During the heyday of Spiritualism, mediums produced spirits that allegedly spoke from the dead, wrote messages on slates, moved objects, and even painted portraits. These latter manifestations were called precipitated paintings. Several of them from the Bangs sisters and the Campbell brothers can be seen on display in Lily Dale, a Spiritualist community in Western New York.
Modern Spiritualism began in 1848 in Hydesville, New York, when two young girls, Maggie and Kate Fox, claimed to have been in communication with a ghost who once occupied their home. Mediums soon sprouted up across the country conversing with the dead.
In July 1906, more than a decade after the deaths of both sisters (Kate died in 1892; Maggie in 1893), Spiritualists in Rochester planned a séance in which they would attempt to produce Maggie and Kate’s posthumous portraits. Rochester was where their elder sister Leah lived in 1848. Upon hearing the news of their unusual abilities, she brought the Fox girls to town to hold séances, and their fame soon skyrocketed.
As an article from Rochester’s Democrat and Chronicle explained:
… the pictures are made in the presence of whosoever wishes to be present, on canvas furnished by those who desire to have pictures made; that the pictures appear, clearly and truthfully, but none the less mysteriously, and that the portraits of dead persons are invariably pronounced excellent likenesses by those familiar with the face and form of the departed ones.
The newspaper said the séance for the Fox Sisters would be “one of the most important demonstrations of modern Spiritualism.”
No follow-up reports shared any results, so it’s unclear if Maggie and Kate’s spirits sat for their portraits. However, given that in 1888 Maggie Fox addressed a Spiritualist conference at the New York Academy of Music and confessed that she and her sister had faked their spirit rappings (though she later recanted her admission), perhaps the ghosts declined the invitation.
For more on the Fox Sisters and how precipitated paintings may have been produced without the aid of ghosts, check out my book, Chasing Ghosts: A Tour of Our Fascination with Spirits and the Supernatural, from Quirk Books.
