Talking to the Dead by Barbara Weisberg

That night, as Fish lay in her bed thinking about “the mysterious workings of Providence,” she decided that she had “resisted the divine spirit in my own heart by making light of what that child said and turning it away….” At that moment she heard soft knocks emanate from underneath her pillow, a sign that she took to affirm “the truth that our departed friends are with us striving for our good….” The recognition calmed her, easing her dread of death. 8
    The spirits were equally reassuring to Isaac, for when he asked whether enjoyment in the afterlife would “be in accordance with our lives hear [sic],” he received “a very loud response.” 9 Well-intentioned men and women, it seemed, could feel confident of their immortal future.
    Quakers such as Amy and Isaac, however, were inclined toward sympathy with spirit communication as much by the nature of their faith as by their rejection of orthodoxy. The couple had twice resigned from Quaker organizations after disputing the extent of the institution’s authority over the individual; in the 1840s they and other like-minded Quakers had founded a new branch of the faith known as the Congregational Friends. Its members’ unstinting devotion to the concept of an inner light—something deeper than but akin to individual conscience—not only supported their political activism but also underscored the notion that ordinary men and women could forge a profound connection with a transcendent spiritual realm. Faith in an inner light endowed even young girls like Kate and Maggie with radiant potential, making otherworldly inspiration seem a less heretical possibility.
    Not that what the spirits had to say always seemed inspiring. One day, for instance, Kate attended a family tea with the Posts and other friends, an ordinary enough event until one of the adults objected to the lavish amount of molasses that Joseph Post, a boy no older than Maggie, was pouring happily on his pudding. An urgent shower of raps called for the alphabet, and the mortals laboriously decoded a message dear to any youngster’s heart.
    â€œPut on as much molasses as he likes,” the indulgent spirit advised. 10
    Isaac recorded many aspects of the spirit sessions. Sometimes, he wrote, Kate and Maggie were magnetized when the raps occurred. He noted as well that the girls frequently spoke simultaneously with the sounds and that on occasion the raps raised subjects that no one in the room had asked or thought about. Such independent thinking had significance, for it implied that the girls weren’t simply mind readers—an amazing enough feat in itself—but spoke instead on behalf of the spirits.
    By the late autumn of 1848 the mysterious noises had been investigated, wrote Isaac, “by many” without trickery being discovered, so that he believed “every candid person admits that the girls do not make it.” 11
    But not every “candid person” agreed with him. Others who heard the raps continued to grapple with doubts. Who really made the sounds? Whose intelligence informed them? Were the Fox girls responsible or the spirits or some third force such as electricity or mesmerism?
    Arriving at any definitive answers seemed, to the skeptical as well as to the hopeful of heart, to depend on investigations designed to prove the presence or absence of fraud. The challenge of the detective work undoubtedly excited some of the curious as much as did the notion of spirit communication itself.
    Along with physical searches for mechanical devices and careful scrutiny of the girls, test questions, as they were called, became an essential investigative tool. No question was too trivial, for the specificity of information tested a spirit’s authenticity. Whose spirit was speaking? What had been its occupation? Favorite color? Place of birth? The cause—accident, murder, disease, old age—that had carried it off