THE SOUNDS OF HYDESVILLE
By Robert Egby

On March 31, 1848 the veil was broken between two worlds. A murdered pedlar in the World of Spirit finally got someone to talk, and it happened in the little hamlet of Hydesville, then some 20 miles out of Rochester, New York State. The events that happened that night, March 31, 1848, and thereafter are known by every student of Modern Spiritualism.
What happened at Hydesville bridged the two worlds--the Physical Earth and the World of Spirit. Communication between humanity and departed loved ones and friends was not only possible, but provable scientifically.  But were the events at Hydesville planned. Was it the a sophisticated cosmic plot, or were the events simple coincidencces.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in “The History of Spiritualism”  says that according to the flood of early messages “the whole system had been devised by the contrivance of a band of thinkers and inventors upon the spirit plane, foremost among whom was Benjamin Franklin.”
Franklin (1706-90) was the American statesman who helped draft the Declaration of Independence, a scientist who invented, among other things the lightning rod, and author of many papers and books.
Emma Hardinge Britten, known to many as the “Mother of Spiritualism,” wrote in her two volume book “History of Modern American Spiritualism,” that from the first working of the spiritual telegraph spirits claimed that “this method of communion was organized by scinetific minds in the spirit spheres.”
First let’s examine the people on the stage a Hydesville. There was the Bell family who inhabited the Hydesville house from 1843-1845??? They were in residence when the peddlar, Charles B. Rosna was murdered sometime in 1843. Then there were the Weakmans whose stay was short, mainly because of the rappings and other sounds. The next family was Mr. And Mrs. John Fox and their daughters, Margaretta  (15)  and Kate (12), and they were the ones who first communicated with the spirit of the murdered peddlar.
The period between the murder in  1843 and the break-through in 1848 was roughly five years. This is the period of the scenario.
Observe the start of the coincidences. A short distance away in Poughskeepsie, also in New York State, a young teenager, with little education was about to be inducted into Mesmerism, an altered state of consciousness technique developed by Austrian physician F.A. Mesmer (1734-1815). In the trance, the teenager, Andrew Jackson Davis discovered clairvoyance and the ability to see diseases and sickness in people. The year was 1843. In March, the following year, 1844, Davis was suddenly transported into the Catskill Mountains, 40 miles from home where he met the spirits of Galen the Greek Physician and Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) the Swedish scientist and mystical thinker whose revelations of the spiritual world stunned readers for centuries.
The encounter changed young Davis’s life, and he started to dictate the most beautiful and inspiring literature which paved the way for public acceptance of Modern Spiritualism.
Was Galen, Swedenborg and Mesmer on Ben Franklin’s cosmic team?  The first two, it’s difficult to say. But Mesmer, definitely yes.
Franlkin knew Mesmer very well.  In 1784 in Paris, a Royal Commission concluded its inquiry into the activities of Franz Mesmer. The Chairman of the Commission was the American Ambassador to France, Ben Franklin. The report gave Mesmer a negative standing.
Coincidence? There’s more. One of Ben Franklin’s inventions was The Glass Armonia,  a strange musical instrument that played “eerie” and relaxing music, similar to the rubbing of rims of wine glasses filled to different depths.  Ironically, it was used be Franz Mesmer to relax patients.
There are more concidences. Let us return to Hydesville. We have the family of John Bell, the occupants of the house at the time of the murder of Charles B. Rosna. It was never proved that John Bell murdered the peddlar, but somebody cut the poor man’s throat, and dragged him off to the cellar. The main part of the body was discovered in 1904.
Bell?  Another of Ben Franlin’s invention was a device called Lightning Bells. It was a contraption that would jingle when lightning was in the air, and reports say Ben was very proud of this invention.
Another coincidence?  Consider the name Charles B. Rosna. A strange name to say the least. He was supposed to have had a wife and several children, but no one ever found them. In fact, the name Rosna is so rare, it doesn’t appear in the US Social Security Records at all.
Rosna is an anagram for Sonar--yes, we all know Sonar as the World War II device used for detetcting submarines under water, a system still used to this day for tracking submerged objects. It was supposed to be an abbreviation of Sound Navigation Ranging. The noises were called Pings. Sonar came 100 years after Hydesville and Charles B. Rosna.
Except for one thing-- Sonar also stems from the Latin Sonare, which means to sound, and Rosna sure made the sounds at Hydesville. Would Ben Franklin have been aware of the Rosna anagram from Latin? Naturally! He was seven years old when he was sent to a Latin school to become a preacher. He was head of his class.
All this raises some intriguing questions.
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