Spiritualism is born in Wayne County, New…
1848 CE
Spiritualism is born in Wayne County, New York, when the teenaged Fox sisters communicate with poltergeists in 1848.
The two younger sisters—Kate, twelve, and Margaret, fifteen—are living in a house in Hydesville, New York, with their parents.
Hydesville, which no longer exists today, is at this time a hamlet that is part of the township of Arcadia in Wayne County, New York, just outside Newark.
The house has some reputation for being haunted, but it isn't until late March that the family begins to be frightened by unexplained sounds that at times sound like knocking and at other times like the moving of furniture.
During the night of March 31, Kate challenges the invisible noisemaker, presumed to be a "spirit", to repeat the snaps of her fingers.
"It" does.
The girls address the spirit as "Mr. Splitfoot", which is a nickname for the Devil.
Later, the alleged "entity" creating the sounds claims to be the spirit of a peddler named Charles B. Rosna, who had been murdered five years earlier and buried in the cellar.
In his writings on the Fox sisters, Arthur Conan Doyle will claim the neighbors dug up the cellar and found a few pieces of bone, but it won't be until 1904 that a skeleton will be found, buried in the cellar wall.
No missing person named Charles B. Rosna is ever identified.