Hydesville, The Story of the Rochester Knockings Chapter 5/8

CHAPTER V.

Happily for the momentous work which the spiritual telegraphers had undertaken to initiate in this

humble dwelling, the first manifestations did not appeal to the high and learned of the earth, but to the

plain common-sense of an honest farmer’s wife, and suggested that whatever could see, hear, and

intelligently respond to relevant queries, must have in it something in common with humanity; and thus

Mrs. Fox continued her investigations. Addressing the viewless rapper she said “count ten;” the raps

obeyed. “How old is my daughter Margaret?” then “Kate?” Both questions were distinctly and

correctly rapped out. Mrs. Fox then asked “How many children have I?” Seven, was the reply; this

however proved to be wrong for she had only six living. She repeated her question and was again

answered by seven raps; suddenly she cried “How many have I living?” Six raps responded. “How

many dead?” a single knock; and both these answers proved correct. To the next question, “Are you a

man that knocks?” there was no response; but “Are you a spirit?” elicited firm and distinctive

responsive knocks.

Emboldened by her success, Mrs. Fox continued her enquiries and ascertained by raps that the

messages were coming from what purported to be the Spirit of an injured man who had been

murdered for his money. To the question how old he was, there came thirty-one distinct raps. He also

gave them to understand that he was a married man, and had left a wife and five children; that his wife

was dead, and had been dead two years. After ascertaining so much, she asked the question “Will the

noise continue if I call in some neighbours?” The answer was by rapping in the affirmative.

At first they called in their nearest neighbours, who came thinking they would have a hearty laugh

at the family for being frightened—but when the first neighbour came in and found that the noise,

whatever it might be, could tell the age of herself as well as others, and give correct answers to

questions on matters of which the family of Mr. Fox was quite ignorant, she concluded that there was

something beside a subject of ridicule and laughter in these unseen but audible communications.

These neighbours insisted on calling others who came, and after investigation were as much

confounded as at first.

The reader must endeavour to picture to himself the scene which followed the introduction of the

neighbours to this weird and most novel court of inquiry. Imagine the place to be an humble cottage in

a remote and obscure hamlet; the judge and jurors, simple unsophisticated rustics; and the witness an

invisible, unknown being, a denizen of a world of whose very existence mankind has been ignorant;

acting by laws mysterious and inconceivable, in modes utterly beyond all human control or

comprehension, and breaking through what has been deemed the dark and eternal seal of death, to

reveal the long-hidden mysteries of the grave, and drag to the light secrets which not even the fabled

silence of the grave could longer hide away. Those who have been accustomed to dream of death as

the end of all whom its shadowy portals inclose, alone are prepared to appreciate the awful and

startling reality of this strange scene, breaking apart, as it did, like a rope of sand, all the

preconceived opinions of countless ages on the existence and destiny of the living dead.

Those who have become familiar with the revealments of the spirit circle will only smile at the

consternation evoked in this rustic party by the now familiar presence and manifestations of “the

spirits,” but to those who still stand in the night of superstition, deeming of all earth’s countlessmillions as “dead,” “lost,” “gone,” no one knows whither; never to return; to give no sign, no echo, no

dim vibration from that vast gulf profound of unfathomed mystery—what a picture is that which

suddenly brings them face to face with the mighty hosts of the vanished dead, all clothed in life, and

girded round with a panoply of power, and light, and strength; with vivid memory of the secret

wrongs deemed buried in their graves. Our cities are thronged with an unseen people who flit about

us, their piercing eyes invisible to us, are scanning all our ways. The universe is teeming with them,

—”THERE ARE NO DEAD,”—the air, the earth, and the sky above, are filled with a viewless host

of spirit—witnesses whose messages ever declare “There is no death.”