Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of My Heart Radio Elizabeth Dutton. Yes,
Speaker 1: do you know it's ridiculous? Yeah, I know it's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Hit me with it. People who refer to their dogs
Speaker 1: as fur babies, because like, if someone says to me
Speaker 1: when I'm walking my dog, is that your fur baby,
Speaker 1: I want to say, yeah, I'm his skin mommy. So
Speaker 1: that's ridiculous. Can I be the flesh daddy? Yes, you could.
Speaker 1: You could be the dog's flesh daddy. I'm just I'm
Speaker 1: the flesh step daddy. I just think it's ridiculous. Just
Speaker 1: say it's your pet. And then I also, as much
Speaker 1: as I am a crazy dog lady and I love
Speaker 1: my dog, I own that dog. He's not my like
Speaker 1: not like internet own more legally I own. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: dunk on him all day, I roast him. But also
Speaker 1: in addition, I'm the owner, I'm the boss lady, I'm
Speaker 1: the alpha, so you know I don't it's a dog dude.
Speaker 1: It's not like my roommate anyway. That's that's ridiculous. Have
Speaker 1: I got a story for you? How about a story
Speaker 1: about the time when the author of Sherlock Holmes, Sir
Speaker 1: Arthur Conan Doyle, my man got into a very very
Speaker 1: public feud with the magician Harry Judini. Yeah, Harry Judini, right,
Speaker 1: I didn't expect that coming. So the two men had
Speaker 1: battled about whether like mediums and psychics and seances and
Speaker 1: jiboards were like valid tools to contact people from the
Speaker 1: great beyond. Now they're public feud eventually ended their friendship,
Speaker 1: as public feuds often do. So you ready for the
Speaker 1: story of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle versus Harry who did born? Ready,
Speaker 1: let's do this. This is ridiculous crime of podcast about
Speaker 1: absurd and outrageous capers, heights and cons. It's always murder
Speaker 1: free and ridiculous. Okay, first things first, we kind of
Speaker 1: need to set some ground rules or some foundational setting
Speaker 1: for this. Well, there's a stage, you know. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just basically that things were different then, even though
Speaker 1: they were the same. And I think you kind of
Speaker 1: need to understand what we are dealing with because if
Speaker 1: I say, you're like, oh, nine twenty, right, but like
Speaker 1: there's like a whole deal about nineteen twenty, I don't
Speaker 1: think a lot of people think about, which is they
Speaker 1: had gone through World War one and the Spanish flu.
Speaker 1: At the same time, death is just hanging in the air.
Speaker 1: There's like this great darkness, there's this grief, and out
Speaker 1: of that comes this need for Yes, it's true. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to argue because that is spot on people
Speaker 1: needed just like people and say jazz, Yes, you need
Speaker 1: to do a jazz hands in the next time. All right,
Speaker 1: I'm not critiquing your style. I'm just saying, but out
Speaker 1: of this need for some spiritual relief and sustenance other
Speaker 1: than jazz music comes this, uh basically spirit of the
Speaker 1: times as ZiT Geist, if you will, that had psychic
Speaker 1: life coaches and like these mediums and charlatans and street
Speaker 1: theater people going and doing like um readings, if you will,
Speaker 1: like just know you, sir, I have a message for
Speaker 1: you from your dead wife. So it's like in person,
Speaker 1: live action, Instagram kind of kind of crystals. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: right now we have like the crystal healers the Internet,
Speaker 1: which covens energy, body working. Yeah, exactly, but that's all
Speaker 1: pretty much the same stuff as then, but the need
Speaker 1: for it was different than than it is now. Although
Speaker 1: with the pandemic we're getting pretty darn close to pushing
Speaker 1: the same similar kind of numbers. Right. Well, that New
Speaker 1: age stuff then was called spiritualism. So this is a
Speaker 1: story about spiritualism. Okay, Okay, I'm really excited for this.
Speaker 1: Did you see this story about that l a guy
Speaker 1: who had to go and hire a psychic life coach.
Speaker 1: I think it was like five grandy paid Dr or No, hey,
Speaker 1: he only did you ever a thousand dollar to deposit,
Speaker 1: but she was going to charge five grand to remove
Speaker 1: a curse that his ex girlfriend had had paid a
Speaker 1: witch to place on him. So he got a psychic
Speaker 1: to fight a witch. Okay, Okay, So I just thought
Speaker 1: that was like, you know, emblematic of our times, but
Speaker 1: it just as easily could have been having the spiritualism
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, Have you ever been to a psychic? No?
Speaker 1: I think like I can remember, um at like some
Speaker 1: elementary school spirit week fair, not spirit like, but like
Speaker 1: I'm excited about school. Um I seem to remember there
Speaker 1: was like a psychic and I'm sure it was highly
Speaker 1: offensive like Roma culture, you know, yeah exactly, with all
Speaker 1: stall yeah and coin earrings and stuff. But um, I
Speaker 1: remember they had like a tent and you could use
Speaker 1: your tickets to go and have your fortune red and
Speaker 1: they put one of those red like thin plastic fish
Speaker 1: that would curl up and it would tell you, like
Speaker 1: what that meant? You know what I'm talking about. It's
Speaker 1: like heat responsive. It's like the paper and you put
Speaker 1: your heat on it. Yeah, and you know they use
Speaker 1: that like throwing bones essentially. Yeah, And so if you
Speaker 1: run a little hot, curls right up if you're you know,
Speaker 1: clammy handed. I don't know anyway, I don't know what
Speaker 1: my fortune was. I'm sure it came true. I like
Speaker 1: Chuck Closterman, the writer, he went to a psychic, actually
Speaker 1: bent to a bunch of psychics and asked them all
Speaker 1: if he could become a professional bowler. And he's like,
Speaker 1: never bowld you had know anything about bowling. They're like, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: I see it for you. You will. So that's kind
Speaker 1: of like my take on a lot of this stuff
Speaker 1: is you're pretty much gonna be told what you want
Speaker 1: for money. But that's said. I do want to say
Speaker 1: straight up, I do not have an opinion of what
Speaker 1: people believe. I want everyone to believe whatever they want.
Speaker 1: The only thing that I find ridiculous in all of
Speaker 1: this is the Charlatan is trying to deceive people. It's
Speaker 1: not the believers. I don't have a problem with whatever
Speaker 1: you believe, it's the deceiver's exactly. So I just wanted
Speaker 1: to say that plane is possible. Okay, let's start off
Speaker 1: our story with an English writer, but not the one
Speaker 1: we're discussing. Not to Arthur Conan Doll instead, Charles Dickens. Well,
Speaker 1: wasn't sir Arthur Conan Doll Scottish? Oh you're gonna be
Speaker 1: like that, Yes he was. I should have said British,
Speaker 1: not English, and then he could have fallen under that umbrella.
Speaker 1: So yes, yeah, continue, So Charles Dickens, you like Dickens.
Speaker 1: Sure he got, he got paid by the Comma. It's
Speaker 1: such a former English teacher comment. I love it. Well. Anyway,
Speaker 1: he's this big time spiritualist and he believed in what
Speaker 1: was called mesmeric curses. Now, mesmeric curses were something that
Speaker 1: he thought would be some a way to heal his
Speaker 1: sister in laws intestinal evil. Yeah, intestinal we've all had
Speaker 1: intestinally right exactly now. He planned also to fight her
Speaker 1: intestinal evil, he would use the power of animal magnetism, right, no, right,
Speaker 1: But he wasn't like that kind of animal magnetism. And
Speaker 1: it also wasn't like, oh I'm gonna rub a magnetic
Speaker 1: rabbit on you. It was it was hanimal magnetism back
Speaker 1: then meant hypnotism. Oh so it's sort of like your animals,
Speaker 1: that your primal primal magnetism. Yeah, exactly, it's like the
Speaker 1: attraction of all living things. I guess I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm not a spiritualist. But he also, you know, it
Speaker 1: was like into clairvoyance, and he believed that this was
Speaker 1: an extension of Clare of Voiance. So basically there's this
Speaker 1: psychic ether and this was an example of him being
Speaker 1: able to tune into it. Right now, He's not alone.
Speaker 1: In the nineteenth century, you have a bunch of like
Speaker 1: luminaries who were big time spiritualist. W. B. Yates was one,
Speaker 1: Queen Victoria's one, the painter of the Scream at Vard Munch.
Speaker 1: He was a big one. Um see. Oh, of course
Speaker 1: Mary Todd Lincoln, the Queen, the first Lady. She very
Speaker 1: famously would have seances in the White House to try
Speaker 1: to contact little Willie, their dear departed Willie. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: wet the earth for a little Willie. Now, the civil
Speaker 1: War was this major driver of all things spiritualism in
Speaker 1: macab right, So that was the first push, and then
Speaker 1: in World War One you get a follow up. Basically
Speaker 1: it's the same response. In the Civil War you have
Speaker 1: like thousand people lost in the battlefields. Then uh, you know,
Speaker 1: in response to this within like by eight seventy eight,
Speaker 1: you have eleven million people who are calling themselves spiritualists
Speaker 1: in the United States, United States, just the United States.
Speaker 1: What was the population, like twelve million, I'm not good
Speaker 1: to the number. I actually don't know. The population was
Speaker 1: one out of three people. But like this nascent, like
Speaker 1: burgeoning kind of spiritual movement ended up turning into an industry.
Speaker 1: So within a generation or two by the turn of
Speaker 1: the century, now there were well, for instance, in nineteen
Speaker 1: o nine you get four hundred twenty seven licensed mentalists
Speaker 1: in on the Eastern seaboard, licensed licensed. In ten years
Speaker 1: time there were six thousand, three hundred and ninety licensed
Speaker 1: from four hundred something just six thousand some ten years
Speaker 1: from nineteen nine nineteen. What had happened in between industry,
Speaker 1: World War One and the Spanish foot you can see
Speaker 1: it's directly like the numbers carry it out. This isn't
Speaker 1: just like, oh yeah, people need spiritualism, though they're paying
Speaker 1: for it. Right. So by the end of like World
Speaker 1: War One, we're talking nineteen eighteen and November nineteen eighteen,
Speaker 1: the war ends, there are twenty million soldiers and civilians
Speaker 1: who are dead. Like it's just like bloody, bloody, bloody times. Right.
Speaker 1: So in a response and also the Spanish flu um,
Speaker 1: you have another let's see, I think americans die in that.
Speaker 1: You have a hundred sixteen thousand Americans die in the
Speaker 1: World War One. So you just as you can see
Speaker 1: from these numbers, it's just it's really hard to find
Speaker 1: somebody who's not touched by loss. Okay. So in that
Speaker 1: environment you have like in New York City, a newspaper
Speaker 1: described the streets being filled with mediums, mentalists. Um, there
Speaker 1: was terms like street fake here, which is you know,
Speaker 1: the Indian fake here, the jongaliers, bunko merchants, miracle workers, healers,
Speaker 1: and sears. So it's just like the streets are ripe
Speaker 1: with people with going, hey, what's that in your pocket?
Speaker 1: Got a little money, I'll tell you something spiritual right now.
Speaker 1: There's also though the d I y approach. Okay, do
Speaker 1: you can always do something yourself, right, So then that
Speaker 1: meant the Luigi board right now. Luigi board was invented
Speaker 1: in like eighteen ninety, I believe, but in by nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 1: it's become the thing everybody wants one. It gets like
Speaker 1: they're having the adults are having parties. Isn't just like
Speaker 1: little you know, isn't children gathering together. There's adults having
Speaker 1: like seances using the Ouiji board right now. My man
Speaker 1: Harry Houdini, he immediately recognized this is kind of a
Speaker 1: slippery soap folks, and he called Wiji boards the first
Speaker 1: step towards insanity. So the guy who like chained himself
Speaker 1: up and hung upside down is telling other people what's insane. Hey, hey, well,
Speaker 1: but you have to understand this is like a common view.
Speaker 1: The was the medical director of for New Jersey State
Speaker 1: Hospital for the Insane. He had the same opinion. He said,
Speaker 1: if Weigi boards quote, it would be difficult to imagine
Speaker 1: conditions more favorable for the development of psychosis than those
Speaker 1: furnished by the Wigi board and other mediums. So it's
Speaker 1: not just that like we have mass death and decimation
Speaker 1: that could cause psychosis. No, it's a it's Luigi board exactly,
Speaker 1: all right, dude, Hey man, he is the director of
Speaker 1: the State Hospital for the Insane. He knows what he's
Speaker 1: talking about. I'm sure. Now, did you ever play with
Speaker 1: the Weigi board? Yeah? Yeah, did you like it? You
Speaker 1: don't seem like it would be the type just saying
Speaker 1: I'll just put it out there. Looks can be deceived.
Speaker 1: Uh No, you know. The thing is is that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can remember doing like doing the whole Weigi board
Speaker 1: thing at like a party or something as a kid.
Speaker 1: And then there's always like you can feel people pushing
Speaker 1: the little what's what is that called on the Uigi board? Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, like those called the selector. It has
Speaker 1: another name. Oh I don't know what it is, Planchett. Okay,
Speaker 1: the planchett. Yeah. So you can feel people pushing on it,
Speaker 1: on the planchet, with their on the plan chet, with
Speaker 1: their agendas, when they asked questions like this, who has
Speaker 1: a crush on me? Who's in the room. Malik has
Speaker 1: a m and it's Malik. Yeah, I so I can. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've played with the Uigi board. I've gone there, and
Speaker 1: did you believe it in the moment, No, because I
Speaker 1: don't trust people. I mean, I I'm very open minded
Speaker 1: about stuff. You know, there's a lot and I'm okay
Speaker 1: with not being able to explain stuff. I don't feel
Speaker 1: like there has to be a scientific explanation for everything,
Speaker 1: and so I'm cool with that, you know, I'm cool.
Speaker 1: I love movies that have ambiguous endings, that's true. I
Speaker 1: love in precision. So I'm yeah, like whatever. You know. Again,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to judge, you know, what I think
Speaker 1: or what other people think. But the Uiji board is
Speaker 1: just totally a setup for people to to try and manipulate.
Speaker 1: It's too much of a thumb on the scale. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that's fair assessment. I grew up in a neighborhood
Speaker 1: with a lot of families. There were a bunch of girls,
Speaker 1: and uh, we definitely play the Wegi board and I
Speaker 1: dug it and I had no problem with it. But
Speaker 1: I also didn't think that they was divining anything. I
Speaker 1: thought it was just kind of we're just all doing
Speaker 1: it and pretending, you know. I realized people actually believed,
Speaker 1: you know, but yeah, whatever, that's but there's also there
Speaker 1: are the people who are terrified of them, like they
Speaker 1: don't want the wegi board in their house. You know. Also,
Speaker 1: do you'd ever play light as a feather stuff as
Speaker 1: a board. I'd heard about it. I saw that, and
Speaker 1: that made me I was much more o believer in that.
Speaker 1: So you mentioned science, right, and science at this time
Speaker 1: is right in this like point where it's also starting
Speaker 1: to shape with people believe not just what they think,
Speaker 1: but what they believe. Right. There's this a funny, little
Speaker 1: strange German Man by the name of Albert Einstein, that
Speaker 1: little kittie, yeah, with a fun fun hair. He was
Speaker 1: up ending almost all reality at this point, but proving
Speaker 1: that scientists really couldn't prove anything. You know, they knew
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff, but they couldn't prove anything. He
Speaker 1: invents he through his theories of relativity, the way particle
Speaker 1: duality of light, his explanation of the photo electric effect.
Speaker 1: He wins a bunch of you know, Nobel prizes, but
Speaker 1: he also up ends reality. He basically says that everything
Speaker 1: is relative to the observer. This is a huge win
Speaker 1: for the spiritualist, the mentalist, and the psychics, and they're
Speaker 1: saying the same thing as Einstein. It's all up to
Speaker 1: what you believe. So now let's get into our man,
Speaker 1: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the most rational mind, the guy
Speaker 1: who invented Sherlock Holmes. How do you think he plays
Speaker 1: into all this? I have no idea. Well, he's you know,
Speaker 1: he's rational. So you expect this guy to be the
Speaker 1: kind to basically be able to parse truth from fiction,
Speaker 1: to be able to analyze things and not be just
Speaker 1: swayed by emotion, right, but he goes to prove that
Speaker 1: we are all victims of what we believe, So stick
Speaker 1: with me. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had also had his
Speaker 1: fair share of death and disease. His wife's brother died
Speaker 1: in World War One in Belgium. His son Kingsley, got
Speaker 1: himself wounded in France, also fighting in the war, and
Speaker 1: then two years later he dies of pneumonia. Conan Doyle's
Speaker 1: younger brother dies of the Spanish flu so it's just
Speaker 1: close to him. All in all, he loses eleven members
Speaker 1: of his family are relative. So he's really velversed in
Speaker 1: this great darkness of that time, right, So he's willing
Speaker 1: to do things like seances, and his wife is super
Speaker 1: into it, so he starts, you know, he's legitimately somebody
Speaker 1: had been curious about his whole life, but he starts
Speaker 1: really getting into it after his son dies. Now I
Speaker 1: want you to picture it ready, the autumn of nineteen September,
Speaker 1: ten months earlier. The Great War just finally come to
Speaker 1: a close. There's that grief hanging there that I've mentioned
Speaker 1: numerous times. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is at a hotel
Speaker 1: in the English coastal town of Portsmith. He's on stage
Speaker 1: for a rally of spiritualist believers and with him on
Speaker 1: stage this dude, Evan Powell. And Evan Powell is a
Speaker 1: thirty eight year old medium, and Powell is like really
Speaker 1: good at his job. He's conjuring up voices of multiple
Speaker 1: departed souls from the audience. Everyone's blown away. Conan Doyle
Speaker 1: and his wife are so struck by what he's doing.
Speaker 1: They're like, hey, bro, like after this show, you want up,
Speaker 1: gonna be pop upstairs into a little private set. And
Speaker 1: he's like, okay, right, So he goes upstairs. Conan Doyle,
Speaker 1: his wife and five of their fellow spiritualist all huddle
Speaker 1: in this room. The candles are lit. They go, okay, medium,
Speaker 1: let's see what you can do. And first they're like, wait,
Speaker 1: we want to check them. So they search him, they
Speaker 1: pat him down for anything, and it's like, okay, he's clean,
Speaker 1: and they go, okay, strip him. They strip him half naked, right,
Speaker 1: and then they tie him to a chair. Is this
Speaker 1: can exactly? Is this really still a psych So they're
Speaker 1: you know, they're all getting kinky with him. We have
Speaker 1: an offer for you, Mr Powell. So he's half naked,
Speaker 1: tied to his chair. They're like, okay, do your stuff right.
Speaker 1: So they have the gas lights all low and their
Speaker 1: flicker and it's like just this whatever, the seven of
Speaker 1: them sitting there with Powell now ConA nod. He's a writer,
Speaker 1: so he records what he sees and he says, I quote,
Speaker 1: we had a strong phenomena from the start. The medium
Speaker 1: was always groaning, muttering, or talking, so that there was
Speaker 1: never a doubt where he was. Suddenly I heard a
Speaker 1: voice out of the darkness, Conor no Doyle here, but
Speaker 1: out of the darkness, Conan Doyle, here's in the medium's voice,
Speaker 1: a voice that he recognizes, right, someone else's voice, and
Speaker 1: he's the voice, says Jane. It is I His wife
Speaker 1: cries it is Kingsley, I said, is that you boy? He?
Speaker 1: And this is all quote he said, he said, in
Speaker 1: a very intense whisper, in a tone all his own father.
Speaker 1: And then after a pause, forgive me, now this kind
Speaker 1: of weird, right, just forgive me from the other side.
Speaker 1: What for? So so Arthur cnan Doyle, this grieving father,
Speaker 1: he's able to hear from his dead son. It blows
Speaker 1: his mind. Forget rationality, forget Sherlock Holmes, forget all that stuff.
Speaker 1: He's like, bro, it's my boy. But not only does
Speaker 1: he hear him, he feels his son's hand press on him.
Speaker 1: He then feels his son kiss him on the forehead,
Speaker 1: and his son whispers to him, I am so happy.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy, exactly just like that. After that point,
Speaker 1: he's he's there. He is completely committed to spiritualism. He
Speaker 1: at one point goes and says that quote, God has
Speaker 1: placed me in a very special position for conveying spiritualism
Speaker 1: to that world which needed it so badly. Right, Spiritualism.
Speaker 1: He's like, that's my religion. Bra Now, this dude, he's
Speaker 1: like sixty years old at this time, and he had
Speaker 1: been started out life as a Catholic. You were a
Speaker 1: Catholic in Scotland. He was a Catholic born in scott
Speaker 1: Is there a big scene Catholics in Scotland? Oh, it's dicey.
Speaker 1: I lived in Glasgow and it's there's a lot of sectarianism,
Speaker 1: we'll put it that way. Yeah, So it looks like
Speaker 1: he was willing to flee the sextarianism and find something
Speaker 1: more unifying and global in mind. So spiritualism just reaches
Speaker 1: like into his heart. And then also he has the
Speaker 1: emotional connection with his son and that need to talk
Speaker 1: to the dead, just like everybody else at this time. Now,
Speaker 1: what could possibly test his faith in this connection to spiritualism? God,
Speaker 1: I told you up top, my man Harry who did
Speaker 1: That's right? That's right. So after this quick break, we'll
Speaker 1: be right back to bring my man Harry Houdini into
Speaker 1: the story. Okay, So it's nineteen nine Arthur Conan Doyle,
Speaker 1: sixty year old man, grieving father, lost eleven relatives all
Speaker 1: to war illness, and he's now thoroughly convinced that he
Speaker 1: can still speak to his dead son if he can
Speaker 1: find the right Canadian medium to speak through. Right, that's
Speaker 1: where we are now, this whole like sayan scene. I
Speaker 1: have to admit, the only thing I've ever picturing when
Speaker 1: I was like reading about this was Paully Walnuts and
Speaker 1: the Sopranos and that sance. Do you remember that? Yes? Yes?
Speaker 1: Do you remember? Like when are you sitting there telling
Speaker 1: all the soul that the medium is looking up above
Speaker 1: him and there's all the souls competing to like basically
Speaker 1: like finger him for their murder? Hey, what's he's looking around?
Speaker 1: And after he tells tone of hey, tone, I'm dragon souls.
Speaker 1: That's one of the things. I mean, that's sort of
Speaker 1: like recenters you when you're watching it of imagining if
Speaker 1: that's the case that they have all these people following
Speaker 1: them around, and like that was the thing with with Polly,
Speaker 1: like when you saw the magnitude, like the number of
Speaker 1: people and you're just like, oh man, yeah, he's put
Speaker 1: a lot of people into some serious dirt maps. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: time to shake things up in this story. But bring
Speaker 1: in my man Harry Hudini now. To properly picture him,
Speaker 1: I want you to imagine that Hudini looks like a
Speaker 1: more attractive Harvey Kitel Need, like that one real name,
Speaker 1: Eric Wise Hudini was this like really headstrong, your curial man.
Speaker 1: He's hot tempered, he's proud, he's you know, not without
Speaker 1: being stereotypical. He's a very what I have experienced from Hungarians,
Speaker 1: very hungarian. Right, he's not going to like balk on anything.
Speaker 1: He's got like a chip on his shoulder and he's like, look,
Speaker 1: you know how long we've been able to maintain Hungary.
Speaker 1: Do you know why we did it? Because we believe
Speaker 1: and we fight for what we believe in. I'm like, word,
Speaker 1: I get that. Houdini. Now, Hudini is this you know,
Speaker 1: Hungarian born magician and an escape artist. As you pointed
Speaker 1: out earlier, he was also the president of the Society
Speaker 1: of American Magicians, which I didn't even know the leadership exactly.
Speaker 1: He was the leader for his crew Sam the Society
Speaker 1: of American Mitchell you know, as the president of the society.
Speaker 1: Of course, he hates all these like mediums and psychics
Speaker 1: which make them look bad. Here's what the magicians and
Speaker 1: illusion is getting like wrapped up in all of this.
Speaker 1: They can't be like mistaken for mesmerists. Right now, Hudini,
Speaker 1: as you pointed out, group famous for it as an
Speaker 1: escape artist. But I want people to understand when I
Speaker 1: say a scape artist, he would like have a cop
Speaker 1: come up on stage and handcuff him, and then he
Speaker 1: would embarrass the cop by breaking out of the handcuffs
Speaker 1: while he was talking to him. That was like a
Speaker 1: warm up appetizer. Later on he'd be like, they have
Speaker 1: chain wrapped around him, the straight jacket. Then he put
Speaker 1: me put underwater and he'd have to get out of
Speaker 1: the locks, the chain, the straight jacket, and they have
Speaker 1: to do it like before he drowned. And luckily he
Speaker 1: could hold his breath for like three minutes, so it
Speaker 1: wasn't entirely impossible, but still it was pretty sketch. He
Speaker 1: would basically constantly the attraction was will he die? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was courting death. Yeah, good way of putting it. Now.
Speaker 1: One of his like other tricks was he once he
Speaker 1: was in Mexico in Moscow. Same thing, Yeah, same things,
Speaker 1: it's just different excellence. So he gets on the Siberian
Speaker 1: prison truck and the key is only for he gets
Speaker 1: locked up in the Siberian prison truck and if he
Speaker 1: can't get out, he has to go all the way
Speaker 1: to a Siberian prison where the only key the lack
Speaker 1: is of course he got out because because we didn't
Speaker 1: hear about him being stuck in in He's not so Houdini.
Speaker 1: He also wrote a book about himself called Hudini, A
Speaker 1: Magician among the Spirits, and in it, I'm going to
Speaker 1: quote a couple of times from it, he said, I
Speaker 1: associated myself with mediums at the time. I appreciated the
Speaker 1: fact that I surprised my clients, but while aware of
Speaker 1: the fact that I was deceiving them, I did not
Speaker 1: see or understand the seriousness of trifling with such sacred
Speaker 1: sentimentality and the baneful results which inevitably followed. To me,
Speaker 1: it was a lark. So basically, he used to con
Speaker 1: the global and then has like this crisis of conscience,
Speaker 1: starts to feel bad, and he decides to become a
Speaker 1: white hat hacker of magicians. It's like, I'm gonna like,
Speaker 1: you know, sheep dog the flock as opposed to being
Speaker 1: a wolf. Therefore, this kind of set some up to
Speaker 1: run counter to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who you know
Speaker 1: in Judini's world is basically you know, grifting the sheep.
Speaker 1: So Houdini has warned everybody, And there's another quote of
Speaker 1: his whenever any of these alleged spiritual mediums tell you
Speaker 1: that they have supernatural aid, you may safely set them
Speaker 1: down as frauds. My trick is merely a matter of
Speaker 1: sleight of hand. So what he's trying to basically prove
Speaker 1: is that after his years of quote having taken the
Speaker 1: spon DeLux which is his name for the rubes in
Speaker 1: with his deceptions, he really now understands that people are hurting.
Speaker 1: He gets that this is a dark time. He says, uh, quote,
Speaker 1: the times hungered for something, A war memorial had appeared
Speaker 1: in every town, and many people naturally sought some divine
Speaker 1: solace for their grief. So that's why he goes after
Speaker 1: the deceivers, and not just because of the magicians, but
Speaker 1: also for the sake of the people. Well, it sounds
Speaker 1: like he classifies all mediums as deceivers essentially. Yes, so
Speaker 1: he doesn't believe in it. He doesn't believe in them.
Speaker 1: He's never been He's never he says, he never has
Speaker 1: seen record of anything that they've done that would prove
Speaker 1: something other than an illusion. So if but he's open
Speaker 1: minded about it, and we'll get into that in a second.
Speaker 1: With Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. So Conan Doyle and Houdini
Speaker 1: strike up a friendship. Their pen pals cute, all right,
Speaker 1: you ever had a pen pal? No? I knew me neither,
Speaker 1: like actually follow through for that. I wrote letters to
Speaker 1: famous people when I was a kid, but like only
Speaker 1: really old famous people, for like Irving Berlin. Were you
Speaker 1: writing to? How old were you? Oh? Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: like dude. I wrote to Bob Ross like the back
Speaker 1: before anybody was ever telling me about brass And he
Speaker 1: wrote me back a really nice letter from MUNC and
Speaker 1: it's all handwritten and they signed it. I mean Irving
Speaker 1: Berlin did the same thing. He wrote back to me. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: like I ha to Berlin. I just told him about
Speaker 1: how I thought his music was still touching and moving.
Speaker 1: And here I was a thirteen year old boy who
Speaker 1: was going through some is just feeling myself and your
Speaker 1: music touched just me. It talks to me, man, I
Speaker 1: feel so No. I just told him, like, you know,
Speaker 1: your stuff still laps, bro, I don't know if it's amazing.
Speaker 1: That's incredible. Yeah. So but he robbed me back. It
Speaker 1: was really really nice handwriting too. He's like a hundred
Speaker 1: years old at the time, literally a hundred years old.
Speaker 1: That was part of the reason I'd heard you had
Speaker 1: a hundred birthdays. Like, I gotta write him before he like, hey,
Speaker 1: happy birthday. Hey man, you're you're one cool unit. You
Speaker 1: send him a birthday card? Uh no, but I did
Speaker 1: wish him kind of a birthday reading. Yeah. Sold. So
Speaker 1: Hudini and con Doyle they're doing the same thing. They're
Speaker 1: sending each other birthday cards or whatever, right, and Hudini
Speaker 1: is like, obviously still Hudini. He's not going to pretend,
Speaker 1: and he's not starstruck by Kunnan Doyle. So he's like
Speaker 1: basically busting his balls about the spiritualism stuff. And he's
Speaker 1: like sending him a book that he wrote, Debunking a Magician,
Speaker 1: and he's like, hey, man, why did you read this?
Speaker 1: And Conan Doyle is like, nah, whatever, okay, I'll read it. No,
Speaker 1: I don't believe it. He's like, hey, why why don't
Speaker 1: you come over here to England and I'll show you
Speaker 1: how things are. And so they're like, yeah, maybe they
Speaker 1: finally do get together. Well, Cudini's over in Europe. They
Speaker 1: hit it off in person. They're both these total hardheads,
Speaker 1: but they win over each other's rent. Then when Hudini
Speaker 1: comes to America, it happens to be that Sir Arthur
Speaker 1: Conan Doyle is over in Atlantic City, and so Houdini
Speaker 1: and Arthur Conan Doyle they make plans to meet up
Speaker 1: in Atlantic City and uh Springsteen situation. So oh the
Speaker 1: song I was thinking of, like Springsteen and some psychic
Speaker 1: in Atlantic City. I was like springste was Houdini and
Speaker 1: then was reincarnated as Bruce Springsteen. That makes so much
Speaker 1: I the Luigi Board told me just now. So the
Speaker 1: great men meet up in Atlantic City. The year is
Speaker 1: like ninety. Their wives are with them, but Conan Doyle
Speaker 1: and his wife like they have a cold spiritual medium thing.
Speaker 1: So they're like, hey, Hudini, why don't you leave your
Speaker 1: wife in the hotel room and then come on over
Speaker 1: and we'll do like a seance. I got a little
Speaker 1: surprise set up for you, and uh who needs being
Speaker 1: open minded? He's like, all right, bet let me see
Speaker 1: what this thing is about. So he goes over there
Speaker 1: and con was like, look, I have a plan. My
Speaker 1: life is a medium. We're going to do an automatic
Speaker 1: writing thing where we contact your mother who he's like,
Speaker 1: my dead mother. Really you want to mess around with that? Okay.
Speaker 1: So at this point, Sir Arthur, Conan Doyle's wife has
Speaker 1: become she's dabbling in it, and she gets really good,
Speaker 1: and she starts doing something called automatic writing, which means
Speaker 1: instead of like channeling in a voice like the medium
Speaker 1: that they saw who had actually spoken the voice of
Speaker 1: the sun, she just writes the messages, that writes them
Speaker 1: as fast as her hand can go. But I'm just curious,
Speaker 1: like she didn't show any of these tendencies she did
Speaker 1: prior to the sund She did, she did prior to
Speaker 1: the answer. She had been doing it. And so Conan
Speaker 1: Doyle is like, I think my wife, who has a
Speaker 1: who's been getting much stronger with her powers. Yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: she can probably hook you up with you know, if
Speaker 1: you want to talk to anyone who's you loved, who's
Speaker 1: also gone to the Grape Beyond. How about your mother?
Speaker 1: You love your mother. So Conan Doyle and his wife,
Speaker 1: Lady Doyle, they are sitting in this candle at hotel
Speaker 1: room and Hudini is there with him to picture these
Speaker 1: two guys. Conan Doyle is like, at this point sixty three,
Speaker 1: he's a big man, he's like six saying like six
Speaker 1: something six three. Right, he's got a military bearing because
Speaker 1: he was in the know the he's a biggin right,
Speaker 1: he's an absolute unit. And Pudini is five six, he's
Speaker 1: bow legged like a circus acrobat. He's squat and like
Speaker 1: like a spark plug of energy and intensity. Right, So
Speaker 1: very bit British military guy. And then this like kind
Speaker 1: of like yeah, little rascal. Right. So they're sitting there
Speaker 1: with Lady Doyle and they're at this table. They like candles,
Speaker 1: they join hands, they say a little prayer. Lady Doyle
Speaker 1: sits real condidence, and still Rudini is still or stir
Speaker 1: Arthur Conan Doyle is still everybody's waiting. Then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, Lady Doyle gets a jolt, right, and she
Speaker 1: starts writing her pen and she's just writing. And when
Speaker 1: I say writing, she fills up fifteen pages of writing
Speaker 1: just that. That's which is a lot. Right now. Conan Doyle,
Speaker 1: being the writer than he is, he records this. So
Speaker 1: here is Conan Doyle's take on the scene. Quote. It
Speaker 1: was a singular scene. My wife with her hand flying
Speaker 1: wildly beating the table while she scribbled at a furious
Speaker 1: rate I sitting opposite and tearing sheet after sheet from
Speaker 1: the block as it was filled up, and tossing each
Speaker 1: across to Houdini while he sat silent, looking grimmer and
Speaker 1: paler every moment. Oh right, that's the scene, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So he's sitting there reading these fifteen pages from his
Speaker 1: dead mother from Lady Doyle's flailing around exactly beating the table,
Speaker 1: and his mother is saying, like pretty much all the
Speaker 1: stuff you expect a dead person to say. She's likes,
Speaker 1: I miss you, I love you, I'm so happy in
Speaker 1: this life, and what are the what's your one quota?
Speaker 1: And it is so different over here, so much larger
Speaker 1: and bigger and more beautiful. It sounds like a pretty
Speaker 1: generic mess, right. It sounds like a kid describing heaven.
Speaker 1: It's so big and they got water slides, and like
Speaker 1: everything's cool, thrilling, it's thrilling, it's the best. It's what's
Speaker 1: it like? A right? It's beautiful. And the funny part, though,
Speaker 1: is it's at the very end the funny your part.
Speaker 1: So Judini's mother ends her transmission from the Great Beyond
Speaker 1: by saying, God bless you, sir Arthur for what you
Speaker 1: are doing my last my last parting words to my
Speaker 1: my son. Your buddy's amazing, Like, he's a gee. You
Speaker 1: should listen to him. He's so handsome. So, you know,
Speaker 1: Conan Doyle says he quote found it all profoundly moving.
Speaker 1: He called it a striking affirmation of the soul's immortality,
Speaker 1: demounds and sufferable. Right, Rudini not so effusive. He was like, yeah, whatever.
Speaker 1: So Conan Doyle goes forward to the press. He's like,
Speaker 1: I have convinced to deny the Great Judini that spiritualism
Speaker 1: is real. Go and ask him and he will tell
Speaker 1: you all. So some news report it's like, hey, Hudini,
Speaker 1: we heard from Conan doll that you believe spiritalism is real.
Speaker 1: What's up, bro? And he's like, he told you what
Speaker 1: you like. Literally, he quotes says like, ha ha ha
Speaker 1: in the paper. In the paper, I looked up the
Speaker 1: old newspaper that it's ha ha ha ha. And then
Speaker 1: after that he's like he starts basically questioning the newspaper report.
Speaker 1: He's like, you know, it's something I found kind of funny. Mare.
Speaker 1: It's that my mother spoke to me from the great beyond.
Speaker 1: But she spoke in English. There's a language she never
Speaker 1: spoke here on planet Earth. I just find that kind
Speaker 1: of curious. Another thing I found curious she began her
Speaker 1: message with a sign of a cross, which is weird
Speaker 1: because she was Jewish and the wife of a rabbi.
Speaker 1: So you know, I'm just finding a little bit of suspicious.
Speaker 1: She converted in the afterlife. But yeah, exactly right. I mean,
Speaker 1: like you could understand if they're looking at it is
Speaker 1: coming out in English. Maybe it's like a universal language,
Speaker 1: that that's what is. Yeah, of course my wife writes
Speaker 1: in English. All she speaks. Wife's name is Lady Gaga ps.
Speaker 1: So he did. He feels a little bit bad about
Speaker 1: kind of like this. And his friend in the press,
Speaker 1: what that brust say. So he's like, all right, when
Speaker 1: we write a letter to Conan Doyle, and I quote,
Speaker 1: I know you are honorable and sincere and think I
Speaker 1: owe you an explanation regarding the letter I received through
Speaker 1: the hands of Lady Doyle. I was heartily in accord
Speaker 1: and sympathy at that seance. But the letter was written
Speaker 1: entirely in English, and my sainted mother could not read, write,
Speaker 1: or speak the English language. I did not care to
Speaker 1: discuss it at the time, because my emotions and trying
Speaker 1: to sense the presence of my mother, if there was
Speaker 1: such a thing possible, kept me quiet until time passed
Speaker 1: and I could give it the proper deduction. I trust
Speaker 1: my clearing up the seance from my point of view
Speaker 1: is satisfactory, and that you do not harbor any ill feeling,
Speaker 1: because I hold both Lady Doyle and yourself and the
Speaker 1: highest esteem. I know you treat this as a religion,
Speaker 1: but personally I cannot do so. For up to the
Speaker 1: present time and with all my experiences, I have never
Speaker 1: seen or heard anything that could really convert me. Now.
Speaker 1: The two start to part ways at this point, but
Speaker 1: we're not done. A year later, Conan Doyle decides that
Speaker 1: spiritualism quote is God's most important message to the world.
Speaker 1: You've doubling down hardcore right. The next dear who deny
Speaker 1: publishes that book that I told you about, Whodini, a
Speaker 1: magician among the Spirits. He sends a book to Sir
Speaker 1: Arthur Conan Doyle and well, I want to put it
Speaker 1: this way, It's like a literary distract. I'll tell you
Speaker 1: all about it right after this break, and we'll get
Speaker 1: into Spiritualism's revenge against Judini. Like it. Okay, it's four
Speaker 1: who Denie puts out his book Hudini a magician among
Speaker 1: the spirits. Now I told you he dissed his boyd
Speaker 1: Conan Doyle. You want to know what he actually said? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote. Spiritualism has claimed among its followers numbers
Speaker 1: of brilliant minds. Whether these great minds have been misdirected,
Speaker 1: whether they have followed the subject because they were convinced
Speaker 1: fully of its true or whether they have been successfully
Speaker 1: hoodwinked by some fraudulent medium, are matters of conjecture and opinion.
Speaker 1: One such is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is impossible
Speaker 1: not to respect the belief of this great author, who
Speaker 1: is wholeheartedly and unflinchingly thrown his life and soul into
Speaker 1: the conversion of unbelievers. Sir Arthur believes in his great mind.
Speaker 1: There is no doubt. But that's not the distract part.
Speaker 1: That's the respect part. Here's the distract. There is no
Speaker 1: doubt that Sir Arthur is sincere in his belief, and
Speaker 1: it is this sincerity which has been one of the
Speaker 1: fundamentals of our friendship I have respected everything he has said,
Speaker 1: and I've always been unbiased because at no time if
Speaker 1: I refused to follow the subject with an open mind,
Speaker 1: I cannot say the same for him. Ah yeah right,
Speaker 1: I don't. I love that disc just because it's like
Speaker 1: one of those nineteenth century distancs. But I cannot say
Speaker 1: the same for my right honorable friend. It's a classy
Speaker 1: dis No. You know, did you ever get into distracts.
Speaker 1: It doesn't seem like that would be your thing. I
Speaker 1: can't imagine you're like throwing on the latest hip hop distract. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not my thing. No, I mean I kind of
Speaker 1: just goes along really well with like the this battle
Speaker 1: between them in terms of their beliefs. You know, let
Speaker 1: everyone just do what they want to do, believe what
Speaker 1: they want to believe. I don't believe in like the converting,
Speaker 1: and I don't think it's I don't know, I don't
Speaker 1: distracts and like whatever. Let people's behave stupid behavior, show
Speaker 1: them who, show out who they are. Let it went out,
Speaker 1: because all you're doing is just escalating it. And I
Speaker 1: don't know, you guys, squash it is what I'm trying
Speaker 1: to squash that beef swatch the beef. See the beef?
Speaker 1: Where's the beef? Doyle is not impressed with Udini's book.
Speaker 1: He writes, literally writes on the flap of it a
Speaker 1: malicious book full of every sort of misrepresentation? Is that
Speaker 1: what he went into the library and wrote, like when
Speaker 1: someone would check it out and like, oh, oh, never mind, no,
Speaker 1: like on this or Arthur doyle dot com page, you
Speaker 1: can find this book and there is the flap open,
Speaker 1: so you can see his writing where like they're still
Speaker 1: doing the distract back and forth. But that's a good
Speaker 1: disc tract, like he just he puts it in there,
Speaker 1: and then oh, so now you're a fan of I
Speaker 1: like the private distracts. That's fair. That's fair. So around
Speaker 1: this time, so we've gone from nineteen twenties, were at
Speaker 1: ninety four, Conan Doyle is like, you know what, as
Speaker 1: I told you, this is the most important spiritual realization
Speaker 1: for all the mankind forever and ever. So he goes
Speaker 1: to where Parliament it says, you know, a parliament, we
Speaker 1: need to make Spiraitualism an official religion, possibly the official
Speaker 1: religion of the British Empire. People are like, all right,
Speaker 1: let's let's let's think about that, let's talk about that,
Speaker 1: and they actually do debate it. Meanwhile, not the actually
Speaker 1: becoming an official religion of the monarchy, but they're just
Speaker 1: recognized the religion. Right. Meanwhile, over you know, across the pond,
Speaker 1: as they say in nineteen twenty six, Judini's working the
Speaker 1: opposite direction. He goes to Congress and at this point
Speaker 1: he's been basically he's got this team of special investigators.
Speaker 1: He's going around like New York, Washington, Boston, wherever you can,
Speaker 1: and is debunking every psychic and medium he can. He's
Speaker 1: got these people going into the seance, has taken notes
Speaker 1: and then so he's got this campaign and the culmination
Speaker 1: of this campaign. As he goes before Congress and says,
Speaker 1: we need a law banning fortune tellers in America and
Speaker 1: he starts testifying before he's like a professional buzz kill exactly.
Speaker 1: Now the congressional hearings they take it legit seriously. But
Speaker 1: also you have to imagine the scene. Every fortune teller
Speaker 1: and psychic and medium on the Eastern Seaboard goes there
Speaker 1: to fight for their and also the other people organized crime,
Speaker 1: because who is backing these people organized crime? Really? So
Speaker 1: they're also there. So everybody is against this. He's going
Speaker 1: against a lot of desperate and dangerous types. So Judini, meanwhile,
Speaker 1: he's loving it. He's a showman. He's got the biggest
Speaker 1: stage in the world. All the newspapers are writing about it,
Speaker 1: so he uses Congress as his stage. He's doing magic
Speaker 1: tricks up there. Yeah, he literally is. He does, like
Speaker 1: the whole thing. He fakes a message from Ben Franklin,
Speaker 1: just to show them how easy it is to like
Speaker 1: do a message from the great beyond. He fakes one.
Speaker 1: He also then at one point he pulls out of
Speaker 1: his sucker, which is all the people that have been
Speaker 1: have lost family fortunes to mediums and oh yeah, no totally.
Speaker 1: And these are people that you know, his investigators that
Speaker 1: dealt with. And it wasn't just like I heard. It
Speaker 1: was like, no, these are wanting to tell you exactly
Speaker 1: how much they lost. So, like Judini says at one point,
Speaker 1: bringing up his boy, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, there are
Speaker 1: millions of dollars stolen by clairvoyance and mediums every year,
Speaker 1: and I can prove it. So Arthur Conan Doyle is
Speaker 1: the biggest dupe. Oh yeah, right, once for friends. Now
Speaker 1: he's like dressing. He tried to convince him, and I
Speaker 1: think he sees us Arthur providing an air of legitimacy.
Speaker 1: You can't have Folms his author saying this is reasonable
Speaker 1: and rational. And Einstein, as I pointed out, has made
Speaker 1: it so they've thrown open the doors. At this point,
Speaker 1: everybody believes everything is now on the table about reality.
Speaker 1: So you can't have one of the strongest minds being saying, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: we need to go towards spiritualism, as Einstein saying, now
Speaker 1: things real, so now. And during this hearing, Judini has
Speaker 1: one of his special investigators also testify. Her name is
Speaker 1: Rose Backenberg, and Deer Rose gets up and she testifies,
Speaker 1: and she says, I know for a fact the table
Speaker 1: talking seances are held at the White House in the
Speaker 1: presence of President Coolidge and his family, because let me
Speaker 1: grab my pearls. So she also says meanwhile that Senator
Speaker 1: Supreme Court justices also visit these clairvoyants, and one name
Speaker 1: in particular comes up, Madame Marcia. Madame Marcia is a
Speaker 1: clairvoyant to the rich and famous. She's like the mad
Speaker 1: member of Gene whatever Gene. Madame Gane think Jean Gray,
Speaker 1: I think she was who right, Reagan and Nancy, She's
Speaker 1: that era whatever, Yeah, she was like so Macknburgh's testimony.
Speaker 1: While she's on the stand, Marcius and some others, these
Speaker 1: other fortune tellers and mediums are like basically heckling her.
Speaker 1: People are jumping up and shouting whys right and now
Speaker 1: Lady Marcia, though, is pretty much kind of holding back.
Speaker 1: She's waiting for Hudini to get back on the stand.
Speaker 1: And while Judini's on the stand, this is like in
Speaker 1: the newspapers. I was reading old newspapers about this. The
Speaker 1: accounts were insane. So he's up on the stand but
Speaker 1: doing his routine. It's just amusing himself, amusing Congress, mocking everybody.
Speaker 1: And he pulls out an envelope with ten large in it.
Speaker 1: He's like this, ten tho dollars will go to any
Speaker 1: medium who can prove any any sensation of perception or
Speaker 1: any of that stuff you all claim to be able
Speaker 1: to do. And if I can't like dispute it or
Speaker 1: prove it to be a sham, I will give you
Speaker 1: this ten thousand dollars. Lady Marcia, Madam Marcia, this is
Speaker 1: her opportunity. She jumps up. She's like, now about he's mine,
Speaker 1: and he's like, excuse me why. She's like, I knew
Speaker 1: when President Harding would die and I said that six
Speaker 1: years before, and I also predicted his election and he's
Speaker 1: like that doesn't count. Like, no, I said, you have
Speaker 1: to be should have just done the like Drew Berry
Speaker 1: Moore firestarter and like to use your mind to set someone.
Speaker 1: But now hand it over. Well, he's like he toldly
Speaker 1: dismisses her. She's like, okay, okay, that's cool. How about
Speaker 1: this when November comes around, you won't be here because
Speaker 1: he literally will not be in that room come November. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. Well, spend has despite of all Judini's best efforts,
Speaker 1: this bill to band fortune tellers, it almost passes, It
Speaker 1: misses by a few votes. He literally like almost changes
Speaker 1: American law. But anyway, November comes around and Hudini drops dead.
Speaker 1: Literally doesn't make it to November. He drops dead on Halloween,
Speaker 1: the last day of October. Spooky. He called it right,
Speaker 1: good for her, so you know, he can say that
Speaker 1: they are fakers or liars or whatever, but she called
Speaker 1: your dad. So anyways, dude dies of a burst appendix,
Speaker 1: which was the result of him being punched by a fan.
Speaker 1: And a lot of people have heard this, but they
Speaker 1: I've often when I heard the story was that a
Speaker 1: fan walked up to him and said, hey, I can
Speaker 1: heard you can like tighten your abs and be able
Speaker 1: to take any punch. That's not the story. The actual
Speaker 1: story is what I'm about to tell you. He was
Speaker 1: in Montreal and he was like giving apach to performances.
Speaker 1: He invites you all these students from McGill University backstage
Speaker 1: to talk to him. He wants to basically appeal to
Speaker 1: the young minds about like, look, be rational, don't not
Speaker 1: believe all this hoodoo voodoo stuff. And they're like, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: well tell us more Houdini. And so while he's sitting there,
Speaker 1: he had hurt his ankle earlier, so he's laying down
Speaker 1: on a couch. One of the students, this dude named
Speaker 1: Jay Gordon Whitehead Ja Guarden Whiteheads, like, bro, I heard
Speaker 1: you can be punched in the stomach and it's like
Speaker 1: not even a problem for you. He's like, yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1: He starts punching him before he can even flex up.
Speaker 1: And this one of the witnesses said that quote Whitehead
Speaker 1: punched Judini with four or five terribly forcible, deliberate, well
Speaker 1: directed blows to his gut. So Hudini, not ready for them,
Speaker 1: just sits there writhing in pain. The dude is basically
Speaker 1: punching his spine through his stomach. So it's like drunken
Speaker 1: college kid is just wailing on him, tuning him up. Okay,
Speaker 1: but he gets crazier because in his book The Man
Speaker 1: Who Killed Hudini, author Don Bell put forward this radical
Speaker 1: theory that Whitehead was actually an assassin sent by the spiritualists.
Speaker 1: Madame Marcia, Yes, strikes again. Oh, I'm telling do you
Speaker 1: can't mess with the you can't mess with organized crime
Speaker 1: and psychic at the same time. Exactly. That's just a
Speaker 1: recipe for disaster. Anyway. So at the time, Bell points
Speaker 1: out that all these people said that this dude Whitehead
Speaker 1: have been basically on the hunt for Hudini, going all
Speaker 1: around Montreal, going you've seen Houdini? Who who is Hudini? Here?
Speaker 1: I heard Whodini was here, y'all seen him? And so
Speaker 1: like sometimes when you talk about Whodini, I am imagining
Speaker 1: like the eighties. Go ahead, it's just a frazzled manager.
Speaker 1: Let's see. Okay, So at this point Judini's he dies
Speaker 1: from the blows and his burst appendix. A couple of
Speaker 1: years later, actually four years later, Conan Doyle joins his friend.
Speaker 1: On the other side, he also dies. Now, when Conan
Speaker 1: Doyle dies, the New York Time writes an obituary and
Speaker 1: they quote him and I quote, I pledge my honor
Speaker 1: that spiritualism is true, and I know that spiritualism is
Speaker 1: infinitely more important than literature, art, politics, or in fact
Speaker 1: anything in the world. Right, dude went down. He doubled
Speaker 1: down all the way and his road that committed to
Speaker 1: the bit, you know, wrote it to the end. Anyway,
Speaker 1: during his memorial service, this a medium, because there were
Speaker 1: plenty of mediums at his funeral. They reported seeing for
Speaker 1: Arthur Conan Doyle at his own funeral, like, oh, look
Speaker 1: there he is right there. And then the clairvoyant goes
Speaker 1: and he told me a message. I'll write it down.
Speaker 1: I wrote down a little piece of pay but here
Speaker 1: you go, missus. Lady Doyle gives me this. Lady Doyle
Speaker 1: was like, hmmm, this is definitely my husband. But in
Speaker 1: all honestly her Conan Doyle's son, the one who didn't die, Adrian.
Speaker 1: He said, the spirit message answers all the tests which
Speaker 1: my father and mother had agreed upon before his passing.
Speaker 1: I can only agree with mother that the messages of
Speaker 1: so intimate a character it cannot be made public, even
Speaker 1: to our closest friends. So he got nasty right, and
Speaker 1: then his mother, Lady Jane Conan Doyle, She said, I'm
Speaker 1: perfectly convinced that the messages from my husband. I am
Speaker 1: assured of this fact that he has been here with us,
Speaker 1: as I am sure that I am speaking to you.
Speaker 1: It is a happy message, one that is cheering and encouraging.
Speaker 1: It is rushes and sacred. Oh it's nice. I mean,
Speaker 1: whether it's true or not. She it gives her great comfort. So,
Speaker 1: giving Conan Doyle his last final words, I give you
Speaker 1: one quote more for him, he said, We who believe
Speaker 1: in the psychic revelation, and who appreciate that a perception
Speaker 1: of these things is of the utmost importance, certainly have
Speaker 1: hurled ourselves against the obstinacy of our time. Possibly we
Speaker 1: have allowed some of our lives to be gnawed away.
Speaker 1: And what for the moment seemed a vain and thankless quest.
Speaker 1: Only the future can show whether the sacrifice was worth it,
Speaker 1: So the question is was a sacrifice worth it? Who's
Speaker 1: to say Houdini? He famously said, I'm just an ordinary
Speaker 1: mortal trying to get along, and really aren't we all
Speaker 1: kind of I mean, that's what you always tell me,
Speaker 1: like be more patient with these people. Everyone's just trying
Speaker 1: to everyone's doing their own things. So the question is,
Speaker 1: is in a matter of belief, do you think that
Speaker 1: what Houdini was doing was good or Sir Arthur Conan
Speaker 1: Doyle was doing is good? Is good? Not even a
Speaker 1: question in this I think that like, in terms of
Speaker 1: it seems like a lot of I'd say, the bulk
Speaker 1: of Houdini's motivations seem to be protecting people from criminals.
Speaker 1: And that's where our crime is, of these like ridiculous
Speaker 1: criminals who are preying upon people and in a really
Speaker 1: vulnerable time. And so I can get with that, like
Speaker 1: weed out the criminals. But I think that there was
Speaker 1: also I gather from what you've been telling me that
Speaker 1: Houdini also kind of wants to be right and tell
Speaker 1: people what to do. And so I think if you
Speaker 1: can protect people from being scammed by these con artists,
Speaker 1: that's one thing, But if you're devaluing their experience. Um,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you a little quick story about the time
Speaker 1: I was a psychic. Yeah, in the early days of
Speaker 1: a O l um. You know how they had all
Speaker 1: those chat rooms, and my brother here and I and
Speaker 1: then we got my mom involved in it too. We
Speaker 1: used to like, we used to start this chat room
Speaker 1: called Toady three thousand and I don't know how we
Speaker 1: came up with the name, but we said we were
Speaker 1: a psychic cat and yeah, and people would come in yeah,
Speaker 1: and we'd say, you have to tell us three things.
Speaker 1: Give us a give us your star sign, your give
Speaker 1: us a random number, and a question you want answered.
Speaker 1: And so we would take the San Francisco Chronicle horoscope
Speaker 1: and have it ready and they would tell us, like,
Speaker 1: this is my sign seven, and then they ask a question.
Speaker 1: You can tell so much by what people ask. So
Speaker 1: it's like am I going to get that job? Should
Speaker 1: I break up with this guy? And so we would
Speaker 1: type out whatever the horoscope of the paper was for
Speaker 1: their sign. But then we would answer the question of
Speaker 1: like yeah, you know what like because first of all,
Speaker 1: if you have to ask is my boyfriend cheating on me?
Speaker 1: He's cheating on you, all right, done, So we would
Speaker 1: kind of feed it and like you're worth more than that.
Speaker 1: Like so we were basically these therapists and we did
Speaker 1: it just messing with people. And then it cold grew
Speaker 1: and so they'd be like waiting like lines, people waiting
Speaker 1: for their reading from toty three thousands like a cat,
Speaker 1: and it got so out of control. We're getting messages
Speaker 1: all the time on that account of like when are
Speaker 1: you going to be in the chat room? I really
Speaker 1: need a reading? And we weren't charging any money, but
Speaker 1: a lot of times we're just talking people through really
Speaker 1: crap situations. I mean, in other times we'd mess with
Speaker 1: people like we're not telling them to jump off of
Speaker 1: buildings or whatever, we're telling them to do dumb stuff. Um. So, anyway,
Speaker 1: I think that like people are looking for a connection.
Speaker 1: That's like our whole purpose here, right, just to connect
Speaker 1: with other people and other living things. And when you're hurting,
Speaker 1: you look for connections. If you find it in something
Speaker 1: that maybe not everyone believes in, more power to you,
Speaker 1: you know, as long as you're not getting scammed. So
Speaker 1: the solace that is offered by a medium. There's nothing
Speaker 1: necessarily wrong with that if the person is willing to
Speaker 1: pay an amount that doesn't ruin their finances. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't even know. I guess you have to like
Speaker 1: compensate someone for their time, right, So it's like a therapist.
Speaker 1: But it's most of these, like the mediums that are
Speaker 1: con artists. They're taking ridiculous amounts of money. It's not
Speaker 1: like the five dollars to remove the witch's curse for
Speaker 1: the l amen exactly. And then they're always like, well,
Speaker 1: if you throw in another thousand, then I can do this,
Speaker 1: and that's you know, that's garbage. But I think, like, so,
Speaker 1: I see what Houdini's doing, but I think that he
Speaker 1: also kind of dug message, like tearing other people down
Speaker 1: to be the smartest one. Now, the harder question is
Speaker 1: in our battle of Houdini versus Conan Doyle, can you
Speaker 1: pick a side? No? Yeah, I can't either, And I
Speaker 1: think that's what makes it an interesting story. By the way,
Speaker 1: in New York State, fortune telling is still considered a
Speaker 1: class being misdemeanor. They got a law on their books
Speaker 1: and the state books and it's still there, and they
Speaker 1: just don't enforce it. But you know, that's the sole
Speaker 1: whole story of America. Like Columbia they got their magical realism.
Speaker 1: We have magical thinking that is so true. That so true.
Speaker 1: So what do you think is a ridiculous takeaway here
Speaker 1: other than you know, whose side do you take? I
Speaker 1: think the ridiculous takeaway is that it's not a crime
Speaker 1: to believe what you believe, as long as you're not
Speaker 1: pushing it on someone else. It is a crime to
Speaker 1: take advantage of other people, especially in like a delicate state,
Speaker 1: you know, if you just come through these atrocities and
Speaker 1: these pandemics and whatnot. Um, So that's my takeaway, like,
Speaker 1: let you know, if it makes someone happy, let him
Speaker 1: believe it. Don't force your beliefs on other people, but
Speaker 1: live and let live like that. I'm would be h.
Speaker 1: Don't take on the mob and Madame Marcia at the
Speaker 1: same time, that's a probably much more practical take Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't don't go up against the spiritualists of the Mob.
Speaker 1: At the same time, thanks for joining us. I'm Elizabeth Dutton,
Speaker 1: I am Saren Burnett used to quote that and I
Speaker 1: quote you can find his online. A ridiculous crime on
Speaker 1: both Twitter and Instagram. You got a tip for us
Speaker 1: about a ridiculous crime that you'd like to hear about
Speaker 1: one maybe that you perpetrated. Hit us up with it.
Speaker 1: Maybe you want to confess her ridiculous crime that somebody
Speaker 1: else around you did. Let us know. Email us a
Speaker 1: ridiculous crime at gmail dot com. Thanks for listening, and
Speaker 1: we'll catch you all next time. Goodbye. Ridiculous Crime is
Speaker 1: hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited
Speaker 1: by the Grand Mesmerist Dave Coustin researches by the all
Speaker 1: seeing eye of Lady Marissa Brown. The theme song is
Speaker 1: by Voodoo Daddy Thomas Lee and the Witch Dr Travis Dutton.
Speaker 1: Executive producers are Ben Crystal Ball Bowlan and No Look
Speaker 1: into My Eyes Brown. Ridiculous Crime is a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. Four more podcasts to my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
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