Spiritualism

The 19th Century Spiritualist Movement is a movement that began in 1848 with the Fox Sisters, largely focussed on interaction with departed souls.

The Fox Sisters:
Maggie and Kate Fox moved to Hydesville, New York in 1847. A year later, in March 1848, the young girls and their family reported repeated knocking and 'rapping' noises coming from somewhere inside their house. Their mother, Margaret Fox, began to question the knocking sounds, and identified the noises as the spirit of a murdered peddler, supposedly buried beneath the house.

The events of 1848, and the fame that followed, constituted the rise of the Modern Spiritualist Movement, which focusses on communication with departed souls through mediums or seances (french: session). Historians such as Weisberg, who wrote a book following the Fox Sisters and their influence, see the girls as catalysts for the movement.

19th Century:
Largely in response to the claims of the Fox Sisters and the 'Rochester Rappings', throughout the 1850s a trend for seances and otherworldly communications took over the United States. This trend spread to Britain and across most of Western Europe. The phenomena of spirit communication took various different forms, mostly developing on the 'rapping' technique of the Fox Sisters' fame, though later including moving small objects and mediums acting as 'conduits' of spirit voices. The popularity of seances, and the lucrativeness of related business, continued to grow into the 1860s and the 1870s.