Hydesville

Hydesville is by Thomas Olman Todd, and its preface speaks of "The interesting events narrated in this book which occurred at Hydesville, in the house of the Fox Family". The preface says the incidents "are based chiefly on the information given in" the work "Modern American Spiritualism" and that "considerable use is made of the actual words and sentences penned by Mrs. Britten". A few facts "have been gathered from various sources, chiefly Robert Dale Owen's" "Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World."

A letter from Manchester, dated December 5th, 1897, is addressed to Mr. T. O. Todd, and its writer says, "I am as much interested in the earnest desire to help the progress of Spiritualism as I have been in my long years of past devotion to that cause." Among the investigators introduced to the household was "a Mr. William Deusler, of Arcadia, an immediate neighbour of the Fox family at this time." A report says school children playing in the cellar of a building in Hydesville known as the "Spook house" made a discovery, and that William H. Hyde "found an almost entire human skeleton between the earth and crumbling cellar walls."