The Reluctant Spiritualist: The Life of Maggie Fox

It began as a prank where Maggie Fox and her sister rapped out messages from the 'spirit world' in 1948 and soon lead to a vast movement of believers in the otherworld - a movement Fox eventually denounced forty years later, revealing her hoax. Maggie Fox's life, prank, and phenomenon is revealed in The Reluctant Spiritualist, a powerful biographical coverage surveying not just her prank and its powers, but the famous people of her era who became engrossed in the promise of tangible evidence of an afterlife.

Can you crack your fingers? Most people can. Can you crack your toes? That's a little rarer, but still not an extraordinary ability. Can you crack your toes and thereby enrich your family and start a new form of religion? That would be extraordinary, and the extraordinary story of the woman who did it is in The Reluctant Spiritualist: The Life of Maggie Fox (Harcourt) by Nancy Rubin Stuart. Maggie Fox, and her sisters, were good enough at toe snapping (and the equivalent of ventriloquism, making people think the noises were coming from elsewhere) that they harnessed the snaps to spooky effect. They convinced first their mother and then much of the American public that the raps were simply the manner of telegraph that dead people use to contact those of us left behind here. It seems preposterous that the spirits, with all the resources of The World Beyond, would have to resort to such a system of communication, and indeed, after the Fox sisters got started, they and their imitators were able to show how spirits helped in such useful feats as tipping tables, writing in trances, producing yucky ectoplasm, or many other peculiar manifestations. Stuart acknowledges the eagerness to believe that is the great engine that powers such performances. Most religions teach that there is some sort of life after death, but many seek direct evidence of it. The spiritualists provided what passed as evidence, and what passed as comfort for the bereaved, and if Maggie Fox could crack her toes and say it was confirmation of life on "the other side", then there was a public eager to believe her. She didn't set out on a career of spiritualism. She was fourteen years old in 1848, living in Hydesville, New York, when she and her sister started playing tricks on their mom. The agitated response of Mrs. Fox to their tricks and rappings convinced her that a spirit haunted the house. The word about the "spook house" spread, and when strangers, including journalists and clergymen, converged upon the farmhouse, Maggie was locked into a role. Her celebrity was taken over by her 34-year-old sister Leah, who learned the secret of how the "spirits" were being produced, and essentially blackmailed Maggie into performing for money (this is why Maggie can be referred to as "reluctant"). Leah organized séances in homes and eventually in larger venues like theaters in Rochester and then Manhattan. The pretty Maggie was wooed from spiritualism by the Arctic explorer Elisha Kent Kane, who secretly married her shortly before his death overseas. Maggie attempted to gain her legacy from him, but Kane's duplicitous family succeeded in keeping it from her. Impoverished, and prone to alcoholism, Maggie eventually exposed herself in 1888, either because of guilt or because of need of money. She appeared on stage in New York to tell 3,000 listeners, "I have been mainly instrumental in perpetrating the fraud of Spiritualism upon a too confiding public." She then took off he

This is an intriguing biography of Maggie Fox who along with her sister, Katy, started the spiritualist movement that talked with the dead during the middle of the eighteenth century in Hydesville, New York. Nancy Ruben Stuart makes a sound argument that teenage Maggie bored with the small town after living in Rochester created the weird knockings that she and her sibling claimed were deceased people communicating through them. The word of what the Fox sisters could do spread and people came from miles around for a reading. Married sister Leah saw a chance for them to make money and soon a movement spread across the country. However, at nineteen years old Maggie fell in love with Arctic explorer Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, who demanded she stopped what he considered a nasty hoax, spiritualism. In her sixties she confessed that spiritualism was a fraud although she continued to give séances. This biography is fascinating as it provides a deep sense of time and place (upstate New York was a hot bed for cult activities) as well as a powerful look at Maggie and her family. The author contends that spiritualism still has a hold on people in the twenty-first century with New Age movements like the psychic hotline. Readers will appreciate this strong glimpse at a teen who shammed a nation. Harriet Klausner

The Reluctant Spiritualist is non-fiction but reads like a fast-paced whodunit. The mystery is whether spiritualism is a fact, or a fraud cooked up by two bored teenage girls in a farmhouse in mid-nineteenth century upstate New York. Drawing extensively on diaries, correspondence, and literature of the times, Nancy Rubin Stuart paints a vivid portrait of the meteoric rise and tragic downfall of Maggie and Katy Fox, women who gave birth to the modern spiritualist movement. It all began when the sisters learned to dislocate the joints of their big toes to produce "rapping" sounds in order to frighten their high-strung mother. Over the years, Maggie and Katy become so popular that they hold seances for world leaders. Much of what Ms. Stuart documents is clearly fraud, but other instances of the sisters' powers, and that of other, mostly female "mediums", are inexplicable. Politicians and celebrites who were skeptics become converts, even while many crusade to expose trickery in the business. This was one of the few occupations where Victorian women influenced society in large numbers, and Ms. Stuart does a good job of exploring spiritualism's sexual overtones. Many famous gentlemen attended seances held by Maggie and Katy because they were attracted to them. One humorous incident involved a bunch of drunken U.S. senators in a hotel room with the two young women. Things haven't changed much in the last 150 years! Against this backdrop is a poignant, star-crossed love story involving Maggie and the great Arctic explorer Elisha Kent Kane. Kane is a firm non-believer who gets Maggie to give up rapping, at least for a while. To the end, Ms. Stuart takes no position on the validity of spiritualism, presenting extensive evidence, pro and con, down to our own time. Some critics have said that the author's even-handedness detracts from her work. I consider her impartiality a strength. It is best to let the reader make up his or her own mind about a subject that defies empirical proof. The Reluctant Spiritualist is an important book that raises hard questions about the immortality of the soul.

This book is a real page turner that beautifully delineates the dramatic story of the life of Victorian era medium Maggie Fox and her era. While it is a biography, Nancy Rubin Stuart's "The Reluctant Spiritualist" reads like a novel even as it describes the rise of spiritualist movement, Maggie's initial role in it and her thrilling, but ultimately tragic romance with Arctic explore Elisha Kent Kane. There's something for ever reader in this book--social history,engaging characters, a great love story, and of course, the ongoing question about the life of the spirit. A terrific read! Wendy S.