Who are the Fox Sisters?

Movies About Spiritualism

In this modern day of mass and quick communications via a host of new media, Spiritualism seems to have fallen by the wayside as a subject for film.

However there are many good short clips on Youtube about the subject (one is below) but we hear there is a new Spiritualist organisation that is to concentrate on producing documentaries about Spiritualism that will include attempts to show as much physical evidence as possible.

More about that when it comes to hand.

Here is a short film about the history of Spiritualism made by the SNU.

The beginnings of Spiritualism

The origin of mediumship is usually linked to the Fox sisters at Hydesville, New York in 1848, but believers date the unofficial beginning of Modern American Spiritualism to the Shakers and similar religious groups. By 1853 the movement had reached San Francisco and London, and by 1860 was worldwide. The Fox family remained very active in Spiritualism for many years. Other notable Spiritualists were Mercy Cadwallader, who became a sort of missionary for the movement, and Emma Hardinge Britten, who wrote e first Spiritualist newspaper in Britain, The Yorkshire Spiritual Telegraph, was published, and by the 1870s there were numerous Spiritualist societies and churches throughout the US and Britain.

There was little in the way of national organisation of mediums in Britain or the USA although some regions of Britain had organised Federations that might have up to thirty circles of similar beliefs, and in 1891 the National Federation of Spiritualists (NFS) came into existence and grew quite large before its name change to the Spiritualists' National Union (SNU) in 1902. British spiritualists of this time were often adherents of the temperance and anti-capital punishment lobbies, often held radical political views and were frequently vegetarians. Some were active in Women's Rights and a minority espoused Free Love: the popular perception of Spiritualists was often of radicals in the Victorian period.

To read more on the Fox Sisters click here for their Wikipedia entry

Judge Edmonds

Judge John Worth Edmonds (1816-1874)

John W. Edmonds was one of the most influential early American Spiritualists. After a great public career, as a member of both branches of the New York State Legislature and, for some time, President of the Senate and Judge of the Supreme Court of New York, he resigned the latter position on account of the outcry raised against his Spiritualistic beliefs and, especially, his support of the Fox sisters.


His interest in the Rochester knockings was aroused in early 1851, and the first account of his experiences was published on August 1, 1853, in the New York Courier, in an article "To the Public." In this article, in order to meet the constant attacks against him by the Press, he confessed his complete conversion to Spiritualism and related his experiences. This bold step aroused a tremendous sensation, and a furious controversy arose.

In a letter published in the New York Herald, on August 6, 1853, he wrote:

"I went into the investigation originally thinking it a deception, and intending to make public my exposure of it. Having from my researches come to a different conclusion, I feel that the obligation to make known the result is just as strong. Therefore it is, mainly, that I give the result to the world. I say mainly because there is another consideration which influences me, and that is, the desire to extend to others a knowledge which I am conscious cannot but make them happier and better."

The Fox Sisters

His investigations into mediumship were logical, hard, and indicative of a man of the law. He was very shrewd, and, consistently, his conclusions were the same: spirit out of body can and does communicate with spirit in body.

From: First Spiritual Temple

As time passed on, Judge Edmonds developed mediumship himself. Between the years 1853 and 1854, within a small circle formed with a few close friends, he received many spirit messages and communications. The chief communicators were alleged to be Swedenborg and Bacon.