Although the belief that the living can communicate with the dead has existed almost as long as man, it wasn't until March 31, 1848 that spiritualism would turn in a new direction through the naivete of two teenage girls. Margaret and Kate Fox, 15 and 11 respectively, would unknowingly prove that communication with the dead is indeed a possibility for those open to the spiritual world.

John and Margaret Fox moved into their new home in Hydesville, New York, a town about 20 miles outside of Rochester on Dec.11, 1847 with their three daughters, Kate, Margaret and Leah. The prior owner convinced that the house was haunted, had sold the house because of inexplicable noises. It wasn't until March of 1848 that the Foxes began experiencing those same raps and taps. The young Fox women were so frightened by the noises that they began to sleep in their parents' bedroom. When the first disturbances occurred they seemed to come from one particular section of the house. In searching for the origin of the sounds the Foxes found nothing out of the ordinary. As the noises continued night after sleepless night, they seemed to be emanating from throughout the house. The sounds were strong enough to rattle the bed on which they huddled. It was on March 31, 1848 that Kate Fox, upon hearing the same rapping and tapping called out, "Mr. Splitfoot, if you can hear me, repeat my hand claps." The ghost allegedly obeyed. Margaret then followed with the same request. Again the sound was echoed by the ghost young Kate had spontaneously named, "Mr. Splitfoot". Mrs. Fox was the next to attempt communicating with the spirit. She asked Mr. Splitfoot to give the ages of her children in the appropriate order of oldest to youngest. Again the phantom answered correctly including the age of a child she had lost to illness at the age of three.

Fearing no one would believe the story of their brush with the spiritual world, the Foxes decided to call in friends and neighbors to authenticate the discovery of the ability of the girls to communicate with the dead. With each person asking questions through the children it was ascertained that the spirit had been murdered in the east bedroom of the house five years earlier. His throat had been cut with a butcher knife, his body taken to the cellar and buried ten feet below the surface of the earth the following night. To further authenticate the story and prove that the Fox women had truly entered a dimension beyond our physical world the Foxes and their neighbors took to digging in the cellar where Mr. Splitfoot had allegedly been interred. That night there were no disturbances in the house.

Continued digging in the cellar finally produced some hair and bones. It seemed that a peddler by the name of Charles B. Rosna had stayed at the Hydesville home five years earlier. Hydesville would apparently be the last stop on Mr. Rosna's work route for it is believed that the source of the ghostly disturbances was just this Mr. Rosna who had been murdered that night. Further proof of the Foxes' credibility came fifty-six years later when school children, playing around the cellar of the "Spook House" as it came to be known made the discovery of

"the skeleton of the man supposed to have caused the rappings
first heard by the Fox sisters in 1848."

Mr. William Hyde who now owned the famed house confirmed their discovery.