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Terrifying & True | Harry Houdini's Final Halloween: Death, Seances & the Secret Code
Harry Houdini died on Halloween, October 31, 1926. For the 100th anniversary in 2026, explore his secret code for testing messages from the dead—and the mediums he fought to expose. This spooky season, Terrifying & True follows the stomach-punch legend, Arthur Conan Doyle's Spiritualism, Arthur Ford's disputed message and Bess Houdini's final 1936 seance. Hear archival recordings of Houdini, Conan Doyle and Bess herself as we separate documented history from supernatural claims. Could the world's greatest escape artist expose a fake message from beyond the grave? We're telling that story tonight.
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More scary stories: https://weeklyspooky.com/
Story submissions: WeeklySpooky@gmail.com
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Harry Houdini spent years exposing psychic mediums who claimed they
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could speak with the dead. Then, on Halloween 1926, the
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world's greatest escape artist died and left his wife with
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a secret code designed to expose any fake messages from beyond.
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Ten years later, Bess Houdini gathered for one final seance,
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could Harry escape death?
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What you are about to hear is believed to be real.
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Based on witness accounts, testimonies, and public record, this is
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Terrifying and True.
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Harry Houdini built his legend by escaping handcuffs, prison cells, chains,
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and locked boxes. Anything designed to hold him. But in
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the final years of his life, he turned his attention
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to a different kind of escape. The claim that the
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dead could return. He challenged mediums, confronted spiritualists, and devised
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a private code with his wife Bess that would expose
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any false message after his death. Then, on October 31st,
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Halloween 1926, Houdini died in Detroit. What followed was a
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decade of seances, disputed messages, and one final Halloween test.
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If the world's greatest escape artist could truly defeat the
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last lock of all, Bess would know. No chance of trickery,
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no concern of a cold reader making a guess. Something
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almost scientific happened. Because if death couldn't hold Houdini, he
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would gladly send the code back. We're telling that story tonight,
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so make sure you're subscribed on your favorite podcast app
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for even more terrifying and true every Monday and something
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scary to enjoy every day of the week. Happy Halloween.
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Halloween night, 1936. On the roof of the Hollywood Knickerbocker Hotel,
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Beatrice Houdini sat before a crowd that had come to
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witness an ending. She was 60 years old, small beneath
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the lights and cameras, and 10 years removed from the
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afternoon her husband had died in Detroit, Michigan. Around her
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were reporters, magicians, public figures, invited witnesses, and hundreds of spectators.
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A table held Harry Houdini's photograph, handcuffs, writing materials, and
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other objects that a spirit might supposedly be able to move.
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Beyond the roof stood the illuminated Hollywood Land sign. At 8.30pm,
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Edward Saint, Bess's manager and companion, began calling into the silence.
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He invited Houdini to rap on the table, lift it,
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move an object, make himself known in any verifiable way.
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This was not the first attempt. It was the last
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one that Bess intended to make. The ceremony was deliberately public.
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Newspapers had promoted it. Recordings and reports would carry the
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event far beyond the roof itself. The witnesses were not
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asked merely to feel a presence. They were given practical
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signs to watch for, and a verbal key that should
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have been unmistakable. If Houdini returned, this was meant to
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create a record, not a private consolation that could change
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shape in memory. For years after Houdini's death, she had
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taken part in attempts to reach him. The date itself
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seemed designed for legend. October 31st, the night when folklore
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places the living and the dead unusually close together. Yet
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the test before her was not supposed to depend on atmosphere, faith,
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or a medium's interpretation. Houdini had left a secret code.
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A correct message would have to contain a precise sequence
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known to Bess and rooted in the private language of
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their old stage act. That sequence had already caused one
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of the most disputed episodes in the history of spiritualism.
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A celebrated medium had claimed to receive it. Bess had
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publicly authenticated what he had said. Then came accusations, denials,
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and evidence that the supposedly secret system was no longer
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secret at all. Now in 1936, the code remained unused
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in the only way that would have satisfied Houdini. Under
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conditions strong enough to eliminate ordinary access, suggestion, and fraud.
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To understand why Harry and Bess built such an exacting test,
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we have to go back to the man Houdini had
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constructed long before the world. tried to summon his ghost.
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He was born Eric Wise in Budapest in 1874 and
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grew up in an immigrant Jewish family that struggled financially
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in the United States. In public, he remade even those beginnings.
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He preferred the Americanized Eric Weiss and sometimes claimed Appleton,
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Wisconsin as his birthplace. As a young performer, he borrowed
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his professional surname from the French magician Jean-Eugène Robert Houdini.
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Herrick Weiss became Harry Houdini. The transformation was more than
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a name. Houdini learned to manufacture a public event around himself.
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He challenged police departments to lock him in their strongest cells.
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He escaped from handcuffs, chains, packing cases, straitjackets, and water-filled containers.
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He arranged newspaper demonstrations in which the authorities became part
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of the spectacle, and every lock became an advertisement. The
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act promised an apparent impossibility, then invited witnesses to inspect
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the conditions. A recording from 1914 lets us hear Houdini
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rehearsing an introduction to his water torture cell.
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The water torture cell, although there is nothing supernatural about it,
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I am willing to profit the sum of $ 1, 000 to
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anyone who can prove that it is possible to obtain
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air inside of the torture cell when I'm locked up
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in it in the regulation manner after it has been
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filled with water.
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Houdini's publicity was disciplined rather than accidental. Challenges were negotiated
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in advance... Locks were examined, photographers were positioned. When a
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newspaper or police department supplied restraints, the institution lending its
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authority to the test also became part of his advertisement.
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He was not a neutral laboratory researcher, and self-promotion never
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left his work. But he understood one principle with unusual clarity.
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The conditions of a test determine what its result can prove.
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That distinction would later become significant. central to his war
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on mediums. Houdini deceived an audience, but he announced that
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deception as entertainment. The mystery was real. The supernatural claim,
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not so much. A spectator bought a ticket knowing that
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a magician intended to fool the eye. In 1894, Houdini
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married Wilhelmina Beatrice Rahner, Bess, and she became his partner,
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on stage and off. Their early act included a version
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of Second Sight. Harry could receive information from Bess through
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ordinary-sounding words that carried... hidden numerical values. The method belonged
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to a long tradition of coded stage telepathy. To an audience,
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the answers appeared impossible. Between the performers, they were signals
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learned through rehearsal. In a coded mind-reading routine, the secret
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was rarely a single magical word. It was a vocabulary,
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a question, Command or change in phrasing could identify a number,
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an object, or a letter while sounding natural to everyone else.
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Such systems demanded memory, rhythm, and trust between partners. Harry
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and Bess had spent years turning that concealed cooperation into
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apparent telepathy. They also knew exactly how impressive a correct
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answer could look when an audience did not know how
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the information had traveled. Their career grew far beyond that routine,
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but the code belonged to the foundation of their marriage
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and partnership. Years later, the same language would become a
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safeguard against a far more serious deception. Houdini's conflict with
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spiritualism is often presented as a simple battle between a
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rational magician and foolish believers. The history is far more
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human than that. Modern spiritualism had begun decades before the
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First World War, but the scale of bereavement after the
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war and the influenza pandemic gave its promise renewed urgency.
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Millions of families had experienced sudden death, often without a
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final conversation or even a grave they could visit. A
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seance offered more than spectacle. It offered continuity. A voice
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in the dark might say that a son had survived death,
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that a husband was safe, that a mother still knew
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her child. Many people who entered seance rooms were not
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gullible caricatures. They were grieving. Some mediums were sincere believers,
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but others used methods that magicians recognized immediately. Concealed information,
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coded accomplices, muscle reading, ventriloquism, luminous paint, prepared slates, hidden devices,
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and the freedoms. provided by darkness. Houdini knew those methods
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because he had studied them and early in his career
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had performed imitations of spirit phenomena himself. He also knew grief.
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His mother, Cecilia, died in 1913. Houdini's devotion to her
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had been intense and her death affected him profoundly. He
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later described searching for a genuine medium who could bring
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him one authentic word. Scholars disagree over whether his loss
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truly began the campaign. His interest in fraudulent mediumship was older,
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but the loss gave the search a personal edge. He
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did not begin declaring that communication with the dead was impossible.
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He said he wanted evidence. He attended seances, compared methods,
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and waited for something a trained conjurer could not reproduce.
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What he repeatedly found was information that could have been
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learned in advance, messages vague enough to fit many lives,
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or physical manifestations that disappeared when controls became strict. His
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position still left room for belief Houdini spoke of God
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and an afterlife, and he did not claim that a
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magician could settle every religious question. His demand was narrower.
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When someone charged money and said a particular dead person
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was speaking, that claim entered the world of evidence. Names,
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private facts, and physical manifestations could all be tested. Faith
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might remain private. A commercial seance making factual promises could
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not ask to be protected from examination. This placed him
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on a collision course with one of the most famous
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writers alive. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had created Sherlock Holmes,
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literature's emblem of cold deductions. Conan Doyle himself became one
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of spiritualism's most influential advocates. His belief was bound to bereavement,
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including the death of his son Kingsley after wartime service.
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To him, spirit communication was not a parlor diversion. It
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was evidence that death had not ended the people he loved.
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In a later filmed interview, Conan Doyle described just how
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certain he had become.
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When I talk on this subject, I'm not talking about
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what I believe. I'm not talking about what I think.
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I'm talking about what I know. There's an enormous difference,
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believe me, between believing a thing and knowing a thing.
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I'm talking about things that I've handled, that I've seen,
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that I've heard with my own ears. And I always
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mind doing the presence of witnesses.
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Houdini and Conan Doyle became friends around 1920. They admired
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one another's drive and celebrity, but they approached evidence from
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opposite directions. Conan Doyle believed Houdini possessed psychic powers, even
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when Houdini insisted that his escapes were accomplished through preparation
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and technique. Houdini, meanwhile, found Conan Doyle so willing to
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believe that explanations sometimes strengthened the author's conviction instead of
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weakening it. Their friendship reached its decisive test on June 17, 1922,
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at the Ambassador Hotel in Atlantic City. The date was
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Cecilia Weiss's birthday. Conan Doyle's wife, Jean, proposed using automatic
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writing to receive a message from Houdini's mother. Lady Doyle
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entered the exercise and produced page after page of writing,
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about 15 sheets in the best documented account. Houdini sat quietly.
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He did not denounce his hosts or interrupt the session,
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but the document gave him reasons for doubt that were
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painfully specific. It began with a Christian cross. Cecilia had
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been the wife of a rabbi. The message also came
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in fluent English, a language she had barely spoken in life.
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It did not acknowledge that the seance was taking place
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on her birthday. The personality in the writing did not
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sound to Houdini like the woman he had known. He left.
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without confronting the Doyles. Courtesy delayed the argument, but it
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couldn't prevent it. Conan Doyle became convinced that the communication
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was genuine. Houdini became more certain that sincere belief could
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make an intelligent observer accept weak evidence. Their private disagreement
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moved into letters, lectures, and newspapers. By 1923, the friendship
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was effectively broken. The split had hardened Houdini's public identity.
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In 1924, he published A Magician Among the Spirits, combining
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historical research with accounts of the methods he had encountered.
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His full evening stage show later ended with an act
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called Do the Dead Come Back? He reproduced seance effects
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before an audience and then explained the machinery behind them.
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The crusade had become both investigation and theater, an attempt
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to inoculate spectators by letting them feel the deception before
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showing them how it worked. Houdini's campaign intensified. He did
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not merely sit in seance rooms and announce that he
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had seen a trick. He built investigations. He attended mediums
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in disguise. He worked with reporters and police. He carried
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tools that allowed him to expose prepared slates and false manifestations.
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He demonstrated how a spirit trumpet could direct a whisper
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through darkness, how a message could appear on a slate
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that had supposedly been clean, and how a medium could
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gather information before a sitter ever entered the room. One
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of his most important investigators was Rose Mackenberg. She traveled
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ahead of Houdini's shows, adopted false names and personal histories,
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and visited local mediums as an ordinary client. Her reports
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gave Houdini details he later used in public exposures or
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to turn over to authorities. Mackenberg documented techniques of cold
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reading and information gathering, but she also found conduct far
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more damaging than stage trickery. Sexual exploitation, financial schemes and
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instructions supposedly delivered by the dead. Mackenberg's value was that
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she could enter rooms where Houdini's famous face simply couldn't.
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During the Washington investigation, she testified that Spiritualist leader Jane
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Coates had told her that senators were interested in the
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subject and that seances had occurred at the White House.
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The testimony created sensational headlines, although the claims about national
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leaders were not independently established. More important were the repeatable
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patterns Mackenberg had recorded. Invented relatives accepted as real. leading
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questions disguised as revelation and advice that could steer a
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client's money or private life. The campaign was not directed
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at grief itself. Its target was the conversion of grief
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into leverage. In 1924, the conflict acquired a formidable central figure,
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Mina Crandon of Boston, known in seances as Marjorie. Crandon
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was the wife of a prominent surgeon. Her supposed spirit
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guide was her deceased brother, Walter. Sitters reported voices, touches,
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moving furniture and an electric bell that rang inside a
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box while her hands and feet appeared controlled. Scientific American
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had offered a $ 2, 500 prize for conclusive psychic manifestations Under
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test conditions, a committee of respected investigators examined Marjorie, and
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Houdini joined it as the member most familiar with practical deception.
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He believed some colleagues were too friendly with the Crandons
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and too willing to accept observations made in darkness. Houdini
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introduced tighter controls, He watched how Marjorie positioned her body
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and concluded that she could reach the bell apparatus simply
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