The Spirits Are Knocking
My high school was haunted.
Happy Halloween, besties! I hope your weekend is full of festive plans, and that reading this newsletter is one of them.
I love Halloween. Spookiness runs in my bones. When I was in high school, my friends and I started a paranormal investigation club. We even got custom shirts made. Why did we do this, other than to kill time? Well, our high school was haunted. We had three distinct spirits. A crying woman in the English wing, an angry man (also in the English wing), and a malevolent spirit that hung out in the weird basement/crawl space area that no one ever went in. Not sure how we knew it was there.
During our senior lock-in, we did a paranormal investigation (these were the days of Ghost Hunters). During those activities, certain things were constructed to make some of us (me) think we had actually connected with the spirit world. I will not go into detail, because I’m ashamed to admit that I legitimately believed these cons well into my 20s. It took me a long time to realize my classmates pranked the fuck out of me.
I thought of these memories while reading this month’s pick, and about where I grew up in Upstate New York and how deeply we felt connected to the spirit world. My small town has seen so much death and darkness. An abnormal amount. All of us who grew up together possess an extremely dark sense of humor that we don’t realize is weird until we leave.
Upstate New York as a whole has a long history with religious fanaticism, cults, Spiritualists, and brutality in general (as is the case with the entire United States). When I picked Samantha Hunt’s Mr. Splitfoot as an atmospheric gothic read for Halloween, I had no idea it took place in Upstate New York, but no setting could have fit better.
Writing this month’s entry was a challenge, because I feel too much affection for the setting. So forgive me if I get a bit distracted.
Mr. Splitfoot by Samantha Hunt
This book was quite a surprise to me. I was not expecting it to be so much about motherhood. And as I mentioned above, I had no idea this took place in New York. The title should have probably tipped me off, since this was the name of the spirit that the notorious Fox Sisters claimed to connect with during their famed seances. The Fox Sisters kicked off the rise of Spiritualism, a full-fledged religion that is still practiced today. The sisters were from the Rochester, NY area, and there is still a well-known community named Lily Dale in Western New York completely populated by Spiritualists. It’s now a tourist destination. Another Upstate New York religion name-checked in Mr. Splitfoot is Mormonism, which was also born in Western New York. I think this fact surprises people.
Yes, there is a cult featured in this book. A cult that is very focused on the cosmos and the writings of both Joseph Smith and Carl Sagan (who lived in Ithaca, NY, near where I grew up). This book is dripping with New York, dripping with my childhood, dripping with the water of the Erie canal. But just know that this book is still a great read, even if your not a New Yorker.
What’s the book about?
Mr. Splitfoot is a split narrative (haha) following two women: Cora and her aunt Ruth. One narrative follows Ruth as a 17-year-old, trying to survive a crazy fundamentalist (and abusive) foster home with her closest friend Nat, and the other follows Ruth years later as a 30-something woman leading Cora, her 25-year-old niece, across New York State on foot…from Buffalo to Troy.
Both timelines and stories are steeped in the spiritual and the paranormal. Ruth and her much older sister Eleanor were victims of their mother’s abuse, Ruth especially. One incident left her with prominant facial scarring. Foster care was not much better, and when Eleanor aged out she had to leave her little sister by herself in the system. That’s when Ruth bonded to Nat, and he to her.
As teens in the foster home, Ruth and Nat began communing with the spirits. Nat called upon a presence named Mr. Splitfoot, who acted as a conduit to other entities. He relayed messages to their foster siblings from their true families, usually their mothers (dead or alive).
Ruth acted as an assistant of sorts. It wasn’t long before the two teamed up with a strange but reliable man named Mr. Bell, who took their show on the road. With the help of Mr. Bell, the team made a lot of money hosting seances for the desperate residents of Troy, NY. They were so successful, in fact, that they attracted the attention of a dangerous man, forcing them to flee.
Jump ahead to the present timeline. Cora has only met her aunt Ruth once before, back when Cora was small and Ruth was just 17. So when Ruth shows up out of the blue at a particularly delicate time for Cora and asks Cora to follow her, she decides why not. Never mind that Cora has just discovered that she’s pregnant by a man she more or less hates—a man who slipped her an abortifacient after she told him she wanted to keep the baby. The baby does not abort, and Cora feels compelled to get them both out of there.
The thing is, Ruth doesn’t really ask Cora to come with her, because she doesn’t talk. And she doesn’t give Cora any clues as to where they’re actually going, no matter how many times Cora asks. When their car breaks down, they start to walk. Cora continues to follow along, despite her growing belly. They walk for months, for over 300 miles, following the path of the Erie Canal.
Cora notices things are strange, like how Ruth doesn’t speak, or how she listens to a Walkman constantly. Like how they stop at a near-ghost town and speak to a woman about a cult called the Etherists, which seems to have some significance for Ruth. They stop at a motel rumored to have ghosts, and they have strange men that Ruth seems to know and be afraid of following them. Their journey is unsettling, but their walk is significant and symbolic. I believe it is them working through generational trauma in preperation for Cora’s baby.
I loved this description of their time on the road:
Men honk. Teenagers play chicken with our bodies and their cars. A nasty dog charges. I pick up a stone aiming for its flank, but—crack—it lands in a soft spot on his forehead. The dog stops. I raise my arms overhead. It’s a small victory for the pedestrian. I don’t even feel bad. It’s really hard to be a walker these days, a pregnant walker. Drivers scream from their windows like we’re the selfish ones, decadently traveling on foot. Time moving luxuriously slow for us. Well, take that right between the eyes.” ~ Cora, p. 73
The two of them keep walking, keep encountering odd situations, keep meeting people from Ruth’s life, until they finally reach their destination. Their destination resolves all the loose threads and dangerous details from the past, brings them to the present and gives them closure. I cannot describe more of the plot without giving away the twists, but it ends gently, in the way that nothing in life really ends. Once they are close to their destination, Cora thinks to herself…
We have a definitive number of steps remaining, a countable number, and then I don’t know what. A bed or a couch. A bathtub. A baby. The end. Or else a new start. A house near the Falls for Ruth and El and me and the baby. That’d be nice, to live with them, to be near the Falls. It’s important to live near water.” ~ p. 289
It’s important to live near water. As a New Yorker and a Finger Lakes ex pat, I have never felt something more intensely. Living by water is critical to our sense of selves. We are connected to it. Water is important to all of us, but in New York it is a great connector. Throughout Mr. Splitfoot, Ruth and Cora follow the Erie Canal. The canal is the guide and the link for the living and the dead, the past and the present. Is walking along the Erie Canal the new hip therapy?
My thoughts.
Well, it’s quite possible that I might be too close to the source material to give any kind of measured opinion, but clearly I loved Mr. Splitfoot. Not only did it explore my home state so authentically, it also explored what it means to become a mother, to find who you are in your own family, and how to face family trauma and attempt to close the circle.
Eleanor and Cora’s relationship as mother and daughter felt so meaningful and loving. While Eleanor does not appear in Mr. Splitfoot much, her presence, absence, and influence on both her sister and her daughter are massive. And Cora’s approach to her own pregnancy and impending motherhood felt so honest but hopeful. Discussions of motherhood and family are the sneaky underlying focus of Mr. Splitfoot, which hit me hard as someone working through that discussion myself.
At one point on their long walk, Cora and Ruth stumble upon a convent and end up leaving with an ex-nun Margaret, who is trying to get home to her now 10-year-old daughter. Margaret left her daughter when she was less than a year old and locked herself away in a convent to protect her baby from herself. She tells the women that she was obsessive, depressed, and a danger to her child. But now she feels that it’s time to return to her. She comments on Cora’s pregnancy…
‘Motherhood,’ she says, ‘despite being immensely common, remains the greatest mystery, and all the language people use to describe it, kitschy words like comfort and loving arms and nursing, is to convince women to stay put.’”
And then Cora thinks to herself…
I don’t say it, but I think she’s forgetting half. There’s a lot about mothering that’s good. I had a really good mom.” ~ p. 199
There are tragedies in life, and there are choices you make. Many of us, myself included, get wrapped up in thinking that the choices we make can prevent all the tragedies from happening. That is not only untrue but impossible. Motherhood is a hot topic right now for me and my friends. Some are mothers, some will be mothers soon, some know they never want to be mothers, and some cannot figure out what they want yet. As someone who falls into that last camp, I found this book incredibly comforting and grounding.
The walk, which for Cora seems pointless, is nonetheless transformative for her. Her cellphone breaks early on and she loses her easiest connection to the world. Her body is changing both by the walking and by the baby inside it. She even comments at one point that, “nothing stranger than pregnancy could happen to a body.” (p. 99).
I believe this is the maturation process. I push back on the psychological concept that parenthood is the true and ultimate maturation for humans, but I do believe that we transform in our adult lives and cast off frivolous pursuits. We become more focused, less concerned. Cora’s maturation is in the walking.
Would I walk across the entire state of New York just to come to terms with motherhood? Yeah, probably. If that is what it took to know my true self and my true wants and needs, absolutely.
But, as an aside, I truly love her lack of phone. I often fantasize about the peace and calm I would get to experience if I didn’t have my phone. I think about how I could become a better version of myself if I wasn’t tethered to this blinging attention void.
I’m smarter now that my smartphone is gone. I can pay attention in a different way. I know what strangers are thinking. I know when a town is coming before it comes because the pollution changes a half mile out. There’s a thickness to the air like when you bring the palms of your hands together toward one another. It’s not magic. It’s just attention and observation.” ~ p. 99
Sounds great. Sounds like one of my favorite books: Jenny Odell’s How To Do Nothing.
There is so much about this Mr. Splitfoot that I wish I could talk about, like the greusome cult, the ghosts (yes, there are ghosts), or how real the depiction of Upstate is and how present Indigenous culture and life is there. But to me, ultimately, this story is about family. It’s about breaking generational trauma and moving forward by looking back. It’s about building something better, but never forgetting where and who you came from. There is a deep spirituality to that.
Millions of stars overhead make the violence of the big bang clear. So much force that matter is still sprinting away from the center. I feel the velocity of space pinning me to this platform. I’m tiny but I’m going to be someone’s mom, someone’s everything.” ~ Core, p. 172
Additional Recommendations
Interested in New York flavored cults? You should WATCH the Under the Banner of Heaven adaptation on Hulu, starring Andrew Garfield and Daisy Edgar-Jones. You should READ Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism by Barbara Weisberg.
If you too want to be free of your phone, read How To Do Nothing by Jenny Odell.
Thirsting for something truly terrifying set in Upstate New York? Read Ghost Story by the late great Peter Straub (it’s scary for real).
Next Month
We’re diving back into my ‘Women Be Eating’ series in November with a particularly gruesome entry on Sara Tantliger’s To Be Devoured. Sara is a Pittsburgh-area author that I have had the pleasure to meet. She is an incredibly lovely and kind person, but her book grossed me out in ways I didn’t even know could happen. Of course I picked it for your Thanksgiving enjoyment. See you in November!