If you’ve ever wondered how the format for ghost hunting shows got started, the format was pioneered way back by the Fox sisters in New York state.
Jenny Paxton, senior history lecturer at University of Texas Permian Basin, presented “Things That Go Bump: The Fox Sisters, Spirit-Rapping and the Modern Ghost Hunter’s Playbook” at the annual UTPB Halloween Conference Thursday in the library event center.
Organized by Paxton, the conference’s theme was “Ghosts.”
“The Fox sisters were, in a lot of ways, responsible for the development of spiritualism, and certainly very largely, responsible for the methodology of ghost hunting today,” Paxton said.
This was going on in the mid-1800s at a time of a lot of upheaval in America, she said. Arguments over slavery were coming to a head and within just over a decade, war would break out.
“There were all kinds of reverberations from the Second Great Awakening and American spirituality. There were major changes in scientific discovery, and also sometimes pseudo-scientific discovery. People were thinking almost no kind of crazy thing was impossible,” Paxton said.
At the time, people didn’t know the telegraph or photography would be possible. The Second Great Awakening was a nationwide Protestant religious revival in the late 18th and early 19th century.
“So why shouldn’t talking to the dead be possible? In the middle of all of this going on in New York, which is where some of the most extreme of the Second Great Awakening had occurred, including the so called Burned-Over District, a family moved into a new house, and the two daughters of the family, Maggie and Kate, who were both basically middle school or early high school age, for whatever reason, decided to play a prank on their parents. They started making little thumping sounds. This started out by dropping apples on strings to hit against the floor and things like that. They moved on to strategically popping their joints against surfaces to make these rapping sounds basically to spook their parents,” Paxton said.
The Burned-Over District refers to the western and central parts of New York state where the Second Great Awakening took place with such force that it seemed to set the area on fire.
Their parents, particularly their mother, Margaret Fox, were convinced it was a ghost. Their mother thought they better try to find out what was going on. She started to ask the ghost questions. Silence meant no and a knock meant yes.
From this, they determined that the ghost was the ghost of a man who had been murdered in the house before the family moved in. He was buried in the cellar. The mother told the neighbors who started to come in, ask questions and get knocks in response. As time went on, the story got larger and larger.
“They actually do try to dig up the cellar to see if there’s a body there. After five feet, they hit water. This does not seem to have dissuaded anyone, however,” Paxton said.
Eventually, it got into the press. In the middle of all of this, Maggie and Kate’s older sister Leah turns up and sees an opportunity. She develops the traditional haunting with furniture moving around, spooky sounds and whispers. They would also hold seances.
Lori Kinsey, an adjunct professor at UTPB and full-time at Trinity Valley Community College in Athens, Texas, presented on “The Way Literacy Dies: The Ghostly Embodiment of the Way Literacy Lives, Even Without a Body.”
“I’m more of a reading and writing expert than a ghost expert, but I felt I could take the things that I already knew about reading and writing and delve into research about ghosts and ghostly writing,” Kinsey said.
Stevie Gaines, who teaches speech and communication at Midland College, said the conference had a lot to offer.
He thought Paxton’s presentation was really interesting.
“In fact, the connections between past and present are really interesting, out of how we’re still doing the same thing with different tools,” Gaines said.
Nivea Schrock, a criminal justice student, and Karla Oaxaca, who is studying nursing, both liked the presentations so far.
Schrock said Paxton was very clear and well-spoken.
“I like the point she’s made about how they started the rapping, like way, way back in the day, and it’s still going on today, and I think that’s pretty cool,” Schrock said.
“I think it’s crazy how it’s still happening today,” she added.
