Speaker 1: Ectoplasm. That's ghost slime. We got there, We did it, ectoplasm.
Speaker 1: Most people actually associate ectoplasm with the movie Ghostbusters, big
Speaker 1: green ghost guy, slimer, sliming around, actoplasmic residue, sampleuisms, exter
Speaker 1: real thing somebody blows and knows and you want to
Speaker 1: keep it to analyzem. I always thought that Dan Ackroyd
Speaker 1: and Harold Ramos, who wrote Ghostbusters ever read a book,
Speaker 1: used the word ectoplasm just because it's sort of sounded ghostie.
Speaker 1: But it turns out Dan Ackroyd was raised a spiritualist.
Speaker 1: He's a third generation spiritualist. Here's an interview he did
Speaker 1: with his father, Peter Ackroyd discussing just that very much.
Speaker 1: So my my experience going up to the old farmhouse,
Speaker 1: which was used partially as a cottage by various members
Speaker 1: of the family through through my youth and college years
Speaker 1: and second city years. Uh, just as you'd see life
Speaker 1: magazines or National Geographic lying around many cottages, we had
Speaker 1: the American Society for Psychical Research journals lying right, and
Speaker 1: all kinds of books that were handed down from uh,
Speaker 1: from my from Sam and Morris, who was dad's father,
Speaker 1: Bell telephone engineer, So the whole family was sort of
Speaker 1: steeped in this, uh this kind of just accepted fact that, uh,
Speaker 1: spirits do exist and can can you communicate if you
Speaker 1: find a talented medium him or her who is willing
Speaker 1: to give themselves up to the controls and the controls
Speaker 1: are the entities from the other side that come through.
Speaker 1: And so that combined with an article in the a
Speaker 1: spr Journal about quantum physics and parapsychology and my love
Speaker 1: of old ghost movies from the thirties and forties, Bob Hope,
Speaker 1: Abbot Costello, the Bowery Boys, um that sort of funeral
Speaker 1: married together to to produce the first draft of Ghostbust.
Speaker 1: This is the best. Dan Ackroyd is a based multigenerational spiritualist, which,
Speaker 1: as we've discussed, is pretty rare, but his grandfather was
Speaker 1: a member at Cassadega's sister camp in lily Dale, New York,
Speaker 1: and a number of the publications and organizations he's discussing
Speaker 1: in that clip are relevant to what we're talking about today.
Speaker 1: The second Spiritualist revival of the nineteen twenties and the
Speaker 1: most famous schism in all of spiritualism, the one between
Speaker 1: Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. But before we
Speaker 1: can get there, let's get you up to speed on
Speaker 1: ectoplasm Baby. We've talked a lot on Ghost Church about
Speaker 1: the Fox Sisters, the founders of American Spiritualism, who by
Speaker 1: the mid eighteen nineties had passed into spirit in semi
Speaker 1: obscurity and poverty. Some of the reasons that their mediumship
Speaker 1: had been discredit at it over the years had to
Speaker 1: do with an increased demand for physical manifestations of spirit,
Speaker 1: basically adding in magic tricks to existing mediumship to make
Speaker 1: it a little flashier, a little show ear and meet
Speaker 1: this consumer demand for a real spectacle. When contacting their dead,
Speaker 1: Americans liked things big and slimy and loud. It's kind
Speaker 1: of our thing. But it led to many, many widely
Speaker 1: debunked practices that were a long way from these simple
Speaker 1: table wrappings that defined the Fox Sisters seance. Maggie Fox
Speaker 1: said this when she first disavowed her religion publicly back
Speaker 1: in in a column that we've read on the show before,
Speaker 1: called the Curse of Spiritualism, she writes, fanatics ignore the wrappings,
Speaker 1: which is the only part of the phenomena that is
Speaker 1: worthy of notice and rush madly after the glaring humbugs
Speaker 1: that flood New York. So what phenomena is she talking
Speaker 1: about here? Well, it was the kind of stuff that
Speaker 1: organizations like the Society for Psychical Research, which was founded
Speaker 1: as a nonprofit in the UK in two were dedicated
Speaker 1: to busting. They'd investigate this sort of phenomena to determine
Speaker 1: whether they were authentic or not. Things like spirit photography,
Speaker 1: the practice where you're dead would appear in a translucent
Speaker 1: picture with you, as well as physical manifestations basically the
Speaker 1: seance on steroids, practices that took mental and trance, mediumship
Speaker 1: and in the pitch dark of the seance room. Added
Speaker 1: things like spirit hands, which was a slimy hand that
Speaker 1: reached across to you in the dark from across the vale.
Speaker 1: Things like slate writing, where a spirit would write messages,
Speaker 1: trumpet mediumship, which is still in occasional practice in Cassadeca today,
Speaker 1: and ectoplasm, which if a medium could goop it out,
Speaker 1: basically served as goes Lube. I guess, oh you didn't
Speaker 1: like to hear that? You didn't like to hear Jamie say,
Speaker 1: ghost lube will imagine how I feel huh. Ectoplasm became
Speaker 1: more common in the mid eighteen nineties post boxes and
Speaker 1: was said to manifest in mediums while in a trance state,
Speaker 1: almost as proof that they had contacted the other side.
Speaker 1: It came out a little different from every medium. One
Speaker 1: psychical researcher named gusav Gelli described it like this, very
Speaker 1: variable in appearance, being sometimes vaporous, sometimes a plastic pace,
Speaker 1: sometimes a bundle of fine threads, or a membrane with
Speaker 1: swellings or fringes, or a fine fabric like tissue. But
Speaker 1: others defined ectoplasm somewhat differently. Let's get our friend, iconic
Speaker 1: spiritualist and creator of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
Speaker 1: on how he describes ectoplasm viscous last a substance which
Speaker 1: appeared to differ from every known form of matter in
Speaker 1: that it could solidify and be used for material purposes. Wow, disgusting.
Speaker 1: Here's a secret. Unlike many elements of spiritualism, particularly transcend
Speaker 1: mental mediumship, which I am still inclined to believe to
Speaker 1: some extent, there is no modern spiritualist I've spoken to
Speaker 1: or seen writing that stands by things like ectoplasm or
Speaker 1: the spirit hands, nor the facial manifestations and full bodies
Speaker 1: that are sometimes said to accompany them. These super extreme
Speaker 1: practices have been pretty thoroughly debunked over the years, and
Speaker 1: we could spend hours talking about specific examples, many of
Speaker 1: which involve the majority male investigators, ghostbusters, if you will,
Speaker 1: going after female mediums relentlessly, not only until they're busted,
Speaker 1: but sometimes until they're ruined. This is of interest to me.
Speaker 1: Ectoplasm was often revealed to be cheesecloth covered in egg
Speaker 1: white or potato starch, gauze, handkerchiefs, rubber gloves. Honestly, the
Speaker 1: photos of what was said to be ectoplasm are pretty funny.
Speaker 1: It's mostly mystical looking women with a mouth or a
Speaker 1: vagina full of soggy fabric. But it's important to consider
Speaker 1: why this caught on so much and the very gender
Speaker 1: dynamics that are at play. The physical medium will be
Speaker 1: talking about a lot today. Mina Crandon was known specifically
Speaker 1: for manifesting ectoplasm and spirit hands from her vagina. So
Speaker 1: while the concept is maybe a little silly, what I've
Speaker 1: been finding is yet another crack in this reputation that
Speaker 1: spiritualism has built for itself as being a religion that
Speaker 1: has historically supported and respected women, and there's no better
Speaker 1: story to demonstrate that and the politics of the last
Speaker 1: major spiritualist revival in the United States. Then the feud
Speaker 1: between Harry Houdini and Arthur Conan Doyle over the mediumship
Speaker 1: of Mina Crandon, a story that leads to history's most
Speaker 1: iconic magician. Oh nope, wait, oh, I am so sorry
Speaker 1: about that. The Chris Angel that lives under my bed
Speaker 1: took issue. Sorry, second most iconic magician, Harry Houdini dedicated
Speaker 1: years of his life to ruin her life. It's a
Speaker 1: witch hunt baby. Today on Kay welcome back and happy
Speaker 1: Ectoplasm episode to all who observe. I still have a
Speaker 1: lot to tell you about my last day in Cassadega,
Speaker 1: but this week we've got a lot of spectral goop
Speaker 1: to wade through. Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini wouldn't
Speaker 1: actually meet until but Doyle had become a spiritualist publicly
Speaker 1: back in the eighteen eighties, at the time joining the
Speaker 1: Society for Psychical Research in eight the same year he
Speaker 1: killed off his most famous creation, Sherlock Holmes in the
Speaker 1: adventure of the Final Problem. Holmes would be brought back
Speaker 1: by the early nineteen hundreds, but at this time Doyle
Speaker 1: was trying to make a clean break from the King
Speaker 1: of Deduction for a reason unbeknownst to many at this time,
Speaker 1: Doyle's father, who was said to have had mediumistic talents
Speaker 1: as well as being a deeply depressive painter who struggled
Speaker 1: with alcoholism, had been committed to an asylum in the
Speaker 1: mid eighteen eighties after displaying erratic behavior. Going back to
Speaker 1: when Arthur Conan Doyle was a kid, this seems to
Speaker 1: have inspired a streak of extreme pragmatism in his most
Speaker 1: famous son. Arthur Conan Doyle trained to be a doctor,
Speaker 1: and when he did begin writing fiction, it was about
Speaker 1: a character who famously used logic and not art to
Speaker 1: ground the story. Do you want to take us to it?
Speaker 1: What do we know about this court kid? Has not
Speaker 1: left us with much? Just the shirt, the trials, they're
Speaker 1: pretty formal. Maybe he was going out for the night
Speaker 1: and the trousers a heavy duty polliat said nasty, same
Speaker 1: as the shirt cheap. They're both too big for him.
Speaker 1: So some kind of standard issue uniform dressed for work.
Speaker 1: Then what kind of work God that shows annoying? So
Speaker 1: in three Arthur Conan, Doyle's father dies, and while they
Speaker 1: hadn't been completely estranged, Doyle began to think back on
Speaker 1: the judgments he had made on his father's beliefs. His
Speaker 1: father used to send the family paintings with messages attached
Speaker 1: like this, keep steadily in view that this book is
Speaker 1: ascribed wholly to the produce of a madman. Whereabouts would
Speaker 1: you say was the deficiency of intellect or depraved taste?
Speaker 1: And Doyle started to con it are that his father's
Speaker 1: leaned towards the supernatural may have had something to it
Speaker 1: all along. So he removed himself from the logic and
Speaker 1: pragmatism that had won him the respect of the world
Speaker 1: through homes and instead threw himself into spiritualism hard, beginning
Speaker 1: in the eighteen nineties all the way up to his
Speaker 1: death in ninety. His wife Jean was said to be
Speaker 1: a medium and also became passionately supportive within the religion.
Speaker 1: So by the late nineteen tenth he'd sort of become
Speaker 1: a figurehead within spiritualism and had thrown all of his
Speaker 1: professional credibility into it with a lot of success, I
Speaker 1: might add he had been touring across the US and
Speaker 1: UK lecturing. He wrote twenty books on the topic of spiritualism,
Speaker 1: with titles like The Case for spirit Photography, to the
Speaker 1: Coming of the Fairies, to my favorite, The Edge of
Speaker 1: the Unknown. The Coming of the Fairies also rocks, though
Speaker 1: it's kind of this aimless series of photos of people
Speaker 1: and fairy toys and the rest of it is basically
Speaker 1: Arthur Conan Doyle being really defensive and saying things like this,
Speaker 1: The cry of faith is sure to be raised and
Speaker 1: will make some impression upon those who have not had
Speaker 1: the opportunity of knowing the people concerned or the place.
Speaker 1: If you knew his friends, you'd believe in fairies. So chill. Also,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of long descriptions of elves. There
Speaker 1: is an ornamental rim to the pipe of the elves,
Speaker 1: which shows that the graces of art are not unknown
Speaker 1: among them. And what joy is in the complete abandoned
Speaker 1: of their little graceful figures as they let themselves go
Speaker 1: in the dance. They may have their shadows and trials
Speaker 1: as we have, but at least there is a great
Speaker 1: gladness manifest in this demonstration of their life, Doyle wasn't
Speaker 1: the only major public figure who is excited about spirit communication.
Speaker 1: Throughout the nineteen tens and nineteen twenties, Sigmund Freud would
Speaker 1: join the British Society for Psychical Research and started to
Speaker 1: think that telepathy was possible in the conscious and unconscious realms.
Speaker 1: Classic Freud Upton Sinclair, who is most famous for The Jungle,
Speaker 1: a book that I read for my book about hot Dogs.
Speaker 1: Upton Sinclair had a wife named Mary who believed herself
Speaker 1: to be psychic, and he published a book on these
Speaker 1: so so results of testing her abilities, called mental Radio.
Speaker 1: Carl Young participated in family sciences early in life, wrote
Speaker 1: his doctoral thesis seeking a medical precedent for medialistic behavior,
Speaker 1: and went on to become the founder of psychoanalysis while
Speaker 1: continuing to attend seances into his fifties. Rudyard kipling sister
Speaker 1: had been a medium, but Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ended
Speaker 1: up at the forefront of the spiritualist revival that was
Speaker 1: in large part brought on by people's desire to reconnect
Speaker 1: with lost soldiers from World War One. Just as the
Speaker 1: first major spiritualist craze had piqued during the Civil War.
Speaker 1: He famously and tragically found out that his beloved son
Speaker 1: had been killed in battle in nineteen eighteen, shortly before
Speaker 1: giving a speech about spirit communication. But he still went
Speaker 1: on saying this not too worry, Not to worry, my
Speaker 1: son survived. The world had changed and it had stayed
Speaker 1: the same. Emphasis was still on expansion on technological progress,
Speaker 1: and you start to see known scientists and inventors actively
Speaker 1: engaging with spiritualist ideas because of its alleged connection to science.
Speaker 1: Remember to this day this is one of the major
Speaker 1: spiritualist principles. We have communication scuttle, and so the science
Speaker 1: community becomes very involved. You'll find people like Thomas Edison
Speaker 1: developing ideas like the spirit phone, and eventually abandoned n
Speaker 1: idea that he toyed around with that was supposed to
Speaker 1: literally let you ring up your dead uncle. There was
Speaker 1: also Sir Oliver Lodge, a scientist who at first was
Speaker 1: famous in being integral to the invention of radio and
Speaker 1: developing ideas around electromagnetism. He then found a second act,
Speaker 1: writing one of the most famous spiritual texts ever called
Speaker 1: Raymond or Life and Death, a channel text in which
Speaker 1: Lodge's son Raymond, who had been killed at Flanders in
Speaker 1: ninetift spoke to him from beyond the veil to tell
Speaker 1: people what happened after death. It was a best seller
Speaker 1: for three years and popularized the idea of the summerland,
Speaker 1: where spirits are said to go when they have moved on.
Speaker 1: I've read sections of it, and it's a very sad
Speaker 1: and pretty remarkable book, one that is sort of half
Speaker 1: spiritualist propaganda and half just a father deeply missing his
Speaker 1: son who was killed in combat and is trying to
Speaker 1: make sense of it. He includes letters that Raymond wrote
Speaker 1: while he was alive, and you could really feel his
Speaker 1: grief between reminders that death means nothing, saying things like this, Indeed,
Speaker 1: it is not right that we should weep for death
Speaker 1: like his. Rather, let us pay him our homage and
Speaker 1: praise and imitation by growing like him, and by holding
Speaker 1: our lives lightly in our country service, so that, if
Speaker 1: need be, we may die like him. Lodge was a
Speaker 1: friend of Doyle's, a former president of the Society for
Speaker 1: Psychical Research who had a so so reputation as an
Speaker 1: investigator after falling for several mediums who later revealed themselves
Speaker 1: to be frauds. Now. Look, I want to hold space
Speaker 1: for how genuinely cool I think it is that, like
Speaker 1: the Foxes, the Ectoplasmic Sisterhood had a pretty good run
Speaker 1: at the top of the twentieth century. They were doing
Speaker 1: things that would have gotten them tried and killed under
Speaker 1: witchcraft laws in the past. They were physically autonomous. They
Speaker 1: were essentially turning the horn tendencies of straight male attendees
Speaker 1: at a seance right back against them. I think it's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. It looks like a hell of a show,
Speaker 1: and also it's a little silly and it makes me laugh. Sorry. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: as books like Raymond were becoming popular, ectoplasmic mediums were
Speaker 1: being taken out right and left. A famous example is
Speaker 1: Ava Carriere or Eva c who was famous for having
Speaker 1: these wild seances where she would materialize a spirit named
Speaker 1: be and Boa, a Brahmin Hindu spirit who was said
Speaker 1: to be over three hundred years old who Ava appeared
Speaker 1: to have made up. The spirit she called Bean Boa
Speaker 1: was later revealed to be a combination of kind of
Speaker 1: obvious cardboard cutouts and hired actors. But Carriere was heavily
Speaker 1: focused on and investigated by these psychical research firms, likely
Speaker 1: because of her methods and who she was. She was,
Speaker 1: first of all, a queer, a woman. She performed with
Speaker 1: her girlfriend, who was twenty five years her senior, and
Speaker 1: she performed in a very sexualized way. She'd often be
Speaker 1: nude during seances. She'd produce ectoplasm from every orifice. Her
Speaker 1: girlfriend slash assistant would sometimes finger her in front of
Speaker 1: everyone to assure them that the ectoplasm was there. In
Speaker 1: addition to hired actors and three hundred year old spirits,
Speaker 1: Eva C was also said to occasionally have sex at
Speaker 1: the end of the seances, either with her girlfriend assistant
Speaker 1: or with an attendee. Doyle and Houdini both saw her perform,
Speaker 1: and Doyle was pretty convinced, Houdini not so much. But
Speaker 1: in her day she got quite a bit of press,
Speaker 1: and many seemed relieved when her methods were proven to
Speaker 1: be false. She was too sexually dangerous. All this to
Speaker 1: say Eva C. Happy pride wherever you are, and to
Speaker 1: mention that while agencies like the spr did bust spirit
Speaker 1: photographers and slate writers, their most high profile targets or
Speaker 1: women who were known to use their bodies and gush
Speaker 1: ghost moubes from their holes and what about that Houdini,
Speaker 1: the same Houdini who grew up in a poor Hungarian
Speaker 1: Jewish family in Wisconsin with six siblings, who established himself
Speaker 1: as a magician at carnivals, often using some of the
Speaker 1: same hot and cold reading techniques that phony mediums do.
Speaker 1: Hot reading being preresearch targeted at a mark, and cold
Speaker 1: reading being saying something vague that someone's bound to pick
Speaker 1: up on and acting like you knew the whole time.
Speaker 1: But eventually he settled on what he was passionate about
Speaker 1: and became primarily known as an escape artist, known for
Speaker 1: things like the water torture cell, the straight jacket escape,
Speaker 1: the buried Alive thingy. He also became an extremely effective
Speaker 1: self promoter. Ego was a big part of what Houdini did.
Speaker 1: This was the guy who would say, of like this,
Speaker 1: no prison can all be. No handle leg irons or
Speaker 1: steel locks can shackle me, No ropes or chains can
Speaker 1: keep me from my freedom. This is the guy who
Speaker 1: advertised in eighteen ninety seven saying, Rudini the Great will
Speaker 1: Sunday night give a seance in the open light. Rudini
Speaker 1: kind of goes on this journey and his attitudes towards
Speaker 1: spirit communication throughout his life. Early on, he says he
Speaker 1: was always interested in spirit communication and didn't disbelieve in
Speaker 1: it at all. The only catch was he understood many
Speaker 1: of the methods that fraudulent mediums had used because he'd
Speaker 1: used some of the same tactics in his early magic days.
Speaker 1: This interest was compounded by two important events in the
Speaker 1: nineteen tens, the first being the death of his beloved
Speaker 1: mother in thirteen. Udini was very close with his mother.
Speaker 1: A book I read to prepare for this episode, called
Speaker 1: The Witch of Lime Street, used this brutal phrase, saying
Speaker 1: the umbilical cord was the only rope Houdini had never
Speaker 1: slipped go off. He openly wept mid interview when he
Speaker 1: learned of her death. They were very close, and after
Speaker 1: her death, Rudini eagerly attended spiritualist seances in hope of
Speaker 1: making contact, but wasn't convinced by any of the mediums
Speaker 1: he spoke with. He framed it like this in his
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty four book A Magician among the Spirits. From
Speaker 1: my early career as a mystical entertainer, I have been
Speaker 1: interested in spiritualism as belonging to the category of mysticism,
Speaker 1: and as a sideline to my own phase of mystery shows,
Speaker 1: I have associated myself with mediums joining the rank and vile,
Speaker 1: and held seances as an independent medium to fathom the
Speaker 1: truth of it all. 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 result which inevitably followed. To me,
Speaker 1: it was a arc. As I advanced to riper years
Speaker 1: of experience, I was brought to a realization of the
Speaker 1: seriousness of trifling with the hallowed reverence which the average
Speaker 1: human being bestows on the departed, And when I personally
Speaker 1: became afflicted with similar grief, I was chagrined that I
Speaker 1: should ever have been guilty of such frivality, and for
Speaker 1: the first time realized that it bordered on crime. So yeah,
Speaker 1: he felt, as many have over the years, that a
Speaker 1: magician is more ethical than a medium, because with a magician,
Speaker 1: it's understood that what is happening is not real. But
Speaker 1: if a medium does the same thing, and calls it
Speaker 1: religion he felt that was inherently exploitative. Rudini walks this
Speaker 1: line carefully throughout his years of spiritualist busting in the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties. The way he presents it is it's not
Speaker 1: that he doesn't believe in it, it's just that he's
Speaker 1: only seen fakery. The second thing that happens in the
Speaker 1: nineteen tens is a conversation Houdini has with a formerly
Speaker 1: famous spiritualist named I A. Davenport. He's come up on
Speaker 1: this show before. He was half of a spiritualist team
Speaker 1: called the Davenport Brothers, two teenagers named Ira and William
Speaker 1: who had hopped onto the spiritualist train after being inspired
Speaker 1: by the Foxes in the early eighteen fifties. They became
Speaker 1: known for their spirit Cabinet, where they would be tied
Speaker 1: together in a closed box full of instruments. The box
Speaker 1: would close, the instruments would mysteriously be played by the spirits.
Speaker 1: The box would open, and the boys would still be
Speaker 1: tied together as if nothing had happened. This was revealed
Speaker 1: to be a magic trick and not a supernatural event.
Speaker 1: Many times there were two magicians slash investigators that followed
Speaker 1: the Davenport Brothers all around England in order to bust them.
Speaker 1: Ira is said to have talked to Houdini in nineteen eleven,
Speaker 1: shortly before his death, and finally admitted that the spirit
Speaker 1: Box was a hoax and shared how he did it.
Speaker 1: Houdini describes the conversation like the US with a classic
Speaker 1: Houdini Bragg wedged in there. He said that he recognized
Speaker 1: in me a past master of the craft, and therefore
Speaker 1: spoke openly and did not hesitate to tell me the
Speaker 1: secrets of his feats. We discussed and analyzed the statements
Speaker 1: made in his letters to me, and he frankly admitted
Speaker 1: that the work of the daven Board Brothers was accomplished
Speaker 1: by perfectly natural means and belonged to that class of
Speaker 1: feats commonly credited the physical dexterity. Not once was there
Speaker 1: even a hint that spiritualism was of any concern to him,
Speaker 1: instead discussing his work as straightforward showmanship. Arthur Conan Doyle
Speaker 1: refuted this last claim, saying that while the spirit Box
Speaker 1: had been disowned, Ira had remained a practicing spiritualist. So
Speaker 1: before they even meet, the boys are already fighting by
Speaker 1: the late nineteen tents, Houdini and Doyle were pretty engaged
Speaker 1: in spiritualist ideas, but from opposite advantage points. Houdini was
Speaker 1: growing steadily more discouraged with it and more and more
Speaker 1: convinced that mediums were wholesale frauds and unethical, while Doyle
Speaker 1: had become the figurehead of the movement, a missionary the
Speaker 1: tom cruise of the situation. So it's only a matter
Speaker 1: of time and in Ny they finally meet. Doyle recounts
Speaker 1: his impression of Houdini in his book The Edge of
Speaker 1: the Unknown. Budini is far and away the most curious
Speaker 1: and intriguing character whom I have ever encountered. I have
Speaker 1: met better men, and I have certainly met very many
Speaker 1: worse ones, but I have never met a man who
Speaker 1: had such strange contrasts in his nature and whose actions
Speaker 1: and motives it was more difficult to foresee or to reconcile.
Speaker 1: And Houdini says this of Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
Speaker 1: the sincere and confirmed believer in spirit phenomena whose acquaintance
Speaker 1: I esteem advises me that I do not secure convincing
Speaker 1: results because I am a skeptic and I therefore want
Speaker 1: to make it clear that I am not a scoffer.
Speaker 1: Doyle had gone to see a show of Houdini's at
Speaker 1: the Great Theater in London and was blown away. Houdini
Speaker 1: was eager to meet him too. He'd been intrigued to
Speaker 1: hear that Doyle answer Oliver Lodge believed to be communicating
Speaker 1: with their dead sons. The men both had great and
Speaker 1: trustworthy reputations. Why not to have a talk with them.
Speaker 1: The two began to exchange letters, and Houdini was still
Speaker 1: very much open to the concept of spirit communication around
Speaker 1: this time. He just wanted to see one medium who
Speaker 1: didn't fall back on what he felt were cheap magic
Speaker 1: tricks when their psychic abilities failed them. This motivated him
Speaker 1: to do something Doyle had been doing for years. He
Speaker 1: started to investigate many of the same European physical mediums.
Speaker 1: Unlike Doyle, Houdini was unmoved by basically everyone and immediately
Speaker 1: starts this creepy pattern of becoming annoyed that mediums vaginas
Speaker 1: are not being more thoroughly inspected. At no time, to
Speaker 1: my knowledge, did the search include the orifices of her body. Stop. Stop.
Speaker 1: You might remember that this is a pattern carried over
Speaker 1: from the Fox Sisters years and the many humiliating physical
Speaker 1: inspections that they underwent in their careers as mediums. In
Speaker 1: this era of investigation, where goo was literally gushing from orifices,
Speaker 1: the inspections became all the more invasive. However, despite Houdini's
Speaker 1: cavity search preferences and disagreement on the authenticity of the
Speaker 1: mediums that Doyle endorsed, they became friends, and Houdini felt
Speaker 1: that the Doyles, Sir Arthur and his wife Jane the medium,
Speaker 1: genuinely believed what they were saying. Based on their early interactions,
Speaker 1: it seemed like Houdini was inclined to be won over
Speaker 1: by the Doyles. He had a short lived film career
Speaker 1: in the early twenties that included a nine movie called
Speaker 1: The Man from Beyond, a silent movie where the idea
Speaker 1: of reincarnation is integral to the plot. He even cites
Speaker 1: Doyle's work in the text, Doyle happened to be in
Speaker 1: New York when this movie premiered. He was there going
Speaker 1: on this hot streak of spiritualist lectures that were selling
Speaker 1: out Carnegie Hall night after night, packing the house with
Speaker 1: war widows that wanted to get in touch with dead soldiers,
Speaker 1: and the Doyles loved the movie. They were touched to
Speaker 1: see the Man from Beyond advertised with blinds like audiences
Speaker 1: everywhere were welcome at his evidence that loved ones gone
Speaker 1: to the great beyond. I'm not lost to us forever.
Speaker 1: Variety said that Houdini's attempt to marry magicians logic and
Speaker 1: spiritualist logic was a failure. The two things don't go together,
Speaker 1: it said, but the boys didn't care. They enjoyed writing
Speaker 1: each other letters, and Doyle felt optimistic that Houdini would
Speaker 1: come around while he continued to tour with images of
Speaker 1: fairies and spirit photography and yes, a strong endorsement of
Speaker 1: Eva cs ectoplasm until the Atlantic City trip. In the
Speaker 1: Houdini's and the Doyles spent the weekend in Atlantic City,
Speaker 1: New Jersey together. I mean incredible. I love it, But
Speaker 1: after two blissful years of friendship, this trip was unfortunately
Speaker 1: the beginning of the end. At some point in the trip,
Speaker 1: Jean felt comfortable enough with the Houdini's to ask if
Speaker 1: they would sit for a mediumship session with her Harry,
Speaker 1: specifically in an attempt to contact his mother. Interestingly, like
Speaker 1: the Fox Sisters, this story has been covered on Drunk History,
Speaker 1: and Lucia's Dylan gets it pretty good, with the exception
Speaker 1: of being completely dismissive of spiritualism, mediums and Houdini's latent misogyny.
Speaker 1: Oh here's the clip, Sir Arthur Conan do. I was like,
Speaker 1: I want you to sit down and have this seance,
Speaker 1: and I have my wife is going to speak your
Speaker 1: mother's words through handwriting. Really, Budiny, shut up quite uh,
Speaker 1: I know your skeptical. Let's just do this. His wife
Speaker 1: was like, Hey, we're all here, we're doing the seance.
Speaker 1: Let's speak to Houdini's mother, so then it would happen. Oh,
Speaker 1: my son, I'm so happy to speak to you. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna put a cross on top of this thing, short
Speaker 1: across on the top of the thing. Mrs Houdiny was Jewish.
Speaker 1: In reality, Jeam channels over is of handwriting from Houdini's mother,
Speaker 1: and while the cross thing is true, what disillusioned Houdini
Speaker 1: was the fact that his mother barely spoke English and
Speaker 1: he didn't feel that she would ever have communicated with
Speaker 1: him in that language. But he didn't say that to
Speaker 1: the Doyle's In the moment, the Doyles thought that Houdini
Speaker 1: was moved, and they left for England, seen off by
Speaker 1: Houdini and Bess at the wharf, thinking that they had
Speaker 1: finally sold him on it. So a quick moment of
Speaker 1: acknowledgment for Harry Houdini's wife, the often overlooked Best Houdini,
Speaker 1: who both inspired a Kitler song and said a lot
Speaker 1: of confusing and vaguely horny early twentieth century things that
Speaker 1: make me laugh, such as saying that she sold her
Speaker 1: virginity for an orange. What I digress privately. Houdini's opinion
Speaker 1: of the seance and officially begun to permanently sour. By
Speaker 1: Halloween of that year, he told the New York Son
Speaker 1: spiritualism is nothing more than spook tricks, and mediums are
Speaker 1: either crooked or hysterical. This piste. Mr Sherlock Art He
Speaker 1: felt that Houdini was being dramatic for press, and wrote
Speaker 1: as much to him in a letter. They sent me
Speaker 1: The New York Sun with your article, and no doubt
Speaker 1: wanted me to answer them. But I have no fancy
Speaker 1: for sparring with a friend in pub when you say
Speaker 1: you have had no evidence of survival. You say what
Speaker 1: I cannot reconcile with my own eyes. I know by
Speaker 1: many examples the purity of my wife's mediumship, and I
Speaker 1: saw what you thought and what the effect was on
Speaker 1: you at the time. You're right that you are very sore.
Speaker 1: I trust that it is not with me, because you,
Speaker 1: having been truthful and manly all your life, naturally must
Speaker 1: admire the same traits and other human beings. Now boys
Speaker 1: and at this point, Houdini went on the offensive and
Speaker 1: signed up to be a judge this high profile panel
Speaker 1: sponsored by the Scientific American to determine once and for
Speaker 1: all if mediumship could be scientifically proven. After trying to
Speaker 1: nail down the science behind spiritual phenomena, if any, for
Speaker 1: months and years, the Classic magazine offered five thousand dollars
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenties money to any medium who could prove
Speaker 1: to a panel of scientists and experts that their abilities
Speaker 1: were scientifically legitimate. This might sound kind of weird that
Speaker 1: a science magazine would want to write about ghosts, but
Speaker 1: this was actually pretty standard for this time. I mean,
Speaker 1: spiritualist ideas were included in the earliest publications of psychology.
Speaker 1: In pamphlet from the Liverpool Psychological Society included a bullet
Speaker 1: point saying it cared about the dissemination of knowledge by
Speaker 1: means of the public instruction, lectures, reading rooms, the press,
Speaker 1: and spirit communion. They bailed on the idea by the
Speaker 1: end of the century, but it was there and again.
Speaker 1: These spiritual revivals tended to happen during times of rapid
Speaker 1: technological and social progress, as well as times of massive
Speaker 1: lost life. This contest took place two years after women
Speaker 1: had gotten the vote, while the gigantic losses of World
Speaker 1: War Two were still at the top of everyone's mind,
Speaker 1: while electricity and radio were spreading across the country. While
Speaker 1: scientific theories like evolution had managed to tie in with
Speaker 1: spiritualism and caused observers of the religion to believe that
Speaker 1: spirits evolve in addition to our bodies over time. The
Speaker 1: second revival came at this interesting time where science was
Speaker 1: not yet considered not magic and most skeptics were still
Speaker 1: open to alternative ideas. A critical element to these scientific
Speaker 1: American tests was how rigorous the panel was allowed to
Speaker 1: be with mediums who were subjecting themselves to inspection. The
Speaker 1: magazine listed materials like quote, induction coils, galvanometers, electroscopes, et cetera,
Speaker 1: Some with the purpose of testing the electrical condition of
Speaker 1: the medium at the moment when phenomena are produced, others
Speaker 1: to prove the presence or absence of material objects unquote.
Speaker 1: Doyle had tried to convince a Scientific American editor named
Speaker 1: James Malcolm Bird not to have Houdini on the board.
Speaker 1: No such luck, although Bird was considered to be an
Speaker 1: extremely gullible man who would flop so hard that he
Speaker 1: would lose his standing both at the American Society for
Speaker 1: Psychical Research and his job at the Scientific American in
Speaker 1: the next ten years. Once the Scientific American open investigation began,
Speaker 1: it went on for over a year, with the rift
Speaker 1: between Houdini and Doyle growing. All the while, Houdini and
Speaker 1: the judges found it pretty easy to dismiss most of
Speaker 1: the media ms that came through. Many who came in
Speaker 1: were women and would have to wear a black bathing
Speaker 1: suit and be marked and glow in the dark paint
Speaker 1: so that the seance room could remain dark as required.
Speaker 1: For some time, the Scientific Americans Library became a seance
Speaker 1: room where experts discredited medium. After medium, finding no real
Speaker 1: viable contenders, Houdini was removed from the board at least
Speaker 1: once when he broke a story ahead of the magazine's publication, and,
Speaker 1: in classic Puddini fashion, took more credit then made sense.
Speaker 1: He went back to touring his magic show at the
Speaker 1: same time that Doyle was doing one of his most
Speaker 1: extensive American speaking tours yet. And they even run into
Speaker 1: each other on the road and have a picnic. But
Speaker 1: still Budini cannot resist talking behind people's backs, he wrote
Speaker 1: in a letter to his wife Bess later, Doyle is
Speaker 1: a historical character, and his word goes far, in fact,
Speaker 1: much further than mine. It is a little bizarre that
Speaker 1: Houdini was being treated as a scientist and a man
Speaker 1: of letters that he never had really been known for
Speaker 1: in these years, but comments like this suggests that that
Speaker 1: might have been how he wanted to be viewed. The
Speaker 1: process of going legit had begun and would continue after
Speaker 1: these years of ghost busting ended, when he would try
Speaker 1: to get back on track to further his education and
Speaker 1: even become a college professor. It's around this time that
Speaker 1: Marjorie Mina Crandon comes into the picture. Marjorie is the
Speaker 1: subject of The Witch of Lime Street, Seance, Seduction and
Speaker 1: Houdini in the Spirit World by David Jahr. Maybe I'm
Speaker 1: especially partial to her because she begins life as a
Speaker 1: poor lady in Boston who rises the social ranks, marries
Speaker 1: a doctor and becomes the most convincing and bewildering medium
Speaker 1: of her era. Plus her act was really horny. I mean,
Speaker 1: who cares if it was real? It's a victimless crime.
Speaker 1: And as an added dash of authenticity, Marjorie had no
Speaker 1: real history of interest in mediumship prior to an impromptu
Speaker 1: science at a party, pretty normal practice for the time,
Speaker 1: where she blew people away with what her friends thought
Speaker 1: was a natural ability. So over a year into the
Speaker 1: Scientific American Contest, the judging board is beginning to run
Speaker 1: out of hope until Mina's husband, doctor Roy Crandon, submitted
Speaker 1: her after being in touch briefly with none other than
Speaker 1: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Marjorie was extremely charming. Many mediums
Speaker 1: of this time and still now skew a little older,
Speaker 1: but Marjorie was in her thirties, very traditionally attractive, with
Speaker 1: a blonde bob and a good sense of humor. And
Speaker 1: while she was tested in many locations all over Boston.
Speaker 1: The Scientific American Board planned to come to her house
Speaker 1: on Lime Street. The judging crew included Deini, a psychical
Speaker 1: researcher named Walter Prince, the inventor of Technicolor, Daniel Comstock,
Speaker 1: Harvard professor William McDougall, an amateur magician Haro Word Carrington.
Speaker 1: Keep that last name in mind while preparing for her
Speaker 1: formal tests. The way Marjorie's mediumship manifested became a lot.
Speaker 1: She did consent to Judini's weird cavity search and would
Speaker 1: then produce ectoplasm, most notably from her vagina. She would
Speaker 1: produce spirit hands from her vagina that we're all cold
Speaker 1: and slimy. She could make tables lift, bell boxes ring,
Speaker 1: and she tended to channel one particular spirit, her brother Walter,
Speaker 1: who had been tragically crushed between railway cars years before,
Speaker 1: and Walter as channeled by his sister. Marjorie was a
Speaker 1: real jokester in these test seances, saying things like this
Speaker 1: laugh and if you can't laugh, then look in the mirror.
Speaker 1: He teased judges and press, He flirt with whim in,
Speaker 1: and he was said to have a deeply masculine voice
Speaker 1: that threw itself all over the place. His masculinity actually
Speaker 1: seemed to be a big selling point for people. Walter
Speaker 1: would mostly talk, but he also moved the table, he pinched,
Speaker 1: he teased. At one point, a judge asked him to
Speaker 1: kick him in the face and then said thank you
Speaker 1: when he did. Marjorie was tested at Harvard and did well,
Speaker 1: particularly with Scientific American editor the famously gullible Jay Bird,
Speaker 1: who started publishing glowing reviews about her before she even
Speaker 1: formally sat down with the Scientific American board. So Houdini
Speaker 1: sees this and says, I think I'll go to Boston
Speaker 1: to test Marjorie before Bird poisoned the well in her
Speaker 1: favor permanently. By all accounts, Marjorie Crandon and Harry Houdini
Speaker 1: had a pretty warm friendship, even when he was publicly
Speaker 1: dragging her. This sounded similar to his relationship with Doyle,
Speaker 1: who rarely said anything unkind about Houdini publicly. I don't
Speaker 1: get it. I'm assuming he was very likable in person,
Speaker 1: but she likes him. Marjorie later writes him a letter
Speaker 1: that says, I have been hearing some very nice things
Speaker 1: about you lately, so I'm glad to be able to
Speaker 1: say I know the great Houdini. But she's still nervous
Speaker 1: before he arrives at Lime Street, as demonstrated by a
Speaker 1: letter that her husband, Dr Crandon writes to Arthur Conan Doyle.
Speaker 1: I think Psyche, my wife is somewhat disturbed by it
Speaker 1: internally because of Houdini's general nastiness. She's vomiting merrily this morning.
Speaker 1: Make no mistake. Houdini always thought that Marjorie was a fraud,
Speaker 1: but it didn't matter what he thought if he couldn't
Speaker 1: explain how she was doing it. So he conceals his
Speaker 1: frustration in the moment. But after the spirit Walter chides him, saying, you, Houdini,
Speaker 1: think you're pretty smart. Houdini started quietly forming theories. Maybe
Speaker 1: there's a third party. He went to a second seance
Speaker 1: test the next night, as Doyle waited across the ocean,
Speaker 1: getting regular updates from Marjorie's husband. Rudini forms more theories
Speaker 1: this night. Maybe she's using her head to move the
Speaker 1: table without it registering with the glow paint she wore.
Speaker 1: But again he can't really prove it, so she's moved
Speaker 1: on to the next round. The Crandons are stoked about this,
Speaker 1: and Houdini is getting frustrated. Gone are the days where
Speaker 1: he seems to be sincerely interested in spirit communication and
Speaker 1: disproving Marjorie's abilities becomes his central focus in life. For
Speaker 1: the next test, Rudini began working on a restraint for
Speaker 1: Marjorie that he thought would prevent her from performing any
Speaker 1: of the physical tricks he suspected her of as Walter.
Speaker 1: While he was doing this, the press around their impending
Speaker 1: seance in the summer of nineteen twenty four got huge. Marjorie,
Speaker 1: who was going by mina to protect her identity, had
Speaker 1: her identity and addressed doxed in the press, and her
Speaker 1: first marriage made a mockery of People began heavily speculating
Speaker 1: that Marjorie and a member of the Scientific American Board, Carrington,
Speaker 1: were having an affair. But before those rumors could get
Speaker 1: two out of hand, Budini completed his box, a contraption
Speaker 1: that only allowed Marjorie's head and hands to have freedom
Speaker 1: of motion. He seems to find this fair, writing to
Speaker 1: a friend that he would allow Marjorie Crandon to keep
Speaker 1: the seance room dark. I want to give Mrs Crandon
Speaker 1: every possible chance to make good, and if she possesses
Speaker 1: any psychic power, I will be the first to assist
Speaker 1: her in this mission. During this trial, the bells rang
Speaker 1: as usual, but upon turning the lights on, the box
Speaker 1: had been partially forced open. Didn't look great for Marjorie.
Speaker 1: Her support on the Scientific American Board was dwindling, with
Speaker 1: only Carrington, who was suspected to be having an affair
Speaker 1: with her, fully in her corner. Houdini, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: was ruthless and very opportunistic at this time, taking every
Speaker 1: chance he could to disparage Marjorie publicly and monetize his
Speaker 1: theory that she was a fraud. It became a regular
Speaker 1: and popular part of his live act, just being a hater.
Speaker 1: It's the same ikey feeling you get when a true
Speaker 1: crime podcast is, like, we're going on tour to talk
Speaker 1: about murders in your area. At the end of August,
Speaker 1: another seance took place where Marjorie's hands were bound and
Speaker 1: nothing materialized. At this point, the magazine felt she was beat,
Speaker 1: but Walter the Spirit persisted, Houdini, you think you're so smart,
Speaker 1: don't you. How much are they paying you to stop this? Phenomena.
Speaker 1: Now not to side with Walter, but if I may,
Speaker 1: I don't think that shoving someone in a tiny unventilated
Speaker 1: box in a tiny unventilated room is conducive for doing
Speaker 1: anything much less. During the dead, another science at Boston's
Speaker 1: Charles Gate Hotel produced the biggest controversy between Crandon and
Speaker 1: Houdini yet. Marjorie had a successful seance in Houdini's box,
Speaker 1: but when it ended, he found a ruler and accused
Speaker 1: her of using it to pull off tricks. This caused
Speaker 1: Walter the spirit to flip, and he claimed that Houdini
Speaker 1: had done it himself. I love what he says here.
Speaker 1: Buckle in the ghost says Houdini, You goddamn son of
Speaker 1: a bitch, get the hell out of here. Never come back.
Speaker 1: If you don't, I will. You won't live forever. Houdini.
Speaker 1: You've got to die. I put a curse on you
Speaker 1: now that will follow you every day until you die,
Speaker 1: and then you'll know better. Holy shit, man. Judini was
Speaker 1: said by those present to be pretty scared and insulted
Speaker 1: at this outburst. He was said to like sort of
Speaker 1: panic and be like, my parents were married when I
Speaker 1: was born. What are you talking about. Of course, Houdini
Speaker 1: press sense this event much differently, casting himself as the
Speaker 1: hero once more. Decades later, a Houdini biographer claimed that
Speaker 1: Houdini's assistant had planted the ruler, but even this fact
Speaker 1: has been disputed. The man who had written the biography
Speaker 1: was William Lindsay Gresham, author of the famously anti spiritualism
Speaker 1: and anti mediumship novel Nightmare Ali, a book that ironically
Speaker 1: mocks the exact kind of physical mediumship that Marjorie is performing.
Speaker 1: But at this point in the trials, Judini felt that
Speaker 1: one more slightly off science would lose Marjorie the contest. Now,
Speaker 1: Judini was known to be a bit of a prude,
Speaker 1: and he seemed deeply uncomfortable with the more sexual aspects
Speaker 1: of Marjorie's persona. Other judges would touch her while she
Speaker 1: was making ectoplasm, not with eva c sexual intensity, but
Speaker 1: the whole process was a semi erotic thing to do
Speaker 1: with a hot lady in a robe while her husband
Speaker 1: was sitting right there. Instead of participating, Udini said nasty
Speaker 1: things about her. He accused her of keeping a refrigerator
Speaker 1: in her vagina, as well as making some pretty unforgivable
Speaker 1: accusations against her. Ahead of their next seance, he said
Speaker 1: that a time where Marjorie allowed him to nap at
Speaker 1: her house on Lime Street after a seance they performed there,
Speaker 1: she had been trying to seduce him. By all accounts,
Speaker 1: this is not true, but I do want to demonstrate
Speaker 1: that Houdini was coming at her relentlessly and then locking
Speaker 1: her in a box. At their final seance, Marjorie started
Speaker 1: sweating and overheated and couldn't move and produced nothing. Udini
Speaker 1: wrote in his postmortem to the Scientific American, I charged
Speaker 1: Mrs Crandon with daily performing her feets like a natural conjurer.
Speaker 1: She is not simple or guileless that a shrewd cunning woman.
Speaker 1: Ahead of the results being announced in the Scientific American,
Speaker 1: Marjorie complained that Houdini's spirit box set her up for failure,
Speaker 1: and even after ostensibly defeating her, Houdini continued to monetize
Speaker 1: Marjorie's potential public humiliation. He published a pamphlet called Houdini
Speaker 1: Exposes the Tricks used by the Boston medium Marjorie in
Speaker 1: Hurst Magazines, where he explicitly accuses Bird and Carrington as
Speaker 1: conspiring with Marjorie, while she rallied her spiritualist supporters and
Speaker 1: started holding seances and public showings again in spite of him.
Speaker 1: Houdini wouldn't relent. He tracked down a photo of her
Speaker 1: brother Walter's train accident horrifying and showed it in public.
Speaker 1: He also showed off what he thought she was doing,
Speaker 1: balancing spirit trumpets on her head and using her feet
Speaker 1: to ring bells. At this point, even Dennie's supporters felt
Speaker 1: like it was getting weird. He won. Why can't you
Speaker 1: let it go? The truth of all the matter is
Speaker 1: that Marjorie and my belief is a social climber, oh right, misogyny.
Speaker 1: He doesn't like her, so you see this pattern of
Speaker 1: him using any gendered attack he can think of to
Speaker 1: cut her down. It's worth mentioning that Marjorie and Arthur
Speaker 1: Conan Doyle are barely speaking to press, and they don't
Speaker 1: speak ill of Houdini publicly during this time at all. Instead,
Speaker 1: Marjorie focused on getting second opinions and got a pretty
Speaker 1: favorable outcome from a prominent psychical researcher named Eric Dingwall,
Speaker 1: who had busted a number of prominent mediums, but outside
Speaker 1: of suspecting that she put ectoplasm in her vagina in advance,
Speaker 1: couldn't disprove her ability before the Scientific American announced their verdict.
Speaker 1: Marjorie was a nervous wreck, and Houdini didn't give a ship.
Speaker 1: He wrote to a friend, no surprises me about Marjorie.
Speaker 1: A woman who would drag her dead brother from the
Speaker 1: grave and exploit him before the public as a means
Speaker 1: of gaining social prominence, would do anything. The results came
Speaker 1: out in February ninety five, and Marjory lost the money
Speaker 1: and the recognition. Her spirit hands had been analyzed and
Speaker 1: identified not as supernatural material but as a hunk of
Speaker 1: animal trachea. The Scientific American contest technically continued through the
Speaker 1: early nineteen forties, even boasting a fifteen thousand dollar prize
Speaker 1: at one point, but it was never given this level
Speaker 1: of public attention again, and spiritualism never caught back on
Speaker 1: in the same way. Marjory, to her credit, was a
Speaker 1: class act about the loss, saying in a public statement,
Speaker 1: the decision does not bother me at all, and I
Speaker 1: can certainly say I'm neither discouraged or disappointed. Any further
Speaker 1: damon must come from my husband and privately she was depressed.
Speaker 1: Now referred to as the Witch of Beacon Street, she
Speaker 1: said she quote does not find myself dancing around as
Speaker 1: joyously as I once did unquote. Houdini, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: rode out the success of ruining Marjorie in public, and
Speaker 1: for the remainder of his life dedicated a lot of
Speaker 1: his time to exposing medium trickery. Between his own magic shows.
Speaker 1: He started this group called my own Personal Secret Service,
Speaker 1: Oh Babe, and he would disguise himself as he went
Speaker 1: from city to city, attending seances and taking people down,
Speaker 1: often trying to get mediums arrested for fraud. While the
Speaker 1: antifortune telling and which laws from generations past were mostly dormant,
Speaker 1: some of them still did exist. It's so bizarre. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's this very successful person traveling around the country like
Speaker 1: a godless missionary, wearing mustachio disguises and saying, surprise, bitch,
Speaker 1: it's Houdini, and everything you ever believed is a lie.
Speaker 1: I don't know where this instinct comes from. I mean,
Speaker 1: it wasn't a hard dedication to the truth. Houdini stretched
Speaker 1: the truth all the time, and he himself had overcome
Speaker 1: so much personally, he'd overcome poverty, he'd overcome the American
Speaker 1: attitudes towards Jewish people in the early twentieth century. Houdini
Speaker 1: was treated anti semitically at many points in his career,
Speaker 1: sometimes by spiritualists. But I still can't figure out why
Speaker 1: this is the hill he chooses to die on time
Speaker 1: and time again, no matter who he has to take
Speaker 1: out to get there. I think it connects more than
Speaker 1: anything else that his not being able to talk to
Speaker 1: his mom one last time. It reached the point where
Speaker 1: Houdini was lobbying President Coolidge to reinstate anti fortune telling bills,
Speaker 1: And even with all this going on, still could not
Speaker 1: let Marjorie Crandon go and sent a spy reporter to
Speaker 1: buddy up with her. Read between the lines and you
Speaker 1: will see I accused Marjorie of using sex charm and
Speaker 1: it has been authenticated, he told a friend. This sequence
Speaker 1: of events sort of recalls another successful, difficult to bust
Speaker 1: female medium from the eighteen seventies. Her name was Florence Cook,
Speaker 1: and she channeled a woman named Katie King, a daughter
Speaker 1: of an imperialist gikes. Cook could make her spirit guide
Speaker 1: full body manifest during seances. Arthur Conan Doyle was known
Speaker 1: to show her spirit photographs on the road. While Cook
Speaker 1: wasn't framed for fraud at the time, a similarly slight
Speaker 1: shamy dismissal of her abilities was launched. A man told
Speaker 1: the Society for Psychical Research that he'd had an affair
Speaker 1: with Florence and that she'd had a long standing affair
Speaker 1: with William Crooks, the investigator who was supposed to be
Speaker 1: investigating her. In the end, Crooks was knighted and moved
Speaker 1: on with his life just fine, and Florence Cook was
Speaker 1: revealed to have been dressing up as Katie the whole time.
Speaker 1: You know how this story goes at this point, when
Speaker 1: she died of pneumonia in poverty in nineteen o four,
Speaker 1: Houdini reached the apex of being on his bullshit in
Speaker 1: n when he managed to get all the way through
Speaker 1: to pitching to a Congress subcommittee. He spent four days
Speaker 1: arguing House Resolution eight nine eight nine, which sought to
Speaker 1: ban fortune telling in d C. This turned into a
Speaker 1: complete circus. Mediums and psychics from all over came in
Speaker 1: protest and to defend themselves, their religion, and their practices.
Speaker 1: What this translated to was a Congress floor full of
Speaker 1: psychics wild but as it turned out, d C wasn't
Speaker 1: really a smart venue for Houdini to choose his hill
Speaker 1: to die on. In the nineteenth century, two first Ladies
Speaker 1: had held seance as in the White House, and Florence Harding,
Speaker 1: who had lived there in the previous presidency, famously had
Speaker 1: a psychic advisor. In fact, her psychic advisor showed up
Speaker 1: to the congressional hearing to defend herself. The bill Houdini
Speaker 1: was proposing included a two fifty dollar penalty and language
Speaker 1: that implied it was scientifically impossible to be a medium
Speaker 1: rods from start to finish, mental degenerates, or deliberate cheats.
Speaker 1: In the end, Houdini lost this battle. Everyone in Congress
Speaker 1: was kind of like relax man, and he was thought
Speaker 1: to have gone too far when accusing the sitting president
Speaker 1: of seeking a psychic's help, said Representative Ralph Gilbert of Kentucky.
Speaker 1: I believe in Santa Claus, and I believe in fairies
Speaker 1: in a way, and Houdini is taking the matter entirely
Speaker 1: too seriously. That's what I've been saying this whole damn show. Ralph,
Speaker 1: thank you As it turned out, Houdini didn't have much
Speaker 1: more time to stir ship. He died later that year,
Speaker 1: a very magician's death mysterious, and on Halloween, while backstage
Speaker 1: in Montreal, he was approached by a man who asked
Speaker 1: Houdini if he believed in the Bible and quote, whether
Speaker 1: it was true that punches in the stomach did not
Speaker 1: hurt you unquote. Houdini brushed it off and joked that
Speaker 1: his stomach could handle a lot, and the guy punched
Speaker 1: him several times hard in the stomach. He died of
Speaker 1: appendicitis just several days later. Houdini's wife Bess spoke on
Speaker 1: his interest in life after death often after he passed,
Speaker 1: as in this radio clip, Mary, you kneel my husband
Speaker 1: a long time, and you remember what he always said
Speaker 1: about these things, that it was impossible for the dead
Speaker 1: to return. That's problem. He was right. Well, if it
Speaker 1: would have been possible, I would have had some sign
Speaker 1: from him in the past ten years. Bes always said
Speaker 1: that Houdini had told her how he would manifest in
Speaker 1: the afterlife, what he'd say if he could communicate with
Speaker 1: her from beyond the grave, and that for as long
Speaker 1: as a decade she held annual seances on Halloween to
Speaker 1: see if he would return. He never showed. Ten years
Speaker 1: is long enough to wait for any man, but not
Speaker 1: for hardcore Houdini fans. The spirit Circle still takes place
Speaker 1: every year on Halloween. People are still waiting. Sir Arthur
Speaker 1: Conan Doyle was finally able to take some pot shots
Speaker 1: at Houdini four years after his death in his book
Speaker 1: The Edge of the Unknown. Good Ship like this, there
Speaker 1: was no consideration of years old, which would restrain him
Speaker 1: if he saw his way to an advertisement. But when
Speaker 1: Houdinie first dies, Doyle is sweet in memorializing his former friend,
Speaker 1: which genuinely seemed to touch Udini's widow best. She revealed
Speaker 1: the Doyle that among her husband's gigantic collection of oddities,
Speaker 1: there was one item he would never sell, a notebook
Speaker 1: full of drawings that have belonged to and been drawn
Speaker 1: by Arthur Conan Doyle's father. I mean, why can't men
Speaker 1: just be friends? That's so nice. Doyle himself lived until
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty, dying of a heart attack. His last words
Speaker 1: were telling his wife, Jean, whose mediumship he had always
Speaker 1: believed in, you are wonderful, Marjorie continued to practice seances
Speaker 1: in Boston until her death. When asked by a psychic
Speaker 1: researcher what her secret was on her deathbed, she remained
Speaker 1: the best. I said, you can go to hell. All
Speaker 1: you psychic researchers can go to hell. Why don't you guess?
Speaker 1: You'll all be guessing for the rest of your lives,
Speaker 1: so ectoplasm. Look, I'm not making this show to tell
Speaker 1: you what is real and what isn't in the spirit realm,
Speaker 1: I don't know. And as much as I love the
Speaker 1: Houdini Doyle saga, I think it's more important to remember
Speaker 1: that the target of their rage or religious feelings, respectively,
Speaker 1: we're connected to real bodies, much more vulnerable than their own.
Speaker 1: And honestly, I don't care if Mina Crandon was a fraud.
Speaker 1: I think she was brilliant, pulling yourself out of poverty
Speaker 1: against all odds to live a life, scamming famous scientists
Speaker 1: into thinking your vaginal discharge is fucking magical. It's like,
Speaker 1: are you serious? Can you tell me with a straight
Speaker 1: face that isn't fucking awesome? I hope Mina Crandon gets
Speaker 1: a movie someday. Her story has never been really adapted properly,
Speaker 1: and the Houdinian Doyle story has been told badly and
Speaker 1: more than once. Okay, one more tangent. There was a
Speaker 1: show on I t V in the UK called Houdini
Speaker 1: and Doyle. I will not dox the actors, but it's
Speaker 1: the most recent past at this concept that reimagines these
Speaker 1: men who really just disagreed on spiritualism and we're friends
Speaker 1: for no more than a couple of years. But in
Speaker 1: this show there buddy cops. It got canceled after a
Speaker 1: few episodes, because of course it did. But Houdini and
Speaker 1: Doyle as buddy cops is such a startlingly bad idea
Speaker 1: that it might actually be an amazing idea. Every religion
Speaker 1: for centuries has told us the death isn't the end.
Speaker 1: Nothing is as it was just ten years ago, maybe
Speaker 1: not even death a load of crap. I can have
Speaker 1: this case myself without help from the Rocks. Are a magician?
Speaker 1: Are your police officers? We're working with the police. Yet,
Speaker 1: fear is a good thing. It's only when you admit
Speaker 1: that you're afraid the fear loses its power. Houdini and
Speaker 1: Doyle coming in two thousand and sixteen to I t
Speaker 1: V Encore. No, it's a bad idea, but you've gotta
Speaker 1: hand it to them. They put that on television on purpose,
Speaker 1: and the story of Houdini, Doyle, and Mina Crandon in
Speaker 1: many ways covers the peaks and valleys of the second
Speaker 1: wave of American Spiritualism, the last major revival of the movement,
Speaker 1: although I would not rule out a third on the horizon.
Speaker 1: I want to end on a quote from Walter the Ghost.
Speaker 1: Actually he once said this through his sister Mina out
Speaker 1: of seance, for life is full of boxes closed and
Speaker 1: death follows right along. The only difference I can see
Speaker 1: is you sing in your box when you're gone. Next week,
Speaker 1: the end of Ghost Church approaches. I have a dinner
Speaker 1: to get to with one of the mediums of Cassadega.
Speaker 1: I've got some secrets to keep, and I've got some
Speaker 1: conclusions to reach. See you there. And also I have
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen right now and I can't set boundaries, so
Speaker 1: I know my voice sounds weird. Have a good week.
Speaker 1: Ghost Church is a Cool Zone Media production created, written
Speaker 1: and hosted by me Jamie Loftus. The show is produced
Speaker 1: by Sophie Lichterman, edited by Ian Johnson, Our theme song
Speaker 1: is by Speedy Ortiz. That's Sadie Dupree, Andy Moholt, Audreys
Speaker 1: White Sides and Joey Dubeck. Music is by Zoe Bade.
Speaker 1: Huge thank you to Paul ev Tomkins for playing Sir
Speaker 1: Arthur Conan Doyle and to Robert Evans for playing Harry Dean.
Speaker 1: Additional parts were played by the wonderful Ghost Church team
Speaker 1: Ian Johnson and Sophie Lichton. And thanks guys, Keep the
Speaker 1: Kid