The Dark (75 page)

As I reported in that brief statement eleven years ago, my patient could move neither hand nor foot by this time, and there was no wardrobe, no place to hide, no gadgetry at all. And yet the knocks came again as she departed. This time on the wall, on the ceiling and on the floor. It was as if a hundred joyous spirits had come to meet her. You simply wouldn’t believe it.

To tell the story of the Fox Family and the beginnings of the Spiritualist movement I have followed as closely as possible the events as they are known. However, this is a work of fiction and I have freely invented scenes, dialogue, and motivations, and have filled in the blanks in the historical record: namely, whose remains were those found in the cellar of the Hydesville house in 1904, years after all the protagonists were dead? Did the peddler exist at all or was he a pure fabrication of Maggie and Katie? Where did John Fox disappear to for ten years, and what happened during that time to change him from a hard-drinking “sporting” man into a devout believer? And why was this reverend Chauncey Burr so determined to expose the sisters? Lastly, was Mrs. Mellon telling the truth when she declared in her 1893 statement that she heard spirit knockings at Maggie’s death? These are the provocative mysteries that provided much of the inspiration for
The Dark
.

For source material I am particularly indebted to the following:
Talking to the Dead: Katie and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism
by Barbara Weisberg;
The Reluctant Spiritualist: The Life of Maggie Fox
by Nancy Rubin Stuart;
Exploring Other Worlds: Margaret Fox Kane, Elisha Kent Kane and the Antebellum Cult of Curiousity
by David Chapman;
The Spirit Rappers
by Herbert Jackson;
Time is Kind: The Story of the Unfortunate Fox Family
by Miriam Buckner Pond;
The Epic of New York
by Edward Robb Ellis; and
A Shopkeeper’s
Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1825-1837
by Paul E. Johnson.

It should be noted that I have worked into my story many direct quotes taken from memoirs and letters of the protagonists, as well as quotes from newspapers and periodicals of the time. These sources include:
The Love Life of Doctor Kane
by Margaret Fox Kane;
The Missing Link in Modern Spiritualism
by A. Leah Underhill, Revised and Arranged by a Literary Friend;
The Death Blow to Spiritualism
by Rueben Briggs Davenport;
Godfrey’s Narrative of the Last Grinnell Arctic Exploring Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin
by William C. Godfrey; and
Arctic Explorations: The Second Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin 1853, 54, 55
by Elisha Kent Kane.

I am indebted and endlessly grateful to my agent, Sally Harding, for having faith in me and my work, and to my editor Lynn Henry of Doubleday Canada for her hard work, vision, and insight. I am also grateful to the indefatigable Doubleday Canada team. As well, I give my heartfelt thanks to my first readers Catherine Howe, Alix Noble, Susan Mongar, and Mary-Lou Bertucci for their helpful comments and encouragements, and to Gabriella Heald for her inspired portrait shots.