‘Addicted to the Supernatural’: Spiritualism and Self-Satire in Le Fanu’s All in the Dark

In the spring of 1848, the Fox family of Hydesville, a desolate New York hamlet, was nightly plagued by disembodied knocking. Events escalated on the evening of March 31, when John and Margaret Fox heard loud noises emanating from the room above in which their children, Katherine and Margaretta, were sleeping. This time the mysterious…