A 1920s postcard featuring the Fox Cottage in Hydesville, NY near Newark.
The Fox Cottage is known as the birthplace of modern Spiritualism. Originally located in Hydesville, New York, it became famous in 1848 when the Fox family began “rapping” with a poltergeist and developed an early system of spirit communication.
While much has been written about the Fox family’s mediumistic talents, little has been detailed about the actual cottage they lived in. Records indicate that the structure was built in 1815 by Dr. Henry Hyde, the founder of the village of Hydesville. The one-and-a-half story building of “very humble type” was made entirely of wood and included an unfinished basement.
Early inhabitants of the cottage included the Bell and Weekman families. Lucretia Pulver, a maid who served both families, suggested that several “peculiar happenings” and “disturbances from some unknown cause” plagued the building since its construction. When the Fox family moved in on December 11, 1847, they immediately became acquainted with these strange knocking sounds. They moved out four months later and relocated to nearby Rochester, NY due to widespread publicity surrounding the rappings.
The cottage came to be known as “the Spook House” among tourists and passed through several different phases of tenancy until the early 20th century. For unknown reasons, the building was scheduled for demolition in 1915 when Spiritualist Benjamin F. Bartlett purchased the cottage. Since Bartlett could only buy the building and not the property, he decided to move it to Lily Dale, a Spiritualist community located 150 miles away in Upstate New York. The cottage had to be shipped in several pieces and was transported on barges down the Erie Canal.
One of the earliest known photographs of the Fox Cottage at Lily Dale taken in the 1920s.
After being reassembled in Lily Dale, local medium Flo Cottrell took stewardship of the home and turned it into a shrine for Spiritualists. The building served as a point of interest for visitors until September 12th, 1955 when a “fire of undetermined origins” burnt the cottage to the ground. All of the original rapping beams, record books, and Fox family memorabilia were destroyed in the fire with only small sections of the front and side walls remaining.
At 1510 Hydesville Road, the site of the original cottage, an exact replica was constructed in the late 20th century through the efforts of Spiritualist John Drummond. In 1983, the replica Cottage once again caught fire after a spark from a wood burning stove ignited a pile of timber.
No efforts have since been made to reconstruct the cottage.
