The exposure attracted widespread attention. Letters poured in from far and wide begging for confirmation, explanation or denial. The rest of the tribe of mediums naively hinted that if there had been fraud it was well to have it exposed but of course they were genuine. Many who had believed in Spiritualism wrote most pathetically. One of these writing from San Francisco says:
“I have been a believer in the phenomena from its first inception through you and your sister, believing it to be true since that time.
“I am now eighty-one years old and have but a short time of course, to remain in this world, and I feel a great anxiety to know through you if I have been deceived all this time in a matter of vital interest to us all.”[10]
But perhaps of them all none better expresses what a blow the exposure was to thousands who had accepted as genuine the messages of the mysterious raps or describes more vividly the effect of Spiritualism on many who are attracted to it than the following from a woman in Boston.[11]
“Hundreds of thousands have believed through you and you alone. Hundreds of thousands eagerly ask you whether all the glorious light that they fancied you had given them, was but the false flicker of a common dip-candle of fraud.
“If, as you say, you were forced to pursue this imposture from childhood, I can forgive you, and I am sure God will; for he turns not back the truly repentant. I will not upbraid you. I am sure you have suffered as much as any penalty, human or divine, could cause you to suffer. The disclosures that you make take from me all that I have cherished most. There is nothing left for me now but to hope for the reality of that repose which death promises us.
“It is perhaps better that the delusion should be at last swept away by one single word, and that word ‘fraud.’
LEAH FOX FISH
