Hydesville

The interesting events narrated in this book which occurred at Hydesville, in the house of the Fox Family, are those by which Modern Spiritualism made its advent into this world as a new revelation in spiritual matters.

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Excerpts:

History is not without its reliable records of similar phenomena, but, just as many scientific men have experimented and stopped short of the gateway of the actual discovery of Nature's secrets, so, many who came in contact with phenomena similar to those of Hydesville whilst being mystified as to the meaning of the operating power, stopped short of the actual discovery that "It can see as well as hear." Notably in the case of the disturbances at Mr. Mompesson's house at Tedworth (1661-1663) and Mr. Wesley's parsonage at Epworth (1716-1717).

The early literature of the Spiritualist Movement is replete with most interesting records of phenomena of bewildering variety, but during the past twenty years the demand for literature on this absorbing subject has taken a more philosophic turn. The phenomena are admittedly real. The philosophy is the subject of debate, hence these early records are fast going out of print and becoming difficult to obtain.

Some few years ago, when the writer paid what proved to be his last visit to Mrs. Emma Hardinge Britten, he was deeply impressed with her desire that the early history of the Spiritualist Movement, for which she spent the greater part of her industrious life, and with which she had been so intimately connected, should not be allowed to pass into oblivion, and that at least the story of HYDESVILLE should be published in a handy form and at a reasonable price. For this purpose she presented him with what appeared to be her only remaining copy of her invaluable historical work "Modern American Spiritualism," and requested him to undertake that duty.

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The birth-places of the greatest of the world's social, political, and religious reformations have generally been of insignificant and lowly aspect, and apparently under the most inauspicious circumstances for producing any great effect upon mankind. The Babe of the lowly manger becomes the Spiritual King of millions of human hearts and souls, and the "Wood Hut" becomes the gateway through which Holy Ministers of Light, from their world of Truth and Beauty, send the evidence of man's immortality, through the instrumentality of a child, to the weary worn pilgrims of earth, who, praying for the "touch of a vanish'd hand, and the sound of a voice that is still," welcome with joyful hearts the Spirit message "WE STILL LIVE."

The scene of the manifestations dealt with in the following pages, was a small wooden homestead, one of a cluster of houses like itself, in the little village of Hydesville, near to the town of Newark, Wayne County, New York (being so called after Dr. Hyde, an old settler, whose son was the proprietor of the house in question). The place not being directly accessible from a railroad, was lonely and unmarked by those tokens of progress that the locomotive generally leaves in its track, hence it was the last spot where a scene of fraud and deception could find a possibility of a successful execution. The house was a humble frame dwelling fronting south, consisting of two fair-size parlours opening into each other, east of these a bedroom and a buttery or pantry, opening into one of the sitting rooms; and a stairway between the buttery and the bedroom leading from the sitting room up to the half storey above and from the buttery down to the cellar.