WEBVTT - Brad Ricca: Lincoln’s Ghost 0:00:00.640 --> 0:00:05.279 This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised. 0:00:13.440 --> 0:00:16.600 They were terrified that he would come to town. They 0:00:16.600 --> 0:00:20.319 were terrified that he was in the room disguise. He 0:00:20.520 --> 0:00:21.840 was their worst nightmare. 0:00:27.840 --> 0:00:31.680 I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor 0:00:31.760 --> 0:00:34.440 in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the 0:00:34.479 --> 0:00:38.360 podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career, 0:00:38.600 --> 0:00:42.360 research for my many audio and book projects has taken 0:00:42.400 --> 0:00:45.640 me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down 0:00:45.680 --> 0:00:50.440 with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers, 0:00:50.440 --> 0:00:54.880 and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true 0:00:54.880 --> 0:00:58.640 crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both 0:00:58.680 --> 0:01:01.640 good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the 0:01:01.720 --> 0:01:08.800 unpublished details behind their stories. Harry Houdini, the world's greatest magician, 0:01:09.080 --> 0:01:12.520 wild audiences around the world in the nineteen twenties. He 0:01:12.640 --> 0:01:16.560 must have felt invincible, but then an evil spirit cursed 0:01:16.640 --> 0:01:20.679 him during a seance, and soon Houdini would wage war 0:01:20.840 --> 0:01:25.520 against spiritualism. He set out to debunk fraudulent mediums and 0:01:25.640 --> 0:01:30.160 expose Charlatan's for lying to people in mourning. Author Bradricka 0:01:30.280 --> 0:01:34.160 tells us about Houdini's crusade from his book Lincoln's Ghost, 0:01:34.520 --> 0:01:39.080 Houdini's War on Spiritualism, and the dark conspiracy against the 0:01:39.120 --> 0:01:45.840 American Presidency. Let's talk about the last book. Give me 0:01:45.880 --> 0:01:47.520 a quick summary of what that book was. 0:01:47.920 --> 0:01:52.960 Missus Sherlock Holmes was a kind of standard true crime. 0:01:53.120 --> 0:01:57.080 The seventeen year old girl gets tragically murdered, and the 0:01:57.120 --> 0:02:00.800 book is about that mystery and how it's solved, but 0:02:00.840 --> 0:02:04.639 more importantly, how it's solved by a middle aged woman, 0:02:05.000 --> 0:02:08.799 Grace Hummiston, who the press called Missus Sherlock Holmes, who 0:02:08.919 --> 0:02:11.240 just turned out, as I kept going into the book, 0:02:11.480 --> 0:02:15.680 just this amazing person who did all this cool stuff. 0:02:15.880 --> 0:02:17.520 And what year did that take place in? 0:02:17.800 --> 0:02:24.639 That took place around the same time, nineteen sixteen, seventeen eighteen, 0:02:24.720 --> 0:02:25.160 around that. 0:02:25.480 --> 0:02:29.960 So you like me like the older stories, So you've 0:02:29.960 --> 0:02:33.200 got now this book that's in nineteen twenty six. What 0:02:33.360 --> 0:02:36.880 is it about these types of stories from one hundred 0:02:36.960 --> 0:02:40.600 years ago that is intriguing to you when you have 0:02:40.680 --> 0:02:43.000 so many more contemporary stories to pick from here? 0:02:43.360 --> 0:02:44.680 Yeah, I mean, I don't know. 0:02:45.400 --> 0:02:48.200 This wasn't an era that I ever really liked as 0:02:48.320 --> 0:02:52.160 kind of a student. I like the Victorians, and further 0:02:52.280 --> 0:02:54.840 on from there, I think there's something about the past. 0:02:54.919 --> 0:02:58.239 I think the real kind of easy answer is that 0:02:58.600 --> 0:03:01.280 you don't have to interview any one, right, You don't 0:03:01.320 --> 0:03:03.320 have to deal with any living people. 0:03:03.480 --> 0:03:05.560 Don't tell everybody our secret, I know, but. 0:03:06.040 --> 0:03:06.680 A lot of right. 0:03:06.760 --> 0:03:09.200 I'm not saying all writers, but a lot of writers. 0:03:09.280 --> 0:03:13.200 You know, we kind of stick to ourselves. And it's 0:03:13.280 --> 0:03:15.920 just kind of nice to deal with the past in 0:03:15.960 --> 0:03:19.760 your own way and kind of discover these people through 0:03:19.800 --> 0:03:23.280 all these different ways that we try to. You know, 0:03:23.320 --> 0:03:25.600 I don't know if they're always successful. I mean, we 0:03:25.680 --> 0:03:29.320 certainly try, but try to get to the past. And 0:03:29.760 --> 0:03:33.480 I just love the idea of visiting the past. I 0:03:33.560 --> 0:03:37.400 should say this, but I'm obsessed with time travel, and 0:03:37.480 --> 0:03:39.120 I think a lot of us start out that way, 0:03:39.120 --> 0:03:41.280 and I think about it a lot, like maybe way 0:03:41.320 --> 0:03:44.440 too much, But this is how you do it, right. 0:03:44.560 --> 0:03:48.000 You do all the research and you try and recreate 0:03:48.480 --> 0:03:51.400 that spot and time as much as you can. 0:03:51.600 --> 0:03:52.720 And I think. 0:03:52.560 --> 0:03:57.400 Until they invent it, until some scientists does it, this 0:03:57.600 --> 0:03:58.920 is as good as it gets. 0:03:59.280 --> 0:04:01.120 Well, let's talk about your history project. 0:04:01.160 --> 0:04:01.360 Here. 0:04:01.520 --> 0:04:03.680 We have a little bit of a crossover because I 0:04:03.760 --> 0:04:06.080 have an audio book, The Ghost Club, which I think 0:04:06.120 --> 0:04:11.560 you'll mention here, and you focus in on one really 0:04:11.600 --> 0:04:14.640 important character who happened to be a member of the 0:04:14.640 --> 0:04:18.880 Club but just has this sort of otherworldly existence at 0:04:18.920 --> 0:04:22.520 so many different levels. And that's Harry Houdini, who I 0:04:22.640 --> 0:04:25.200 have to think, no matter how young our audiences, people 0:04:25.279 --> 0:04:27.640 have to have all heard about Harry Houdini. But why 0:04:27.680 --> 0:04:29.840 don't you give me a little background on your main 0:04:29.920 --> 0:04:30.520 character here. 0:04:30.839 --> 0:04:35.679 I really hesitate in calling Houdini the kind of Taylor 0:04:35.760 --> 0:04:42.080 Swift of the early nineteen hundreds. But his range was 0:04:42.200 --> 0:04:46.440 he traveled the world, and he was on tour more 0:04:46.520 --> 0:04:49.760 than the Grateful Dead War. He was on tour, you know, 0:04:50.080 --> 0:04:53.719 three hundred and fifty days a year, and he would 0:04:53.760 --> 0:04:58.919 just do his shows and everyone loved him, right, he 0:04:59.040 --> 0:05:02.000 was hugely popular. And you know the end of the 0:05:02.040 --> 0:05:05.440 eighteen hundreds, he starts with just simple magic, and he 0:05:05.480 --> 0:05:07.960 starts with card tricks, and they call him the King 0:05:08.040 --> 0:05:11.000 of Cards because he masters that. And then he moves 0:05:11.040 --> 0:05:15.599 on to escapes, and he masters escapes, and he starts 0:05:15.640 --> 0:05:19.800 doing more elaborate magic, more elaborate escapes, you know, everyone 0:05:19.920 --> 0:05:21.880 kind of even if you don't know who Dini, you've 0:05:21.920 --> 0:05:26.159 heard of the Escape from the Chinese Water Torture Cell, 0:05:26.200 --> 0:05:30.000 which has this ridiculous kind of vaudeville name as like 0:05:30.040 --> 0:05:32.320 the worst place you want to be and it's just 0:05:32.320 --> 0:05:34.360 a box. They throw it in the in some water, 0:05:34.440 --> 0:05:37.760 which is still pretty bad. But what I couldn't wrap 0:05:37.800 --> 0:05:40.840 my head around is that at the kind of end 0:05:40.920 --> 0:05:44.320 of his careers in his fifties, which back then you 0:05:44.360 --> 0:05:48.400 know that was just it's wrapping up now, but he 0:05:48.720 --> 0:05:53.680 changed everything. He's such an adaptable performer, but he focuses 0:05:54.080 --> 0:05:59.880 on this real kind of social cultural phenomenon that's going 0:05:59.920 --> 0:06:03.440 on in the world, which is spiritualism, and he makes 0:06:03.520 --> 0:06:06.760 that his main focus. To me, it just seems like 0:06:06.920 --> 0:06:09.680 I couldn't understand why did he do that? And that 0:06:09.800 --> 0:06:11.919 was like kind of the beginning of the project. 0:06:12.080 --> 0:06:14.520 You know, one of the things from researching Ghosts Club, 0:06:14.560 --> 0:06:16.760 which was, you know about a social club of men 0:06:17.040 --> 0:06:19.800 that started with Charles Dickens and still have gone to meetings, 0:06:19.800 --> 0:06:22.280 still goes through today, where that you know, back then 0:06:22.320 --> 0:06:25.320 you had all these affluent men, including Houdini and Arthur 0:06:25.360 --> 0:06:28.840 Conan Doyle who wrote Cherlock Holmes who were eating French 0:06:28.880 --> 0:06:31.560 food at very expensive restaurants. I mean, these are power 0:06:31.680 --> 0:06:36.200 players in the world, Maharashi. I mean it was just incredible. 0:06:36.560 --> 0:06:39.240 And then talking about ghosts and fairies and you know, 0:06:39.320 --> 0:06:42.880 retelling all of these stories. It's always surprising to me 0:06:43.200 --> 0:06:47.039 when I read the profiles of those people, including Abraham Lincoln, 0:06:47.279 --> 0:06:51.880 who I feel like are rooted in science or you know, 0:06:52.000 --> 0:06:55.039 something that you would think would be very very grounding 0:06:55.600 --> 0:06:57.960 in a present world kind of way, and then they 0:06:58.000 --> 0:07:00.279 believe in all of this other stuff that that could 0:07:00.279 --> 0:07:03.080 have been considered wild back then. And Doyle was one 0:07:03.120 --> 0:07:06.560 of them, because you know, so Sherla Combs is so scientific. 0:07:07.279 --> 0:07:10.720 And I wondered about Whodini and I guess let's keep 0:07:10.720 --> 0:07:14.400 talking about him if there was at one point did 0:07:14.400 --> 0:07:17.640 he ever feel like he had a connection to the 0:07:17.720 --> 0:07:19.840 other world when he was younger, because I know that 0:07:19.880 --> 0:07:22.440 oftentimes happened with these men in the Ghost Club. 0:07:22.560 --> 0:07:23.600 Yeah, that's a great question. 0:07:23.680 --> 0:07:26.560 And I loved Ghost Club, by the way, and I 0:07:26.600 --> 0:07:28.640 told you this off air, and I might as well 0:07:28.680 --> 0:07:32.000 share it that this project was kind of built from 0:07:32.440 --> 0:07:34.640 a project I wanted to do on the Ghost Club, 0:07:34.760 --> 0:07:36.800 and then I saw, oh, no, Kate did a book, 0:07:37.520 --> 0:07:40.080 So then I knew I was sunk, but I loved 0:07:40.160 --> 0:07:42.160 what you did with it, and it just kind of 0:07:42.200 --> 0:07:45.760 forced me to look at something a little differently. With Houdini, 0:07:45.840 --> 0:07:51.120 he had this line that says, Whodini was a huge 0:07:51.160 --> 0:07:56.320 fan of Abraham Lincoln. He like idolized him. And I thought, 0:07:56.360 --> 0:07:59.280 of all the people, you know, Whodini was never political, 0:08:00.080 --> 0:08:02.520 nothing like that, but he loved Lincoln. 0:08:02.520 --> 0:08:03.560 So I wanted to explore that. 0:08:03.680 --> 0:08:06.200 And it turned out when he was a kid, Whodini 0:08:06.320 --> 0:08:10.200 went to a seance in Wisconsin where he grew up, 0:08:10.280 --> 0:08:15.600 in Appleton, Wisconsin, in the heart of the Midwest, Midwest, 0:08:15.680 --> 0:08:19.240 the most midwestiest you can be, if that's a word, 0:08:19.840 --> 0:08:23.840 And the medium who was doing the seance brought forth Lincoln, 0:08:24.600 --> 0:08:27.120 because Lincoln was one of the big ones that kind 0:08:27.120 --> 0:08:30.880 of all mediums somehow had access to. And he brought 0:08:30.920 --> 0:08:34.800 forth Lincoln and you know, I'll take questions, and Houdini, 0:08:34.840 --> 0:08:38.480 who was this huge, little young Houdini, was a huge 0:08:39.000 --> 0:08:41.679 deve ote of Lincoln. Knew all these facts and all 0:08:41.720 --> 0:08:45.160 these trivia, and he asked kept asking Lincoln all this stuff. 0:08:45.160 --> 0:08:47.360 You know, what did you do after your mother died 0:08:47.920 --> 0:08:50.760 and so forth, and Lincoln, of course, the spirit Lincoln 0:08:50.960 --> 0:08:54.439 got all the questions wrong, and that's when Houdini knew 0:08:54.480 --> 0:08:58.720 that it was fake. And he was not so concerned 0:08:58.760 --> 0:09:01.920 that it was fake, but he was more concerned that 0:09:02.360 --> 0:09:06.640 it had kind of been presented as truth and it 0:09:06.720 --> 0:09:10.360 had kind of really hurt his feelings. And afterwards he 0:09:10.480 --> 0:09:13.880 kind of hung around and talked to the medium and 0:09:13.960 --> 0:09:16.719 he said, you know, why, why did you do that? 0:09:16.880 --> 0:09:18.440 And he said, that's what we all do. 0:09:19.120 --> 0:09:22.280 And he had this kind of crashing down of all 0:09:22.400 --> 0:09:26.520 his ideas of maybe what magic was and what other 0:09:26.559 --> 0:09:29.920 things were, including the afterlife, and that was I think 0:09:29.960 --> 0:09:33.000 the start of it. And there were other things along 0:09:33.040 --> 0:09:35.880 the way that just made him more resolved to kind 0:09:35.920 --> 0:09:40.360 of really wipe this. They always said they weren't a religion, 0:09:40.600 --> 0:09:44.360 but they really acted like a religion, spiritualism, and he 0:09:44.440 --> 0:09:46.480 wanted to wipe the earth clean of it. 0:09:46.880 --> 0:09:49.959 Yeah. I remember a story of a little girl from 0:09:50.000 --> 0:09:51.920 this is from the Ghost Club. A little girl who 0:09:52.120 --> 0:09:54.800 begged her father, please don't go. He was going on 0:09:54.840 --> 0:09:58.800 a transatlantic flight from the UK to America. Please don't go, 0:09:58.840 --> 0:10:00.600 Please don't go, And he said, she said, I think 0:10:00.640 --> 0:10:02.200 the ship's going to go down, and he says, no, 0:10:02.280 --> 0:10:04.720 don't be ridiculous and kisses her and gets on the Titanic. 0:10:05.520 --> 0:10:07.840 And so this is one of the many stories you 0:10:07.880 --> 0:10:10.040 know that they talked about in the Ghost Club. But 0:10:10.320 --> 0:10:15.280 talk to me about how spiritualism was born, not specifically 0:10:15.320 --> 0:10:17.280 in the United States, as in you know who came 0:10:17.400 --> 0:10:21.079 up with it? But why why did it spread? Because 0:10:21.080 --> 0:10:22.680 it did spread pretty quickly. 0:10:22.880 --> 0:10:25.040 I'm so glad you asked that, because that's I'm like 0:10:25.080 --> 0:10:27.760 giving you, like all these reasons why I wrote the book. 0:10:28.120 --> 0:10:31.360 This is kind of a big reason. Is this is 0:10:31.400 --> 0:10:32.760 a story about death. 0:10:33.880 --> 0:10:34.839 It really is. 0:10:35.000 --> 0:10:37.320 I mean you can say, like, well, it's a story 0:10:37.360 --> 0:10:42.160 about death, but really, how death is life winning? It's death. 0:10:42.920 --> 0:10:45.559 It starts with death. I mean, you have the Spanish 0:10:45.600 --> 0:10:49.320 flu pandemic, and then you have roughly the same time 0:10:49.400 --> 0:10:54.200 as World War One, and you have millions dead, millions dead. 0:10:54.360 --> 0:10:57.559 And I started, you know, doing this right at the 0:10:57.800 --> 0:11:01.959 end of the COVID pandemic, with the idea of you know, 0:11:02.000 --> 0:11:04.840 there's all these people who have died in such a 0:11:04.880 --> 0:11:06.240 short span of time. 0:11:06.320 --> 0:11:08.760 What are we going to do? How do we deal 0:11:08.800 --> 0:11:09.040 with this? 0:11:09.200 --> 0:11:11.520 I still don't think we've dealt with it at all, 0:11:11.800 --> 0:11:15.480 and when something like this happens, there's this sense of 0:11:16.360 --> 0:11:22.600 death as this kind of existential crime in that this 0:11:22.760 --> 0:11:26.319 isn't cool, right, that this is you know, we can 0:11:26.400 --> 0:11:28.959 kind of accept that we have to accept death right 0:11:29.160 --> 0:11:32.120 on a personal level people we know, and even with ourselves, 0:11:32.160 --> 0:11:34.680 but when it happens like that, it seems to me, 0:11:34.720 --> 0:11:37.800 and this isn't like an official analysis, but it seems 0:11:37.840 --> 0:11:40.840 to me that people kind of fight back a little 0:11:41.280 --> 0:11:45.080 bit more. And then you have the kind of resurgence 0:11:45.240 --> 0:11:49.920 of spiritualism in America certainly where Okay, we're not going 0:11:50.000 --> 0:11:53.280 to deal with all this pain and misery of all 0:11:53.280 --> 0:11:57.680 these people gone. We can talk to them. They're still here. 0:11:57.880 --> 0:12:00.720 We can pierce the veil, and you have, all of 0:12:00.720 --> 0:12:06.079 a sudden, all these believers coming out of everywhere. And 0:12:06.320 --> 0:12:08.760 just like you said before, it's kind of that little 0:12:09.200 --> 0:12:12.839 step from the scientific like kind of stepping up or 0:12:12.840 --> 0:12:15.680 stepping down where you look at it, it gets easier 0:12:15.760 --> 0:12:18.400 to do when there's so much death. And Okay, I 0:12:18.440 --> 0:12:20.320 believe in this because I want to talk to my 0:12:20.800 --> 0:12:21.600 brother who. 0:12:21.480 --> 0:12:24.320 Died in the war, or my father or whoever. 0:12:24.600 --> 0:12:27.240 Yeah, and it's that trauma of not just a death, 0:12:27.280 --> 0:12:30.880 but with war it's not unexpected. But who what parent 0:12:31.000 --> 0:12:32.760 is going to go in and think, you know that 0:12:32.800 --> 0:12:34.439 my kid's going to be one of the ones who 0:12:34.480 --> 0:12:36.880 are going to die. They're praying it doesn't happen. It's 0:12:36.880 --> 0:12:40.400 that ripping that Lincoln felt, can you because I think 0:12:40.440 --> 0:12:42.080 what I had seen too is, you know, it was 0:12:42.120 --> 0:12:45.319 the rise after the Civil War where we hadn't experienced 0:12:45.360 --> 0:12:48.599 for one hundred years that sort of you know, devastation, 0:12:49.320 --> 0:12:52.640 and then Lincoln experienced it sort of directly, and that's 0:12:52.679 --> 0:12:55.240 where we get the stories. Can you tell me about 0:12:55.240 --> 0:12:58.200 Lincoln's experiences and his wife and all of that, just 0:12:58.200 --> 0:12:59.440 a quick little summary. 0:12:59.720 --> 0:13:04.240 Yeah, So Lincoln loses his son very famously, and it's 0:13:04.280 --> 0:13:07.160 so tragic, and it's one of those stories that just 0:13:07.280 --> 0:13:11.200 no matter what version you read, it's just it's awful. 0:13:11.360 --> 0:13:15.920 It's true. I think historians agree that his wife, Mary 0:13:15.960 --> 0:13:20.400 Todd Lincoln looked to mediums for help. Again, like you said, 0:13:20.400 --> 0:13:22.880 the trauma, the grief, and she said that she would 0:13:23.040 --> 0:13:27.120 go to bed every night and see Willie at the 0:13:27.120 --> 0:13:29.920 foot of her bed, see his ghost, you know. And 0:13:29.960 --> 0:13:33.040 this is a mother going through trauma and of course 0:13:33.080 --> 0:13:36.760 she has. You know, people have tried to diagnose her 0:13:36.480 --> 0:13:40.480 for decades and decades, but you know, going through going 0:13:40.520 --> 0:13:43.720 through a lot, and so there's definite points that she 0:13:44.080 --> 0:13:48.400 consulted with the medium. There's later on, after her husband dies, 0:13:48.440 --> 0:13:51.880 she takes a famous spirit photograph with the ghost of 0:13:52.080 --> 0:13:55.479 Abe Lincoln. And this is one thing that the spiritualists 0:13:55.679 --> 0:13:59.280 later on in Houdini's time, point to. They say, well, 0:13:59.320 --> 0:14:03.880 you should believe even spiritualism because Abe Lincoln did. As 0:14:03.920 --> 0:14:08.320 for Abe himself, there's no tried and true proof, but 0:14:08.400 --> 0:14:12.480 there are plenty of anecdotes and plenty of stories. You know, mediums. 0:14:12.640 --> 0:14:15.960 There are a couple that would write books that say, 0:14:16.000 --> 0:14:19.800 you know, I sat with the president. I blacked out 0:14:19.960 --> 0:14:24.000 and came to and he said, well, thank you. You've 0:14:24.080 --> 0:14:27.840 just solved the problem of slavery. So that the mediums 0:14:27.920 --> 0:14:30.880 are acting as the president. And this is what causes 0:14:30.920 --> 0:14:35.040 this dangerous kind of thing that that Whodini is worried. 0:14:34.800 --> 0:14:35.800 Is going to happen again. 0:14:36.560 --> 0:14:38.720 But yeah, so there's plenty of this, and a lot 0:14:38.720 --> 0:14:42.560 of people even back then would claim Lincoln talk to 0:14:42.640 --> 0:14:46.040 them or came to them for comfort at the time 0:14:46.120 --> 0:14:47.800 of his greatest grief. 0:14:51.120 --> 0:14:54.280 So tell me Houdini's story. He grows up, he becomes 0:14:54.280 --> 0:14:58.600 this incredible, you know, magician and entertainer. Tell me, you 0:14:58.640 --> 0:15:00.440 know where you want to start with the and what 0:15:00.600 --> 0:15:03.600 his adventure is like. It starts with a curse, is 0:15:03.600 --> 0:15:04.440 what it sounds like. 0:15:04.800 --> 0:15:09.520 Yeah, I knew I couldn't do the big comprehensive biography 0:15:09.560 --> 0:15:13.240 of Harry Houdini because that sounded like a lot of 0:15:13.280 --> 0:15:16.440 work now, But I wanted to look at just this 0:15:16.760 --> 0:15:20.120 part of his life where he fights spiritualism. It's kind 0:15:20.160 --> 0:15:22.760 of the last two years of his life more or less. 0:15:22.880 --> 0:15:26.360 Is he gets cursed by this famous there's a famous 0:15:26.400 --> 0:15:30.640 medium in Boston, and he gets cursed and the spirit 0:15:30.680 --> 0:15:31.240 says you're. 0:15:31.080 --> 0:15:31.560 Going to die. 0:15:31.640 --> 0:15:35.480 Houdini, enough is enough, and he doesn't take it seriously 0:15:35.600 --> 0:15:39.840 at all, though there are some points later on he'll write, well, 0:15:39.920 --> 0:15:41.600 if I get hit by a car, you're going to 0:15:41.680 --> 0:15:44.280 say the curse worked. But sure enough, two years later 0:15:44.320 --> 0:15:47.920 he's dead. So it's not that the curse worked, but 0:15:48.440 --> 0:15:50.280 those are the facts. So I wanted to look at 0:15:50.320 --> 0:15:53.400 those two years and see what he did and how 0:15:53.440 --> 0:15:56.480 he did it to, like I said, fight against this 0:15:57.520 --> 0:16:01.120 really powerful and you know, when you said, these are 0:16:01.160 --> 0:16:05.840 powerful people. Spiritualism was a really powerful movement, and he 0:16:05.920 --> 0:16:10.040 had found that they had infiltrated, you know, into kind 0:16:10.040 --> 0:16:14.040 of all aspects, you know, not just the everyday American 0:16:14.120 --> 0:16:16.800 who would go to a seants now and again as 0:16:16.840 --> 0:16:22.360 a kind of this weird kind of spiritual entertainment, but 0:16:22.640 --> 0:16:28.320 also into things like churches and businesses and even government. 0:16:28.880 --> 0:16:31.040 So that's the part I wanted to focus on. 0:16:31.480 --> 0:16:34.760 I'm wondering, you know, Houdini, just from my research with 0:16:34.840 --> 0:16:38.280 Ghost Club, had clashed with quite a few people. You 0:16:38.320 --> 0:16:41.160 had people who really believed deeply in spiritualism, and then 0:16:41.400 --> 0:16:43.960 there were quite a lot of skeptics, and then there 0:16:43.960 --> 0:16:46.400 were some in the middle. So do you get very 0:16:46.480 --> 0:16:53.040 much into Houdini's very famous sort of a dissolving relationship 0:16:53.080 --> 0:16:56.400 with Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes, who was an 0:16:56.440 --> 0:17:01.240 incredible devoted spiritualist and you know, believed his wife was 0:17:01.320 --> 0:17:04.239 automatic writing, I think is what his wife did. So 0:17:04.320 --> 0:17:07.199 tell me, you know what about that relationship is before 0:17:07.400 --> 0:17:10.399 the curse happens after that relationship or before it starts 0:17:10.400 --> 0:17:11.320 to crumble. 0:17:11.800 --> 0:17:13.320 Kind of around the same time, and I have a 0:17:13.359 --> 0:17:17.400 great story for that. So Doyle and Houdini are at 0:17:17.440 --> 0:17:21.440 one point great friends because Houdini wants to be the 0:17:21.680 --> 0:17:26.600 perfect American, like really likes being friends with celebrities. He 0:17:26.640 --> 0:17:30.840 thinks it's really cool, and he really respects Sir Arthur 0:17:30.880 --> 0:17:34.280 and so forth. And then, as you alluded to, Sir 0:17:34.400 --> 0:17:37.600 Arthur after World War One has a lot of loss 0:17:37.640 --> 0:17:41.920 in his life and turns completely to spiritualism and becomes 0:17:42.080 --> 0:17:46.960 really the most famous figurehead of the movement and speaks 0:17:47.359 --> 0:17:52.320 really eloquently and goes on lecture tours and has slides 0:17:52.440 --> 0:17:57.040 of just ghosts everywhere and converts people on the. 0:17:56.960 --> 0:17:59.879 Spot and believes everybody. I think, I don't know if 0:17:59.920 --> 0:18:03.200 I remember him criticizing any medium that he ran across. 0:18:03.200 --> 0:18:04.600 He believed everything they said. 0:18:05.000 --> 0:18:09.600 What drives Houdini nuts is that Sir Arthur, who is 0:18:09.880 --> 0:18:13.960 very smart and like you said, it creates homes right, 0:18:14.359 --> 0:18:19.320 the ultimate detective. What drives Houdini nuts is that Doyle 0:18:19.920 --> 0:18:23.680 will find a way to explain every little thing. So 0:18:23.760 --> 0:18:27.960 if a medium makes a mistake, Doyle has a reason why. 0:18:28.280 --> 0:18:31.760 So a great example of this is Doyle invites Houdini 0:18:31.840 --> 0:18:35.640 and his wife Bess to Atlantic City for a small 0:18:35.760 --> 0:18:40.240 vacation with the family, et cetera. And while they're there, Doyle, 0:18:40.280 --> 0:18:44.320 who's constantly trying to convert Houdini, says, you know, sit 0:18:44.359 --> 0:18:48.840 with my wife and she will do a seance for 0:18:48.920 --> 0:18:52.760 your mother. Houdini's mother had died in nineteen thirteen. They're 0:18:52.920 --> 0:18:58.960 famously extremely close, and this really affects Sudini in a 0:18:59.080 --> 0:19:02.000 great way. So they sit for the seance and she does, 0:19:02.119 --> 0:19:05.720 like he says, automatic writing. She becomes possessed, her eyes 0:19:05.800 --> 0:19:08.200 roll back in her head and she just starts writing. 0:19:08.760 --> 0:19:12.440 And she presents these pages to Houdini and they're from 0:19:12.520 --> 0:19:14.840 his mother, and she says, I miss you so much. 0:19:14.880 --> 0:19:17.239 I can't wait till you come join me. It's so 0:19:17.400 --> 0:19:22.000 wonderful here and so on and so forth. And Houdini 0:19:22.280 --> 0:19:24.880 stares at her and he says, this is I'm paraphrasing. 0:19:24.960 --> 0:19:28.320 He says, this is fine, but he says, my mother 0:19:28.440 --> 0:19:32.320 never spoke a word of English. She was Hungarian, and 0:19:32.359 --> 0:19:35.080 so of course the automatic writing was all in English. 0:19:35.400 --> 0:19:40.920 And Sir Arthur says, well, in the afterlife they have 0:19:41.080 --> 0:19:45.200 spiritual colleges, and she would have learned English by that, 0:19:45.400 --> 0:19:49.520 Oh God. And Houdini's furious. And that's when the fight 0:19:49.680 --> 0:19:51.560 is well and truly on. 0:19:52.040 --> 0:19:55.720 Well because he's insulting Doyle's wife. Not just a medium. 0:19:56.280 --> 0:19:58.840 I mean, this is Doyle's wife who he just absolutely 0:19:58.960 --> 0:20:02.359 adored and believe and oh yeah, said she was brilliant, 0:20:02.560 --> 0:20:05.040 and so yeah, that's pretty incredible. That must have been 0:20:05.160 --> 0:20:10.120 very uncomfortable after that happened. So the curse comes up, 0:20:10.359 --> 0:20:13.480 and let's say the medium was fake. What would be 0:20:13.480 --> 0:20:16.840 the motivation do you think for a medium to declare 0:20:17.240 --> 0:20:19.920 that one of the most famous people in the world 0:20:20.680 --> 0:20:23.439 is going to die in the next however many years, 0:20:23.440 --> 0:20:24.360 what's that motivation? 0:20:25.240 --> 0:20:26.639 Yeah, I mean that's the question. 0:20:26.800 --> 0:20:31.280 Because the Spiritualists, like I said, were very powerful, and 0:20:31.560 --> 0:20:36.400 they had a governing body called the National Spiritualists Association, 0:20:37.080 --> 0:20:41.920 who's still around today. And they were really awesome. And 0:20:42.119 --> 0:20:46.480 when I dealt with them, they gave me their secret 0:20:46.480 --> 0:20:50.240 file they had on Houdini, which was really cool and 0:20:50.280 --> 0:20:53.480 a lot of other really great stuff. They're super nice, 0:20:54.119 --> 0:20:57.119 they were very powerful, they were making a lot of money. 0:20:57.520 --> 0:21:02.080 Most of them, to a person, hated Houdini because if 0:21:02.160 --> 0:21:04.760 he had his way, they would be out of a job. 0:21:04.920 --> 0:21:08.000 They would be out of a very lucrative job. Mediums 0:21:08.040 --> 0:21:11.840 were like making a lot of money and Houdini ultimately, 0:21:12.359 --> 0:21:14.600 you know, one of the big narratives in the book 0:21:14.720 --> 0:21:18.880 is he testifies before Congress and in support of a 0:21:19.000 --> 0:21:21.320 bill that it's kind of a small bill, it's an 0:21:21.359 --> 0:21:24.720 anti fortune telling bill, but it's one of those bills 0:21:24.760 --> 0:21:28.119 that can be interpreted as you know, kind of putting 0:21:28.160 --> 0:21:33.960 restrictions on spiritualism and spiritualist readings. There would be a 0:21:34.040 --> 0:21:37.880 license fee, there would be all this other sorts of stuff. 0:21:37.920 --> 0:21:40.359 So they were looking, they were making a lot of money, 0:21:40.400 --> 0:21:43.440 and they saw Houdini as a threat. And you could 0:21:43.440 --> 0:21:46.000 see this, and they would have all these conferences like 0:21:46.080 --> 0:21:49.040 all over the world, and they would just shout out 0:21:49.359 --> 0:21:52.800 how terrible Houdini was and he was just the worst 0:21:52.880 --> 0:21:56.960 thing to happen to the movement, and that people must 0:21:57.000 --> 0:21:59.640 shut their eyes to what he was saying and believe 0:21:59.680 --> 0:22:04.080 in the afterlife, believe in what their relatives were telling them. 0:22:04.400 --> 0:22:06.640 So when I started to see that in all these 0:22:06.680 --> 0:22:10.640 speeches that were just too spiritualist, it made me realize 0:22:10.720 --> 0:22:14.760 that they were taking this much more seriously than a 0:22:14.880 --> 0:22:18.679 kind of parlor trick of let's spook Udini and curse them. 0:22:18.880 --> 0:22:22.680 You would think that must dim from complaints or something 0:22:23.280 --> 0:22:25.560 of the way I framed it in Ghost Club is 0:22:25.760 --> 0:22:28.479 picturing a woman who was scraping together all of her 0:22:28.520 --> 0:22:31.440 money because she lost her son in World War One. 0:22:32.040 --> 0:22:34.480 And you know, I'm not talking about these influential men 0:22:34.520 --> 0:22:36.880 who had you know, millions, hundreds of thousands and would 0:22:36.920 --> 0:22:40.200 meet in London like the woman who is saving all 0:22:40.240 --> 0:22:42.959 of her money and maybe not even feeding her kids 0:22:43.000 --> 0:22:45.720 because she wants to connect with her dead soldier son 0:22:45.880 --> 0:22:48.400 one more time. Do you think that was the motivation 0:22:48.520 --> 0:22:50.200 or do you think there was some sort of weird 0:22:50.600 --> 0:22:55.679 competition between the standard religions you know as we know 0:22:55.800 --> 0:22:57.480 it and spiritualism. 0:22:57.680 --> 0:22:59.000 I think yes to all that. 0:22:59.160 --> 0:23:03.240