Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism Book

Is it really possible to talk to the dead? This question still generates passionate opinions from believers and sceptics alike and is explored in Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism. One can only imagine the stir that the Fox sisters created in 1848 when they claimed to hear a ghost rapping on the wall of their Hydesville, New York home. The sisters soon discovered that the ghost would tap answers to specific questions. Within days neighbours and travellers were showing up at the house wanting to converse with the "spirit". The Fox sisters went onto become a national phenomenon, holding séances and making their livings as celebrity mediums. They were also the leaders of a new movement called the spiritualists. New York-based filmmaker Barbara Weisberg assembled this fascinating and expertly recounted biography. Beyond trying to prove whether the Fox girls were legitimate, Weisberg wrote a study of how two young girls could shape a new spiritual movement in mid-1800s America. "The more I thought about the Fox sisters, the more it seemed to me not only that Kate and Maggie sparked a movement, but that their lives epitomised the conflicts and urges that helped fuel its blaze. The question of the other world aside, the girls' appeal surely stemmed in part from the ways they embodied--and intuited--their culture's anxieties and ambitions." Ironically, in not trying to prove whether these two were frauds, Weisberg has created a more satisfying human story within a rich historical context, not unlike the tactics used for the bestseller Seabiscuit. And likewise, this could and should easily translate into a dynamite major motion picture. --Gail Hudson, Amazon.comRead More