Involving leading figures of the era, from Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle to inventor Thomas Edison, the ramifications of this clash between science and faith can still be felt today.

In trying to expose frauds, however, the magician ran up against claims that he was infringing upon religion-a response that illuminates rising tensions in 1920s America, where people increasingly turned to science and rationalist thought to explain life’s mysteries. Houdini had more respect for the highway robber, who at least had the courage to prey upon victims out in the open. Worse still was the violation of trust, as the troubled or grief-stricken viewer never learned that the spirit manifestations were all hocus-pocus. Houdini rejected others’ claims that he himself possessed supernatural powers, preferring the label of “mysterious entertainer.” He scoffed at those who professed psychic gifts yet performed their tricks in the dark, where, as further insult to his profession, “it is not necessary for the medium to be even a clever conjurer.” The Witch of Lime Street: Séance, Seduction, and Houdini in the Spirit WorldĪn account of the showdown between Houdini, a relentless unmasker of charlatans, and Margery Crandon, the nation's most credible spirit medium Buyįor Houdini, a man who’d made a living suspending disbelief with skillful, innovative illusions, Spiritualist mediums transgressed both the ethos and artistry of his craft. He did not want to go down in history as a magician or an escape artist.” “This is what he wanted to be remembered for. “ the apex of Houdini’s anti-Spiritualist crusade,” says David Jaher, author of The Witch of Lime Street, a 2015 book about Houdini’s yearlong campaign to expose a Boston medium as a fraud. At the outset, the magician stated his case plainly: “This thing they call Spiritualism, wherein a medium intercommunicates with the dead, is a fraud from start to finish.” Harry Houdini (seated at center left) with Senator Arthur Capper (right) at a 1926 congressional hearingĭescribed by the Washington Post as “ uproarious,” the 1926 congressional hearings marked the culmination of Houdini’s all-consuming mission to put fake mediums out of business. A few months before his death, Houdini even testified before Congress in support of legislation that would have criminalized fortune-telling for hire and “any person pretending to … unite the separated” in the District of Columbia. In the last years of his life, Houdini, who’d once displayed open curiosity about Spiritualism (a religious movement based on the belief that the dead could interact with the living), publicly inveighed against fraudulent mediums who conned grieving customers out of their money. He’d likely be mortified, however, to learn that these remembrances take the form of a séance. Ever the attention-seeker in life, Houdini would be honored that admirers are still marking the anniversary of his death after 95 years. Though visitors are banned from visiting the magician’s grave on Halloween, devotees continue to gather for the tradition elsewhere. I do not believe that Houdini can come back to me, or to anyone.”ĭespite Bess’ lack of success, the Houdini séance ritual persists to this day. But on Halloween 1936, she finally gave up, declaring to the world, “Houdini did not come through. Over the next ten years, Bess hosted annual séances to see if the so-called Handcuff King would come through with an encore performance from the spirit world. Famous in life for his improbable escapes from physical constraints, the illusionist promised his wife, Bess, that-if at all possible-he would also slip the shackles of death to send her a coded message from the beyond. Harry Houdini was just 52 when he died on Halloween in 1926, succumbing to peritonitis caused by a ruptured appendix.

Holding a seance