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Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.

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Speaker 2: They were terrified that he would come to town. They

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Speaker 2: were terrified that he was in the room disguise. He

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Speaker 2: was their worst nightmare.

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Speaker 1: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor

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Speaker 1: in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the

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Speaker 1: podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career,

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Speaker 1: research for my many audio and book projects has taken

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Speaker 1: me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down

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Speaker 1: with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers,

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Speaker 1: and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true

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Speaker 1: crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both

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Speaker 1: good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the

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Speaker 1: unpublished details behind their stories. Harry Houdini, the world's greatest magician,

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Speaker 1: wild audiences around the world in the nineteen twenties. He

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Speaker 1: must have felt invincible, but then an evil spirit cursed

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Speaker 1: him during a seance, and soon Houdini would wage war

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Speaker 1: against spiritualism. He set out to debunk fraudulent mediums and

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Speaker 1: expose Charlatan's for lying to people in mourning. Author Bradricka

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Speaker 1: tells us about Houdini's crusade from his book Lincoln's Ghost,

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Speaker 1: Houdini's War on Spiritualism, and the dark conspiracy against the

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Speaker 1: American Presidency. Let's talk about the last book. Give me

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Speaker 1: a quick summary of what that book was.

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Speaker 2: Missus Sherlock Holmes was a kind of standard true crime.

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Speaker 2: The seventeen year old girl gets tragically murdered, and the

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Speaker 2: book is about that mystery and how it's solved, but

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Speaker 2: more importantly, how it's solved by a middle aged woman,

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Speaker 2: Grace Hummiston, who the press called Missus Sherlock Holmes, who

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Speaker 2: just turned out, as I kept going into the book,

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Speaker 2: just this amazing person who did all this cool stuff.

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Speaker 1: And what year did that take place in?

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Speaker 2: That took place around the same time, nineteen sixteen, seventeen eighteen,

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Speaker 2: around that.

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Speaker 1: So you like me like the older stories, So you've

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Speaker 1: got now this book that's in nineteen twenty six. What

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Speaker 1: is it about these types of stories from one hundred

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Speaker 1: years ago that is intriguing to you when you have

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Speaker 1: so many more contemporary stories to pick from here?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I don't know.

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Speaker 2: This wasn't an era that I ever really liked as

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Speaker 2: kind of a student. I like the Victorians, and further

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Speaker 2: on from there, I think there's something about the past.

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Speaker 2: I think the real kind of easy answer is that

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Speaker 2: you don't have to interview any one, right, You don't

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Speaker 2: have to deal with any living people.

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Speaker 1: Don't tell everybody our secret, I know, but.

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Speaker 3: A lot of right.

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Speaker 2: I'm not saying all writers, but a lot of writers.

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Speaker 2: You know, we kind of stick to ourselves. And it's

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Speaker 2: just kind of nice to deal with the past in

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Speaker 2: your own way and kind of discover these people through

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Speaker 2: all these different ways that we try to. You know,

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Speaker 2: I don't know if they're always successful. I mean, we

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Speaker 2: certainly try, but try to get to the past. And

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Speaker 2: I just love the idea of visiting the past. I

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Speaker 2: should say this, but I'm obsessed with time travel, and

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Speaker 2: I think a lot of us start out that way,

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Speaker 2: and I think about it a lot, like maybe way

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Speaker 2: too much, But this is how you do it, right.

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Speaker 2: You do all the research and you try and recreate

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Speaker 2: that spot and time as much as you can.

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Speaker 3: And I think.

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Speaker 2: Until they invent it, until some scientists does it, this

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Speaker 2: is as good as it gets.

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Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about your history project.

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Speaker 3: Here.

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Speaker 1: We have a little bit of a crossover because I

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Speaker 1: have an audio book, The Ghost Club, which I think

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Speaker 1: you'll mention here, and you focus in on one really

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Speaker 1: important character who happened to be a member of the

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Speaker 1: Club but just has this sort of otherworldly existence at

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Speaker 1: so many different levels. And that's Harry Houdini, who I

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Speaker 1: have to think, no matter how young our audiences, people

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Speaker 1: have to have all heard about Harry Houdini. But why

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Speaker 1: don't you give me a little background on your main

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Speaker 1: character here.

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Speaker 2: I really hesitate in calling Houdini the kind of Taylor

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Speaker 2: Swift of the early nineteen hundreds. But his range was

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Speaker 2: he traveled the world, and he was on tour more

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Speaker 2: than the Grateful Dead War. He was on tour, you know,

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Speaker 2: three hundred and fifty days a year, and he would

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Speaker 2: just do his shows and everyone loved him, right, he

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Speaker 2: was hugely popular. And you know the end of the

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Speaker 2: eighteen hundreds, he starts with just simple magic, and he

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Speaker 2: starts with card tricks, and they call him the King

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Speaker 2: of Cards because he masters that. And then he moves

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Speaker 2: on to escapes, and he masters escapes, and he starts

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Speaker 2: doing more elaborate magic, more elaborate escapes, you know, everyone

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Speaker 2: kind of even if you don't know who Dini, you've

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Speaker 2: heard of the Escape from the Chinese Water Torture Cell,

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Speaker 2: which has this ridiculous kind of vaudeville name as like

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Speaker 2: the worst place you want to be and it's just

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Speaker 2: a box. They throw it in the in some water,

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Speaker 2: which is still pretty bad. But what I couldn't wrap

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Speaker 2: my head around is that at the kind of end

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Speaker 2: of his careers in his fifties, which back then you

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Speaker 2: know that was just it's wrapping up now, but he

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Speaker 2: changed everything. He's such an adaptable performer, but he focuses

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Speaker 2: on this real kind of social cultural phenomenon that's going

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Speaker 2: on in the world, which is spiritualism, and he makes

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Speaker 2: that his main focus. To me, it just seems like

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Speaker 2: I couldn't understand why did he do that? And that

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Speaker 2: was like kind of the beginning of the project.

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Speaker 1: You know, one of the things from researching Ghosts Club,

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Speaker 1: which was, you know about a social club of men

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Speaker 1: that started with Charles Dickens and still have gone to meetings,

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Speaker 1: still goes through today, where that you know, back then

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Speaker 1: you had all these affluent men, including Houdini and Arthur

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Speaker 1: Conan Doyle who wrote Cherlock Holmes who were eating French

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Speaker 1: food at very expensive restaurants. I mean, these are power

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Speaker 1: players in the world, Maharashi. I mean it was just incredible.

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Speaker 1: And then talking about ghosts and fairies and you know,

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Speaker 1: retelling all of these stories. It's always surprising to me

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Speaker 1: when I read the profiles of those people, including Abraham Lincoln,

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Speaker 1: who I feel like are rooted in science or you know,

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Speaker 1: something that you would think would be very very grounding

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Speaker 1: in a present world kind of way, and then they

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Speaker 1: believe in all of this other stuff that that could

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Speaker 1: have been considered wild back then. And Doyle was one

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Speaker 1: of them, because you know, so Sherla Combs is so scientific.

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Speaker 1: And I wondered about Whodini and I guess let's keep

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Speaker 1: talking about him if there was at one point did

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Speaker 1: he ever feel like he had a connection to the

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Speaker 1: other world when he was younger, because I know that

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Speaker 1: oftentimes happened with these men in the Ghost Club.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great question.

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Speaker 2: And I loved Ghost Club, by the way, and I

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Speaker 2: told you this off air, and I might as well

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Speaker 2: share it that this project was kind of built from

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Speaker 2: a project I wanted to do on the Ghost Club,

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Speaker 2: and then I saw, oh, no, Kate did a book,

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Speaker 2: So then I knew I was sunk, but I loved

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Speaker 2: what you did with it, and it just kind of

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Speaker 2: forced me to look at something a little differently. With Houdini,

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Speaker 2: he had this line that says, Whodini was a huge

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Speaker 2: fan of Abraham Lincoln. He like idolized him. And I thought,

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Speaker 2: of all the people, you know, Whodini was never political,

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Speaker 2: nothing like that, but he loved Lincoln.

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Speaker 3: So I wanted to explore that.

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Speaker 2: And it turned out when he was a kid, Whodini

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Speaker 2: went to a seance in Wisconsin where he grew up,

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Speaker 2: in Appleton, Wisconsin, in the heart of the Midwest, Midwest,

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Speaker 2: the most midwestiest you can be, if that's a word,

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Speaker 2: And the medium who was doing the seance brought forth Lincoln,

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Speaker 2: because Lincoln was one of the big ones that kind

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Speaker 2: of all mediums somehow had access to. And he brought

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Speaker 2: forth Lincoln and you know, I'll take questions, and Houdini,

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Speaker 2: who was this huge, little young Houdini, was a huge

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Speaker 2: deve ote of Lincoln. Knew all these facts and all

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Speaker 2: these trivia, and he asked kept asking Lincoln all this stuff.

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Speaker 2: You know, what did you do after your mother died

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Speaker 2: and so forth, and Lincoln, of course, the spirit Lincoln

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Speaker 2: got all the questions wrong, and that's when Houdini knew

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Speaker 2: that it was fake. And he was not so concerned

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Speaker 2: that it was fake, but he was more concerned that

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Speaker 2: it had kind of been presented as truth and it

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Speaker 2: had kind of really hurt his feelings. And afterwards he

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Speaker 2: kind of hung around and talked to the medium and

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Speaker 2: he said, you know, why, why did you do that?

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Speaker 3: And he said, that's what we all do.

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Speaker 2: And he had this kind of crashing down of all

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Speaker 2: his ideas of maybe what magic was and what other

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Speaker 2: things were, including the afterlife, and that was I think

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Speaker 2: the start of it. And there were other things along

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Speaker 2: the way that just made him more resolved to kind

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Speaker 2: of really wipe this. They always said they weren't a religion,

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Speaker 2: but they really acted like a religion, spiritualism, and he

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Speaker 2: wanted to wipe the earth clean of it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. I remember a story of a little girl from

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Speaker 1: this is from the Ghost Club. A little girl who

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Speaker 1: begged her father, please don't go. He was going on

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Speaker 1: a transatlantic flight from the UK to America. Please don't go,

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Speaker 1: Please don't go, And he said, she said, I think

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Speaker 1: the ship's going to go down, and he says, no,

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Speaker 1: don't be ridiculous and kisses her and gets on the Titanic.

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Speaker 1: And so this is one of the many stories you

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Speaker 1: know that they talked about in the Ghost Club. But

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Speaker 1: talk to me about how spiritualism was born, not specifically

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Speaker 1: in the United States, as in you know who came

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Speaker 1: up with it? But why why did it spread? Because

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Speaker 1: it did spread pretty quickly.

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Speaker 2: I'm so glad you asked that, because that's I'm like

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Speaker 2: giving you, like all these reasons why I wrote the book.

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Speaker 2: This is kind of a big reason. Is this is

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Speaker 2: a story about death.

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Speaker 3: It really is.

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Speaker 2: I mean you can say, like, well, it's a story

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Speaker 2: about death, but really, how death is life winning? It's death.

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Speaker 2: It starts with death. I mean, you have the Spanish

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Speaker 2: flu pandemic, and then you have roughly the same time

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Speaker 2: as World War One, and you have millions dead, millions dead.

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Speaker 2: And I started, you know, doing this right at the

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Speaker 2: end of the COVID pandemic, with the idea of you know,

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Speaker 2: there's all these people who have died in such a

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Speaker 2: short span of time.

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Speaker 3: What are we going to do? How do we deal

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Speaker 3: with this?

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Speaker 2: I still don't think we've dealt with it at all,

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Speaker 2: and when something like this happens, there's this sense of

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Speaker 2: death as this kind of existential crime in that this

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Speaker 2: isn't cool, right, that this is you know, we can

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Speaker 2: kind of accept that we have to accept death right

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Speaker 2: on a personal level people we know, and even with ourselves,

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Speaker 2: but when it happens like that, it seems to me,

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Speaker 2: and this isn't like an official analysis, but it seems

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Speaker 2: to me that people kind of fight back a little

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Speaker 2: bit more. And then you have the kind of resurgence

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Speaker 2: of spiritualism in America certainly where Okay, we're not going

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Speaker 2: to deal with all this pain and misery of all

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Speaker 2: these people gone. We can talk to them. They're still here.

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Speaker 2: We can pierce the veil, and you have, all of

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Speaker 2: a sudden, all these believers coming out of everywhere. And

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Speaker 2: just like you said before, it's kind of that little

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Speaker 2: step from the scientific like kind of stepping up or

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Speaker 2: stepping down where you look at it, it gets easier

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Speaker 2: to do when there's so much death. And Okay, I

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Speaker 2: believe in this because I want to talk to my

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Speaker 2: brother who.

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Speaker 3: Died in the war, or my father or whoever.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's that trauma of not just a death,

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Speaker 1: but with war it's not unexpected. But who what parent

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Speaker 1: is going to go in and think, you know that

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Speaker 1: my kid's going to be one of the ones who

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Speaker 1: are going to die. They're praying it doesn't happen. It's

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Speaker 1: that ripping that Lincoln felt, can you because I think

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Speaker 1: what I had seen too is, you know, it was

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Speaker 1: the rise after the Civil War where we hadn't experienced

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Speaker 1: for one hundred years that sort of you know, devastation,

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Speaker 1: and then Lincoln experienced it sort of directly, and that's

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Speaker 1: where we get the stories. Can you tell me about

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Speaker 1: Lincoln's experiences and his wife and all of that, just

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Speaker 1: a quick little summary.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So Lincoln loses his son very famously, and it's

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Speaker 2: so tragic, and it's one of those stories that just

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Speaker 2: no matter what version you read, it's just it's awful.

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Speaker 2: It's true. I think historians agree that his wife, Mary

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Speaker 2: Todd Lincoln looked to mediums for help. Again, like you said,

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Speaker 2: the trauma, the grief, and she said that she would

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Speaker 2: go to bed every night and see Willie at the

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Speaker 2: foot of her bed, see his ghost, you know. And

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Speaker 2: this is a mother going through trauma and of course

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Speaker 2: she has. You know, people have tried to diagnose her

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Speaker 2: for decades and decades, but you know, going through going

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Speaker 2: through a lot, and so there's definite points that she

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Speaker 2: consulted with the medium. There's later on, after her husband dies,

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Speaker 2: she takes a famous spirit photograph with the ghost of

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Speaker 2: Abe Lincoln. And this is one thing that the spiritualists

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Speaker 2: later on in Houdini's time, point to. They say, well,

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Speaker 2: you should believe even spiritualism because Abe Lincoln did. As

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Speaker 2: for Abe himself, there's no tried and true proof, but

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Speaker 2: there are plenty of anecdotes and plenty of stories. You know, mediums.

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Speaker 2: There are a couple that would write books that say,

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Speaker 2: you know, I sat with the president. I blacked out

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Speaker 2: and came to and he said, well, thank you. You've

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Speaker 2: just solved the problem of slavery. So that the mediums

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Speaker 2: are acting as the president. And this is what causes

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Speaker 2: this dangerous kind of thing that that Whodini is worried.

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Speaker 3: Is going to happen again.

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Speaker 2: But yeah, so there's plenty of this, and a lot

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Speaker 2: of people even back then would claim Lincoln talk to

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Speaker 2: them or came to them for comfort at the time

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Speaker 2: of his greatest grief.

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Speaker 1: So tell me Houdini's story. He grows up, he becomes

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Speaker 1: this incredible, you know, magician and entertainer. Tell me, you

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Speaker 1: know where you want to start with the and what

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Speaker 1: his adventure is like. It starts with a curse, is

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Speaker 1: what it sounds like.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I knew I couldn't do the big comprehensive biography

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Speaker 2: of Harry Houdini because that sounded like a lot of

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Speaker 2: work now, But I wanted to look at just this

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Speaker 2: part of his life where he fights spiritualism. It's kind

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Speaker 2: of the last two years of his life more or less.

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Speaker 2: Is he gets cursed by this famous there's a famous

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Speaker 2: medium in Boston, and he gets cursed and the spirit

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Speaker 2: says you're.

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Speaker 3: Going to die.

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Speaker 2: Houdini, enough is enough, and he doesn't take it seriously

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Speaker 2: at all, though there are some points later on he'll write, well,

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Speaker 2: if I get hit by a car, you're going to

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Speaker 2: say the curse worked. But sure enough, two years later

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Speaker 2: he's dead. So it's not that the curse worked, but

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Speaker 2: those are the facts. So I wanted to look at

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Speaker 2: those two years and see what he did and how

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Speaker 2: he did it to, like I said, fight against this

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Speaker 2: really powerful and you know, when you said, these are

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Speaker 2: powerful people. Spiritualism was a really powerful movement, and he

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Speaker 2: had found that they had infiltrated, you know, into kind

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Speaker 2: of all aspects, you know, not just the everyday American

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Speaker 2: who would go to a seants now and again as

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Speaker 2: a kind of this weird kind of spiritual entertainment, but

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Speaker 2: also into things like churches and businesses and even government.

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Speaker 2: So that's the part I wanted to focus on.

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Speaker 1: I'm wondering, you know, Houdini, just from my research with

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Speaker 1: Ghost Club, had clashed with quite a few people. You

295
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Speaker 1: had people who really believed deeply in spiritualism, and then

296
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Speaker 1: there were quite a lot of skeptics, and then there

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Speaker 1: were some in the middle. So do you get very

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Speaker 1: much into Houdini's very famous sort of a dissolving relationship

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Speaker 1: with Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes, who was an

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Speaker 1: incredible devoted spiritualist and you know, believed his wife was

301
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Speaker 1: automatic writing, I think is what his wife did. So

302
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Speaker 1: tell me, you know what about that relationship is before

303
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Speaker 1: the curse happens after that relationship or before it starts

304
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Speaker 1: to crumble.

305
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Speaker 2: Kind of around the same time, and I have a

306
00:17:13,359 --> 00:17:17,400
Speaker 2: great story for that. So Doyle and Houdini are at

307
00:17:17,440 --> 00:17:21,440
Speaker 2: one point great friends because Houdini wants to be the

308
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Speaker 2: perfect American, like really likes being friends with celebrities. He

309
00:17:26,640 --> 00:17:30,840
Speaker 2: thinks it's really cool, and he really respects Sir Arthur

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Speaker 2: and so forth. And then, as you alluded to, Sir

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Speaker 2: Arthur after World War One has a lot of loss

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Speaker 2: in his life and turns completely to spiritualism and becomes

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Speaker 2: really the most famous figurehead of the movement and speaks

314
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Speaker 2: really eloquently and goes on lecture tours and has slides

315
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Speaker 2: of just ghosts everywhere and converts people on the.

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Speaker 1: Spot and believes everybody. I think, I don't know if

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Speaker 1: I remember him criticizing any medium that he ran across.

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Speaker 1: He believed everything they said.

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Speaker 2: What drives Houdini nuts is that Sir Arthur, who is

320
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Speaker 2: very smart and like you said, it creates homes right,

321
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Speaker 2: the ultimate detective. What drives Houdini nuts is that Doyle

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Speaker 2: will find a way to explain every little thing. So

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Speaker 2: if a medium makes a mistake, Doyle has a reason why.

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Speaker 2: So a great example of this is Doyle invites Houdini

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Speaker 2: and his wife Bess to Atlantic City for a small

326
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Speaker 2: vacation with the family, et cetera. And while they're there, Doyle,

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Speaker 2: who's constantly trying to convert Houdini, says, you know, sit

328
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Speaker 2: with my wife and she will do a seance for

329
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Speaker 2: your mother. Houdini's mother had died in nineteen thirteen. They're

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Speaker 2: famously extremely close, and this really affects Sudini in a

331
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Speaker 2: great way. So they sit for the seance and she does,

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Speaker 2: like he says, automatic writing. She becomes possessed, her eyes

333
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Speaker 2: roll back in her head and she just starts writing.

334
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Speaker 2: And she presents these pages to Houdini and they're from

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Speaker 2: his mother, and she says, I miss you so much.

336
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Speaker 2: I can't wait till you come join me. It's so

337
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Speaker 2: wonderful here and so on and so forth. And Houdini

338
00:19:22,280 --> 00:19:24,880
Speaker 2: stares at her and he says, this is I'm paraphrasing.

339
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Speaker 2: He says, this is fine, but he says, my mother

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Speaker 2: never spoke a word of English. She was Hungarian, and

341
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Speaker 2: so of course the automatic writing was all in English.

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Speaker 2: And Sir Arthur says, well, in the afterlife they have

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Speaker 2: spiritual colleges, and she would have learned English by that,

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Speaker 2: Oh God. And Houdini's furious. And that's when the fight

345
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Speaker 2: is well and truly on.

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Speaker 1: Well because he's insulting Doyle's wife. Not just a medium.

347
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Speaker 1: I mean, this is Doyle's wife who he just absolutely

348
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Speaker 1: adored and believe and oh yeah, said she was brilliant,

349
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Speaker 1: and so yeah, that's pretty incredible. That must have been

350
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Speaker 1: very uncomfortable after that happened. So the curse comes up,

351
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Speaker 1: and let's say the medium was fake. What would be

352
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Speaker 1: the motivation do you think for a medium to declare

353
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Speaker 1: that one of the most famous people in the world

354
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Speaker 1: is going to die in the next however many years,

355
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Speaker 1: what's that motivation?

356
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that's the question.

357
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Speaker 2: Because the Spiritualists, like I said, were very powerful, and

358
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Speaker 2: they had a governing body called the National Spiritualists Association,

359
00:20:37,080 --> 00:20:41,920
Speaker 2: who's still around today. And they were really awesome. And

360
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Speaker 2: when I dealt with them, they gave me their secret

361
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Speaker 2: file they had on Houdini, which was really cool and

362
00:20:50,280 --> 00:20:53,480
Speaker 2: a lot of other really great stuff. They're super nice,

363
00:20:54,119 --> 00:20:57,119
Speaker 2: they were very powerful, they were making a lot of money.

364
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Speaker 2: Most of them, to a person, hated Houdini because if

365
00:21:02,160 --> 00:21:04,760
Speaker 2: he had his way, they would be out of a job.

366
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Speaker 2: They would be out of a very lucrative job. Mediums

367
00:21:08,040 --> 00:21:11,840
Speaker 2: were like making a lot of money and Houdini ultimately,

368
00:21:12,359 --> 00:21:14,600
Speaker 2: you know, one of the big narratives in the book

369
00:21:14,720 --> 00:21:18,880
Speaker 2: is he testifies before Congress and in support of a

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00:21:19,000 --> 00:21:21,320
Speaker 2: bill that it's kind of a small bill, it's an

371
00:21:21,359 --> 00:21:24,720
Speaker 2: anti fortune telling bill, but it's one of those bills

372
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Speaker 2: that can be interpreted as you know, kind of putting

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Speaker 2: restrictions on spiritualism and spiritualist readings. There would be a

374
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Speaker 2: license fee, there would be all this other sorts of stuff.

375
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Speaker 2: So they were looking, they were making a lot of money,

376
00:21:40,400 --> 00:21:43,440
Speaker 2: and they saw Houdini as a threat. And you could

377
00:21:43,440 --> 00:21:46,000
Speaker 2: see this, and they would have all these conferences like

378
00:21:46,080 --> 00:21:49,040
Speaker 2: all over the world, and they would just shout out

379
00:21:49,359 --> 00:21:52,800
Speaker 2: how terrible Houdini was and he was just the worst

380
00:21:52,880 --> 00:21:56,960
Speaker 2: thing to happen to the movement, and that people must

381
00:21:57,000 --> 00:21:59,640
Speaker 2: shut their eyes to what he was saying and believe

382
00:21:59,680 --> 00:22:04,080
Speaker 2: in the afterlife, believe in what their relatives were telling them.

383
00:22:04,400 --> 00:22:06,640
Speaker 2: So when I started to see that in all these

384
00:22:06,680 --> 00:22:10,640
Speaker 2: speeches that were just too spiritualist, it made me realize

385
00:22:10,720 --> 00:22:14,760
Speaker 2: that they were taking this much more seriously than a

386
00:22:14,880 --> 00:22:18,679
Speaker 2: kind of parlor trick of let's spook Udini and curse them.

387
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Speaker 1: You would think that must dim from complaints or something

388
00:22:23,280 --> 00:22:25,560
Speaker 1: of the way I framed it in Ghost Club is

389
00:22:25,760 --> 00:22:28,479
Speaker 1: picturing a woman who was scraping together all of her

390
00:22:28,520 --> 00:22:31,440
Speaker 1: money because she lost her son in World War One.

391
00:22:32,040 --> 00:22:34,480
Speaker 1: And you know, I'm not talking about these influential men

392
00:22:34,520 --> 00:22:36,880
Speaker 1: who had you know, millions, hundreds of thousands and would

393
00:22:36,920 --> 00:22:40,200
Speaker 1: meet in London like the woman who is saving all

394
00:22:40,240 --> 00:22:42,959
Speaker 1: of her money and maybe not even feeding her kids

395
00:22:43,000 --> 00:22:45,720
Speaker 1: because she wants to connect with her dead soldier son

396
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Speaker 1: one more time. Do you think that was the motivation

397
00:22:48,520 --> 00:22:50,200
Speaker 1: or do you think there was some sort of weird

398
00:22:50,600 --> 00:22:55,679
Speaker 1: competition between the standard religions you know as we know

399
00:22:55,800 --> 00:22:57,480
Speaker 1: it and spiritualism.

400
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Speaker 3: I think yes to all that.

401
00:22:59,160 --> 00:23:03,240
Speaker 2: I think there was definitely this kind of lower middle

402
00:23:03,280 --> 00:23:08,520
Speaker 2: class appeal to spiritualism. Those are the folks that lost

403
00:23:08,560 --> 00:23:13,639
Speaker 2: the most people in both tragedies, and also kind of

404
00:23:14,000 --> 00:23:15,760
Speaker 2: I don't want to say, but more like kind of

405
00:23:16,000 --> 00:23:20,159
Speaker 2: open to this kind of alternative religion. Even though they

406
00:23:20,200 --> 00:23:23,320
Speaker 2: said it was never a religion, it totally was. But

407
00:23:23,720 --> 00:23:28,680
Speaker 2: it was also a competition with Houdini for entertainment dollars,

408
00:23:29,240 --> 00:23:32,000
Speaker 2: you know, because people pointed out and it's hard not

409
00:23:32,119 --> 00:23:34,919
Speaker 2: to see it that way. That is he kind of

410
00:23:35,240 --> 00:23:37,760
Speaker 2: is that the apex of his career and this other

411
00:23:38,240 --> 00:23:43,280
Speaker 2: like movement is in every city in America, you have people,

412
00:23:43,320 --> 00:23:45,120
Speaker 2: you know, what should I pay for? Should I go

413
00:23:45,400 --> 00:23:50,240
Speaker 2: punt down money for the magician or for another kind

414
00:23:50,240 --> 00:23:52,960
Speaker 2: of magician that would let me talk to like you said,

415
00:23:53,000 --> 00:23:54,040
Speaker 2: my dead son.

416
00:23:57,240 --> 00:24:00,560
Speaker 1: So his relationship with Doyle is sort of this integrated.

417
00:24:00,960 --> 00:24:04,879
Speaker 1: He gets this curse and he's also testing mediums. I

418
00:24:04,920 --> 00:24:07,359
Speaker 1: think is from what I remember. Can you tell me

419
00:24:07,400 --> 00:24:09,520
Speaker 1: some of the good stories that you came up with,

420
00:24:09,640 --> 00:24:13,080
Speaker 1: because I remember a pair of brothers who would drag

421
00:24:13,160 --> 00:24:16,399
Speaker 1: a a closet I think, are a cupboard all over

422
00:24:16,480 --> 00:24:20,240
Speaker 1: America and the Davenport brothers, I think, yeah, right, and

423
00:24:20,280 --> 00:24:22,119
Speaker 1: then you would hear Knox, and you would hear a

424
00:24:22,119 --> 00:24:23,880
Speaker 1: piano playing and all kinds of stuff, and the two

425
00:24:23,880 --> 00:24:26,719
Speaker 1: guys were standing there. So there were a lot of

426
00:24:26,760 --> 00:24:31,840
Speaker 1: opportunities to disprove table spinning and the automatic writing, and

427
00:24:32,000 --> 00:24:35,320
Speaker 1: there were physical tools that medium used. So was he

428
00:24:35,800 --> 00:24:38,080
Speaker 1: able to dispel some stuff in a creative way?

429
00:24:38,440 --> 00:24:38,800
Speaker 3: Yeah?

430
00:24:38,920 --> 00:24:41,720
Speaker 2: I describe parts of this to somebody. They said, well

431
00:24:41,760 --> 00:24:44,760
Speaker 2: is this scary? Is this book scary? And I'm like, well, yeah,

432
00:24:44,840 --> 00:24:47,200
Speaker 2: some parts are terrifying, but some parts are like really

433
00:24:47,280 --> 00:24:51,400
Speaker 2: hilarious because some of the stuff that both sides would do,

434
00:24:51,920 --> 00:24:54,920
Speaker 2: that the spiritualists would do to try and convince their

435
00:24:55,840 --> 00:24:58,200
Speaker 2: people who had paid good money, but then the people

436
00:24:58,200 --> 00:25:00,240
Speaker 2: are trying to catch them. It's just really this cat

437
00:25:00,280 --> 00:25:04,679
Speaker 2: and mouse. So Houdini had this group that he called

438
00:25:04,760 --> 00:25:08,640
Speaker 2: the Secret Service because he kind of saw himself as

439
00:25:08,680 --> 00:25:12,040
Speaker 2: this kind of president of magic, which he really was,

440
00:25:13,000 --> 00:25:14,720
Speaker 2: but he had this group called the Secret Service, and

441
00:25:14,760 --> 00:25:17,919
Speaker 2: they would go around the entire country. They would usually

442
00:25:18,400 --> 00:25:20,520
Speaker 2: go ahead of him where he would go on tour

443
00:25:20,600 --> 00:25:23,600
Speaker 2: and kind of stake the place out. And some of

444
00:25:23,600 --> 00:25:26,919
Speaker 2: the best parts of this is that they were mostly women.

445
00:25:27,680 --> 00:25:29,639
Speaker 2: His best agents were women.

446
00:25:29,880 --> 00:25:32,880
Speaker 1: Do you think mediums that's their number one client when

447
00:25:32,920 --> 00:25:36,280
Speaker 1: they think it's women mostly? Yeah, interesting, Yeah, that was

448
00:25:36,320 --> 00:25:36,880
Speaker 1: the reason.

449
00:25:37,160 --> 00:25:41,480
Speaker 2: And it was because people, you know, thought the secret

450
00:25:41,520 --> 00:25:45,560
Speaker 2: agent would be the guy, and also that they said

451
00:25:45,720 --> 00:25:50,639
Speaker 2: that the woman agent could disguise herself in a number

452
00:25:50,680 --> 00:25:54,080
Speaker 2: of different ways. So his number one agent, and my

453
00:25:54,280 --> 00:25:57,600
Speaker 2: favorite person in the whole book was this woman named

454
00:25:58,040 --> 00:26:02,639
Speaker 2: Rose Mackenberg and she was from Brooklyn and she just

455
00:26:02,720 --> 00:26:06,200
Speaker 2: got hooked up with Houdini in kind of a really

456
00:26:06,240 --> 00:26:09,399
Speaker 2: weird way. She goes to a seance and she just

457
00:26:09,560 --> 00:26:13,719
Speaker 2: totally debunks it because she's just this no nonsense, you know,

458
00:26:13,880 --> 00:26:17,119
Speaker 2: don't tell me this is a ghost when it's really this.

459
00:26:17,400 --> 00:26:22,600
Speaker 2: And he hires her and she goes on this solo crusade,

460
00:26:23,080 --> 00:26:25,800
Speaker 2: even away from Houdini but working for him, of just

461
00:26:25,840 --> 00:26:28,840
Speaker 2: shutting down all these mediums. And she has a million stories,

462
00:26:28,880 --> 00:26:32,600
Speaker 2: like there's one like you said, where instruments would play

463
00:26:33,200 --> 00:26:36,240
Speaker 2: and there was a drum playing and a trumpet was

464
00:26:36,280 --> 00:26:39,760
Speaker 2: playing and this is all and everyone can see this,

465
00:26:39,920 --> 00:26:41,919
Speaker 2: and the idea is that, oh, it must be the

466
00:26:42,000 --> 00:26:45,399
Speaker 2: spirits who are doing right, and Rose just refused to

467
00:26:45,440 --> 00:26:48,199
Speaker 2: believe it. So she comes back the next night. She

468
00:26:48,680 --> 00:26:53,919
Speaker 2: disguises herself as this old lady, and once the lights

469
00:26:53,960 --> 00:26:57,440
Speaker 2: go out and they start doing it again, she gets

470
00:26:57,480 --> 00:27:00,240
Speaker 2: off her seat and crawls around the room and she

471
00:27:00,359 --> 00:27:04,240
Speaker 2: goes behind the drum, the bass drum, and looks inside

472
00:27:04,280 --> 00:27:07,879
Speaker 2: and she's like, will I touch ectoplayism? And she writes

473
00:27:07,920 --> 00:27:10,280
Speaker 2: all these great like diaries and stuff, so we have

474
00:27:10,440 --> 00:27:14,600
Speaker 2: this awesome first person view of it all, and she

475
00:27:14,720 --> 00:27:18,800
Speaker 2: finds there's a guy in there, a little person who's

476
00:27:18,840 --> 00:27:21,560
Speaker 2: just banging the drum, and there's this great moment where

477
00:27:21,880 --> 00:27:24,720
Speaker 2: they both just stare at each other because they're terrified

478
00:27:25,160 --> 00:27:27,240
Speaker 2: that one's gonna tell on the other, and they just

479
00:27:27,359 --> 00:27:30,920
Speaker 2: back off and she later, you know, busts the medium

480
00:27:30,920 --> 00:27:33,600
Speaker 2: and it's all over. But there's there's just so many

481
00:27:33,680 --> 00:27:37,880
Speaker 2: stories like this of these people who weren't Houdini but

482
00:27:38,040 --> 00:27:42,160
Speaker 2: believed in his crusade that would go and break down

483
00:27:42,240 --> 00:27:45,760
Speaker 2: even you know, from the simplest local spirit medium too.

484
00:27:45,880 --> 00:27:50,560
Speaker 2: There's another there's a journalist named Virginia Swain who gets

485
00:27:50,560 --> 00:27:55,520
Speaker 2: sent to He sends to a spiritualist camp in Illinois

486
00:27:55,520 --> 00:27:59,480
Speaker 2: called Chesterfield. It's still there today, and she's there for

487
00:27:59,520 --> 00:28:02,560
Speaker 2: a couple weeks and the stuff that happens is just

488
00:28:02,840 --> 00:28:07,399
Speaker 2: completely bananas. But at the end they discover who she

489
00:28:07,600 --> 00:28:10,760
Speaker 2: is and they try to lyncher, but she gets out

490
00:28:10,760 --> 00:28:14,080
Speaker 2: in time and reports it to the newspapers and it

491
00:28:14,119 --> 00:28:15,159
Speaker 2: runs in syndication.

492
00:28:15,880 --> 00:28:21,720
Speaker 1: It's amazing. And you know the stories of debunking these mediums,

493
00:28:21,880 --> 00:28:24,280
Speaker 1: I mean, they've range from what I found, They ranged

494
00:28:24,320 --> 00:28:27,959
Speaker 1: to really simple spotting. So you know, we can talk

495
00:28:28,000 --> 00:28:32,040
Speaker 1: about One of my favorite things is the spiritual photography.

496
00:28:32,040 --> 00:28:33,760
Speaker 1: I can't remember if there's a is there a phrase

497
00:28:33,800 --> 00:28:35,280
Speaker 1: for that or is that what it is?

498
00:28:35,560 --> 00:28:36,520
Speaker 3: Yeah? Spirit photos?

499
00:28:36,600 --> 00:28:40,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and you know the idea of the double exposure,

500
00:28:40,200 --> 00:28:44,480
Speaker 1: and people didn't really understand that, So did Whodini. Do

501
00:28:44,560 --> 00:28:46,960
Speaker 1: you think, like, how would he know or how were

502
00:28:47,000 --> 00:28:50,680
Speaker 1: these people know what to look for? And how would

503
00:28:50,720 --> 00:28:55,040
Speaker 1: they not get exposed to the medium world? You know,

504
00:28:55,160 --> 00:28:58,240
Speaker 1: as well, somebody's out there looking at you. Be careful

505
00:28:58,240 --> 00:29:00,480
Speaker 1: and this is how you might change yourself so that

506
00:29:00,520 --> 00:29:02,000
Speaker 1: you don't get caught or something like that.

507
00:29:02,640 --> 00:29:04,320
Speaker 3: Oh, that's such a great question. Yeah.

508
00:29:04,400 --> 00:29:08,040
Speaker 2: They were terrified of that. They were terrified that he

509
00:29:08,080 --> 00:29:11,120
Speaker 2: would come to town. They were terrified that he was

510
00:29:11,320 --> 00:29:16,040
Speaker 2: in the room disguised. He was their worst nightmare. And

511
00:29:16,240 --> 00:29:19,200
Speaker 2: the cool thing I found about Whodini is that he

512
00:29:19,240 --> 00:29:21,480
Speaker 2: would kind of he just assumed it was all fake.

513
00:29:22,160 --> 00:29:25,320
Speaker 2: And the way he would know for sure is if

514
00:29:25,360 --> 00:29:27,960
Speaker 2: he could replicate it, because that's how he did his

515
00:29:28,000 --> 00:29:30,080
Speaker 2: magic tricks. He would see a magic trick and say,

516
00:29:30,080 --> 00:29:31,840
Speaker 2: well I can do that, and they'd figure it out.

517
00:29:32,280 --> 00:29:35,960
Speaker 2: So with the Spirit photos, he just got a camera

518
00:29:36,240 --> 00:29:39,720
Speaker 2: and just messed around with it at his house in Harlem,

519
00:29:40,160 --> 00:29:43,400
Speaker 2: and they just there's stories of him and his brother,

520
00:29:43,680 --> 00:29:46,240
Speaker 2: just like you know, messing around with this camera for hours,

521
00:29:47,000 --> 00:29:50,640
Speaker 2: and he eventually produces a series of photos and he

522
00:29:50,720 --> 00:29:55,040
Speaker 2: produces one a very famous one where he's talking to Lincoln,

523
00:29:55,360 --> 00:29:58,640
Speaker 2: and he releases this one and some of the New

524
00:29:58,720 --> 00:30:02,120
Speaker 2: York papers pick it up, like Whodini sees the light,

525
00:30:02,240 --> 00:30:06,520
Speaker 2: Whodini speaks to Lincoln. And then he comes around, you know,

526
00:30:06,600 --> 00:30:09,120
Speaker 2: after all this and says, you know, you're all morons.

527
00:30:09,200 --> 00:30:11,000
Speaker 3: I did this in my basement.

528
00:30:11,520 --> 00:30:13,840
Speaker 2: And then he shows how he does it like he

529
00:30:13,880 --> 00:30:17,360
Speaker 2: does like a newspaper or magazine article where he goes

530
00:30:17,360 --> 00:30:20,360
Speaker 2: step by step how he made the spirit photo. So

531
00:30:20,400 --> 00:30:23,680
Speaker 2: he tries to debunk it and make it as practical

532
00:30:23,720 --> 00:30:24,520
Speaker 2: as possible.

533
00:30:24,840 --> 00:30:27,640
Speaker 1: Do you think that convinced people? And the press is

534
00:30:27,720 --> 00:30:31,560
Speaker 1: covering it right? Does this get through to the people?

535
00:30:31,720 --> 00:30:33,840
Speaker 1: And it was an extraordinary number. I can't remember how

536
00:30:33,880 --> 00:30:36,800
Speaker 1: many Americans it was, one hundred thousand or something associated

537
00:30:36,800 --> 00:30:39,920
Speaker 1: themselves with spiritualism in the twenties a lot. Did you

538
00:30:39,960 --> 00:30:41,040
Speaker 1: have a better number than that?

539
00:30:41,320 --> 00:30:43,800
Speaker 2: I did not have a number, and I think it

540
00:30:44,080 --> 00:30:48,160
Speaker 2: was a ton more. Yeah, because just looking at like

541
00:30:48,400 --> 00:30:53,520
Speaker 2: every city in the newspaper they would advertise, so even

542
00:30:53,560 --> 00:30:55,840
Speaker 2: if they didn't have a church like New York and

543
00:30:56,000 --> 00:30:58,760
Speaker 2: DC and all the big cities would have a church

544
00:30:59,040 --> 00:31:03,560
Speaker 2: or many church, but there were always people coming around

545
00:31:04,240 --> 00:31:07,040
Speaker 2: or that were just camped out there as like your

546
00:31:07,080 --> 00:31:10,800
Speaker 2: local media, right, I've heard one hundred the same for

547
00:31:10,920 --> 00:31:14,000
Speaker 2: people that were kind of card carrying members. But there

548
00:31:14,000 --> 00:31:17,360
Speaker 2: were so many that were just doing it, going to

549
00:31:17,440 --> 00:31:20,800
Speaker 2: the seances, talking these people, paying to these people. So

550
00:31:20,960 --> 00:31:24,360
Speaker 2: it's hard to think. But your first question is the

551
00:31:24,400 --> 00:31:27,840
Speaker 2: best one, is like did this work? Did he convince anybody?

552
00:31:28,240 --> 00:31:31,560
Speaker 2: Because that's the one I really wanted to know, because

553
00:31:31,600 --> 00:31:35,440
Speaker 2: I think that resonates today a little bit. You know,

554
00:31:35,520 --> 00:31:40,800
Speaker 2: here's all this overwhelming evidence. Can I convince you? No? Okay,

555
00:31:41,480 --> 00:31:44,600
Speaker 2: So I don't know if it convinced as many people.

556
00:31:44,960 --> 00:31:47,640
Speaker 2: I know it didn't convince as many people as he

557
00:31:47,760 --> 00:31:48,360
Speaker 2: wanted it to.

558
00:31:49,640 --> 00:31:53,000
Speaker 1: And he never expressed doubts in any way. I mean

559
00:31:53,040 --> 00:31:56,760
Speaker 1: with the loss of his mother. So William Yates, the poet,

560
00:31:56,760 --> 00:31:58,680
Speaker 1: the famous poet, was also in the ghost Club. He

561
00:31:58,760 --> 00:32:01,600
Speaker 1: had lost his mother also, and that is what tipped

562
00:32:01,640 --> 00:32:06,320
Speaker 1: him into spiritualism. Was this just awful loss. So it's

563
00:32:06,320 --> 00:32:09,040
Speaker 1: interesting when one one way goes, you know, one person

564
00:32:09,080 --> 00:32:11,240
Speaker 1: goes one way and one goes the other. And it

565
00:32:11,240 --> 00:32:14,560
Speaker 1: seems like Houdini was angry about being lied to about

566
00:32:14,560 --> 00:32:17,160
Speaker 1: his mother, and that's kind of what at least the

567
00:32:17,160 --> 00:32:19,880
Speaker 1: emotional part of it. What about his wife, What did

568
00:32:19,880 --> 00:32:20,720
Speaker 1: his wife believe?

569
00:32:20,880 --> 00:32:21,960
Speaker 3: Was it best best?

570
00:32:22,120 --> 00:32:27,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, Houdini did try to reach his mother through mediums,

571
00:32:28,000 --> 00:32:30,720
Speaker 2: and it was almost I think it was doomed to

572
00:32:30,760 --> 00:32:34,920
Speaker 2: fail because he kind of knew it wasn't going to work.

573
00:32:34,960 --> 00:32:37,320
Speaker 2: But there's lots of stories and lots of anecdotes that

574
00:32:37,360 --> 00:32:39,560
Speaker 2: he did try and he was kept trying, and that

575
00:32:39,960 --> 00:32:42,960
Speaker 2: one of the main reasons he went after this, just

576
00:32:43,000 --> 00:32:45,640
Speaker 2: like you said went after the spiritualist, is because they

577
00:32:45,720 --> 00:32:49,600
Speaker 2: let him down. It was also because there he had

578
00:32:49,680 --> 00:32:52,280
Speaker 2: all these scrap books that he collected of all these

579
00:32:52,440 --> 00:32:56,920
Speaker 2: evil things that spiritualism had done to people who like

580
00:32:57,040 --> 00:33:01,240
Speaker 2: driving them to suicide or kill their parents. But Bess

581
00:33:01,360 --> 00:33:05,680
Speaker 2: is the real enigma because no one knows what she was.

582
00:33:05,760 --> 00:33:09,720
Speaker 2: His constant companion. She was more than you know, just

583
00:33:09,800 --> 00:33:13,280
Speaker 2: the kind of magician's wife. She was his assistant on

584
00:33:13,360 --> 00:33:16,480
Speaker 2: stage forever in the beginning, and then kind of you know,

585
00:33:16,560 --> 00:33:20,160
Speaker 2: did some more behind the scenes stuff as to what

586
00:33:20,200 --> 00:33:25,680
Speaker 2: she believed nobody knows. There's very little left behind. After

587
00:33:25,800 --> 00:33:30,080
Speaker 2: Houdini died, she started doing a seance for him to

588
00:33:30,240 --> 00:33:33,040
Speaker 2: contact him. But it's hard to tell, like how much

589
00:33:33,040 --> 00:33:36,280
Speaker 2: of that was heartfelt and how much of that was

590
00:33:36,360 --> 00:33:40,560
Speaker 2: a kind of promotional stunt, right, yeahmative, But during the

591
00:33:40,960 --> 00:33:44,480
Speaker 2: mix of it, when it's when Houdini's cursed and you know,

592
00:33:44,560 --> 00:33:49,520
Speaker 2: in his crusade, it's really hard to see what she thought.

593
00:33:49,680 --> 00:33:53,040
Speaker 2: She was a real enigma to me, and I found

594
00:33:53,080 --> 00:33:56,240
Speaker 2: something about her. I think about her in the book

595
00:33:56,280 --> 00:33:58,680
Speaker 2: that I put in an epilogue that might be kind

596
00:33:58,680 --> 00:34:01,000
Speaker 2: of like the missing key to all of it.

597
00:34:01,400 --> 00:34:05,800
Speaker 1: Does Houdini throughout all of this, is he ever stumped?

598
00:34:06,120 --> 00:34:09,920
Speaker 1: Do you think by a medium or you know, somebody

599
00:34:10,080 --> 00:34:12,719
Speaker 1: who is you know, claiming to be I mean they

600
00:34:12,760 --> 00:34:14,160
Speaker 1: called him a lot of different things. It was like

601
00:34:14,239 --> 00:34:18,279
Speaker 1: mystic mediums. Yeah, the people who were kind of the conductors.

602
00:34:18,680 --> 00:34:21,239
Speaker 1: Did he find anybody who stumped him or that you

603
00:34:21,320 --> 00:34:23,879
Speaker 1: know of, or where he came close to saying.

604
00:34:23,880 --> 00:34:27,279
Speaker 3: Maybe, I don't know, Yeah, there was one, and there's

605
00:34:27,320 --> 00:34:27,680
Speaker 3: only one.

606
00:34:27,800 --> 00:34:30,759
Speaker 2: Because you get this feeling that he Whodini was kind

607
00:34:30,760 --> 00:34:34,239
Speaker 2: of I mean, he fascinates me. I don't claim to

608
00:34:34,320 --> 00:34:37,520
Speaker 2: know him at all. He's one of those subjects where

609
00:34:37,560 --> 00:34:39,480
Speaker 2: you just kind of have to write all the way

610
00:34:39,480 --> 00:34:42,200
Speaker 2: around him and then you get kind of kind of

611
00:34:42,239 --> 00:34:43,800
Speaker 2: get a sense of it. But a lot of times

612
00:34:43,840 --> 00:34:46,080
Speaker 2: I think he was kind of a jerk. Like people

613
00:34:46,080 --> 00:34:49,000
Speaker 2: would say, here's my medium act you mean, he would

614
00:34:49,040 --> 00:34:51,960
Speaker 2: just say, no, that's bunk, that's you know, that's ridiculous.

615
00:34:52,080 --> 00:34:54,400
Speaker 2: There was one that stumped him that he didn't know

616
00:34:54,440 --> 00:34:57,080
Speaker 2: how they did it. There was some woman who had

617
00:34:57,120 --> 00:35:01,080
Speaker 2: died in Los Angeles. They took a picture of her

618
00:35:01,160 --> 00:35:04,839
Speaker 2: casket because it's you know, that's what people did, and

619
00:35:05,080 --> 00:35:08,840
Speaker 2: there was this weird light around it, like by her head.

620
00:35:09,520 --> 00:35:12,520
Speaker 2: And for some reason he always would come back and say,

621
00:35:12,600 --> 00:35:15,520
Speaker 2: this is the one I couldn't explain. And I don't

622
00:35:15,520 --> 00:35:17,600
Speaker 2: know why, because it seems like that would be like

623
00:35:17,760 --> 00:35:22,680
Speaker 2: the most easiest thing to do. But for whatever reason,

624
00:35:22,760 --> 00:35:25,600
Speaker 2: he said, and he would said this a bunch of times,

625
00:35:25,680 --> 00:35:27,680
Speaker 2: this is the one I cannot explain.

626
00:35:27,960 --> 00:35:31,960
Speaker 1: It's interesting. I wonder what people think with spirit photography.

627
00:35:32,120 --> 00:35:34,080
Speaker 1: I think it was William Hope was the big one,

628
00:35:34,200 --> 00:35:37,160
Speaker 1: the big spirit. He was the one who had Doyle

629
00:35:37,239 --> 00:35:41,280
Speaker 1: with Lincoln and you know, some really famous photos. Yeah,

630
00:35:41,320 --> 00:35:44,880
Speaker 1: I wonder what the explanation was for why still film

631
00:35:45,000 --> 00:35:48,640
Speaker 1: would be able to pick up on a spirit or

632
00:35:48,800 --> 00:35:50,919
Speaker 1: a light associated with the spirit with that the human

633
00:35:50,960 --> 00:35:53,280
Speaker 1: eye wouldn't come up with. And I always just thought

634
00:35:53,640 --> 00:35:56,600
Speaker 1: I wish somebody could explain what they were thinking with that.

635
00:35:56,600 --> 00:35:59,560
Speaker 2: That's a great question, because I think we take that

636
00:35:59,719 --> 00:36:04,440
Speaker 2: for ranted. And it's not like photography was new, but

637
00:36:04,560 --> 00:36:08,480
Speaker 2: it was still I think photography was mysterious, yeah right,

638
00:36:09,400 --> 00:36:13,200
Speaker 2: not like not the average person knew how to do it.

639
00:36:13,960 --> 00:36:17,560
Speaker 2: And it seemed like if there was something with anything

640
00:36:17,719 --> 00:36:20,560
Speaker 2: visual that if you saw it, it was like that

641
00:36:20,680 --> 00:36:22,920
Speaker 2: kind of took the place of I don't want to

642
00:36:22,920 --> 00:36:24,960
Speaker 2: say it took the place of science because science is

643
00:36:25,800 --> 00:36:29,880
Speaker 2: seen two. But it was so easy to believe what

644
00:36:29,920 --> 00:36:33,520
Speaker 2: you would see. And this like Doyle's famous He makes

645
00:36:33,200 --> 00:36:38,319
Speaker 2: his film The Lost World with the dinosaurs, and he

646
00:36:38,480 --> 00:36:40,719
Speaker 2: shows it in New York and people are like, oh

647
00:36:40,800 --> 00:36:43,200
Speaker 2: my god, these are real, and if you've seen them,

648
00:36:43,520 --> 00:36:47,640
Speaker 2: they look like gumby, right, But it's if you see it,

649
00:36:47,760 --> 00:36:50,080
Speaker 2: you believe it. And I don't want to say that, well,

650
00:36:50,120 --> 00:36:53,319
Speaker 2: you know, people were just naive in the twenties, but

651
00:36:53,840 --> 00:36:58,080
Speaker 2: I think it's just the scope of experience, of historical

652
00:36:58,160 --> 00:36:59,880
Speaker 2: experience of what you see.

653
00:37:00,040 --> 00:37:04,280
Speaker 1: Well, of course Doyle hints at his beliefs in Christmas Carol,

654
00:37:04,320 --> 00:37:07,359
Speaker 1: one of my favorite stories, but that Beneezer Scrooge and

655
00:37:07,400 --> 00:37:11,279
Speaker 1: all of that. So the opposite just having faith, the

656
00:37:11,360 --> 00:37:15,719
Speaker 1: opposite of the very clinical and scientific Sherlock Holmes. So

657
00:37:16,280 --> 00:37:19,680
Speaker 1: there's this two year period right where Houdini's going on

658
00:37:19,680 --> 00:37:22,560
Speaker 1: this crusade. What is he thinking the endgame is going

659
00:37:22,600 --> 00:37:26,239
Speaker 1: to be? Because he cannot debunk everybody in America, and

660
00:37:26,280 --> 00:37:28,920
Speaker 1: of course there were just plenty in the UK, and

661
00:37:29,000 --> 00:37:31,319
Speaker 1: he would come to the UK often. Did you get

662
00:37:31,320 --> 00:37:33,319
Speaker 1: a sense for was it going to Congress and getting

663
00:37:33,360 --> 00:37:36,040
Speaker 1: some kind of legislation all the books to stop these people?

664
00:37:36,280 --> 00:37:39,920
Speaker 2: He really wanted that bill to pass. It's this just

665
00:37:40,120 --> 00:37:44,200
Speaker 2: really outrageous. All these scenes of him in front of

666
00:37:44,440 --> 00:37:48,799
Speaker 2: the Congressional committee, like doing magic tricks to try and

667
00:37:48,840 --> 00:37:49,520
Speaker 2: convince him.

668
00:37:50,200 --> 00:37:51,440
Speaker 3: It's just it's priceless.

669
00:37:51,480 --> 00:37:53,799
Speaker 2: But I think the answer is he really wanted that

670
00:37:53,880 --> 00:37:56,960
Speaker 2: to pass, but he really thought he could wipe it out.

671
00:37:57,080 --> 00:38:00,960
Speaker 2: I mean, he had that kind of ego. He was Houdini.

672
00:38:01,320 --> 00:38:04,120
Speaker 2: He thought everything was possible. And of course you can't

673
00:38:04,160 --> 00:38:06,879
Speaker 2: wipe out, you know that kind of phenomenon. It kind

674
00:38:06,880 --> 00:38:11,000
Speaker 2: of ends eventually, kind of naturally on its own, and

675
00:38:11,040 --> 00:38:12,800
Speaker 2: plenty of people believe in it today.

676
00:38:13,040 --> 00:38:13,239
Speaker 1: Yeah.

677
00:38:13,320 --> 00:38:15,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think he thought he could, he could really

678
00:38:15,280 --> 00:38:17,440
Speaker 2: do it. He was that kind of manic.

679
00:38:17,960 --> 00:38:19,920
Speaker 1: So one of the things I think about, and what

680
00:38:20,000 --> 00:38:21,480
Speaker 1: I was thinking about in the book, and I knew

681
00:38:21,480 --> 00:38:23,719
Speaker 1: you would too, is is that idea of having that

682
00:38:23,840 --> 00:38:28,080
Speaker 1: faith versus the scientific whatever the evidence is, and having

683
00:38:28,239 --> 00:38:31,839
Speaker 1: somebody go through and debunking, and how upsetting that must

684
00:38:31,880 --> 00:38:34,360
Speaker 1: have been to the true believers. And then sometimes I

685
00:38:34,400 --> 00:38:37,600
Speaker 1: think does it do any harm? Like? What is the harm?

686
00:38:37,719 --> 00:38:39,920
Speaker 1: So you've got the woman that I made up. She's

687
00:38:40,239 --> 00:38:42,799
Speaker 1: saved up her money, she's lost a son, she's in

688
00:38:42,880 --> 00:38:46,160
Speaker 1: a lot of pain, and she has a medium. The

689
00:38:46,200 --> 00:38:49,480
Speaker 1: medium says, your son is standing over your right shoulder,

690
00:38:50,040 --> 00:38:53,320
Speaker 1: and he is telling me I love you, mom, Everything

691
00:38:53,400 --> 00:38:55,840
Speaker 1: is fine. I will see you when I'm meant to

692
00:38:55,880 --> 00:38:58,160
Speaker 1: see you, and you know, God be with you or

693
00:38:58,200 --> 00:39:01,279
Speaker 1: whatever he says. So I was thinking about that, and

694
00:39:01,280 --> 00:39:03,319
Speaker 1: I had wondered if Hodini had thought about that two way.

695
00:39:03,520 --> 00:39:05,120
Speaker 1: Is there harm actually harm in that?

696
00:39:05,600 --> 00:39:08,799
Speaker 2: I don't think there is. I think it's kind of wonderful.

697
00:39:09,160 --> 00:39:13,440
Speaker 2: I think Houdini though there was no either or, and

698
00:39:13,520 --> 00:39:16,280
Speaker 2: he would say I know exactly what he would say.

699
00:39:17,080 --> 00:39:21,040
Speaker 2: He would tell the story of the Robbins family. Husband

700
00:39:21,080 --> 00:39:24,040
Speaker 2: and wife in Iowa live on a farm trying to

701
00:39:24,080 --> 00:39:27,320
Speaker 2: have a child. They finally succeed. They have this beautiful

702
00:39:27,400 --> 00:39:32,840
Speaker 2: daughter named Constance Vivian. She dies five hours later, you know.

703
00:39:33,080 --> 00:39:36,640
Speaker 2: Wrecked with grief, the mother goes on a trip a

704
00:39:36,680 --> 00:39:40,239
Speaker 2: few months later to Chicago, meets with her sister, so

705
00:39:40,320 --> 00:39:44,200
Speaker 2: and so forth, meets a medium and the medium says,

706
00:39:44,560 --> 00:39:47,520
Speaker 2: I can bring her back to you. And she says,

707
00:39:47,680 --> 00:39:50,560
Speaker 2: talk like, you know, so I can see her. She's like, no,

708
00:39:50,680 --> 00:39:53,680
Speaker 2: I can bring her back to you. She gives her

709
00:39:53,719 --> 00:39:58,279
Speaker 2: an elaborate series of instructions. They have to go back

710
00:39:58,320 --> 00:40:02,200
Speaker 2: to their house and wait to be given the sign,

711
00:40:02,280 --> 00:40:05,279
Speaker 2: and they have to wear all white. And on the

712
00:40:05,400 --> 00:40:08,960
Speaker 2: night in the night she gives her put flowers all

713
00:40:09,000 --> 00:40:12,880
Speaker 2: through the child's room and they're wearing all white and

714
00:40:12,920 --> 00:40:15,680
Speaker 2: they sit there in the dark and wait and there's

715
00:40:15,800 --> 00:40:20,719
Speaker 2: no sound. It's just pure silence and nothing happens. And

716
00:40:20,760 --> 00:40:22,560
Speaker 2: this is kind of I think this is the best

717
00:40:22,560 --> 00:40:24,560
Speaker 2: part of the story. The husband goes, well, I'm going

718
00:40:24,600 --> 00:40:27,200
Speaker 2: to bed, So he gets up and he doesn't want

719
00:40:27,200 --> 00:40:30,920
Speaker 2: to wait anymore. He goes to bed, and the wife

720
00:40:31,120 --> 00:40:35,400
Speaker 2: is still sitting there and she hears steps on the

721
00:40:35,480 --> 00:40:40,360
Speaker 2: staircase and the door opens and there's a shape. She says,

722
00:40:40,400 --> 00:40:42,720
Speaker 2: it's not a person, it's a shape, and it's holding

723
00:40:42,840 --> 00:40:45,680
Speaker 2: a baby, and she gives the baby to her and

724
00:40:45,719 --> 00:40:50,520
Speaker 2: it's her daughter, she says, down to the two birthmarks,

725
00:40:50,600 --> 00:40:53,440
Speaker 2: it's her. She goes to the press. She says it's

726
00:40:53,480 --> 00:40:58,880
Speaker 2: a miracle. The husband comes around eventually and says believes

727
00:40:58,920 --> 00:41:01,920
Speaker 2: in it too, how do you explain it? Soon after,

728
00:41:01,960 --> 00:41:07,359
Speaker 2: the woman says, I'm moving to California to be with

729
00:41:07,400 --> 00:41:11,279
Speaker 2: this medium who did all this to work in her

730
00:41:11,320 --> 00:41:15,200
Speaker 2: spiritual center and spread the good word and the hood days.

731
00:41:15,239 --> 00:41:18,719
Speaker 2: Separate with the husband and that's that. A couple of

732
00:41:18,800 --> 00:41:23,160
Speaker 2: years later, the spiritual center kind of breaks down for

733
00:41:23,520 --> 00:41:27,400
Speaker 2: fraud and all this other stuff, and the woman is

734
00:41:27,440 --> 00:41:31,040
Speaker 2: interviewed by the press missus Robinson. She says, I know

735
00:41:31,160 --> 00:41:35,440
Speaker 2: this isn't my daughter anymore, but I really want to

736
00:41:35,520 --> 00:41:39,640
Speaker 2: keep her. My only fear is that she will disappear

737
00:41:40,080 --> 00:41:44,880
Speaker 2: through a window someday, like she's a ghost. So Houdini

738
00:41:45,080 --> 00:41:48,239
Speaker 2: loved that story because that story is the worst, right,

739
00:41:48,920 --> 00:41:52,640
Speaker 2: instead of the comforting aspect, you have the medium who

740
00:41:52,719 --> 00:41:56,000
Speaker 2: prays on and this really happened. This wasn't just some

741
00:41:56,320 --> 00:41:58,319
Speaker 2: like plenty of these things are just stories, but this

742
00:41:58,400 --> 00:42:02,320
Speaker 2: happened and gives her a child, and then it extracts

743
00:42:02,400 --> 00:42:05,400
Speaker 2: money from her, you know, over a period of five years.

744
00:42:06,080 --> 00:42:08,600
Speaker 2: And where the child came from. You know, all these

745
00:42:08,760 --> 00:42:11,839
Speaker 2: reporters try to find and no one's figured it out.

746
00:42:12,320 --> 00:42:14,480
Speaker 2: So that would be his answer that for all the

747
00:42:15,280 --> 00:42:19,480
Speaker 2: small comforts it can give someone, there were people who

748
00:42:19,520 --> 00:42:22,640
Speaker 2: were really preying on people who were grieving.

749
00:42:23,120 --> 00:42:26,279
Speaker 1: I think that the stories have been so interesting for me.

750
00:42:26,800 --> 00:42:30,560
Speaker 1: The interesting also part is the mechanics of the mediums

751
00:42:30,840 --> 00:42:32,840
Speaker 1: in this time period. I looked it up because you

752
00:42:32,840 --> 00:42:35,120
Speaker 1: and I didn't know the definite numbers, and I looked

753
00:42:35,120 --> 00:42:38,400
Speaker 1: it up and it was at its heyday around the

754
00:42:38,560 --> 00:42:40,960
Speaker 1: you know, late eighteen hundreds and the early nineteen hundreds

755
00:42:41,000 --> 00:42:43,560
Speaker 1: before it kind of turned into fringe religion more than

756
00:42:43,560 --> 00:42:47,960
Speaker 1: anything else. Eight million people in the United States and

757
00:42:48,080 --> 00:42:54,480
Speaker 1: Europe combined identified as spiritualists. Well million, that's incredible. It

758
00:42:54,520 --> 00:42:55,920
Speaker 1: was such a big deal and then it sort of

759
00:42:55,960 --> 00:42:59,440
Speaker 1: faded and faded into oblivion. And then what a lot

760
00:42:59,440 --> 00:43:01,680
Speaker 1: of people now associate that with is like miss Cleo.

761
00:43:01,800 --> 00:43:02,719
Speaker 1: Do you remember Miss Cleo?

762
00:43:02,840 --> 00:43:03,240
Speaker 3: Oh?

763
00:43:03,000 --> 00:43:07,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, from the TV commercials. So I had wrestled with

764
00:43:07,200 --> 00:43:10,279
Speaker 1: it in my book. But what do you think do

765
00:43:10,360 --> 00:43:13,600
Speaker 1: you think we can talk to you know, the people

766
00:43:13,640 --> 00:43:16,200
Speaker 1: in a different realm? Is there a different realm?

767
00:43:16,719 --> 00:43:21,600
Speaker 2: So I wrote this book from Whodini's, you know, kind

768
00:43:21,640 --> 00:43:24,200
Speaker 2: of like his point of view that it's all not real,

769
00:43:24,760 --> 00:43:28,319
Speaker 2: because I knew if I separated that it would be

770
00:43:28,400 --> 00:43:31,560
Speaker 2: too difficult to navigate, and I don't think it would work.

771
00:43:31,960 --> 00:43:34,520
Speaker 2: So I knew I had to do it through Houdini's way.

772
00:43:34,680 --> 00:43:37,360
Speaker 2: And then you can, you know, see how he dismantles

773
00:43:37,400 --> 00:43:40,719
Speaker 2: all of it and gets to what I think he

774
00:43:40,960 --> 00:43:44,600
Speaker 2: thought was more than that. I think what his version

775
00:43:44,640 --> 00:43:49,120
Speaker 2: of magic was that being set. I have a ghost story.

776
00:43:49,520 --> 00:43:52,319
Speaker 2: So I do believe it, and I had it in

777
00:43:52,440 --> 00:43:54,799
Speaker 2: the book as like the last chapter, and they said

778
00:43:54,800 --> 00:43:57,919
Speaker 2: cut that what I kind of at first I was mad,

779
00:43:58,000 --> 00:44:03,480
Speaker 2: but I agree because you have to stay on Houdini's

780
00:44:03,560 --> 00:44:06,160
Speaker 2: you know that this was was to him, it was

781
00:44:06,280 --> 00:44:09,520
Speaker 2: all fake, and nobody would talk him out of it,

782
00:44:09,640 --> 00:44:12,600
Speaker 2: just like Doyle. Doyle's the counterpoint, Like you said, he

783
00:44:12,760 --> 00:44:15,320
Speaker 2: could not be talked out of it. And I really

784
00:44:15,360 --> 00:44:18,600
Speaker 2: wanted to get that because of you know, things going

785
00:44:18,600 --> 00:44:22,279
Speaker 2: on today, of being so focused that you kind of

786
00:44:22,400 --> 00:44:25,280
Speaker 2: you can can miss things, you can miss the truth.

787
00:44:25,680 --> 00:44:28,600
Speaker 2: But yeah, no, I do think and my version of

788
00:44:28,640 --> 00:44:32,680
Speaker 2: it is kind of Whodini's version. Hohodini thought the greatest

789
00:44:32,719 --> 00:44:36,600
Speaker 2: thing that can happen to you in life is coincidence.

790
00:44:37,120 --> 00:44:42,279
Speaker 2: He thought coincidence was just pure magic, more so than

791
00:44:42,680 --> 00:44:46,480
Speaker 2: any kind of sign or card trick. He said, when

792
00:44:46,960 --> 00:44:49,839
Speaker 2: there's good coincidence, he's like, that is the best thing there.

793
00:44:50,040 --> 00:44:53,240
Speaker 2: I totally agree with that. I think that can be

794
00:44:53,239 --> 00:44:55,840
Speaker 2: better than a ghost story, if that makes sense. But yeah, no,

795
00:44:55,960 --> 00:44:59,560
Speaker 2: I do think there's something right. I mean, you made

796
00:44:59,600 --> 00:45:00,440
Speaker 2: me answer it.

797
00:45:00,480 --> 00:45:01,040
Speaker 3: What do you think.

798
00:45:01,440 --> 00:45:04,799
Speaker 1: I grew up myself in what was always told was

799
00:45:04,840 --> 00:45:08,319
Speaker 1: a haunted farmhouse. I say it in the book. You

800
00:45:08,360 --> 00:45:12,520
Speaker 1: know that it was owned by the county's first undertaker,

801
00:45:12,680 --> 00:45:17,399
Speaker 1: and have we had original floors And I looked under

802
00:45:17,440 --> 00:45:20,880
Speaker 1: the trapdoor in the closet one time and there was

803
00:45:21,120 --> 00:45:24,040
Speaker 1: no insulation. I mean it was woodplanks. These were legit

804
00:45:24,200 --> 00:45:27,600
Speaker 1: floors from eighteen ninety, I think is when it was built.

805
00:45:28,120 --> 00:45:30,319
Speaker 1: And I've always just thought, what is it in those

806
00:45:30,360 --> 00:45:34,600
Speaker 1: floors because it was before and then during embalming when

807
00:45:34,600 --> 00:45:37,200
Speaker 1: he worked. So if you just think about all of that,

808
00:45:37,280 --> 00:45:41,239
Speaker 1: I just I'm not convinced that having that many bodies

809
00:45:41,480 --> 00:45:44,120
Speaker 1: in a house, many of them were murder victims or

810
00:45:44,160 --> 00:45:49,040
Speaker 1: domestic violence or whatever, that there isn't some residue literal,

811
00:45:49,239 --> 00:45:53,640
Speaker 1: literal and figurative residue that's there. But you know, I mean,

812
00:45:53,680 --> 00:45:56,200
Speaker 1: living in a house from eighteen hundreds, there's creeks and

813
00:45:56,320 --> 00:45:59,040
Speaker 1: it scared me to death growing up. But what's your

814
00:45:59,080 --> 00:45:59,800
Speaker 1: ghost story?

815
00:46:00,480 --> 00:46:04,279
Speaker 2: My mom broke her wrist many many years ago, and

816
00:46:04,320 --> 00:46:07,400
Speaker 2: she fell down the stairs and she had to go

817
00:46:07,440 --> 00:46:10,480
Speaker 2: to the hospital get it like set in eight places.

818
00:46:10,520 --> 00:46:12,960
Speaker 2: You know, it's really bad. And she kept saying, I

819
00:46:13,000 --> 00:46:16,719
Speaker 2: was pushed, I was pushed, and she you know, ended

820
00:46:16,800 --> 00:46:20,480
Speaker 2: up like in the adjacent room. So something happened. So whatever,

821
00:46:21,600 --> 00:46:24,319
Speaker 2: you know, she's recovering. I don't want to say it's funny,

822
00:46:24,400 --> 00:46:27,960
Speaker 2: but she had to like elevate her her arm. So

823
00:46:28,000 --> 00:46:30,400
Speaker 2: my dad, like you know, goes up and screws this

824
00:46:30,440 --> 00:46:34,239
Speaker 2: giant metal hook in the ceiling and then you know,

825
00:46:34,800 --> 00:46:37,560
Speaker 2: wheels her arm up. So the whole time she's like,

826
00:46:37,760 --> 00:46:41,600
Speaker 2: looks like she's answering a question in a classroom. She's

827
00:46:41,640 --> 00:46:44,839
Speaker 2: a teacher, so anyway, she keeps saying, you know, I

828
00:46:44,880 --> 00:46:47,040
Speaker 2: was pushed, and then she said, someone's poking me.

829
00:46:47,200 --> 00:46:49,439
Speaker 3: Someone's poking me. Like, what are you talking about? Mom?

830
00:46:50,040 --> 00:46:53,600
Speaker 2: Then she sees someone on TV, a kind of local

831
00:46:53,680 --> 00:46:56,640
Speaker 2: medium called the Ghost Lady. I live in Cleveland. She's

832
00:46:56,640 --> 00:46:58,879
Speaker 2: still around, and she was saying for Halloween, you could

833
00:46:58,920 --> 00:47:00,480
Speaker 2: like go to some bar and she would tell you

834
00:47:00,520 --> 00:47:01,120
Speaker 2: about ghosts.

835
00:47:01,120 --> 00:47:01,560
Speaker 3: I don't know.

836
00:47:02,200 --> 00:47:04,840
Speaker 2: So my mom wants to bring her to the house,

837
00:47:05,280 --> 00:47:07,120
Speaker 2: and you know, she's in a lot of pain. She's

838
00:47:07,160 --> 00:47:09,719
Speaker 2: not that kind of person, but we're like, okay, we'll

839
00:47:09,719 --> 00:47:12,600
Speaker 2: do it. And somebody came and she said, you have

840
00:47:12,760 --> 00:47:16,800
Speaker 2: a ghost. You have a child, a girl. She followed

841
00:47:16,840 --> 00:47:19,720
Speaker 2: you home from school. And we're sitting in the room

842
00:47:19,920 --> 00:47:23,479
Speaker 2: and I'm not really buying this, and my dad's next

843
00:47:23,480 --> 00:47:25,799
Speaker 2: to me, he's not really buying it. And she's like, oh,

844
00:47:25,800 --> 00:47:28,040
Speaker 2: but she has a dog with her, And all of

845
00:47:28,080 --> 00:47:30,480
Speaker 2: a sudden, I'm like, okay, let's go. Let's tell me

846
00:47:30,520 --> 00:47:33,160
Speaker 2: more about the ghost stop because that's the coolest part, right.

847
00:47:33,480 --> 00:47:38,040
Speaker 2: She's like, well, she's a golden labrador, so apparently she

848
00:47:38,080 --> 00:47:40,800
Speaker 2: didn't mean to knock my mom down the stairs or

849
00:47:40,880 --> 00:47:44,120
Speaker 2: so forth, but she did, and she doesn't want to leave.

850
00:47:44,440 --> 00:47:46,560
Speaker 2: I have a younger brother and sister. And she's like,

851
00:47:46,640 --> 00:47:51,120
Speaker 2: she likes her sister's room. It's very pink, creepy. Yeah,

852
00:47:51,160 --> 00:47:54,160
Speaker 2: and well it gets worse. She goes she likes the pony,

853
00:47:54,640 --> 00:47:57,239
Speaker 2: and I'm like, okay, this is all you know, you

854
00:47:57,239 --> 00:48:01,160
Speaker 2: can come up with this. The pony's name is Princess,

855
00:48:01,800 --> 00:48:05,480
Speaker 2: and my sister turns white and she's like, it is princess.

856
00:48:06,080 --> 00:48:09,759
Speaker 2: Now at this point, I'm like, that's a gamble to

857
00:48:09,880 --> 00:48:15,520
Speaker 2: say princess. It's not like the worst gamble, right, but

858
00:48:15,719 --> 00:48:16,840
Speaker 2: it's still a gamble.

859
00:48:17,400 --> 00:48:20,360
Speaker 3: It was it was a little impressive, right, Yeah.

860
00:48:20,400 --> 00:48:23,080
Speaker 2: And so she's like, okay, now I'm going to like

861
00:48:23,200 --> 00:48:26,120
Speaker 2: tell them to go home. This is like the Poltergeist moment.

862
00:48:26,160 --> 00:48:28,920
Speaker 2: This is the part that I never understand. But you know,

863
00:48:29,000 --> 00:48:31,400
Speaker 2: people claim they can do it, so that's great.

864
00:48:32,280 --> 00:48:34,880
Speaker 1: So is this an exorcism? Is this like is that

865
00:48:34,920 --> 00:48:36,719
Speaker 1: what she's saying? She's going to do an exorcism?

866
00:48:36,960 --> 00:48:38,680
Speaker 3: It's Poultergeys go to the light.

867
00:48:38,880 --> 00:48:42,160
Speaker 1: Oh and I think exorcism is taking the devil out

868
00:48:42,239 --> 00:48:42,400
Speaker 1: of you.

869
00:48:42,600 --> 00:48:45,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, they're not evil. But so here I step

870
00:48:45,360 --> 00:48:47,440
Speaker 2: in because I'm kind of a freak. I said, hold on,

871
00:48:47,480 --> 00:48:50,080
Speaker 2: I want to take a picture. So I have like

872
00:48:50,280 --> 00:48:53,800
Speaker 2: four cameras, I have like digital camera, a little camera,

873
00:48:54,280 --> 00:48:56,840
Speaker 2: and I take pictures of the staircase where they're on

874
00:48:57,760 --> 00:48:59,600
Speaker 2: and okay, okay, now you can do your thing.

875
00:48:59,640 --> 00:49:02,680
Speaker 3: And she's like, she does not like me the medium.

876
00:49:02,840 --> 00:49:05,520
Speaker 2: And she does her thing, and I go check the

877
00:49:05,600 --> 00:49:08,640
Speaker 2: you know, later on, I checked the cameras, all the

878
00:49:08,719 --> 00:49:10,200
Speaker 2: digital cameras and so forth.

879
00:49:10,280 --> 00:49:11,200
Speaker 3: Absolutely nothing.

880
00:49:11,880 --> 00:49:15,360
Speaker 2: I take one photo with one of those like plastic

881
00:49:15,440 --> 00:49:19,240
Speaker 2: cameras with the real film, and I took a bunch

882
00:49:19,360 --> 00:49:22,799
Speaker 2: like around the house. Those all developed great. The one

883
00:49:22,840 --> 00:49:27,319
Speaker 2: of the staircase pure white, and I don't have a flash.

884
00:49:27,520 --> 00:49:30,239
Speaker 2: So this happens, and I'm like, so I don't know.

885
00:49:30,800 --> 00:49:33,920
Speaker 2: But then my sister she had said the girl had

886
00:49:33,960 --> 00:49:37,759
Speaker 2: died in a sledding accident. And my sister, who's like

887
00:49:38,120 --> 00:49:41,040
Speaker 2: kind of annoying about this, like looked it up, like

888
00:49:41,160 --> 00:49:44,120
Speaker 2: researched it, and she says, I found out who the

889
00:49:44,160 --> 00:49:47,759
Speaker 2: girl was, and I said, I never want to know

890
00:49:48,560 --> 00:49:52,960
Speaker 2: that because if she used some real I'm like that.

891
00:49:53,040 --> 00:49:55,440
Speaker 2: And I felt like Kudini, like this is where the

892
00:49:56,120 --> 00:49:57,160
Speaker 2: rage comes from.

893
00:49:57,280 --> 00:49:58,120
Speaker 3: You know, why would you?

894
00:49:58,760 --> 00:50:01,319
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the deposite of what you're talking about, like

895
00:50:01,360 --> 00:50:05,319
Speaker 2: for comfort, like use this this girl's tragedy to just

896
00:50:05,440 --> 00:50:08,600
Speaker 2: get like a couple hundred bucks. So I didn't really

897
00:50:08,600 --> 00:50:11,680
Speaker 2: buy the ghost story, but it could have been a

898
00:50:11,680 --> 00:50:12,400
Speaker 2: ghost story.

899
00:50:12,600 --> 00:50:14,200
Speaker 1: I want your sister to email me.

900
00:50:14,440 --> 00:50:17,600
Speaker 3: My sister's a huge fan of you, so yeah, and.

901
00:50:17,560 --> 00:50:19,200
Speaker 1: Then we'll confront the medium together.

902
00:50:19,440 --> 00:50:23,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's a good it's a good story. Now.

903
00:50:23,560 --> 00:50:27,360
Speaker 1: I mean, it's pretty public knowledge how Houdini dies. I

904
00:50:27,400 --> 00:50:29,319
Speaker 1: did not realize it until I looked it up. But

905
00:50:29,960 --> 00:50:32,440
Speaker 1: can we put a conclusion on this, because you know,

906
00:50:32,520 --> 00:50:34,840
Speaker 1: my hope was that he just sort of went to

907
00:50:34,880 --> 00:50:38,080
Speaker 1: sleep and just didn't wake up and then you know,

908
00:50:38,160 --> 00:50:41,160
Speaker 1: a curse whatever. And Bess's like, well, I don't know,

909
00:50:41,600 --> 00:50:43,799
Speaker 1: but he had a pretty painful death, right.

910
00:50:44,320 --> 00:50:44,600
Speaker 3: Yeah.

911
00:50:44,680 --> 00:50:50,120
Speaker 2: It was Halloween ninety nine years ago this year. He

912
00:50:50,320 --> 00:50:57,240
Speaker 2: had ruptured appendix infection. The story is that right before

913
00:50:57,280 --> 00:51:00,799
Speaker 2: he was going to give a lecture at McGill university,

914
00:51:00,960 --> 00:51:04,239
Speaker 2: a student kind of walked into his dressing room, and

915
00:51:05,239 --> 00:51:08,440
Speaker 2: there's different versions of what happened, but basically just started

916
00:51:08,480 --> 00:51:12,520
Speaker 2: punching him in the stomach. The general anecdote of the

917
00:51:13,239 --> 00:51:17,080
Speaker 2: stories that Houdini dared him to do so because he

918
00:51:17,200 --> 00:51:21,520
Speaker 2: had he could like make his stomach like super ripped

919
00:51:21,600 --> 00:51:25,719
Speaker 2: and nobody could touch him, which sounds a lot like Houdini, right.

920
00:51:26,560 --> 00:51:29,440
Speaker 2: The problem with the story is that there's no evidence

921
00:51:29,600 --> 00:51:33,120
Speaker 2: of Houdini ever doing this before, because when he would

922
00:51:33,120 --> 00:51:35,840
Speaker 2: do something, he would do it a billion times, like

923
00:51:35,920 --> 00:51:39,279
Speaker 2: his famous taking his thumb off trick or all this

924
00:51:39,400 --> 00:51:42,960
Speaker 2: kind of stuff. So what I found in the book

925
00:51:43,239 --> 00:51:45,200
Speaker 2: is I knew I couldn't and a lot of people

926
00:51:45,200 --> 00:51:47,759
Speaker 2: have looked at like, you know, what happened when he

927
00:51:47,840 --> 00:51:51,920
Speaker 2: was in the hospital and what happened in the punching.

928
00:51:53,239 --> 00:51:57,839
Speaker 2: I looked more at the background of his assailant, who

929
00:51:57,920 --> 00:52:01,080
Speaker 2: was a guy named Gordon Whitehead who grew up in

930
00:52:01,120 --> 00:52:06,760
Speaker 2: this really small town in British Columbia. All these Houdini

931
00:52:06,880 --> 00:52:10,160
Speaker 2: characters just go through history and they don't say anything.

932
00:52:10,800 --> 00:52:14,719
Speaker 2: He says very little in the historical record. But I

933
00:52:14,800 --> 00:52:20,279
Speaker 2: found that he had a very radicalizing childhood, a possibly

934
00:52:20,680 --> 00:52:29,200
Speaker 2: radicalizing childhood with spiritualism, very anti immigrant, very right wing.

935
00:52:29,600 --> 00:52:33,279
Speaker 2: Houdini was an immigrant but tried to disguise it his

936
00:52:33,520 --> 00:52:37,400
Speaker 2: entire life. You always said, I'm from Appleton, Wisconsin, And

937
00:52:37,480 --> 00:52:39,840
Speaker 2: only after he died was it revealed that he was

938
00:52:39,880 --> 00:52:44,280
Speaker 2: born in Hungary. So I kind of put this portrait

939
00:52:44,360 --> 00:52:49,080
Speaker 2: of him together where there could be reasons of him

940
00:52:49,600 --> 00:52:52,760
Speaker 2: going And I want people to think if there reasons

941
00:52:52,800 --> 00:52:57,360
Speaker 2: for him going after Houdini and not just hey buddy,

942
00:52:57,400 --> 00:52:59,200
Speaker 2: let me punch you in the stomach and see if

943
00:52:59,239 --> 00:52:59,680
Speaker 2: it hurts.

944
00:53:00,239 --> 00:53:01,800
Speaker 3: It was a vicious attack.

945
00:53:01,920 --> 00:53:08,560
Speaker 2: There were two eyewitnesses, and there's some weird connections where

946
00:53:08,560 --> 00:53:14,120
Speaker 2: he says some strange things. But maybe there doesn't need

947
00:53:14,160 --> 00:53:18,920
Speaker 2: to be an exact connection to think of that. Maybe

948
00:53:18,960 --> 00:53:21,720
Speaker 2: he was one of these people, like you said earlier,

949
00:53:21,840 --> 00:53:25,960
Speaker 2: a believer who once they're seeing Houdini kind of wreck

950
00:53:26,080 --> 00:53:29,040
Speaker 2: their belief system, just got angry. I mean, I don't

951
00:53:29,080 --> 00:53:30,560
Speaker 2: know that for sure at all.

952
00:53:30,920 --> 00:53:34,879
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, do you think that Whodini would have been

953
00:53:35,239 --> 00:53:40,279
Speaker 1: pleased with the demise of Spiritualism, which I think I

954
00:53:40,280 --> 00:53:44,640
Speaker 1: don't even know. Spiritualism as a major movement made it

955
00:53:44,680 --> 00:53:47,560
Speaker 1: out of the nineteen twenties, but I'm not sure. It

956
00:53:47,560 --> 00:53:51,080
Speaker 1: seems like it would be ripe for a resurgence around

957
00:53:51,120 --> 00:53:54,640
Speaker 1: the Great Depression, but I'm just not sure it lasted

958
00:53:54,719 --> 00:53:55,880
Speaker 1: much longer than Hudini.

959
00:53:56,480 --> 00:53:59,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there's still If you go to Lilydale

960
00:54:00,239 --> 00:54:02,480
Speaker 2: in New York once a year, they have a huge

961
00:54:02,560 --> 00:54:07,000
Speaker 2: festival and they're really nice and really cool, and lily

962
00:54:07,080 --> 00:54:10,640
Speaker 2: Dale is a spiritualist community. You can go there and

963
00:54:10,800 --> 00:54:13,719
Speaker 2: get your you know, get a reading or whatever, and

964
00:54:13,719 --> 00:54:16,640
Speaker 2: they have a lot of really important artifacts there. You know,

965
00:54:16,680 --> 00:54:20,200
Speaker 2: I wondered if it would after COVID. I think it has.

966
00:54:20,360 --> 00:54:23,960
Speaker 2: I have this kind of weird theory that spiritualism, the

967
00:54:24,040 --> 00:54:30,279
Speaker 2: new spiritualism is Facebook. That Facebook has become this kind

968
00:54:30,280 --> 00:54:34,360
Speaker 2: of afterlife that you know, once a year, I'll get

969
00:54:34,520 --> 00:54:39,080
Speaker 2: a happy birthday for someone that I, you know, was

970
00:54:39,160 --> 00:54:44,239
Speaker 2: friends with who's died, and people will just shower with

971
00:54:44,360 --> 00:54:47,640
Speaker 2: happy Birthday, Happy heavenly bird, which is, like you said,

972
00:54:47,640 --> 00:54:49,879
Speaker 2: I think that's comforting, and that's I mean, who am

973
00:54:49,880 --> 00:54:54,319
Speaker 2: I to to judge that, But I think Facebook has

974
00:54:54,400 --> 00:54:58,719
Speaker 2: become that kind of space, and now with AI, like

975
00:54:58,840 --> 00:55:02,760
Speaker 2: everyone's kind of hosting pictures of themselves, like doing something

976
00:55:02,800 --> 00:55:09,239
Speaker 2: in Ai. It's like this idealized heavenly image. Yeah, that

977
00:55:09,360 --> 00:55:14,920
Speaker 2: facebooks where everything's perfect, everything, everybody's happy, everybody's I mean

978
00:55:14,960 --> 00:55:19,800
Speaker 2: I'm not happy at all at Facebook, but just people

979
00:55:19,920 --> 00:55:22,160
Speaker 2: like they live on I mean, some part of that

980
00:55:22,280 --> 00:55:24,759
Speaker 2: is cool, but to me, some part of that is

981
00:55:25,280 --> 00:55:38,080
Speaker 2: really it feels like spiritualism in a way.

982
00:55:40,360 --> 00:55:43,239
Speaker 1: If you love historical true crime stories, check out the

983
00:55:43,280 --> 00:55:46,359
Speaker 1: audio versions of my books The Sinner's All About the

984
00:55:46,360 --> 00:55:49,560
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985
00:55:49,640 --> 00:55:52,879
Speaker 1: Don't Forget. There are twelve seasons of my historical true

986
00:55:52,880 --> 00:55:57,400
Speaker 1: crime podcast, tenfold More Wicked right here in this podcast feed,

987
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Speaker 1: scroll back and give them a listen if you haven't.

988
00:55:59,800 --> 00:56:03,840
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989
00:56:03,840 --> 00:56:08,800
Speaker 1: producer is Alexis Amrosi. Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain.

990
00:56:09,160 --> 00:56:12,759
Speaker 1: This episode was mixed by John Bradley. Curtis Heath is

991
00:56:12,800 --> 00:56:17,759
Speaker 1: our composer. Artwork by Nick Toga. Executive produced by Georgia Hardstark,

992
00:56:17,960 --> 00:56:22,000
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993
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995
00:56:28,280 --> 00:56:30,840
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996
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997
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