Aaron Mahnke

Once there, she immediately fell into a comfortable routine.

She used nicknames for her parents and siblings that no one but Mary Roth would have known.

She recognized family friends and would mention others from out of town that the Roths knew, people who had never visited Watsika in all the years the Venoms had lived there.

There was simply no way for anyone other than Mary Roth to know these things.

When she did see them, she treated the Venoms as if they were just some nice family she had only recently met.

She was polite to them, for sure, but it never evolved into anything more.

But Mary knew of Laurence.

In fact, she claimed to understand better than anyone else what was really going on with her.

It was just a really difficult story to believe.

Mary said that Laurence was sick.

Her seizures were a symptom of that illness.

But Mary had gone through all of that in her own lifetime, and she knew how to help.

So Laurence, at least according to Mary, was in heaven getting better.

And when she'd recovered, Mary would leave and allow the young woman back into her own body.

And look, I get the skepticism.

I'm right there with you.

This is pretty bizarre stuff, no doubt about it.

And these people were obviously primed for this story, too.

Spiritualism was hot in 1878.

The Amazing Fox sisters were three decades deep into their career as world-famous mediums, traveling around performing seances for sellout audiences.