Some advice: if you’re going to build a career as a medium, using people’s money to communicate with “ghosts”, stick with your story and don’t confess it’s all a hoax. That’s what The Fox Sisters did after earning their fame as mediums who could talk to spirits via “rapping” (knocking on walls, that is, not spitting sick bars).

It all started as a trick involving an apple on a string that the two youngest sisters played on the eldest in their home in Hydesville, New York. But word of the phenomenon got out, and before long, the sisters were holding seances with the departed that triggered a mass religious movement. Their story ended when Margaretta confessed the truth, tarnishing their reputation for good. Less than five years later, they were all dead.