GARBLED AND DISTORTED TESTIMONY.
So the neighbors were called in at the Hydesville house and the "rappings"
were continued.
By diligent questioning on the part of the older persons in the Fox
household and of the neighbors, the mysterious noises were made to affirm
or to deny almost anything which was suggested to the "mediums," often in
accordance with knowledge that, it had been believed, was only possessed
by a few persons.
And so the wonder grew, day by day.
Pursuing the idea that a man had been murdered in the house, the whole of
a very horrible history was obtained, and the name even of the supposed
murderer was indicated by affirmative "raps" when mentioned together with
others in a tentative way. The occupation of the victim was said to be
that of a pedler. He had $500 in money and was buried in the creek which
ran past the house.
Mrs. Underhill admits that some of the neighbors were misled and went to
digging in the creek, called Ganargua, the water of which was then very
low. But they speedily recognized the absurdity of this undertaking, and
the girls, Maggie, Katie and Lizzie laughed at them for their pains. The
bones of an old horse were found there and nothing more.
By this time the two sisters had arrived at very great proficiency in
producing the raps. Such a crude and easily detected means as the bobbing
of apples on the floor was early discarded. Often in the morning, before
they dressed, and after the old folks had left their room, the sisters
would stand in their bare feet on the floor and vie with each other in the
laughable exercise of making the "strange" noises. It was impossible, of
course, that Lizzie should not know the whole truth, although being about
thirteen years old at this time, she was unabled to imitate the "raps"
very successfully. Indeed, it is said that she was too frank and outspoken
in disposition to engage long in any deception. When the children
persisted in deluding their mother, partly for their amusement and partly
because they were ashamed to retract what had already caused so much
excitement and had drawn so much attention to themselves, Lizzie used to
break out indignantly:
"_Now, Maggie, how can you say that it was done by spirits! You know
yourself that it's all a story. It's a great shame to pretend such
things._"
Many occurrences of this description I have gathered from Mrs. Kane.
But Mrs. Leah Underhill, in her jumbled up narrative, states that "_When
the raps broke out suddenly close to some of the family, or at the table,
one of the girls would accuse the other of having caused them, saying,
'Now you did that, etc., etc.'_"
Thanks to Mrs. Leah Underhill, such hints of the true explanation of
these "manifestations" are plentiful throughout her book, and one needs
only to bring some little intelligence to bear upon it to read between the
lines the whole story of the fraud.
And here let me quote a passage which only goes to show how very strong
was the love of deviltry in the children:
"Father had always been a regular Methodist in good standing, and was
invariable in his practice of morning prayers; and _when he would be
kneeling upon his chair, it would sometimes amuse the children to see him
open wide his eyes as knocks would sound and vibrate on his chair itself_.
He expressed it graphically to mother: 'When I am done praying that
jigging stops.'"
Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane distinctly remembers incidents like this one; only
she qualifies the narrative by saying that her father never opened his
eyes when these annoyances came while he was at prayer, but went devoutly
on to the end without heeding them.
How absurd for any one to suppose that if these sounds were produced by a
cause unknown to the children, they would laugh at them and regard them as
very great sport, instead of trembling and crying with affright!
"The sounds which were heard at those times," says Mrs. Kane in her
statement to the writer, "were all produced by Katie and myself, and by no
other being or spirit under the sun. Nor did we always do it with our
feet. Frequently in that early stage of the excitement about the
'rappings,' we would make the sounds with our fingers, provided it was
easy to do so without causing suspicion. In order to do it unknown to any
one, we would sit with one hand hidden by an elbow resting upon the table,
or the woodwork of a chair.
"Of course, our mother in her earnest belief, poor soul, excited us to do
a great deal more than otherwise we would had done. The mystery of the
sounds absorbed her entire being for the time. She became pale and
worn-looking and thought that great misfortunes were to happen, and
prayed often and fervently. I can well remember how my heart used to smite
me at times when I looked upon her and knew that Katie and I were the
cause of all her trouble. In later years, long after I had come to the age
of understanding, I had very bitter reasons for such pangs of remorse,
especially towards the last of mother's life, when, as I know, she was in
a great measure undeceived and feared for the perdition of the souls of
her children."
In Mrs. Underhill's book, (written for her by another,) there is an effort
to convey the impression that John D. Fox, her father, shared in the
belief which she sought to establish in the spiritual origin of the
"knockings." Such an implication Mrs. Kane declares to be utterly false.
He never manifested in any way a tendency toward such belief; on the
contrary, he always showed by his conduct and his manner of speech, the
utmost repugnance to it, and a perfect contempt for the weakness which
could lead one into it.
Margaret Fox, the mother, used to say to her husband:
"Now, John, don't you see that it's a wonderful thing?"
"No, I don't," he would answer. "Don't talk to me about it. I don't want
to hear a word about it!"
Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane says, further: "My father did not believe in
Spiritualism. The excitement which we caused annoyed him a great deal. He
signed a statement which merely amounted to his declaring that he did not
know how the noises originated. He was cajoled into doing this. He wanted
to get rid of the importunities of those who believed, or affected to
believe, in the 'rappings.'"
* * * * *
Such is the story of the earliest "rappings" at Hydesville.
It is embellished by Mrs. Underhill with many transparent falsehoods. But
still further to bolster it up, it was thought necessary to discover
traditions, or to invent "hearsay" anecdotes, giving to the house in which
they lived a ghostly history. There are few country houses about which the
memory of the oldest neighboring inhabitant does not recall something or
other remarkable and strange, which was told him by some one or other
whose identity is very indefinite, in the dim, distant past. Thus it is
stated that odd noises had been heard in the Hydesville house during
several previous years by successive occupants. But it is confessed that
none of those persons (whose testimony no one pretends to give) had
obtained any intelligible messages from another world.
Mrs. Kane states that all of this alleged neighborhood gossip was totally
unknown to her at the time, and she believes that it had its chief--or
perhaps its only--origin, in the morbid imaginations of those who were the
first to set it going.