Back in the day when I first started researching what is a ghost? What are the unexplainable things that are happening around us? I really did not know anything about ghosts nor had I thought about them until I started visiting old buildings in downtown Austin so I could write about my new downtown walking tour Austin Promenade Tours.
The overwhelming number of people who told me that there was what they called a ghost, and the stories related to the ghost in the building caused me to change the name of my tour from Austin Promenade Tours to Austin Ghost Tours.
Rosemary Ellen Guiley book, or I should say Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits was the first book that I ever purchased. Like an encyclopedia it was full of information that I found very helpful.
One story in the very big book I remember reading was about the Fox Sisters. They were supposed to be three sisters who ushered in the beginning of Spiritualism in the Victorian era. The three sisters were Leah, Maggie and Katie. Leah was 10 years older than Maggie. Maggie was 4-years older than Katie. I don’t believe that they ushered in anything new; it just had a new name, Spiritualism. Ghosts and the mediums who could communicate with them for example priests, religious individuals and such, had been communicating with the deceased for a long time. What set the Fox Sisters apart was the fact that the communication was monetized and made very public through newspapers and writings of the time. Prior to the sensationalism of the media Communications with the other world had been happening for all of time.
The sisters made a good living traveling around Europe and the United States holding seances and behaving as mediums between people and deceased loved ones. At one point even working for PT Barnum.
There were consequences that came with the success. The eldest Leah seemed the most together as the manager. But, the much younger sisters Maggie and Katie struggled with alcoholism. Maggie went to treatment and recovered but later returned to drinking. Katie never stopped drinking. and Leah eventually abandoned the family and married a wealthy businessman and retired from performing.
As Maggie and Katie’s careers waned Maggie would eventually claim that it was all a fake and none of it was real. She would later say she was just kidding and take it back. At one point Leah had the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children take Katie’s two boys from her due to her alcoholism.
Leah died on November 1st 1891 at the age of 77. Katie drank herself to death on July 2nd, 1892, at the age of 56. Her body was found by one of her sons. Maggie died on March 8th, 1893, at the age of 59 at a friend’s home in Brooklyn, she was ill and destitute.
Lifetime achievements of Rosemary Ellen Guiley
