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As long as the ropes were refastened before the trick’s conclusion, the audience was never the wiser. Meanwhile, accomplices would wait for the lights to go out to slip in through trap doors elsewhere on stage. The medium would slip their bonds as soon as they were out of sight, freeing their hands to stand in for the rambunctious spirits. This was a convincing trick in its time, and all it required was a little escape artistry to pull off. At the end of the scene the curtains parted to reveal the medium tied up just as they were left. Hands poked out from between the drapes, ghostly figures materialized, and instruments left on the floor of the cabinet started to play themselves. Once the curtains were drawn and the lights were extinguished, all sorts of spooky mayhem took place.

#SEANCE MEANS FULL#

To gain the full trust of the audience, they sometimes invited spectators to come on stage and tie the ropes to their liking. Mediums would enter the cabinets (often curtained-off sections of stage) with their hands bound to prevent them from faking any paranormal activity. MANIFESTATION CABINETSĪfter first appearing on the séance scene in the 1850s, manifestation cabinets, or spirit cabinets, soon became a staple of the genre. One moment it was ludicrous, the next it was weird.' 2. The New York Herald wrote, 'There stood a black-robed, sharp-faced widow working her big toe and solemnly declaring that it was in this way she created the excitement that has driven so many persons to suicide or insanity. Rather, the girls produced the sounds themselves by manipulating the joints in their knuckles and toes.Īfter relying on the trick for decades, one of the sisters decided to reveal her fraud to a live audience by banging her bare toe against a wooden stool to show them how it was done. The 'ghosts' they corresponded with weren’t really ghosts at all, nor were they apples. During séances, they would recite the alphabet and pretend to wait for spirits to slowly spell out messages.

The sisters used this concept as the basis for their medium act. The Fox girls were indeed responsible for the rapping, but the source was actually apples they had tied with string and bounced against the floor of their bedroom.

After their mother heard mysterious knocks coming from the walls and furniture of their home, she concluded the noise was metaphysical in nature. The famous Fox sisters had spirit rapping to thank for their careers. But knowing the behind-the-scenes secrets of séances doesn’t make them sound any less entertaining. These so-called communions with the dead have since generally been debunked as clever parlor tricks (thanks to skeptics like Harry Houdini). Whether the medium performed at home or on stage, the chance to see them summon disembodied hands, decipher otherworldly messages, and belch up ectoplasm was considered quality entertainment back in the day. Today self-proclaimed psychics tend to get a bad rap, but during the late 19th and early 20th centuries they enjoyed celebrity status.

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