One of the most influential spiritual movements of the 19th century began entirely by accident, with two restless children in an upstate New York farmhouse. This episode traces the meteoric rise and tragic fall of the Fox sisters, Margaretta, Catherine, and their older sister Leah, whose 1848 prank spiraled into the entire spiritualism movement.

Rather than simply critiquing historical gullibility, we look at a psychological biography of child stars trapped in their own myth during an era desperate to communicate with the beyond.

• The 1848 origin in Hydesville, New York, where the girls used toe and joint cracking against floorboards to fake spirit rappings for their mother.
• The escalation into a murdered-peddler backstory, and how older sister Leah turned a haunting into a traveling exhibition.
• The movement's fusi ...