Explore "The Humbugs of the World" by P.T. Barnum on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The spirit-rapping and medium humbugs -- Their origin -- How the thing is done -- $500 reward.
The "spirit-rapping" humbug was started in Hydesville, New York, about seventeen years ago, by several daughters of a Mr. Fox, living in that place. These girls discovered that certain exercises of their anatomy would produce mysterious sounds -- mysterious to those who heard them, simply because the means of their production were not apparent. Reports of this wonder soon went abroad, and the Fox family were daily visited by people from different sections of the country -- all having a greed for the marvelous. Not long after the strange sounds were first heard, someone suggested that they were, perhaps, produced by spirits; and a request was made for a certain number of raps, if that suggestion was correct. The specified number were immediately heard. A plan was then proposed by means of which communications might be received from "the spirits. " An investigator would repeat the alphabet, writing down whatever letters were designated by the "raps. " Sentences were thus formed -- the orthography, however, being decidedly bad.