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fox!
    “Foxes from where?” I asked.
    “I think there were two or three of them,” Ted said. “The Fox sisters. Margaret was the most famous. Anyway, to totally oversimplify
     things, the idea behind the movement was the belief that the spirits of dead people could be contacted by mediums.”
    I didn’t mean for it to happen, but my mouth dropped wide open.
    “No, no —” he said, putting his hand out in the universal “stop” position. “Don’t even say it. I’m not saying I believe in
     all that stuff. I’m a historian, not a nut job. I’m just telling you what
they
believed.”
    I couldn’t think of a thing to say. Part of me wanted to punch Ted Kenyon in his already squashed-down nose, but part of me
     wanted to hear more of the story.
    “The story goes that the Fox sisters made contact with the ghost of a murdered peddler in their farmhouse, around 1848 or
     ’49, I think. They said the peddler told them he had been murdered by the farmer who had lived there, and his things were
     stolen and his body buried in the cellar. And the thing was, they didn’t just do it once. They could establish contact at
     any time, and when they asked this spirit to make a knocking sound, it did. Hundreds of people came and witnessed it. Before
     too long, people all over the country were hiring mediums and having séances. And the Spiritualists were born. The whole thing
     was utterly ridiculous,” he added, shaking his head.
    I thought about punching his nose again.
    “Well, if hundreds of people heard it, why are the Spiritualists ridiculous?” I asked, trying to sound casual, like I didn’t
     care much one way or the other what the answer was.
    “The Fox sisters got really famous, and suddenly everybody wanted to be a ‘medium.’ And of course there was an unlimited supply
     of kooks willing to pay good money to supposedly contact their dead loved ones. It was the thing to do, in those days. It
     was a fad, a craze. Like … disco.”
    DISCO?
    “It was nothing more than a business venture, a scam. And a lot of these so-called mediums started making names for themselves.
     Then they could really charge top dollar.”
    So-called
mediums?
    “And they’d develop followings, and host these gatherings called salons where they’d have tea and cakes, and then hold séances.
     It became the Victorian version of the Oprah book club.
    “Anyway, one of these mediums lived here at the Mountain House for about a year — she had her own room where she conducted
     her so-called séances. She was apparently not even very good at
faking
being a medium. Quite the old bat, from what I’ve read. And, as you might have guessed by now, she called herself Madame
     Serena.”
    Then he gave me this look and he chuckled and shook his head. Like he just
assumed
that I agreed with him — that
any
sane human being would automatically and without question agree that a person styling themselves as a so-called medium was
     a faker, an old bat. Insane. A laughingstock. And that anyone stupid enough to believe in mediums was a nut job.
    I didn’t know I was going to say it. I just saw red.
    “Who do you think you are?” I demanded, sitting up very straight and scowling. Ted drew back, like I had in fact already punched
     his silly misshapen nose and was winding up for a second go.
    “I’m sorry?” he asked. He looked genuinely distressed.
    “I just don’t know how you can sit there and mock an entire group of people, millions of people actually, who either believe
     they can communicate with the dead, or believe that someone else can. I mean, where do you get off making a decision like
     that?”
    Ted stared at me, his mouth open.
    “I mean, did I miss some sort of global memo that was issued stating
Hey, we can cross off the old life-after-death thing from our list of ancient questions, because Ted of the Whispering Pines
     Mountain House has just announced that the whole thing is
— how’d you put it —
utterly