Houdini(23)

With his large ego and longstanding need to prove himself as an intellectual, Houdini began clashing with his fellow committee members almost immediately. After the committee had tested a medium named George Valentine and found evidence of fraud, Houdini immediately told the press about the committee’s discoveries. Other committee members, especially Bird, objected to Houdini’s violation of the bylaw that none of the members speak to the press individually, for fear of discouraging future candidates from coming forward to compete for the prizes.



Due either to Houdini’s indiscretion or to some other reason, no other viable medium came forth to try for the prize for six more months, until Nino Pecoraro, a young Italian medium, volunteered. Pecoraro was interesting to the committee because he claimed to be channeling the famous deceased medium Eusapia Palladino. Bird, perhaps intentionally, failed to tell Houdini about the first two test séances that the committee held with Pecoraro. However, by the third, Houdini had caught wind of the tests and arrived to evaluate Pecoraro. During his séances, Pecoraro seemed to make things appear and sounds occur while bound tightly. Houdini showed Pecoraro what it really meant to be bound, tying him intricately and knowledgably from his own years of experience as an escape artist. Bound thusly, Pecoraro was unable to produce the same effects as he had during the first two “tests,” proving that he himself, and not a spiritual force, had produced the noises and images in the prior séances.



After Pecoraro, the committee took on the testing of a medium who called herself Margery. Margery’s real name was Mina Crandon, and she was the young, well-to-do wife of a surgeon and Harvard professor named Dr. Crandon. The aristocratic pair lived in beautiful four-story house on Beacon Hill in Boston and enjoyed an educated and cultured circle of friends and colleagues. Margery purported to produce messages from the dead in several languages and, most famously, to channel her deceased brother Walter, a young man who had been killed while working on the railroad. Margery had gained a large following of believers who praised her powers as a medium, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Again, Bird failed to tell Houdini about thirty séance tests that were held with Margery in the first half of 1924. Upon discovering that the committee was close to awarding a prize to Margery, Houdini intervened and insisted on evaluating her for himself. Bird, who had been staying with the Crandons, and who Houdini already suspected of aiding the couple in fraud in order to gain their friendship, was forced to agree.



In July of 1924, Houdini and other committee members began a series of séances with Margery in Boston. Houdini quickly detected that Margery used her foot to ring a bell supposedly rung by Walter and that she used her head to move objects while her hands and feet were held by other sitters. Houdini tried to convince the committee to immediately publish his discoveries, but Bird convinced the group to sit with Margery for another series of séances before deciding. Houdini believed, probably correctly, that Margery and Dr. Crandon used their unusually close relationship with Bird to find out what Houdini knew about Margery’s methods.



For the second round of séances, held the following month, Houdini convinced a Scientific American committee member named Walter Franklin Prince, head of the American Society for Psychical Research, to attend. Houdini and an assistant named Collins built a special cabinet for Margery to sit in. It was designed to prevent her from using her tricks to manipulate a bell and other items. In a very tense series of séances that stretched over two days, Houdini and Margery accused each other of planting various items in the box and in the bell, Houdini insisting that Margery was using a tool to ring the bell from far off and Margery insisting that Houdini was planting tools on her and blocking the bell.



During these two tense days, Bird stepped down as secretary of the committee and Prince took over the post. Margery’s spirit brother Walter “cursed out” Houdini, telling him to leave, which amused Houdini, as he knew Walter was not really speaking but one of the Crandons. In earlier séances, Walter had revealed “his” anti-Semitic feelings towards Houdini, a sentiment that Dr. Crandon mirrored in his correspondence with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. By the last séance of the month, Margery failed to produce any communications or signs from the dead. Houdini triumphantly told the committee that her failure was due to the fact that she was restrained from performing her techniques by the box he and Collins and built and left Boston convinced that she was a fraud.



The committee, never having all sat together at the same time for a séance with Margery, remained divided for a long time about whether to credit Margery with the prize or to denounce her as a fraud. The group polarized between Houdini and a committee member named Carrington, a writer of many articles of psychical research. Houdini insisted that he had already detected that Margery was a fraud and that the public should know about her deception—and his role in discovering it—as soon as possible. Carrington insisted that Margery was genuinely communicating with the spirits. McDougall, a scientist and committee member who had never actually attended any of the séances, took no side but complained to the newspapers that Houdini acted like Houdini was the only one qualified to judge the matter, when he, McDougall, a professor and scientist, knew as much or more than a magician. This, as well as the fact that supporters of Margery publically declaimed Houdini as merely an ignorant magician, infuriated Houdini, who was sensitive as always to being classified as inferior to academics and aristocrats.