Houdini(22)
During the summer of 1922, Houdini and Bess joined Doyle and his family in Atlantic City for a weekend of fun and relaxation. During this visit, Doyle’s wife, who claimed to be able to perform “trance-writing,” a method of communicating with spirits by which the medium writes messages from the dead, summoned Houdini for a session. In that session, with Doyle present, she produced fifteen pages of writing supposedly from Houdini’s mother, Cecilia. While the Doyles thought that Houdini came out of this experience with unmistakable proof of his dead mother’s presence and Spiritualism as a whole, Houdini really emerged highly skeptical that his mother was involved with the writing. However, he said nothing of this to the Doyles, wanting to keep the peace.
In October 1922 Houdini got into trouble with both the magician community and the Spiritualists when he published an article explaining a common trick of both, the placement of a radio transmitter inside a non-descript household object to create noises and voices seemingly from magic or spirits. The Society of American Magicians, of which Houdini was president, formed a special committee to make sure that neither Houdini nor other magicians exposed any more of their trade secrets. The SAM also criticized Houdini for writing a monthly column in a New York paper, teaching young readers how to do minor magic tricks. Houdini further clashed with Howard Thurston, his deceased mentor Keller’s protégée. Thurston was a believer in Spiritualism and had attended séances with Besinnet. Thurston was also one of the few magicians what came anywhere close to Houdini’s skill and fame, the more likely reason for their rivalry.
After Doyle returned to England, Houdini and his friend began to have disagreements by letter about various aspects of Spiritualism. In October of 1922, Houdini published an article in a New York paper essentially stating Houdini’s conviction that mediums and séances were fraudulent. Doyle was sent the article by someone, and for the first time the friends argued openly about Spiritualism. Houdini explained how the trance-writing session that he had endured with the Doyles in Atlantic City had left him convinced not of Spiritualism’s truth, but of its lack thereof. Doyle answered by explaining away each of the reasons that Houdini had found to disbelieve the truth of the session. Soon, Doyle and Houdini were fighting publically in an exchange of letters published in The New York Times. When Doyle returned to the United States for a second tour, the two men met up in Denver, Colorado. Despite efforts to patch their relationship, Houdini agreed to meet with a reporter who had written an article claiming that Doyle had dared him to come to a séance, where he would produce Houdini’s mother. This publicity put more strain on the friendship. After Doyle had returned to England, Doyle similarly reacted gullibly to a supposed jab by Houdini in a California newspaper. The two men finally dissolved their friendship.
Houdini The Lecturer and Investigator
By 1924, Houdini was becoming recognized nationally as an investigator and educator on the subject of fraudulent techniques used by mediums. He toured the United States, giving lectures at universities about the history of Spiritualism and the ways that fraudulent mediums produced their effects. Houdini also “tested” mediums. Most famously, he reproduced the powers of a renowned Spanish medium who called himself Argamasilla, who claimed to be able to see through metal. He also duplicated mediums’ use of telepathy, organizing a test at his house in which he went into another room while his guests selected topics at random, returning to the room to explain (correctly) what he had “telepathically received” from them while in the other room. He jokingly performed a “teleportation” of a writer to a benefit held by the Society of American Magicians, pretending that the speaker was communicating via radio, but concealing the man in the banquet hall, who emerged after announcing he was teleporting in for the event. During his push to expose fraud among mediums, Houdini wrote and published a book called A Magician Among the Spirits.
The Scientific American Committee
Houdini’s most longstanding battle in his fight against fraudulent Spiritualist mediums began in January of 1924, when he was nominated to an investigative committee put together by the magazine Scientific American. The purpose of the committee was to determine who, if anyone, would be the winner of two cash prizes offered to the first two individuals who produced a psychic object or photograph while working under the committee’s strictly controlled test conditions. The other members of the committee were largely academics and scientists, including two individuals from the Society of Psychical Research (the SPR), a United Kingdom-based nonprofit dedicated to objectively researching paranormal phenomena. J. Malcolm Bird, an editor at Scientific American, served as the secretary for the committee.