Humbug! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Fire lighting by itself in the fireplace

The Fox sisters, Margaret, Kate, and Leah, are credited today with playing an important role in the emergence of modern Spiritualism. In later years, they gained great success as mediums and married wealthy men. Around 1888 Margaret decided to return to the Catholic church and became convinced that her powers were diabolical.

After Margaret's admission, the sisters lost all their friends. They later died in poverty and were buried in paupers' graves.

Answer: She used all of these methods

Margaret demonstrated how the raps and bangs witnesses heard were created by her and her sisters, in their stocking feet, cracking their toe joints against a small pine platform. Her sisters never confessed.

Answer: Margaret Fox

Margaret Fox made this statement in an interview with the "New York World". Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a great believer in spiritualism. Harry Houdini spent a great part of his career trying to disprove life after death. Ehrich Weiss is Harry Houdini's real name.

Answer: Both of these

Houdini worked for years to try to disprove life after death. He also had an agreement with his wife that when he died, if it were possible at all, he would contact her after death. He never did. Ironically, due to all his work demonstrating how spirit mediums were fake, people began to believe that Houdini, himself, had spiritual powers.

Answer: The belief that fasting brought one closer to God

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle not only believed in the public examples of magic and fantasy, but wrote extensive arguments in hopes of persuading the public that these things existed, even after the people involved in the frauds declared emphatically that they were fake.

Some people began to state openly that it was apparent that the creator of Sherlock Holmes wasn't nearly as bright as his fictional detective.

Answer: They were photos of fairies

Photographic experts who studied the photos taken by the girls said that no negatives had been tampered with, and the blurring of the fairies in the photos indicated that the fairies were moving when the photos were taken. Actually, the "fairies" were made by attaching paper cut outs to tree branches and photographing them, then taking the negatives with the fairy images on them and using them to photograph the girls looking as if they were interacting with the fairies.

Answer: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was 100% convinced that the fairy photos were real. Houdini did not believe in any of the spiritual/magical images. Claud Shepperton was the illustrator of the actual book from 1915 that was the source of the fairy images. Fred Gettings discovered the images in the book in 1977.

Answer: All charges were dropped due to lack of evidence

One of the photography experts who testified in court against Mumler was P.T. Barnum. The judge dropped all charges against Mumler, and his photos were displayed for that week on the full cover of "Harper's Weekly".

Answer: P.T. Barnum

P.T. Barnum purchased several of Mumler's ghost photos for his museum as specimens of "humbug". He displayed them to the public in his museum to let them see how they had been fooled.

Answer: They could not reach agreement on the authenticity of the photos

Robert Boursnell was not able to work with photographers, because they always accused him of "messing up" their negatives. He said he had done nothing to their negatives, but every time his photo was taken, one or more other people showed up as "ghosts" in the photo with him.

The photos were probably double exposures, but the photographers said that to their knowledge he had never had access to the slides which were purchased new and sealed.