In 1870s Vermont, brothers William and Horatio Eddy became America's most celebrated psychic mediums, attracting spiritualism's biggest names with seances featuring materialized spirits and disembodied hands. A skeptical New York journalist's investigation converted him to believer, but fraud allegations in 1875 destroyed their empire, leaving questions about whether their supernatural abilities were genuine or elaborate illusions. The Eddy brothers descended from Mary Bradbury, a Salem witch trial defendant who escaped execution by fleeing Massachusetts in 1692.