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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the best of Coast to Coast podcast,

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Speaker 1: from Coast to Coast. Now here's a highlight from Coast

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Speaker 1: to Coast AM on iHeart Radio. Okay, welcome back to

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Speaker 1: Coast to Coast Professor Slim king with us as we

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Speaker 1: talk about the life of Hrry Houdini. Will also talk

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Speaker 1: about magic very shortly as well. Professor, back to the

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Speaker 1: curse you were talking about the Marjorie and Houdini, and

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Speaker 1: explain a little bit more about who Marjorie was. Okay,

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Speaker 1: Marjorie's real name is Mina Crandon and she was a

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Speaker 1: socialite in Boston. She was married to a doctor and

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Speaker 1: they had kind of a mysterious life. She was said

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Speaker 1: to be really really a sensuous lady. All the pictures

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Speaker 1: I see, she looks pretty average, but everybody who met

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Speaker 1: her I thought she was just devastatingly beautiful. I don't

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Speaker 1: know why, but they did. Uh and uh it had

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Speaker 1: probably had something to do with the way that she

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Speaker 1: did her seances. Uh. Menick was that they called her

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Speaker 1: Marjorie and she was the witch of Lime Street. Sometimes

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Speaker 1: they called her the blonde Witch of Boston. And that

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Speaker 1: was it a compliment in those days to call somebody

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Speaker 1: a witch. I think so. I think it's I think

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Speaker 1: they got a big kick out of it, because I

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Speaker 1: it was a lot of people during that time period,

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Speaker 1: during the spiritualist movement, UM, a lot of people were

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Speaker 1: having family circles. There were all kinds of people that

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Speaker 1: were Catholics or Baptists or whatever. On their on their

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Speaker 1: Sunday afternoon or a Saturday, they would all get together

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Speaker 1: in the middle of the day and hold hands and

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Speaker 1: somebody would go into a trance and they would try

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Speaker 1: to contact their de ceased relatives. It was a common

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Speaker 1: back in the twenties. Okay, but this this curse now, right,

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Speaker 1: So uh, Harry goes and he's gonna check out Mina Crandon.

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Speaker 1: He's going to go to Boston, and they line up

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Speaker 1: about six fances that he's going to attend. Now, the

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Speaker 1: Scientific American has a twenty dollar purse for anybody that

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Speaker 1: can prove that they are a real medium, and kind

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Speaker 1: of like the j R. E F. The James Randy

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Speaker 1: Educational Foundation had a million dollar one here which they

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Speaker 1: never had to give out, right, they never had to

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Speaker 1: give it out, but they I don't think they actually

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Speaker 1: let anybody who could actually win participant. Well they won't

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Speaker 1: like you for that one. Yeah, well they can. They

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Speaker 1: can dislike me all they want. I don't think they

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Speaker 1: played fair. And they finally shut it down and they've

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Speaker 1: just given the money whoever they want. That is interesting

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Speaker 1: that they were taking in about one point five million

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Speaker 1: dollars a year, talking about a million dollar contests, so

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Speaker 1: they were coming that way ahead. So anyway, the the

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Speaker 1: Scientific American has the same kind of thing going on.

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Speaker 1: So they are always going to Marjorie's seances. So they

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Speaker 1: set this up with six of these and Houdini goes up,

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Speaker 1: but he doesn't send um Rose Macknburg, that's the agent

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Speaker 1: that he usually sends ahead. What he does is he

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Speaker 1: builds a box kind of looks like a sauna. He

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Speaker 1: builds his box and he has um James Collins build

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Speaker 1: it for him, and he builds all of Houdini's props

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Speaker 1: and it's it's designed so that only Mina's head and

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Speaker 1: her hands can stick out, so she can't get at anything.

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Speaker 1: So Houdini's gonna make sure that she can't produce any trickery.

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Speaker 1: So they do one seance and everything goes according to plan.

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Speaker 1: And uh they have what they call a bell box.

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Speaker 1: It's a little bell inside of a box and if

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Speaker 1: they push on the lid, the bell will ring. And

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Speaker 1: they always put the box outside of the reach of Mina.

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Speaker 1: Uh and in this particular instance, they put it between

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Speaker 1: Houdini's legs so there's no way anyone could get at it. Well,

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Speaker 1: in the first scance, the bell rings, So the second

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Speaker 1: stance he brings in the box and he puts her

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Speaker 1: in the box. He's going to stop it, and they

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Speaker 1: put that in the second stance, the bell rings, So

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Speaker 1: now he's baffled. So now he's got a fixer. And

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Speaker 1: remember what we talked about before about there's always an

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Speaker 1: out you have to he has to fix Margie because

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Speaker 1: Marjorie because he's actually already written a book about her,

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Speaker 1: how he's you know, exposed her. So he's got this

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Speaker 1: book he's to put out, so he has to expose her.

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Speaker 1: So she comes in. Everybody gets around the seance, and

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Speaker 1: of course Marjorie has a spirit guide and his name

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Speaker 1: is Walter, and it's Marjorie's brother, so Walter. She goes

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Speaker 1: into a trance and Walter comes out and just starts

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Speaker 1: cussing and swearing and cursing at Houdini, and he says,

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Speaker 1: why did you put this foul thing in here? Why

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Speaker 1: are you doing this? Why did you do this? I'm

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Speaker 1: cursing you. This is this is this is a spirit

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Speaker 1: saying this right. This is the spirit saying it through Marjorie,

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Speaker 1: and the spirit Walter puts a death curse because inside

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Speaker 1: the box is a ruler, one of those rulers that

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Speaker 1: fulls up into three pieces, is one of those all kinds,

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Speaker 1: and it's inside the box. The only people that had

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Speaker 1: access to the box was Houdini and uh James Collins

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Speaker 1: soon was the curse professor, and then Houdini ended up dying. Well,

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Speaker 1: he cursed him. And some people say that he said

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Speaker 1: you'll die in a year. That's uh, you know, people

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Speaker 1: debate about that, but he died in two years. He

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Speaker 1: was totally dead. This big strong man died in two

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Speaker 1: years after being cursed by Walter. Did it scare him? Well, actually,

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Speaker 1: Houdini used it in his advertising. You can see their

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Speaker 1: Houdini ads all over the place where Houdini advertised that

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Speaker 1: he's under the curse of the spiritual and could die

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Speaker 1: at any moment. Yeah, and it really helped him, you know,

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Speaker 1: kind of in a way. But then you get this

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Speaker 1: concept of the self fulfilling prophecy, right, that they have

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Speaker 1: prophesied that he's gonna die. So later when Houdini gets sick,

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Speaker 1: maybe this is in the back of his mind and

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Speaker 1: so he doesn't go to the doctor because he doesn't

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Speaker 1: he doesn't want to prove them right. He doesn't want

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Speaker 1: to show that he's getting sick or that something's happened.

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Speaker 1: And that's kind of my viewpoint of maybe what happened

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Speaker 1: why he didn't go when he first started getting sick,

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Speaker 1: and Arthur Ford, what happened to him eventually Arthur Ford,

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Speaker 1: Arthur Ford toward the world after he gave this, Uh,

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Speaker 1: did he outlive Houdini. He outlived as he lived until

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Speaker 1: Arthur Ford lived a fantastic life. So after Houdini tries

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Speaker 1: to frame up Marjorie, Um, he puts out this book.

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Speaker 1: He actually fails, but he says he does it. And

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Speaker 1: he's got these photos of Marjorie's legs under the table,

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Speaker 1: and then he had some drawings made where her leg

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Speaker 1: is reaching around his leg. So he makes some drawings

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Speaker 1: and puts them in the book where the photo is

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Speaker 1: not anything like the drawing. A little, a little trickery

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Speaker 1: by Houdini. Yes, so Houdini once again is doing this,

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Speaker 1: and um, there was a guy named Walter B. Gibson,

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Speaker 1: and he is probably one of, if not the number

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Speaker 1: one expert on Houdini. He worked with Houdini, he worked

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Speaker 1: with Dunninger, and then he worked with Kreskin. And he

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Speaker 1: makes this statement, there's a a bombshelling in the interviewed

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Speaker 1: Kreskin and he gives this quote by Gibson and says,

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Speaker 1: when will magicians realize that Houdini was often as dishonest

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Speaker 1: as the mediums he purported to expose. That's pretty heavy.

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Speaker 1: That is heavy coming from the number one guy. So

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Speaker 1: he knew that they were putting um James Collins in there,

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Speaker 1: and that Rose Macknburg was going ahead, and they were

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Speaker 1: setting them up so he would have a great show.

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