“We must all sit very still now,” she declares.
She picks up the trumpet from the table and begins to swing it around, then puts it to her lips and hisses into it, then grunts, then moans, then finally murmurs, “Hel-oooooo.”
“Hello,” the sitter responds.
“Do you believe?” the medium asks through the trumpet.
“Oh, yes,” the sitter answers.
The male medium’s associate stands in front of the cabinet, addressing the sitters. The medium’s hand slips out between the cabinet curtains, removing, from beneath the bottom of his associate’s robe, a veritable carload of luminous silk forms, faces, hands, costumes and reaching rods.
“Be it understood,” the associate vows, “Professor Oglethorpe has nothing in this cabinet with him save his spirit friends.”
“Oh, yes,” the sitters say.
A séance room in darkness, a cabinet, its curtains extending to the ceiling.
Inside, a trap door is raised in the ceiling, a padded ladder lowered. Down which descend an endless legion of spirits enacting their ethereal performances.
All of these mediumistic ploys were well known to Harry Houdini.
He used all of them to discredit what he believed to be fraudulent psychics.
Occasionally, he went too far.
Margery
August 19-20, 1924
Boston, Massachusetts
The dark hotel room was so still that even the shifting of his light weight on the chair was audible. Houdini spoke suspiciously. “You have her hands grasped firmly?” he demanded.
Dr. Prince sighed. “I have her left hand held in mine,” he answered.
Would the little man ever be satisfied? he wondered.
“I have the right hand,” Dr. Crandon said slowly and distinctly. “As always.”
“Yes, her husband,” muttered Houdini.
“You accepted him, sir,” Malcolm Bird reminded the magician.
Along with Dr. Comstock, Hereward Carrington and Professor MacDougall, he sat some distance from the cabinet.
Houdini made a disgruntled sound. His small hands swept quickly above the surface of the table which separated him from the cabinet.
Then he touched the electric light wired to a telegraph key; the bell box.
Mina Crandon, known to the psychic world as Margery, sat in the heavy wooden cabinet, only her head and hands protruding. Her eyes were closed, her head slumped forward.
“Very well,” Houdini addressed her. “Ring the bell if you can. Let me hear the bell ring.”
The bell rang so immediately that his look of smug assurance vanished in an instant, replaced by one of angry surprise.
“Are you satisfied?” asked “Walter.”
“Contrary to all the newspaper reports,” Houdini told them before the next sitting, “I have not been baffled along with every other investigator.”
“You’re still not convinced?” Malcolm Bird looked offended. “You heard the bell last night. We all heard it.”
“Obvious fraud,” Houdini responded.
“Mr. Houdini.” Bird’s features tightened with resentment. “Every single condition in the séance room—down to the very construction of the solid wood cabinet—was yours.”
“Completely false,” the magician said. “The conditions were not mine.
“Further, I accuse you, Mr. Bird, of being totally untrustworthy and I forbid you from being present in the séance room any longer. I have canceled a valuable stage tour to attend these sittings and I will not be trifled with or lied to.”
Malcolm Bird, infuriated, could barely speak. “That’s it for me,” he managed to say before he stormed from the room.
Houdini’s smile was cold. “Perhaps now we can have an honest test,” he said.
Fifteen minutes later, Mina Crandon, attired in dressing gown, silk stockings and slippers, was helped into the cabinet by her husband.
Houdini shut the cabinet and locked it carefully. “Now,” he said.
He looked at Dr. Crandon. “Professor MacDougall will hold your wife’s right hand this evening.”
“You don’t trust me either?” Dr. Crandon challenged.
“In matters of this sort, I trust no one,” Houdini answered. “Least of all, you, the subject’s husband.”
“You believe I will deliberately assist her in deceiving you,” Dr. Crandon said, his expression one of ill-contained rage.
“I believe it possible that you already have,” Houdini replied.
Dr. Crandon shuddered, attempting to repress his fury. “She is accustomed to my holding her right hand,” he said.
A look of anger twisted the magician’s face. “Either Professor MacDougall holds her right hand or I will declare this sitting null and void and consequently do all within my power to discredit any further sittings by your wife.”
Dr. Prince took hold of Dr. Crandon’s arm to restrain him. Crandon looked at him abruptly, then back at Houdini. He was about to speak when his wife said, “It’s all right, Goddard. Let it be.”
Dr. Crandon filled his lungs with slow, deep breath, then nodded once and moved to one of the chairs against the wall.
“Dr. Prince will, as usual, hold the mediums’ left hand,” Houdini said, giving the word ‘medium’ an emphasis of obvious scorn.
Dr. Crandon began to rise from his chair, then sank back down as Carrington reached out and gripped his shoulder.
“The man is intolerable,” Crandon murmured.
Carrington’s smile was partly sad, partly amused. “I know,” he replied quietly.
As Dr. Comstock was moving to extinguish the lights, Houdini said, “One moment, I want to check the cabinet again.”
“Dear God.” Dr. Crandon looked around the room as though to avoid the sight of the small magician as Houdini unlocked and opened the cabinet again, then peered inside, feeling around the interior, aided by his assistant.
“Very well,” he finally said.
He closed the cabinet again and re-locked it. He and his assistant took their places by the table as Dr. Comstock turned off the lights and felt his way to his chair.
Within a minute, Margery’s “control”—ostensibly her deceased brother Walter—burst through, his voice incensed.
“We will not continue with this sitting!” he said. “The magician plans to trick us!”
“What?” Houdini sounded outraged.
“He has hidden a collapsible ruler under the cushion beneath the medium’s feet!” raged “Walter.” “There will be no sitting! Turn on the lights!”
A frowning Dr. Comstock rose and felt his way back to the light switch.
“I forbid this!” cried Houdini.
“There will be no sitting!” Walter cut him off.
As the lights went on, Houdini lunged to his feet and over to the cabinet, features stone-like. With quick, angry movements, he unlocked the cabinet and threw it open. Reaching down, he jerked a folded ruler from beneath the cushion under Mrs. Crandon’s feet; held it up in triumph.
“Announcing the existence of this ruler is obviously a cheap device to avoid its discovery and, at the same time, discredit me,” he said derisively.
“A cheap device to discredit my wife, you mean!” Crandon broke in loudly. Again, he had to be restrained by Carrington.
Houdini pointed at the cabinet, his expression one of contempt.
“I accuse our so-called medium of concealing this ruler in the cabinet to besmirch my reputation!” he cried.
“A lie!” raged Crandon.
“Mr. Houdini, you and your assistant checked the cabinet completely just before we started,” Dr. Prince reminded him.
“We did not—” began Houdini.
“You even re-opened the cabinet to check it again mere seconds before we started,” Prince interrupted the magician.
“In order to place the ruler inside and discredit my wife!” Dr. Crandon shouted.
“False!” Houdini screamed at him. “False! False! F
alse!”
AFTERWARD
The mystery was never solved. Houdini denied that he had placed the ruler in the cabinet. So, too, did Dr. Crandon and his wife.
At the very least, Houdini’s accusations of fraud in this case were questionable.
Oddly enough, although it is generally assumed that Houdini went to his grave claiming that he had never witnessed a single, genuine psychic manifestation in his life, he once told Hereward Carrington that, while performing in Berlin, he had, in fact, experienced exactly such a manifestation.
He was walking onto the stage to begin his show when his eyes were drawn to the opposite wing.
There, he saw his mother standing, a shawl over her head.
Smiling at him.
Torn between his sense of duty to the audience and his stunned reaction to the sight of his beloved mother, Houdini spoke a few words of greeting to the audience, then looked back quickly at the wing where he had seen his mother.
She was gone.
Houdini, stricken, commenced his show.
Later, to discover that, at the moment he had seen his mother, she was dying in New York.
Even more odd—if not downright peculiar—is the conviction that Houdini’s declared vow to communicate with his wife after death never took place despite yearly attempts on his birthday.
In fact, he did communicate with his wife as agreed.
At least, his widow believed that he did.
In a message delivered by well-known medium Arthur Ford—through his Spirit Control Fletcher—Mrs. Houdini was told the following:
“A man who says he is Harry Houdini but whose real name was Ehrich Weiss, is here and wishes to send to his wife, Beatrice
Houdini, the ten-word code which he agreed to do if it were possible for him to communicate.
“He says you are to take this message to her and, upon acceptance of it, he wishes her to follow out the plan they agreed upon before his passing. This is the code:
“ROSABELLE**ANSWER**TELL**PRAY**ANSWER**LOOK** TELL**ANSWER**ANSWER**TELL”
No one on earth knew this code but Houdini and his wife.
Following another sitting with Arthur Ford, Mrs. Houdini stated emotionally, “It is right!”
The code was used by her and Houdini in their “mind-reading” act.
Interpreted, the message was ROSABELLE, BELIEVE.
Mrs. Houdini prepared a hand-written statement as follows:
Regardless of any statements made to the contrary, I wish to declare that the message, in its entirety, and in the agreed upon sequence given to me by Arthur Ford, is the correct message prearranged between Mr. Houdini and myself.
Beatrice Houdini
From the moment Mrs. Houdini signed this statement, she was exposed to a firestorm of scorn and criticism.
It is believed that she later reneged on her signed statement.
At least, virtually everyone believes that she did.
But the facts remain.
MEDIUM MOST RARE
The era of the great mediums was coming to a close. Spiritualism was waning.
Psychical research was now concentrating on effects and general tests rather than on individual psychics.
Only one figure remained as the era neared its conclusion. The last truly rare medium.
Arguably, the most rare medium in the history of parapsychology.
Edgar Cayce
May 2, 1890
Hopkinsville, Kentucky
By the streamside, he had built a lean-to of saplings, fir branches, moss, bark and reeds.
He was sitting there that afternoon, reading the Bible.
He was only thirteen but he’d read it twelve times and his plan was to complete his thirteenth reading of it by the end of the year.
He was in the middle of a verse from Jeremiah when he sensed a presence.
Looking up, he saw a woman standing in front of him. The blinding sunlight behind her made it difficult for him to see her clearly.
He started as she spoke to him, her voice soft yet perfectly audible.
“Tell me what you would like most of all so that I may give it to you,” she said.
The boy was awed and frightened even though the woman’s voice had been benign.
He winced as he saw something moving behind her shoulders.
Something like wings.
Edgar swallowed dryly, just managing to respond.
“Most of all, I’d like to be helpful to others,” he said. “Especially to children when they’re sick.”
He blinked.
The woman was no longer there.
He sat rooted to the ground for several minutes, gaping at the spot where the woman had been standing.
Then, jumping to his feet, he ran all the way home to tell his mother.
She was in the kitchen making supper and he blurted out his story.
When he was finished, he asked her, “Do you think I’ve been reading the Bible too much? It makes some people go crazy, doesn’t it?”
Mrs. Cayce smiled and put her arms around his.
“You’re a good boy to want to help others,” she told her son. “Why shouldn’t your prayer be answered?”
Edgar hit the floor again and sprawled there, breathless.
His father, Squire Cayce, hauled him to his feet and set him down hard on the parlor chair.
Snatching the spelling book off the floor where it had landed when he’d cuffed his son, Squire Cayce slapped it onto Edgar’s lap, making the boy wince.
“You will not disgrace the family,” Squire Cayce told him sternly. “You will stay up all night if need be but you will learn to spell the words in that lesson. I will not have a stupid son.”
He pointed at the cowering boy. “Now get to business,” he commanded. “I’ll be back again in another half hour.”
He left the room and the groggy Edgar re-opened his spelling book. It had been a long evening for him. Every time his father had asked him to spell the words from his current lesson, Edgar had failed.
Sniffling, he leaned over the book and began to study again.
At half past ten, Squire Cayce strode into the room and grabbed the speller from his son’s hands.
“Spell capital,” he ordered.
“C-a-p-i-t-i-”
He cried out as his father, totally exasperated, smacked him on the left side of the head and sent him flying off the chair.
He pointed fiercely at his huddled son.
“I am going into the kitchen for a few minutes,” he said ominously. “When I come back, I am going to ask you that lesson once more.
“It’s your last chance.”
He stormed out. Edgar, tired and sleepy, left ear ringing, sat up slowly, trying not to cry.
He froze as he heard a woman’s voice; the voice he’d heard in the woods that day. “If you can sleep a little, we can help you,” it said.
Edgar looked around dazedly. The room was empty.
He twitched as the voice repeated, “If you can sleep a little, we can help you.”
Edgar groaned weakly. How could it get any worse no matter what he did? he thought.
Closing his spelling book, he put it on the floor and laid down with his head on top of it. In seconds, he had fallen sound asleep.
His father woke him up ten minutes later by yanking the speller out from under his head so that his skull thumped down on the floor.
“All right,” his father said in a threatening voice. His tone made it obvious that he was sure that nothing had changed.
Grabbing Edgar by the left arm, he pulled him to his feet and sat him on the chair again. “Capital,” he ordered.
“C-a-p-i-t-a-1,” the boy replied.
The Squire’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.
“Household,” he said.
“H-o-u-s-e-h-o-l-d,” the boy responded.
“Valid,” said the Squire.
“V-a-l-i-d.”
When Edgar had spelled every word in the lesson correctly, his fa
ther went on to the next lesson. The boy spelled every word in that lesson as well.
Then the boy said, “Ask me anything in the book.”
The Squire’s face was getting red now. Glaring from the book to Edgar and back again, he skipped through the speller at random, picking out the hardest words he could find—which Edgar spelled correctly.
When the boy said, “There’s a picture of a silo on the next page, the word synthesis under it—s-y-n-t-h-e-s-i-s.”
The Squire slammed the book down in a fury.
“What kind of nonsense is this?!” he roared. “You knew that lesson all the time! You knew the whole blessed book!”
“Yes, because the angel—” Edgar broke off with a cry of pain as his father whacked him on the head again, knocking him off the chair.
“Go to bed!” the Squire shouted. “Before I lose my temper!”
The headaches had been plaguing him for weeks now. By the time he reached Elkton, the pain had become severe and constant.
Edgar couldn’t find the strength to sell anymore. Locating the nearest doctor, he visited the man’s office and asked for a sedative.
The doctor gave him some powder in a folded square of paper and, as soon as he arrived at his hotel, Edgar poured the powder into several inches of tap water, stirred it with an index finger and swallowed it in one gulp. Then he lay down on the bed to try and sleep.
It was March, 1900.
When he opened his eyes again, two doctors were leaning over him, looking very grave.
“How do you feel?” one of them asked.
Edgar tried to answer but was unable to summon more than a whisper.
Shocked, he tried again; in vain. He looked at the doctors frightenedly.
Then he looked around, experiencing a jolt of new dismay.
He was no longer in the hotel room but in his bedroom at home.
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