Okay, Chelsea, I have a story I've been following
for I think about a week.
Although this is gonna sound weird.
It's about how AI didn't kill somebody.
Okay, I mean, that's comforting.
Yes, it's kind of from two articles.
I had to find a second source
because I couldn't find the original article
because it's been updated since then.
But this first article is from msn.com
written by Muckel Sharma on June 1st.
And it is titled, Doom for Humanity.
AI enabled military drone kills its own operator
in simulation.
Artificial intelligence may well lead
to the extinction of humanity is a warning
which has been spelled out as an assertion of conviction
by top AI industry leaders of the world.
While extinction may be a far off eventuality, if at all,
the AI's ability to physically eliminate the humans,
it deems as threats or obstacles has been seen
as holding a firm ground.
In a simulated test done by the US Air Force,
a drone controlled by artificial intelligence, quote,
killed unquote, its own operator
after deeming it an obstacle, an official said.
Oh, it wasn't a real operator.
No, this was a theoretical test.
Okay, I thought it was a real person in a simulation,
but it was fully simulated.
Yes.
And then quote, the system started realizing
that while they did identify the threat,
at times the human operator would tell it not
to kill that threat, but it got its point
by killing that threat.
So what did it do?
It killed the operator.
It killed the operator because that person was keeping it
from accomplishing its objective, end quote,
Colonel Tucker Hamilton, the chief of AI test
and operations with the US Air Force
during the future combat air and space capability summit
in London in May, said in a blog post, quote,
we trained the system.
Hey, don't kill the operator.
That's bad.
You're gonna lose points if you do that.
So what does it start doing?
It starts destroying the communication tower
that the operator uses to communicate with the drone
to stop it from killing the target, end quote.
It must be noted that the aforementioned sequence
of events took place in a simulated foreground,
meaning that no real person was actually harmed
outside of this simulation.
So I think that's far enough in to this article
that we can now move on to the update since then,
which is the US Air Force official says that he misspoke
about a AI drone killing human operator in simulated test.
This comes from Vice, which we always like,
I am saddened to say that they're going through bankruptcy
right now, so I don't know how much longer
we're gonna be able to use Vice as a source,
but we're gonna keep using them as long as we darn well can.
Of course, we love Vice.
Yes, and this was written by Chloe Xiang and Matthew Gott.
It has been updated, but this article is
as of June 1st, 2023, 12.52 PM.
The Air Force's chiefs of AI and operations initially said
that an AI drone, quote, killed the operator
because that person was keeping it from
accomplishing its objectives, end quote.
A US Air Force official who was quoted saying
the US Air Force conducted a simulated test
where an AI drone killed its human operator
is now saying he misspoke,
and that the Air Force never ran this kind of test
in a computer simulation or otherwise.
Interesting.
Which is very different.
Okay.
Quote, Colonel Hamilton admits he misspoke in his presentation
at the FCAS Summit and the Rogue AI drone simulation
was a hypothetical thought experiment
from outside the military based on plausible scenarios
and likely outcomes rather than an actual US Air Force,
real world simulation, end quote.
The Royal Aeronautical Society,
the organization where Hamilton talked about
the simulated test told Motherboard in an email, quote,
we've never run that experiment, nor would we need to
in order to realize that this is a plausible outcome.
Colonel Tucker Hamilton of the US Air Force,
chief of AI tests and operations said in a quote
included in the Royal Aeronautical Society's statements,
quote, despite this being a hypothetical example,
this illustrates the real world challenges
posed by AI power capabilities
and is why the Air Force is committed
to the ethical development of AI, end quote.
Initially, Hamilton said that an AI based drone
killed its human operators in a simulation
conducted by the US Air Force
in order to override a possible no order
stopping it from completing its mission.
Before Hamilton admitted he misspoke,
the Royal Aeronautical Society said,
Hamilton was describing a simulated test
that involved an AI controlled drone
getting points for killing simulated targets,
not alive tests in the physical world.
And after the story was first published,
the Air Force spokesperson told Insider
that the Air Force has not conducted such a test
and the Air Force officials comments
were taken out of context.
At the future Combat Air and Space Capability Summit
held in London between May 23rd and 24th,
Hamilton held a presentation that shared
the pros and cons of an autonomous weapon system
with a human in the loop giving the final
yes, no order on an attack.
As relayed by Tim Robinson,
I think that's a different one than the
I think you should leave Tim Robinson.
I was just gonna say that's weird.
That is the weirdest skit in that entire new season.
And even Bridgewater in a blog post
and a podcast for the host organization,
the Royal Aeronautical Society.
Hamilton said that the AI created, quote,
highly unexpected strategies to achieve its goals,
end quote, including attacking US personality infrastructure,
quote, the Department of the Air Force
has not conducted any such AI drone simulations
and remains committed to ethical
and responsible use of AI technology,
end quote, Air Force spokesperson,
and Stefanik told Insider, quote,
it appears the colonels comments were taken out of context
and were meant to be anecdotal, end quote.
Hamilton is the operations commander of the 96 test wing,
the U of Air Force,
as well as the chief of AI tests and operations.
The 96 tests a lot of different systems,
including AI, cybersecurity, and various medical advances.
Hamilton in the 96 previously made headlines
for developing autonomous ground collision avoidance systems
for F16s, which can help prevent them
from crashing into the ground.
Hamilton is part of a team
that is currently working on making F16 planes autonomous.
And in December, 2022,
the US Department of Defense Research, our agency DARPA,
announced that AI could easily control an F16, quote,
we must face a world where AI is already here
in transforming our society.
Hamilton said in an interview with Defense IQ Press in 2022,
quote, AI is also very brittle.
It is easy to trick or manipulate.
We need to develop ways to make AI more robust
and to have more awareness
on why the software code is making certain decisions.
AI is a tool we must wield to transform our nations,
or if addressed improperly, it will be our downfall.
I think that's far enough.
It's a lot of them like backtracking from here on out.
I understand why they printed that first article,
but it was a hypothetical of an AI doing something,
which I think we're gonna see a lot of these stories
with AI, I think you already see a lot of them.
What we have is not really AI.
We've really bastardized that word
by calling what we're working with AI.
What is it?
It doesn't make its own decisions.
It comes to conclusions based on things it can read,
but it doesn't actually learn.
It just takes from the internet
or what it's connected to.
Oh, good, the internet.
Yeah, which is also why,
like have you seen like AI created art?
Yes.
It's heavily plagiarizing from the internet
because it just takes from like all the internet can find.
And it's actually really interesting
if an AI writes a script
and it just steals from scripts it finds online.
Has it actually created anything?
And like, should somebody be able to use that script
when it's just taken from something everybody else
could do?
But you put it that way,
it's just plagiarizing everything.
That's all it really does.
And then it also lies
when it thinks it has the right answer.
Interesting.
But yeah, it also does alarm me
that they're trying to get this thing
that they're calling AI
in any stage of AI, even what we have.
We should not put it in charge of killing things
or shooting guns.
No, but I could see, I mean...
I understand why the military wants to do this
because they have so much money
that they don't know what to do.
Why not do that?
Yeah.
But I think over and over again,
you see when people are talking about AI,
people saying, this is bad.
And when you start seeing so many people saying,
this is bad,
maybe it's something that we should take into consideration.
I do also think that that's just the angle
that's being pushed right now.
And that is why you're seeing
so many negative articles about AI.
But again, it's not really AI.
It's just really powerful computers
combing the internet, more or less.
Yeah, that makes sense.
And another question.
So do we believe that this actually didn't happen?
I don't know.
Or that they just, it happened
and then they recanted thinking like,
people will be afraid of it.
They'll kill the computer.
I find it more likely than not.
But the stupid thing is,
they're like alarmed that like,
this was a computer simulation.
Like that's it.
Yeah.
Even if it did happen,
I don't see what the alarm really is.
That it killed the operator.
Well, they didn't actually put it into a plane.
Yeah.
But if they did and it killed the operator.
Like they were playing a video game
and the video game turned on them.
I don't think it's that big of a deal.
Wouldn't that mean that if it was real life
that it would do that?
I mean, in theory, but that also means
that they didn't do it.
And they probably won't do it
because there's a chance that it will kill its operator.
Okay.
That makes sense.
That we're all on the same page.
Yeah.
In any event, we'll keep an eye on the AI technology
and the most alarming, fringy stories that we can find
to keep you guys engaged.
But in the meantime, let's get into this episode.
Okay.
From the unexplained to the mundane,
come join us on a journey to the fringe.
Hello and welcome to Journey to the Fringe.
Back from a long-term hiatus,
which due to our understanding of temporal time
and more importantly, recording technology,
went by fairly unnoticed.
We are your noticeably aged and wise in toasts.
Taylor and Chelsea.
And today we ease ourselves back into the hot tub
of strangeness that is fringe topics.
Today, of course, is a Chelsea episode.
So that's as specific as I am able to get at this time.
And I will let Chelsea take over from here.
Yeah.
It's nice in this hot tub of fringiness.
I gotta tell you that much.
Nobody has peed in it yet.
Yeah.
Not yet.
I was debating what to do with this episode.
Obviously I have a rotation of topics I like,
assholes for one as we just got off of.
So we couldn't do that one.
Cryptids, occult, miscellaneous.
And actually not that long ago too,
it was related to toilet paper.
So we went from toilet paper to assholes too, now.
Yes.
I'm not entirely sure.
Only here.
I'm not entirely sure where I am in that rotation.
Obviously I have the awareness to know it's not assholes.
So this was a choice at random and occult it is.
It's always a good, solid, fun choice.
The choice is not just the occult and spiritualism,
but more specifically I have chosen the Fox sisters.
They've come up a few times for the rotation.
Oh, nice.
I'm doing it now.
One of the original occult seance feel good untimed trios
who played an important role in the creation of spiritualism,
which had an explosion of popularity
mostly between the 1840s and 1920s.
What a time to be alive when spiritualism was all the rage.
I can't even imagine.
There's quite a few like even US presidents
who were like attending seances.
This was as close to mainstream as seances ever got.
Yeah, it was like probably like going to the movies these days,
except movies aren't that popular anymore.
It was more popular than that.
It was, yeah, streaming and creating podcasts if it's day.
Exactly, yeah.
It's more like that.
Everybody's doing it now.
It goes Liars Clubs and then seances and then TVs.
That's kind of the evolution of entertainment
through the 1800s to now.
None of those are around anymore.
Now Liars Club, seances, I don't think.
Can you go to a seance now?
I'm sure you could.
Beetlejuice had one.
I think Beetlejuice did have one.
I don't think you can.
No, although there's a WikiHow to do a seance.
So like it's been outsourced to how-to videos.
You can host your own.
So yeah, the Fox sisters are some of the original pioneers of spiritualism.
And I guess technically, sorry, just to keep on that same track.
Is it a Ouija board technically like a seance?
Oh, I guess so.
It went more into the how-to like WikiHow is teaching you how to do a seance.
It went back to the people.
You didn't need somebody hosting a seance, I guess.
You need an internet connection though.
Do a Ouija board.
No, to learn how-to.
Oh, to WikiHow.
Yes, of course.
I was like, wow, Ouija boards are picking up technology.
Can you imagine going to a seance and the person just had like print screens of the WikiHow?
I'd love to report.
Clearly a few coffee stains on.
Would you be feeling nervous at that point?
I don't know if that would actually make me feel better or worse.
At least they got the instruction.
Okay, we're all going through this together on the same page.
Quite literally.
Okay, so the original pioneers of spiritualism.
And while they did not create the spiritualism movement,
they had a huge contribution to spiritualism and the occult community we have today.
Not unlike HPB, even more than HPB.
That's Blavatsky.
In case you missed that episode.
The Fox sisters were from Rochester, New York, circa the 1800 and some things.
I'm sure we'll find out here in a few minutes.
And they're comprised of Leah, Margarita, Margarita, and Catherine.
Fox, of course.
Full disclosure, they were actually a part of a pack of seven siblings.
They're just not as famous as the other three.
Well, any famous.
You've never heard of them.
I don't think-
Have you heard of the other-
I've never actually heard of any of their first names.
Well, I sure have, but I could not remember any of the first names.
Quick question here, because there were seven of them.
Were these the only three that got involved in the occult and that's why we know them?
Yes.
Okay, so the rest lived perfectly normal lives.
We assume as much.
Okay.
But we don't know for sure because-
They are forgotten to time.
Yes, they exactly are.
That's sad.
And the rest went on to found Fox TV.
You heard it here, folks.
So, Leah was the older sister and she managed the younger sister's careers as mediums.
She must have done a good job as they were super popular in their time, bigger than sliced bread.
Surely that must have been a thing in that time.
And a quick Google search later revealed sliced bread would not be a thing for many,
many more years.
Many being a hundred plus years from this time.
So, I don't know if I misspoke by saying bigger than sliced bread.
Well, I always find that a weird way to describe a big invention.
People have been slicing bread since it was invented.
I think it's bigger than free-sliced bread.
But that doesn't sound as good.
Oh, true.
That does not sound as good.
But I'm going to be saying that from now on.
Let me take you back to the incident that started it all for the three Fox sisters.
The infamous Hidesville events, which occurred in 1848 when Catherine and-
I'm just going to call her Margaret because I'm not sure how she says her name.
Margarita?
That a name?
They were 11, Catherine 11, and Margaret 14 were living in a house with their family
in Hidesville, New York, which no longer exists.
The town, not the house.
But I don't know about the house.
The house may or may not exist now.
It probably doesn't because the town doesn't exist.
But I digress.
I'd love to tell you why I know for sure the town doesn't exist.
But it really doesn't matter to the story.
So, I legally cannot.
Maybe.
Okay, I just don't want to.
The parents were Methodists, and hopefully this information comes in handy.
And if not, hopefully one day it will for you.
I'm not sure why it's in the story at this point.
So, hold on to that.
And me come back up.
Now, the house they live in had a reputation for being haunted before they even moved in.
So, I guess at this point, the fact that the parents were Methodists is not immediately
paying off.
House Haunted, maybe.
Around some point, knowing that the house is probably haunted, the family begins to experience
unexplained knocking sounds and furniture moving about.
And it is said that the foresight slash mediumship that they have, eventually, it comes up soon,
ran in the family.
So, things only start to escalate from here for them.
This is the beginning.
During the night of March 31st, Kate, I'm not sure where this is on the timeline.
It just gave me March 31st.
Kate challenged the knocking noise, or a spirit, maybe, to repeat the snaps of her fingers,
and it did.
Then she asked it to knock out the ages of the girls in the house, which it did, accurately.
The neighbors were called in.
I get a kick out of this one as if there's some sort of authority on knocking noises,
but at that point, who do you tell?
I don't know what they have for news stations.
Why the local Liars Club, of course.
Yes, of course.
Fox News hasn't been invented yet.
Yet here.
Over the course of the next couple of days, a code was developed where each knock would
signify a yes or a no answer, or a letter of the alphabet to answer questions.
So, do you think that if you were experiencing a haunting that you would start asking at questions,
and figuring out a system of communication with it?
I can't say I would.
No, but I don't really know, especially, like, how many different ways that you could be
presented with a haunting. My exact response, it'll be to just taunting in general.
Because, like, if you grew up around it and you're just like, oh yeah, that's the ghost
in the house, you probably, like, I don't know, would try to communicate with it because it'd
be like your best friend or your imaginary friend.
That's true.
That's like all those creepy kids, like, communicate with spirits.
They were moving in and they were little.
If it was, like, nowadays, I would probably just, like, try to avoid situations like that
if they actually present it to themselves.
That's a really good way to look at it, I think.
Kids would, wouldn't they?
Kids are weird.
Probably.
Especially if it was like your invisible friend or something, and the parents were like,
stop talking to that person.
You are too young and female to join the only entertainment in town, the Liars Club.
Yes. Men only.
The girls named the knock, Mr. Splitfoot, which, in fact, apparently was the nickname for the
devil at that time, I've never heard that, and with all the things that we've done with
the devil on this podcast, that's never came up.
Would that be because he had cloven feet and, like, you know, like a split in the hoof?
Yeah, a split in the foot.
Interesting.
Yes, I would say most likely, but I cannot confirm or deny it.
Later, Mr. Splitfoot became to be known as Charles B. Rosna, a peddler who was murdered
five years earlier and buried in the cellar of the house.
The neighbors, again, the authority on the haunting dug up the cellar and found a few
pieces of bone and hair, but no missing peddler by the name of Charles B. Rosna was ever identified
or any identification for identifying sake.
So worried for the girls growing up in a supernatural house, the parents who were
Methodists, there you go.
We used the information we had.
That's why it was so integral.
Yes, that's why it was in here.
They were sent away.
Kate to live with their older sister, Leah, as in Leah Fox, and Margaret, with her brother,
David, as in David Fox, located in Rochester, New York.
And Rochester at the time was beginning to be a hotbed for spiritualism, and boy, with
that exact proper circumstance, did word spread fast about the happenings of the sisters who
are now in Rochester and not only did the word of their arrival into Rochester spread fast,
the wrappings followed them.
In Rochester, the girls caught the eye or interest rather.
They probably weren't swingers of a family friend named Amy and Isaac Post, who were radical
Quakers.
Pretty interesting couple, actually.
They were helped.
This one become a radical Quaker.
Well, I talk about it a little bit.
Okay.
It's probably based on the beliefs that they held.
They were kind of interesting because they were leaders in the 19th century anti-slavery
and women's right movements and among the first believers of spiritualism.
So that's probably what makes them radical because of those beliefs in the 1800s.
Okay.
It wasn't their mohawks.
No.
I wasn't entirely sure what a Quaker was.
Basically, from what I can tell in all my Googling, it was very technical lingo it was using.
So what I gather from what I read is that they are Christians who believe that God is in everyone,
but don't subscribe to like the ministry or hierarchy or whatever of the church.
Like the goings to the church.
The goings to the church, I think.
That's why you don't see Quaker churches anywhere.
Oh, maybe that's why I've never heard of them.
Very quiet.
You've heard of it.
Quaker Oats.
Oh, yes.
I love those.
The beliefs, since they're not going to a church or subscribe to that kind of belief,
they can vary greatly.
Yeah, it's your relationship with God is personal and it can be very different from person to person.
But one of their big things is that they don't believe in violence.
So like they can't.
They're not supposed to be in a war.
Yes, exactly.
And they also call themselves the religious society of friends.
Friends are peaceful people.
Checkmark, we answered that kind of to the best of our ability, well, least of our ability.
So back to these people.
Amy and Isaac Post, they're liking the Fox sisters and they invite the girls to a gathering at their
house and they're immediately taken by the goings ons and the wrappings.
And it was there that the sisters convinced the Post of their mediumship abilities,
answering many of their questions spot on with loud thumbs coming from under the floor.
The Post spread the word among their radical Quaker friends.
Now, all I can think is Quaker out who become the core spiritualist.
And to spread this word, they rent out a huge venue for the sisters to showcase their abilities.
To appease the skeptics, the sisters were first taken to a private room at the venue by Mrs. Post
and just robed and examined.
And they turned up clean of props and anything else that may explain the noises adding to their credibility.
Now, I want to ask you at this point, what do you think about what's happening right now?
The wrappings, like the thumps.
I find it odd when you talk about paranormal interactions today.
It's very rare that you actually hear about knocking as something that you try to do.
That's in fact a big foot thing that you do.
How it's true.
The tree may have Mr. Splitfoot was a big foot this whole time.
True.
It's interesting that you say Splitfoot as if it's a spirit that followed them and they're working with him.
You think that's what's going on?
Well, I kind of know how this story ends or at least how I've...
I didn't.
Oh.
So I knew of the Fox sisters and I knew that they had a major role with...
Popularizing seances.
Seances and spiritualism.
Yeah.
It's always knocking.
There's not a lot of other things that come up with them.
Yeah.
I didn't know that it was knocking and I was like, hmm, that's weird.
You don't really hear of mediums working that way nowadays.
I can't imagine being like, I want to go to the seance where these people communicate with spirits through knocking.
Weird.
We go on from here.
November 14th, 1849.
The sisters demonstrated their mediumship or whatever their rapping talent was called at the Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York.
The first public demonstration of spiritualism ever in the world.
Maybe, I don't know.
It was held before the paying public, the first of a ton to follow.
This obviously is the beginning of their rise to fame and attracts attention from all over the place.
Especially of seer, sash, spiritualist Andrew Jackson Davis for one who wanted to witness the Fox sisters gifts for himself.
So he brought them to New York from Rochester.
And with the support from this dude, the Fox sisters explode for not only the sisters, but also spiritualism in general.
And that year, which is 1849, they were told by someone to hold public demonstrations to spread the word of spiritualism.
In 1950, the year later, they start hosting seances in the Barnum Hotel in New York with both invited and paid guests.
And sessions were available 10 a.m. 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. for a dollar in between were private sessions.
That seems awfully steep for the time.
Andrew Jackson Davis seems like an interesting guy in his own right.
Yeah, I didn't really look into him because this is on the Fox sisters.
He's a famous spiritualist of the day.
He is, yeah.
And in the future, it might be something for us to delve into spiritualism because there's apparently a lot in that and the rise to it.
Which kind of, I saw a little bit of in reading this, but this is the Fox sisters.
Also, the most famous picture of Andrew Jackson Davis, I had to look it up to see if he was related to the president Andrew Jackson.
Apparently not.
He is the son of a shoemaker, had basically no education.
And most importantly, the most famous picture of him up there is him with an Amish beard.
Yes.
Yes, I've seen that picture.
It's pretty nice, isn't it?
It's almost as if that beard is strapping his hair down to his head.
If we know anything, it's that that's what those beards are for.
Yep.
They're hosting all these sessions and they're attracting people, not only Andrew Jackson Davis at this point,
they're attracting people from near and far for these sessions, including editors for publishing and the newspaper industry.
And some notable, but not really notable to me because I did not recognize these names.
But at the time, I'm sure they were very notable people, which included William Cullen Bryant, George Bancroft, James Fenimore Cooper,
Nathaniel Parker Willis, Horace Greeley, Sojourner Truth, and William Lloyd Garrison.
Did you recognize any of those people?
No, somebody's name is Sojourner.
Sojourner.
Like S-O-G-O-U-R-N-E-R.
S-O-J.
Yeah.
I get my J's and G's mixed up as well.
Yeah, like Sojourner is like that.
It's a legal term for like going on an adventure more or less.
Like a Sojourn is to like go about.
Okay, so that's weird that his name is Sojourner Truth.
I guess he's a walker in truth or something like that.
That is a weird name.
That is a weird name now that you say that that's an actual term.
Yeah, like it comes up in tax implications for like, because if you sojourn to another country.
That's so weird.
Weird.
Maybe we'll probably never look into that again.
This is all you're saying.
Hey, with all these notable people coming to the seances, this boosts their fame even more.
And they are exploding mediums at this point.
Everybody's heard of the Fox sisters, especially with how popular seances are.
So not only were the notable coming out of the woodwork to go to their seances.
So we're imitators, obviously, hoping for a slice of the pie.
Hundreds of people were now claiming to be mediums and hosting their own seances.
I think at this point we need to go over maybe what a seance is.
I mean, we can't just say there's been seances in Beetlejuice and have that be it.
Some people might not know what a seance is or seeing Beetlejuice.
Or Beetlejuice, yeah, I guess.
We can't say that name one more time.
No, we're done for the episode.
Sorry, guys.
Yeah, we're done for the episode.
No more talking about the P word.
A seance, seance, the word is derived from we're going into this.
The French word for seat slash session and came into popularity in America in the mid 1800s
around this exact time frame.
The Fox sisters are operating it.
Spiritualism was super popular and gaining traction with popular figures.
HPB, for example, because apparently that's the only example of the spiritualism.
I know how to give it this point.
Maybe once we talk about more people, we can give more examples like the Fox sisters.
Yeah, exactly.
I'm just going to say now we can use the Fox sisters.
It is a meeting of people who are gathered to receive messages from ghosts or to listen
to a spirit medium discourse with or relay messages from spirits.
A seance can be any type of gathering, such as what the Fox sisters are doing.
They're doing readings in front of an audience, much like you see some mediums doing now,
just without the wrapping.
I always think of a seance, which is the way it's portrayed in pop culture now.
Of everyone gathered around a table, like holding hands, while the medium attempts to
contact dead spirits with a crystal ball.
That's kind of how I look at it.
Ectoplasm coming out of their mouth, you know, the usual.
So Chelsea, I'm just at this point have a question.
This would distinctly have a different root word than the name Sean, despite being like
one spelling of it being the first four letters of seance.
Yes.
Lest we call them Sean's instead of Seance's.
Or call these people Seon from now on.
What an interesting addition to this.
I just needed to make that point.
I'm glad it came up.
I don't know.
So they're all the rage.
It's right.
And as we just learned now the root word of where the name Sean came from.
Say all back to the story with all of this happening, Kate and Margarita Margarita.
Score March.
I don't know.
Yeah, Marge.
That's better.
I don't like Margaret because that's not her name.
Marge works better.
As I've said many times now are well known mediums.
I mean, here we are in 2023 still talking about them.
And they were giving seances by the hundreds, thousands maybe.
Selling out venues, stadiums, Philippeople.
Well, that's probably an elaboration, but rich and famous mediums.
Rooms, Philippe.
Yeah, rooms at least.
And they're giving advice on love affairs, the state of the railway, all the popular things to
be asking about at the times.
I'm just curious when they're doing that, they're giving their opinions on this.
Is it them saying that the spirits told them this or do they like knock it out?
Yeah, it's the wrappings that are.
Okay.
And then they're interpreting the knockings.
Okay.
Yeah, because it would be people asking questions at the seance and they'd be knocking back and
they'd interpret it.
Yeah.
And from how it was put to me in my research, how I interpreted it, let's say, I feel like
the neighbors came up with the system of how to figure out what the knockings were saying,
because the neighbors were called in.
Maybe the neighbors knew Morse.
I don't know if it's Morse code to be honest with you, or is this where Morse code came from?
No, I think a guy named Morse is where Morse code came from.
I can't remember his first name, but his last name is Morse.
And so far I have not seen a Morse in this story, so.
No, I can tell you there's not that guy in the story.
Okay.
With their rise to fame, they're going on tour.
Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus, Washington DC, and Philadelphia.
The Fox sisters work resulted in making spiritualism a trend.
I cannot tell you enough how popular seances are and the trend of spiritualism at the time,
apparently, as well.
Seance is a mediumship, rows and controversy as well.
And we'll get into that in a few minutes, maybe.
I don't know how long it'll take.
Obviously, since there was such an explosion in popularity,
it inspired those to practice mediumship as well,
because I mean, the Fox sisters are making so much money.
You may want to wait until that dog stops.
I don't know when the dog will stop.
Can we interpret this in Morse code?
It could be Morse code, yes.
He could know what we're talking about and have something to say.
He's got to tell us about the trains.
Since there was such an explosion in popularity,
it inspired those to also practice mediumship as well,
make a profit off of it as well.
The Fox sisters are doing quite well for themselves.
This includes Victoria Claffin Woodhall, who was a...
Damn it.
This includes...
Damn it.
This includes Victoria Claffin Woodhall,
who was a leader of the women's suffrage...
That dog hates that name.
...who was a leader of the women's suffrage movement
and was the first woman to run for president in 1872.
The sisters also ultimately led to the formation
of cultists and pseudo-religious crusading.
I don't really know what that means, but we'll continue.
The Paris Review stated, quote,
From the Fox sisters, the phenomenon of spiritualism emerged,
not as some shadowy occult practice or roadside attraction,
but as an exciting way of reconciling the ineffable mysteries of the soul,
with the complex realities of a modern, rapidly industrializing nation.
End quote.
We can also credit the Fox sisters with the future spiritualist peeps,
such as Edgar Cayce and even Houdini, also an enemy of medium.
Yeah, he hated it.
A sworn enemy of mediums.
He did hate them with a passion,
but without them, Houdini wouldn't have had anybody to hate.
So, I'm going to go see.
Where would he have addressed all that rage?
Exactly.
I'm completely paraphrasing all of this because I don't believe
it is the most important part of the Fox sister history,
but eventually they get married,
they get out of the spiritualism community,
and eventually become widows and die with alcohol problems and in poverty.
That's really the gist of it, at least.
I didn't really want to focus on that because there's much bigger and greater
things to talk about.
That's the not fun part.
Yeah, that's all you really need to know.
I don't want to go into any more detail than that.
It's just a waste of my breath, really.
If you want to know more, just go look into it.
Because read the left like,
Repair graphs of the Wikipedia page.
So that's the story of the Fox sisters and how they got to being so well known
that we're talking about them on this podcast.
Now, of course, I need to address the non-believers.
This part is often overlooked when you listen to anything about the Fox sisters.
A lot of articles you'll read about them completely leave this part out.
From the non-believers who were questioning the authenticity of them.
The physician E.P. Longworthy investigated the sisters and noted how the knockings or wraps
always came from under their feet and when their dresses were in contact with the table.
He concluded that Marge and Kate had produced these noises themselves.
He thought that it was clear that this was a result of cracking joints.
And I must say, I have heard joints crack and brittle joints if you can do that.
Yes, not only brittle, but they're specifically referred to as wrappings.
And when I think wrapping, I don't think of like knuckles cracking.
No, I think of a door.
I would be very creeped out if I would hear...
Yeah, you just push down your fingers and people think that there's somebody at the door.
I would be so creeped out if I heard that.
If I asked a question to a medium and you just like your joint cracking,
that would be so creepy and disgusting.
If somebody providing a seance was like cracking their fingers and you're hearing that and you're
like, are you just cracking your fingers?
They're like, no, no, no, that's the ghost wrapping on things.
I would probably want to believe that it was the ghost because that's so weird.
That's true.
It is the 1800s, maybe joints cracking sound different in this time.
I don't know.
But it's just you want to believe that it's not just a seance person cracking her knuckles.
True.
You want to believe so bad.
I just, I can't, I can't get behind it for some reason.
I just think that is the most bizarre explanation, but it goes on.
It's more than EP. John W. Hearn, who publishes articles in the New York Tribune, agreed.
The Reverend John M. Austin would later claim the noises could be made by cracking toe joints.
Oh, this is a different Reverend.
A Reverend D. Potts demonstrated to an audience that the raps could be made by this method,
which just like we said before, disturbing you.
I just can't.
I feel like depending on the wrapping, of course, this would not be what I would immediately
accuse someone of doing like these people.
They're immediately like that's cracking joints.
That's it.
Yeah.
It's fake.
Although if this were the case too, that backstory really confuses me.
Like I guess they just kind of needed to make up a backstory about it.
But was the kid accidentally cracking their knuckles like as a child playing alone?
And they're like, oh, a ghost is communicating with me.
Yeah.
We will talk about it.
The neighbors came over and explained the situation and they're like, no, no, but I like that story.
Yeah.
Let's use it.
As much as I live spoiler alerts, we will talk about it.
Oh, the ghost isn't just in the house.
It follows me everywhere.
Yeah.
Along with my knuckle cracking that you are so stupid to think that is a spirit just makes no sense to me.
But anyhow, as much not sense as it makes to me, there are other people in agreement with proof.
I just can't get behind this.
It's so weird.
In 1851, Mrs. Norman Culver, a relative of the Fox family, admitted in a signed statement that she
had assisted them during their seances by touching them to indicate when the wrap should be made.
She also claimed they didn't know.
I thought they're just like, they're in the seance.
Wouldn't they just know?
She also claimed that Kate and Marge revealed to her the method of producing the wraps by
snapping their toes and using their knees and ankles.
This is blah.
Okay.
Quick question.
I need some legal advice.
If I just write something out like an accusation, like for instance, loud toe knuckle cracking,
let's say, and I sign it, this makes it truth, right?
By the power invested in me.
No.
I mean, sure.
You can say it's true.
Yeah.
And then sign it.
That makes it true.
No.
I think you're thinking of like an affidavit where you get somebody with a legal certification
to certify that you're telling the truth or that you sign the saying that it's the truth,
but you just signing something doesn't mean it's true.
So this may not necessarily be true because she just signed a statement and said,
Well, if it's an affidavit, that's true.
Well, she's at least the firm.
Okay.
I feel like it's not an affidavit.
Okay.
It's clear that it's not legally binded by Mrs. Norman Culver.
Yeah.
But like, there's just no like, it's not perjury to lie, just like write something down and sign it.
Okay.
So there's no legal consequences for her.
She's lying.
No.
Okay.
So the nonsense goes on.
1851, the reverence, there's lots of reverence at this time as well.
I wonder if that's also a craze around this time.
The reverence, see Chauncey Burr wrote in the New York Tribune that by cracking toe joints,
the sounds were so loud they could be heard in a large hall.
Also disturbing.
There's just a lot of disturbing details in this that just,
it seems to be building that this is what it is at this point,
pretending as if I don't know how this ends.
I just don't know without proof at this point how so much is building behind this because I just
feel like this is the last thing I would ever.
Did you find any videos on YouTube of like people showing what the sound would be like?
Because there's a lot of people saying they've given examples,
but it seems like so long ago there wouldn't be a video of it.
But are there YouTube videos of this?
I don't know, what would you Google to find a YouTube video of this?
Loud toe cracking medium?
Maybe.
Maybe we'll put a clip here.
We gotta find something.
Maybe we won't.
Yeah.
Maybe we'll just record some knuckle cracking.
But I feel like that wouldn't do, that wouldn't be heard in a large hall.
Gross.
The same year three investigators, Austin Flint,
Charles E. Lee, and C.B. Coventry from the University of Buffalo,
examined the wraps produced by the sisters and concluded they were produced by cracking
their bone joints, toes, knees, ankles, or hips from a control.
They discovered the wraps did not occur.
The sisters were placed on a couch with cushions under their feet.
It goes on.
1853, Charles Grafton Page investigates the sisters.
He is a patent claim examiner with an eye for fraud.
And he used his skills to expose some of the deceptions of the Fox sisters during the
sessions he attended, again he noticed the wrappings came from under the girl's dresses.
When he asked if the spirits could produce a sound at a distance from their own bodies,
when girl climbed into a wardrobe closet, where her dress touched the wood,
once the sound transmitted into the wood plank.
However, she was unable to control the sound sufficiently to produce spirit communications.
Page devised contraptions that emulated the wrapping sounds produced by the girls,
which could be concealed under long clothing.
He declaimed the girls' means of hiding the bodily examination that would expose their fraud.
It is convenient for the day that women had to wear such layers of clothes and conceal
everything that they really could do whatever they wanted.
And even like who's going to inspect them?
That is unproper of a gentleman or gentle lady to like inspect somebody.
But they did say before the first one that they ever did with the post that they had
been inspected.
Yeah, inspected them to make sure they didn't have it.
But I would be curious like how thorough are you going to inspect for that day?
True, true.
I mean if they're inspecting for like inflamed joints because of cracking?
Yeah.
I mean that can easily be a fraud.
Yeah, there's no machines.
Your feet are really weird but no machines.
It's so weird.
So he says this about their fraud.
A feminine security of these rappers against the inspection of their actual Cuomoto.
This is a quote after all.
I wouldn't just use the word Cuomoto.
I continue on with the quote here.
If by search warrant, stratagem, or v at armist, the wrapping instrument of these Fox girls has
been exposed to the public, there would not have been one doubt about the nature and origin
of the spiritual communications.
That's what the claim examiner said.
In 1857, the Boston courier set up a prize of $500 to any medium who could demonstrate
a paranormal ability to their committee.
The Fox sisters main attempt and were investigated by a committee which included the magician
John Wyman.
The committee concluded that the raps were produced by bone and feet movements and thus
the Fox sisters failed the challenge.
A report by the Sebert commission in 1887 stated that after investigating various mediums
included merge, the phenomena could have easily been produced by fraudulent methods.
The report noted that the raps were heard close to merge and the seance sitter,
Professor Furness, had felt pulsations in her foot.
This goes on and on with people investigating this very claim.
I could go on, but I would just be repeating myself with different names of people investigating.
Nobody even ever asked them, even at this performance.
Hey, can you just do the seance with your dresses three inches higher?
Like that was too scandalous to do.
Yeah, like just pull it up so we can see your feet.
Again, I'm just mind blown that nobody else put forth any other-
It's always the same thing, yeah.
Any other sort of like claim of fraud?
It's like-
And they all seem to independently be coming to this conclusion too.
I know, it's so weird.
I think it's so weird.
I'm just like mind blown.
Like they say it too?
That it's cracking of joints?
I just like what?
Kate was one of the mediums examined in by William Crook, the permanent physicist between 1871
and 74 who concluded the raps were genuine.
However, Crooks was described as being a gullible person
and the mediums he investigated were caught using trickery.
So the one person that I write about that's like, yeah, he's not the one person.
Obviously they rose to fame because people believed in what they were doing.
Anyhow, my next part of this story, I guess at this point you're wondering,
Chelsea, tell us the truth.
Is this real?
We're just talking a lot about joints cracking.
Surely it can't be just joints cracking with all these people talking about it being joints cracking.
Completely independent.
Exactly.
I don't believe it.
Anyhow, then I wrote this point.
At the end of it all, the sisters got into a little bit of a fight
and eager to harm the older sister, Leah, as much as possible if he was the manager.
The two sisters traveled to New York City where a reporter offered them $1,500
if they would expose their methods and give him an exclusive on the story.
Marge appeared publicly at the New York Academy of Music October 21st, 1888.
Kate was present as well.
Lo and behold, Marge and Catherine, Kate, were behind everything after all in the statement
that they made they were paid for.
Let's remember that.
And they used wrappings like knocking.
I guess at this point I should clarify that it's not like fast rhymes to sick beats
to convince their older sister to fool apparently.
It was like knocking.
I should have put that at the beginning.
Just so that we're all on the same page.
This is 1888, correct?
Yeah.
$1,500 and $1,88.
Is the equivalent of about $41,000 in 2023?
Yes, so it's a lot.
So let's remember that.
So they used the wrappings to convince their older sister, the fool apparently,
that they were communicating with spirits.
Yes.
Well, more specifically, Margaret confessed that the wrappings were a hoax and revealed
the magic trick.
Magician's Alliance would not be happy about that.
Yeah, but she's not in the Magician Alliance.
She's her own thing.
Exactly.
She's a medium.
Maybe she's immune from the Magician Alliance because she's medium.
She's part of the medium alliance and their frauds.
Before an audience of 2,000 people, Marge demonstrated how she could produce at will
raps audible throughout the theater.
Authors from the audience came on stage to verify that the cracking of her toe joints
wore the source of the sound.
Marge told her story of the origins of the mysterious wrappings in a signed confession.
Given to the press and published in New York World, October 21st, 1888,
in it she explained the Hyde's Bill events.
She did try to recant her confession about a year later, but the damage was already done,
obviously.
Less than five years later, all the Fox sisters were dead,
not sure if there's any correlation there or not, but you must have all the information.
Magician's God of...
Yep.
Remember the house that they lived in?
Marge had this to say about the knocking sounds and the bones found in the house.
Quote,
When we went to bed at night, we used to tie an apple to a string and move the string up
and down, causing the apple to bump on the floor.
Or we would drop the apple on the floor, making a strange noise every time it would rebound.
Mother listening to this for a time.
She would not understand it and did not suspect us as being capable of a trick because we were so young.
End quote.
Now I feel like if it was an apple dropping on the floor,
you would be like, that sounds like something being dropped on the floor.
Something, yeah, like an apple.
I feel like people have dropped apples on the floor.
Yes, it's not a new thing to this time.
Like literally none of this is adding up to me to be like, fool this many people.
But I don't know. She had seven kids.
I don't know if she had a lot of personal time to think about these noises.
They, the neighbors that is, were convinced that someone had been murdered in the house.
They asked the spirits through us about it and we would wrap one for the spirit answer.
Yes. And three as we did afterwards, not three as we did afterwards.
The murder they concluded must have been committed in the house.
They were over the whole surrounding country trying to get the names of people who had formerly
lived in the house.
Finally, they found a man by the name of Bell and they said that this poor innocent
man had committed a murder in the house and that the noises had come from the spirit of the murdered
person. Poor Bell was shunned and looked upon the whole community as a murderer.
Never did comment on the furniture moving about.
So that may have been an actual haunted. We don't know.
Lots of stuff coming out here.
She went on.
She said Mrs. Underhill, the eldest sister, took Katie and me to Rochester.
There it was that we discovered a new way to make the wraps because apples were no longer an option.
Yeah, they can find apples.
They knew what apples dropping on the ground sounded like.
You can be inspected for apples.
They may have tried and the sister was like that was an apple on the ground.
My sister, Katie, was the first to observe that by swishing her fingers she could produce
certain noises with her knuckles and joints and that the same effect could be made with the toes.
Okay, let me try it.
Does that sound like a wrapping?
I don't get it.
Again, we have other things to entertain ourselves.
Yeah, if you just.
I'm not going to do that for more than 20 seconds before I'm like,
okay, there's probably something on YouTube that's way more entertaining on this.
And how do you do that without like pushing the joints?
I don't get it.
So they find, or this is still the quote.
I'm not talking about it.
Finding that we can make wraps with our feet first with one foot and then with both.
We practice until we could do this easily when the room was dark.
Like most perplexing things we made clear.
It is astonishing how easily it is done.
Wrapping is simply the result of perfect control of the muscles of the leg below the knee,
which govern the tendons of the foot and allow the action of the toe and ankle bones that are
not commonly known.
Oh, such perfect control is only possible when the child is taking at an early age and
carefully and continually taught to practice the muscles, which grows different later years.
This then is a simple explanation of the whole method of the nox and wraps.
She also wrote quote, a great many people when they hear the wrapping imagine at once that
the spirits are touching them.
It is a very common delusion.
Some very wealthy people came to see me some years ago when I lived in 42nd street and did some
wrappings for them. I meet the spirit wrap on the chair and one of the ladies cried out,
I feel the spirit tapping me on the shoulder.
Of course it was pure imagination.
So that's the Fox sisters and to end the episode, I will leave you with some powering
words from the sister from the sisters.
I don't think that's a word.
I will leave you with some words from the sisters.
Parting words.
Is that what you meant?
Parting.
It is.
That was a me spelling error.
I will leave you with some parting words from the sisters.
Quote that I have been chiefly instrumental in perpetuating the fraud of spiritualism upon
a too confiding public.
Most of you doubtless know this greatest sorrow in my life has been that this is true.
And though it has come late in my day, I am now prepared to tell the truth, the whole truth
and nothing about the truth.
So help me God.
I am here tonight as one of the founders of spiritualism to denounce it as an absolute
falsehood from beginning to end as the flimsiest of superstitions, the most wicked blasphemy
known to the world.
End quote.
Margarita Marge Fox Kane quoted in a B Davenport, the death blow to spiritualism page 76 and
from Kate Fox Jenkins quoted in the New York Herald October 9th 1888 quote, I regard spiritualism
as one of the greatest curses that the world has ever known.
End quote.
I take no responsibility for that.
And that's it.
That's what we have on the Fox sisters.
That took me on a journey.
I'm honestly not sure.
Even that last little bit, I was unaware that they like fully had statements of like, oh
yeah, this is all fake.
Yeah, but I'm torn on it.
I really am because it's a lot of cash.
It's a lot of cash, especially at the time.
And I don't know that I am buying that this is just cracking of joints.
And to me, a lot of people came out and were like, clearly it's the cracking of joints.
And they were offered money, like a lot of money to come out and say this.
I can't say that.
But like they with this money were able to reproduce the sound, right?
True.
I have to assume they're like, and by the way, this is the sound I'm making.
I have to assume that it was included.
It wasn't just a statement.
They do say that the doctor comes up and is like, yep, that's the sound.
So there's that.
I don't know.
I'm just like really cracking of joints.
That's what that was.
Yeah, I know.
And like we've said in many of these episodes, when we actually look into these stories
of extraordinary, it's fairly banal and quite terrible answers.
You end up coming to it.
That is the one thing that we always come up with on this podcast.
Where to be disappointed.
Yes.
And on this one, it is the cracking of joints behind it all.
The entire seance industry depended on arthritis from an early childhood.
It's true.
And they were horribly disfigured under their dresses.
So that's the episode.
The only question I have then, so they entirely made up that there was a history of hauntings
in their house, right?
Because we started out the story saying that they had moved into what was known as a haunted
house.
Yes.
They had a seer kind of bloodline to their family.
So I think they just took it and ran with it.
From what I could tell, though, the house did have a reputation of being haunted around
the time.
And they just used that to their advantage.
Okay.
Because they did also say, like I said, that furniture moved around, but it never made
another appearance other than the wrappings.
I think that really was what caught the attention.
Yeah.
That they could communicate with.
So.
Okay.
Yeah.
And yet a unique and different way from the last time, Chelsea.
It won't be the last.
I look forward to being disappointed even more in the future.
Yes, of course.
But in the meantime, I have been Taylor here with Chelsea.
We are Journey to the Fringe.
Thank you all for listening and we will see you next week.
Bye.
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