A closer look
Margaretta and Kate Fox inadvertently launched the massive Modern Spiritualism movement in 1848 by claiming they were communicating with a murdered peddler's ghost through mysterious knocking sounds in their farmhouse. Decades later, they confessed that they had faked the entire phenomenon by secretly cracking their toe joints against the wooden floorboards to fool their overly credulous mother. Millions of people, including scientists and politicians, subsequently based their entire belief in the afterlife on the auditory equivalent of two bored teenagers cracking their knuckles. It is simultaneously hilarious and bleak to realize that an entire global religion was accidentally founded just because some kids in upstate New York figured out a clever way to pull a prank when there was no internet to keep them entertained!
