Houdini: A Life Worth Reading (10 page)

With his large ego and longstanding need to prove himself as an intellectual, Houdini began clashing with his fellow committee members almost immediately. After the committee had tested a medium named George Valentine and found evidence of fraud, Houdini immediately told the press about the committee’s discoveries. Other committee members, especially Bird, objected to Houdini’s violation of the bylaw that none of the members speak to the press individually, for fear of discouraging future candidates from coming forward to compete for the prizes.

Due either to Houdini’s indiscretion or to some other reason, no other viable medium came forth to try for the prize for six more months, until Nino Pecoraro, a young Italian medium, volunteered. Pecoraro was interesting to the committee because he claimed to be channeling the famous deceased medium Eusapia Palladino. Bird, perhaps intentionally, failed to tell Houdini about the first two test séances that the committee held with Pecoraro. However, by the third, Houdini had caught wind of the tests and arrived to evaluate Pecoraro. During his séances, Pecoraro seemed to make things appear and sounds occur while bound tightly. Houdini showed Pecoraro what it really meant to be bound, tying him intricately and knowledgably from his own years of experience as an escape artist. Bound thusly, Pecoraro was unable to produce the same effects as he had during the first two “tests,” proving that he himself, and not a spiritual force, had produced the noises and images in the prior séances.

After Pecoraro, the committee took on the testing of a medium who called herself Margery. Margery’s real name was Mina Crandon, and she was the young, well-to-do wife of a surgeon and Harvard professor named Dr. Crandon. The aristocratic pair lived in beautiful four-story house on Beacon Hill in Boston and enjoyed an educated and cultured circle of friends and colleagues. Margery purported to produce messages from the dead in several languages and, most famously, to channel her deceased brother Walter, a young man who had been killed while working on the railroad. Margery had gained a large following of believers who praised her powers as a medium, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Again, Bird failed to tell Houdini about thirty séance tests that were held with Margery in the first half of 1924. Upon discovering that the committee was close to awarding a prize to Margery, Houdini intervened and insisted on evaluating her for himself. Bird, who had been staying with the Crandons, and who Houdini already suspected of aiding the couple in fraud in order to gain their friendship, was forced to agree.

In July of 1924, Houdini and other committee members began a series of séances with Margery in Boston. Houdini quickly detected that Margery used her foot to ring a bell supposedly rung by Walter and that she used her head to move objects while her hands and feet were held by other sitters. Houdini tried to convince the committee to immediately publish his discoveries, but Bird convinced the group to sit with Margery for another series of séances before deciding. Houdini believed, probably correctly, that Margery and Dr. Crandon used their unusually close relationship with Bird to find out what Houdini knew about Margery’s methods.

For the second round of séances, held the following month, Houdini convinced a
Scientific American
committee member named Walter Franklin Prince, head of the American Society for Psychical Research, to attend. Houdini and an assistant named Collins built a special cabinet for Margery to sit in. It was designed to prevent her from using her tricks to manipulate a bell and other items. In a very tense series of séances that stretched over two days, Houdini and Margery accused each other of planting various items in the box and in the bell, Houdini insisting that Margery was using a tool to ring the bell from far off and Margery insisting that Houdini was planting tools on her and blocking the bell.

During these two tense days, Bird stepped down as secretary of the committee and Prince took over the post. Margery’s spirit brother Walter “cursed out” Houdini, telling him to leave, which amused Houdini, as he knew Walter was not really speaking but one of the Crandons. In earlier séances, Walter had revealed “his” anti-Semitic feelings towards Houdini, a sentiment that Dr. Crandon mirrored in his correspondence with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. By the last séance of the month, Margery failed to produce any communications or signs from the dead. Houdini triumphantly told the committee that her failure was due to the fact that she was restrained from performing her techniques by the box he and Collins and built and left Boston convinced that she was a fraud.

The committee, never having all sat together at the same time for a séance with Margery, remained divided for a long time about whether to credit Margery with the prize or to denounce her as a fraud. The group polarized between Houdini and a committee member named Carrington, a writer of many articles of psychical research. Houdini insisted that he had already detected that Margery was a fraud and that the public should know about her deception—and his role in discovering it—as soon as possible. Carrington insisted that Margery was genuinely communicating with the spirits. McDougall, a scientist and committee member who had never actually attended any of the séances, took no side but complained to the newspapers that Houdini acted like Houdini was the only one qualified to judge the matter, when he, McDougall, a professor and scientist, knew as much or more than a magician. This, as well as the fact that supporters of Margery publically declaimed Houdini as merely an ignorant magician, infuriated Houdini, who was sensitive as always to being classified as inferior to academics and aristocrats.

When the committee failed to reach a decision after another round of séances with Margery, Houdini traveled to Boston to expose her himself and prove his worth to the world. In January of 1925, Houdini staged a show at Boston’s Symphony Hall, inviting Margery to come and perform, and offering her his own prize of ten thousand dollars if she succeeded in escaping detection of fraud. Predictably, Margery did not show up, but Houdini, not to be deterred from exposing her, put on a two-hour show replicating her tricks with some blindfolded sitters, while the audience had full view of how he perpetrated the phenomena. His program included tricks performed from inside supposedly the same cabinet that he had made for Margery, although it was later revealed that the cabinet was probably a replica.

Committee members, including Prince, whom Houdini had trusted as an ally, and McDougall, whom Houdini had made up with after McDougall’s insults, reacted by publishing statements disapproving of Houdini’s show and asserting that Houdini’s replication of Margery’s tricks had proved nothing. Doyle joined the fray by publishing an article about his view of Margery’s abilities, aimed to discredit Houdini’s reputation as a serious investigator of Spiritualism. In addition, the publisher of
Scientific American
, Orson Munn, had become fed up by the way Houdini had changed the magazine’s scientific investigation into a Houdini-focused publicity stunt. Public supporters of Margery spread the news that many mediums predicted that Houdini would be dead within a year, a well-deserved punishment for his harassment of one of their revered leaders.

Enraged and betrayed, Houdini held a six-week show at New York’s Hippodrome Theater in which he continued to produce phenomena that supposedly only mediums could evoke through channeling spirits, including supposedly predicting two events before they happened (in reality, Houdini had journalist friends give him the information before it went to the press). The Crandons retaliated by holding a lecture in Boston, to which they invited professors from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and other academic elites, where they illustrated Margery’s abilities in a slide presentation. A researcher from the Society of Psychical Research named Eric Dingwall, a former magician whom Houdini had considered to be an ally, spoke, devoting considerable time to criticizing Houdini’s qualifications to judge Margery’s abilities, and recommending that Margery come for further study in England. McDougall chaired the lecture.

The committee’s deadlock was finally broken when the Crandons refused to continue to submit to testing unless Houdini was removed from the committee. Munn, the publisher of
Scientific American
, for all that he resented Houdini’s showmanship while serving on the committee, refused to remove Houdini, and the Crandons withdrew from the investigation. The committee members then voted four to one that there was no basis for believing that Margery’s skills came from supernatural sources. Prince and McDougall released separate, individual statements indicating that they had not been convinced that Margery had any paranormal abilities.

The Crandons attacked the verdict, saying that they had withdrawn from the test, not that the committee who had come to a decision. Houdini, infuriated by the weak language of the verdict, harangued Prince to release the truth to the public—that he, Houdini, had discovered not only a lack of proof of paranormal ability but also that Margery had engaged in several fraudulent tactics. Prince refused and resigned as head of the American Society of Psychical Researchers, exhausted and disgusted by the dramatic fighting. The American Society of Psychical Researchers was taken over by none other than Houdini’s original nemesis on the committee, Bird. Houdini immediately resigned from the American Society of Psychical Researchers.

Not one to submit to less than crushing his opponents, Houdini orchestrated the publication of a pamphlet denouncing an unnamed couple that fraudulently called themselves mediums. Shut out of Margery’s séances himself, he sent an undercover agent to infiltrate the goings-on and report back to him, continually replicating whatever stunts that Margery produced onstage so that the Crandons knew that he was watching them.

In 1925 Margery was discredited publically when she was studied by Harvard University’s Psychology Department, who discovered and published many of her non-paranormal techniques for producing “communications” from the dead. Houdini was beyond gratified when Walter Franklin Pierce, the committee member who had betrayed him, publically told the papers that he had been wrong and that Houdini had been right. Prince and Houdini re-established their friendship via mail. Houdini was even more thrilled by the timing of the Harvard report, as it gave him the opportunity to humiliate his old enemy J. Malcolm Bird, who had in the meantime published a book devoted to exalting Margery and disparaging Houdini. In 1926 Houdini showed up at a public address of Bird’s at a Spiritualist church in Philadelphia and traded bitter speeches with Bird about poor character and deceitful tactics.

Ironically, Houdini later learned from his Boston informant that Margery, who was now reduced back to Mina Crandon and who was drinking herself to death, admired Houdini’s ability to see through her act and his determination to stand his ground.

After the committee’s verdict, Houdini became more aggressive in his efforts to discredit mediums. Not only did Houdini disagree with opportunistically tricking vulnerable and uneducated people out of money, he also espoused the popular theory of the time that Spiritualism could lead people to become insane and/or to commit crimes and pointed out that sexual assaults on women happened under the cover of the séance proceedings.

Houdini essentially opened his own anti-fraud, anti-Spiritualist police force. He advertised in papers that anyone who had been robbed by a medium could write to him for help. He trained the New York Police on tricks used during séances. He also hired his own undercover investigators. Houdini still attended séances and exposed mediums on the spot, often testifying against them later in courts of law. He retained open the $10,000 reward that he had held out to Margery, offering it to any medium who could perform an act that he himself could not duplicate. Mediums who attended his shows were likely to be called out, challenged, and then booed out of the theater, sometimes in tense situations that threatened rioting and violence.

Two of Houdini’s most useful informants were Robert Gysel and Rose Mackenberg. Gysel was a magician who lived and performed in the Midwestern states. Gysel used extreme measures to expose mediums, including harassment and prosecution. Mackenberg was a young, non-descript Jewish woman from Brooklyn who traveled around to mediums under various identities, receiving advice and predictions about nonexistent children and husbands. She reported back in writing to Houdini what she learned.

Houdini used Mackenberg to publically humiliate a reverend of the Spiritualist faith, Charles Gunsolas from Indianapolis, who had written to Houdini with a veiled threat that Gunsolas could reveal all of Houdini’s methods of doing tricks if Gunsolas wanted to. Houdini sent Mackenberg for some readings with a fictional story of having lost an infant, and Gunsolas provided his medium services to her. When Gunsolas showed up at Houdini’s show in Indianapolis, Houdini called him up on the stage and revealed his detective work and the evidence that he had of Gunsolas’ fraud.

Houdini scoffed at Spiritualists who called themselves ministers and reverends, pointing out that ministers of other faiths had to undergo years of intensive training, whereas all one had to do to be a Spiritualist leader was to claim psychic powers. To prove his point, Houdini had Mackenberg travel the United States becoming ordained as a Spiritualist minister many times over. Houdini also sent Mackenberg to Massachusetts to purchase the charter of a Spiritualist church, which she was able to do with ease, although Houdini was later court-ordered to return the charter.