March 28, 2025 • 40 mins
Fearing for his life, Harry Houdini leaves secret codes with his loved ones, promising to use them in any post-mortem messaging. In 1926, Houdini's death shocks the world, but the news that follows is even more astounding. A report of the impossible: contact has been made.
For a full list of sources, see the show notes at timharford.com.
Get ad-free episodes, plus an exclusive monthly bonus episode, to Cautionary Tales by subscribing to Pushkin+ on Apple Podcasts or Pushkin.fm. Pushkin+ subscribers can access ad-free episodes, full audiobooks exclusive binges, and bonus content for all Pushkin shows.
Subscribe on Apple: apple.co/pushkin
Subscribe on Pushkin: pushkin.fm/plus
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. This is the final episode of a three part series.
You can enjoy it on a standalone basis, but if
you've not heard episodes one and two, you might prefer
to listen to them first. Rose Mackenberg picked up her
(00:36):
morning newspaper, saw the headline on the front page, and
choked on her coffee.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
She was genuinely staggered.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
She later wrote, if this was true, it.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Was the story of the century, an actual, factual miracle.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
The headline Houdini sends from grave, the word he promised wife.
The date was January the ninth, nineteen twenty nine. Two
in a bit years had passed since the death of
Harry Houdini at the age of just fifty two. Rose
(01:15):
Mackenberg had worked for Houdini as his chief investigator of
fraudulent mediums, as Houdini transformed himself from a magician and
escape artist into a crusader for critical thinking about supernatural ideas,
in particular the fast growing religion of spiritualism, with its
(01:36):
claim to enable communication between the living and the dead.
Rose read the article in her newspaper. Houdini and his
wife Bess had a secret code, It said, the previous dad,
the medium arthur Ford had visited Bess and delivered her
(01:57):
a message in the Secret Code. Having thus established his identity,
Harry went.
Speaker 4 (02:04):
On, spare no time or money to undo my attitude
of doubt. While on earth, place the truth before all
those who have lost the faith. Tell the world there
is no death. Tell the world that Harry Houdini lives
and will prove it a thousand times.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Hmm. That sounded suspiciously like just what a spiritualist minister
would want the ghost of Harry Houdini to say. But
what about that secret code? The newspaper carried a statement
by Bess.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
I wish to declare that the message is a correct
message pre arranged between mister Houdini and myself. Beatrice Houdini.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Rose Mackenberg didn't dismiss the idea that there was life
after death. She was smart, skeptical, and open minded. That's
why Houdini trusted her. As Rose said, he wanted to believe,
he thought, but one.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Thing truth.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Still, though surely not.
Speaker 5 (03:17):
For a flash.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Even my composure was shaken, and then my memory began
to function.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening to cautionary tales. In
(03:52):
the summer of nineteen twenty six, Harry Houdini should have
been having arrest. Had just been to Washington, d C.
Giving evidence at raucous congressional hearings into a bill that
proposed to ban mediums. In autumn, he'd be embarking on
a grueling five month coast to coast tour from Boston
(04:16):
to Providence, Albany, Schenectady, Montreal, Detroit. Houdini was getting older,
but he couldn't stop touring. He needed the money. It's
not that he had expensive tastes in things like food
or clothes. Growing up in poverty had left him with
frugal habits, so much so Bess had to periodically retire
(04:40):
his tatteoust underwear and slip new ones into the drawer
without telling him. The drain on his resources was what
he saw as his sacred duty, his crusade for critical thinking.
He was spending tens of thousands of dollars a year
millions in today's money, on his team of psychic investigators
(05:05):
headed by Rose Mackenberg, and lawyers to fight off an
endless stream of lawsuits as the fraudulent mediums he exposed
sued him for slander. Sure he'd win the lawsuits. They
were stressful and expensive, nonetheless, but the plan for arrest
hit a snag when Houdini heard about the latest stage
(05:29):
sensation in New York, a self styled Egyptian fekia whose
showpiece was to survive being sealed in an air tight casket. This,
claimed the Fekia, was due to his unique ability to
enter into a special state he called cataleptic anesthesia. Houdini
(05:53):
was irked. This was uncomfortably close to his wheelhouse, being
confined in a tight space and getting out alive and
cataleptic anesthesia was mumbo jumbo. Anyone could train themselves to
survive on little air for a while if they were
fit enough and disciplined enough to take short, calm, shallow breaths.
(06:15):
Hoodini issued a challenge, however long this fekir survives in
a sealed coffin, I'll do it for longer. The fakir
called the city's media to a swimming pool to lay
down his marker. He had himself soldered in a zinc coffin,
which was submerged in the pool by six men standing
(06:38):
on it. After fifty nine minutes, they cut open the coffin.
He was alive, Houdini called the Press to another swimming
pool and had himself soldered into a bronze coffin that
had had specially made A telephone wire poking through the
(06:58):
lid would let him call for help if he needed it.
A half hour passed, an hour and a quarter. It
was hot in this swimming pool. The temperature inside the
coffin neared one hundred degrees. If I'd die, Podini had
(07:20):
said beforehand to the assembled Press.
Speaker 5 (07:23):
It will be the will of God and my own foolishness.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Hoodini wasn't as fit as he used to be. He'd
put on twenty pounds since his younger days. Yes, he'd
just put himself through a vigorous workout regime to get
back in shape. But had he done enough. After an
hour and twenty eight minutes, Hoodini started to feel himself
(07:51):
drifting off.
Speaker 5 (07:55):
Bring me up in two minutes, he.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Breathed into the phone line. They did. The soul That
coffin lid was peeled back like a sardine can reveal
Houdini caked in sweat, deathly white, but alive, pulse racing.
He hadn't just beaten the Fekiir's record. He had obliterated it.
(08:25):
Hoodini might have been sanguine about the prospect of accidentally
dying in one of his own stunts, but another kind
of threat to his life made him increasingly paranoid.
Speaker 5 (08:37):
They're going to kill me.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Houdini had taken to calling a friend at all hours
of the day and night.
Speaker 6 (08:45):
Don't laugh every night.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
They're holding seances and praying for my death.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Spiritualist mediums did keep predicting Whodini's imminent demise. That's got
to be unsettling. When does a prediction become a veiled threat?
And those lawsuits were mounting up. No sooner had Houdini
embarked on his big autumn tour than he had to
travel back overnight to New York for an urgent meeting
(09:16):
with his lawyer, and then another overnight train to Albany
to get straight back on stage. And in Albany disaster,
Houdini was performing his trademark Chinese water torture escape. His
feet were clamped in wooden stocks and he was hoisted
(09:37):
upside down then lowered into a cabinet filled with water.
But as he dangled in the air, the stocks cracked
and fractured. Houdini's ankle. He finished the show on one
leg and hobbled through the rest of his stint in Albany,
Schenectady and on to Montreal. Nearing the end of his run.
(10:03):
In Montreal, Houdini was in his dressing room, reclining on
a couch to rest his healing ankle and amiably chatting
to two young students, an artist and his friend. The
artist was sketching Houdini's portrait. A third student came into
the room, not known to the first two. He'd borrowed
(10:23):
a book from Houdini, and he'd come to give it back.
The new arrival seemed to be annoyingly lacking in social awareness.
He dominated the conversation, bombarding Houdini with question after unrelated question.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
Is it true, mister Houdini, that you can resist the
hardest blows struck to the abdomen?
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Houdini tactfully tried to deflect. Fill my muscles, ha, they
are like iron. The three students took turns to feel
Houdini's arms. They were indeed like iron.
Speaker 4 (10:58):
But would you mind if I delivered a few blows
to your abdomen, mister Houdini.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Houdini clearly wasn't in the mood to be hit in
the abdomen, but the student wasn't getting it, and Houdini's
ego was a powerful thing, all right, he said. He
began to shift on the couch so he could stand
up and brace himself, but the student didn't wait. He
stood over the couch, pummeling Houdini in the stomach. Blow
(11:27):
after crunching blow, the artist's friend leaped up. What are
you doing? Are you crazy? Houdini raised a hand.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
That will do.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
The artist finished his portrait and presented it to Houdini.
Speaker 5 (11:44):
You make me look a little tired in this picture.
The truth is I don't feel so well.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
By nighttime, Houdini was complaining of crippling pains in his stomach,
but he had the final shows in Montreal to get through,
and then an overnight train to try, then straight on
stage for another show in Detroit. He can barely stand,
touching his side two weak to complete a simple magic
(12:21):
trick of pulling a silk streamer from a bowl. When
the curtain falls, Houdini collapses. He's running a fever of
one hundred and four by the time he gets to
hospital and the surgeon opens him up an infection that
began in his appendix has spread to the lining of
(12:41):
his stomach. Hoodini's insides are a mass of pass in
a world before antibiotics, this isn't survivable. Hoodini holds on
for a few more days.
Speaker 5 (12:59):
I suppose we'll get over this waveiness in no time
until at last, Yes, I'm all through Friday.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
They're going to kill me, Houdini had said, had he
been right to fear that his spiritualist enemies had been
not just predicting his death but plotting it. Maybe, but
punching someone in the stomach is hardly a reliable way
to kill them. Even in hindsight. We don't know if
(13:35):
those punches made any difference, or if Houdini was already
suffering from a burst appendix. It seems more likely that
what's true of Houdini's death is true perhaps of death
more generally. There is no deeper narrative that makes sense
of it all, much as we'd love to believe there is.
(13:56):
It's all just chance and happenstance. Harry Houdini died on
the thirty first of October nineteen twenty six. He was
buried in the Bronze coffin it had made for his
swimming pool stunt. But from that coffin would he discover
(14:17):
a telephone line to the living Cautionary tales will be
back after the break. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the great
(14:44):
author and famous spiritualist, had a curious kind of friendship
with Harry Houdini. They kept up a cordial private correspondence
for some time after they started bitterly ripping into each
other in public. The two men fascinated each other. Houdini
was intrigued by how someone as obviously smart as Sir
(15:06):
Arthur could be so credulous. He believed in fairies and
goblins for goodness sake. As for Sir Arthur, he was
convinced that Houdini himself had supernatural powers. How else could
he manage his astonishing tricks and escapes. When he heard
(15:27):
of Houdini's death, Conan Doyle put out a statement, his.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Death is a great shock and a deep mystery to me.
I greatly admired him and cannot understand how the end
came for one so youthful.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
In private, though Conan Doyle wasn't shocked at all, his.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Death was most certainly decreed from the other side.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
After all, thought Sir Arthur. If Houdini had been hiding
the help he got from the spirit world, while at
the same time cruelly mocking the mediums who brought messages
from the spirit world, well it stands to reason that
the spirits would be incensed. Still, Conan Oyle spied an opportunity.
(16:16):
He'd always hoped to persuade Houdini to admit that he
was in fact a powerful spirit medium himself. Perhaps he'd
have better luck in recruiting Houdini to the cause now
that Houdini was dead. He began writing letters to Houdini's widow, Bess.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
I am sorry that shadows grew up between.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Us, my dear Sir Arthur. Bess replied, Houdini would have
been the happiest man in the world had he been
able to agree with your views.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Conan Oyle turned on the flattery.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Any man who wins the love and respect of a
good woman must himself be a fine and honest man.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Bess began to open up.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
If only you knew how my heart yearns to hear
the precious message from my beloved.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
I am quite sure, Knowing has determined character that he
will get back to you.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Every day Bess sat and stared at Houdini's picture. If
only he could speak. She announced a prize of ten
thousand dollars for anyone who could send her a message
she'd recognize as having come from Houdini. That went about
as well as you'd expect. Every crank in the country
(17:40):
sent in messages purportedly from Houdini, saying things like God
is Truth, God is Love, and tussel with death was agony.
With every new message, Bess became more despondent.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Houdini was an unusually intelligent man. All these messages, without exception,
have been silly.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Sir Arthur kept writing. He might be a laughing stock
in some circles. He had just published a second edition
of his much ridiculed book, The Coming of the Fairies,
but the author of the Sherlock Holmes Mysteries still had
away with words in his speeches on spiritualism. He could
be very persuasive as a journalist. Once remarked Conan Doyle
(18:32):
could sell you a house with its roof missing by
means of an eloquent and sustained eulogy of the features
that remained. In one letter, Bess mentioned that a mirror
had fallen from the wall and smashed. Might that have
some kind of significance? So Arthur jumped on the suggestion.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
I think the mirror incident shows every sign of being
a message. After all, such things don't happen elsewhere. No
mirror has ever broken in this house. Why should yours
do so?
Speaker 1 (19:07):
So, arthur fear eye is that if the spirits were
cross with Houdini for denying his supernatural powers in his lifetime,
they may now be temporarily forbidding him to get clear
messages back as a kind of punishment. And if that
was happening, how might Houdini express his frustration fus by
smashing a mirror?
Speaker 2 (19:29):
It is just the sort of energetic thing one could
expect from him.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
So Arthur had trained the full force of his persuasive
powers onto the grief stricken Bess Houdini. What a coup
it would be if he could get her to publicly
state that Houdini had returned. But even Sir Arthur could
see he'd need something more than a smashed mirror to
(19:54):
convince the skeptics. As he wrote to a spiritualist friend.
Speaker 7 (19:59):
I am in quite intimate touch with missus h who
was a splendid, loyal little woman. She seems quite to
accept our point of view, but does keen on getting
some evidence which she can give to the world.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Just afternoon on January eighth, nineteen twenty nine, the charming
young medium arthur Ford arrived at Bess Houdini's house. Some
of arthur Ford's followers came with him. Some of Bess's
friends were there, and two journalists. Bess was lying on
(20:39):
a sofa, covered in a blanket with a bandaged head
she'd fallen over at a New Year's party. Arthur Ford
sat down, wrapped a silk blindfold around his eyes, and
began to shake.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Hoodini is here. He tells me to say hello, best sweetheart.
He wants me to give you these words Rosa bel answer, Tell, pray, answer,
look book, tell, answer, answer tell. He wants you to
tell him whether they are right or not.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
Yes, they are.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
He tells you to take off your wedding ring and
tell them what rosa bell means.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Bess removed her wedding ring. Inside was inscribed the word Rosabel.
It was their song, she explained, way back when they
first met.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
Rouse see sweet Rosea Bell. I love her more than
I can tell.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
Than the secret code answer tell, pray answer look tell
answer answer, Tell what was that about? Back when Bess
and Houdini had been performing mind reading the circus, They'd
devised a way to communicate. They picked out some words
(22:14):
that wouldn't look incongruous in the context of their act,
and made each correspond to a number. Answer was two,
tell was five, and so on. Bess might, for example,
ask someone in the audience to guess a number and
write it down for her. Then Bess would call out
(22:36):
to Houdini something like.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Pray, tell what the answer is? Speak quickly.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Now Houdini would note the order of the code words
and ignore the other words in the sentence, convert them
back into numbers, and he'd know what the audience member
had written down. Depending on the context, those numbers could
be translated into letters too, according to their place in
the alphabet. Answer two the letter B tell five E
(23:08):
spell it out, and the words Arthur Ford had delivered
spelled B E L I E V E believe.
Speaker 4 (23:24):
Rosa bell believe is that the right message.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Bess nodded tearfully, and Ford continued in triumph.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
He says, tell the world that Harry Houdini lives and
will prove it a thousand times.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle read the news, he was
exultant all at once. Whodini had become.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
The classical case of after death return.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Doyle got to work drafting a lengthy article.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
If these loving hands can meet through the veil, then
hours also can do so.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
When Rose Mackenberg read the news for a flash, her
composure was shaken. Then, as she recalled, my memory began
to function. Rose bel but that was hardly a secret.
Anyone who knew the Houdinis knew the significance of roose belt.
(24:40):
And as for those numbered code words, Rose thought, had
she read them somewhere since Houdini's death. She went to
her bookshelf and took down a biography of Houdini published
the previous year. Sure enough, tucked away on page one
hundred and five, there it was Pray one, answer two.
(25:05):
Rose closed the book. She could only get that the
details of how Ford had pulled off his trick. But
if the so called secret code was not so secret
after all, it clearly was a trick that was enough
to restore Rose's composure. As it happened, those details were surprising.
(25:27):
They were set out in an article on the front
page of the next morning's newspaper under an even bigger headline,
who DNI message a big HOPX cautionary tales will be
back in a moment? Who DENI message a big hoax?
(25:58):
The article was written by a journalist called Raya Howray.
She'd been at Bessie's house for the seance. She'd also
been at Bessie's house a couple of days before, when
she reported she had found Bess in a state of
semi delirium, intermittently blacking out. Under the constant care of physicians.
(26:19):
Bess was suffering from flu. It seemed she was also
still recovering from that bang to the head of the
New Year's party. But there was more to the story.
Bess had fallen because she was drunk. She'd been drinking
a lot lately and taking drugs and partying with younger men.
(26:40):
One of those younger men was none other than the dashing,
charming medium Arthur Ford. The journalist Raya Howrey had been
at some of those parties with Bess and Arthur Ford.
She knew how well they knew each other. She may
not have known that Bessi's semi delirium wasn't just from
(27:03):
drink or flu. She'd also swallowed lots of sleeping pills.
She'd left a note for Harry's lawyer, I am.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
So ill, I want to go to Harry.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
The semi delirious Bess told Raya all about the seance
she and Arthur Ford had planned. Arthur would give her
the coded message, she'd take off her wedding ring, explain
roose belt, and so on. Raya took careful notes. She
(27:39):
realized that Bess planning a seance wasn't much of a story,
but she could get two days of front page headlines
if she first reported on the seance, then reported on
the hoax. On the day after the seance, Raya invited
(28:01):
Arthur Ford to her house. Ford was delighted with the
newspaper coverage. Houdini's return was on all the front pages.
Raya led Ford into a discussion of the party where
she'd first met Ford and Bess didn't he remember? Oh? Yes,
Ford happily reminisced. Then Raya told Ford how she was
(28:26):
going to write another story about how Bess had told
her exactly how the seance would unfold. She showed him
the notes she'd taken. She had also shown those notes
to her editor before the seance. Ford was horrified.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
But you must play ball, really, I would be glad
to make financial compensation.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
The editor was hiding in the next room listening to everything.
When the hoax story was published, Arthur Ford insisted he
had been the victim of an impersonation attempt. It didn't
seem to harm his career as a medium. Houdini's lawyer
(29:12):
hand wrote a letter to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, handwritten
because this was in strictest confidence. He didn't even want
his secretary to see the contents. He thought Sir Arthur
should know just how desperate Bessie's mental decline had become
before that seance. Sir Arthur judiciously inserted one word into
(29:34):
his long article about Whodini's return. Apparently, then he tacked
a couple of sentences on to the end.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
It is true that in the last resort we are
dependent upon the veracity and honesty of missus Houdini. But I,
for one, am not cynical enough to question it.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Perhaps it wasn't just grief about Harry's death that caused
bess to play along, but also what Bess had found
among Harry's belongings after his death, letters from other women
women she knew, women who privately referred to Harry as
(30:18):
my magic man or magic lover. Bess invited each of
them to lunch, but when they rang the doorbell, it
was Bessi's maid who answered, Missus Houdini is indisposed. She
asked me to give you this handing over a bundle
of their correspondence. In their book The Secret Life of Houdini,
(30:44):
the authors William Callush and Larry Slowman argue that Bess
was desperate for Harry to come back publicly to her.
She wanted to claim his spirit for the cause of
her marriage, just as Sir Arthur wanted to claim Houdini
for his religion. When the plan backfired, Bess spiraled further more,
(31:07):
drink ever younger Jiggilows, Pudini's brother, stepped in to safeguard
what was left of her inheritance. Bess checked herself into
a sanatorium. Hoodini had investigated enough mediums to know their
target market, the bereaved, made vulnerable by their grief. He
(31:33):
must have guessed that if he went first, Bess might
struggle to resist, so he didn't make a code just
with Bess. He made codes with everyone he felt he
could trust. One day, for instance, years before his death,
Hoodini stopped by the office of a friend and gave
him a present, a copy of Roget's Thesaurus. Inside was
(31:58):
a penciled note.
Speaker 5 (32:01):
There is our cold.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Never breathed to a living soul. In his book A
Magician among the Spirits, Whodini said he had made pacts
like this with a dozen friends, every code unique. By
the time he died, it may have been more than twenty.
Whichever of us dies first, who Deni would explain, if
(32:27):
we find we still live and we can get through
with a message, include those words. When faced with an
intractable question, we can sometimes find an imaginative way to
generate evidence, And few questions are more intractable than do
we live on after death? The only evidence we'll ever
(32:50):
get is if someone comes back from the dead to
tell us. But how can we be sure if a
message from the other side is genuine? Wishful thinking is powerful,
Frauds can be convincing. Who Deni tried to make sure
that his audiences knew that. But what impresses me about Houdini.
(33:13):
Isn't just his efforts to debunk the lies. It's his
dedication to uncovering the truth. Houdini wanted to believe, but
he wasn't credulous like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He was
curious and systematic. He set up a one man experiment
(33:34):
that was not only ingenious but selfless, because he knew
he might not be the one to gather the evidence
if he died first, it would be his friends whould
have to piece that evidence together, either the various different
code words coming through which would strongly suggest that communication
(33:55):
with the dead was possible, or not, as the case
may be. Some of the friends Houdini made pacts with
died before him. One even called him to her deathbed
to reassure him that she remembered their code, a secret handshake.
She held out her hand and grasped Houdini's in the
(34:18):
grip they'd agreed, if I can get through, she said,
I'll have someone shake your hand like that. Nobody ever did.
After Houdini died, nobody apart from Bess ever said he
(34:41):
came through with the code they arranged. One of his
secret codes was with of course, Rose Mackenberg. Rose spent
three decades after Houdini's death investigating mediums. They gave her
messages from fifteen hundred fictitious dead husbands, but nobody mentioned
(35:03):
the words she had agreed with Houdini. If just one
of those mediums really did have a hotline to the
spirit world, you'd think that Houdini might have picked up.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle died in nineteen thirty. His widow,
(35:23):
Lady Doyle, invited a trusted medium to bring her husband back,
A good friend of Sir Arthur, a protege. Indeed, that
medium Arthur Ford. Lady Doyle was perfectly satisfied that Sir
Arthur had come through. Lady Doyle was less pleased when
(35:45):
some other medium published a book which claimed to contain
interviews with her dead husband, Arthur Conan Doyle's Book of
the Beyond. How dare they use his name like that?
It seemed that any old chancer could commandeer Sir Arthur's
spirit for their own purposes, and there was nothing Ladied
(36:09):
Oil could do about it. Who would have thought? Bess
eventually found a good man. His name was Edward Saint,
and he'd made his living in the circus, just like
Harry and Bess all those years ago. His act, he'd
(36:30):
challenged the audience to make him laugh, crack a joke,
and hid stays stony faced. If you got so much
as a smile out of him, you'd win a thousand dollars.
The money was never in danger. Saint had a partially
paralyzed face. Edward Saint revered Houdini and looked after Bess.
(36:56):
Years after her seance with Arthur Ford, she told an interviewer.
Speaker 3 (37:01):
There was a time when I wanted intensely to hear
from Harry. I was ill, both physically and me, and
such was my eagerness that spiritualists were able to prey
upon my mind.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
To her friends, she added a few more words about
Arthur Ford.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
But he was such a handsome young man.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
On the tenth anniversary of Houdini's death, the thirty first
of October nineteen thirty six, Edward Saint and Bess organized
a seance, the Final Seance, one last chance for Harry
to come through. Hundreds of guests gathered under the stars
(37:49):
on the rooftop of a Hollywood hotel. Millions more listened
to the live radio broadcast. A portrait of Houdini, lit
by a single red light bulb, looked down on a
table on which stood various devices of the medium's trade,
a trumpet, a bell, slates with chalk. Saint explained why
(38:16):
every facility has been provided tonight that might aid in
opening a pathway.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
To the spirit world.
Speaker 6 (38:23):
Are you here, Houdini, please manifest yourself in any way possible.
Let it take the table, spell out a code, Harry
ring the bell.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
Everyone waited, nothing happened. Saint turned to Bess, missus Houdini,
have you reached a verdict?
Speaker 3 (38:52):
Yes, I do not believe that Houdini can come back
to me or to anyone.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
It is finished. Bess looked up at the portrait of
Harry Houdini.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
Good Night, Harry.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
She turned out the light. By Houdini Trilogy drew on
(39:38):
books such as Final Seance by Massimo Polydoro and The
Life and Afterlife of Harry Houdini by Joe Posnanski. For
a fullest of our sources, see the show notes at
Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales is written by me Tim
Harford with Andrew Wright, Alice Fines, and Ryan Dilly. It's
(40:02):
produced by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust. The sound design
and original music are the work of Pascal wi. Additional
sound design is by Carlos San Juan at Brain Audio.
Bend A Dafhaffrey edited the scripts. The show features the
voice talents of Melanie Guttridge, Stella Harford, Oliver Hembrough, Sarah Jupp,
(40:23):
massaam Monroe, Jamal Westman, and rufus Wright. The show also
wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg,
Greta Cohne, Sarah Nix, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody, Christina Sullivan,
Kira Posey, and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production
of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at Wardoor Studios in London
(40:46):
by Tom Berry. If you like the show, please remember
to share, rate and review. It really makes a difference
to us and if you want to hear the show,
add free sign up to Pushkin Plus on the show
page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm, slash
plus
Pushkin. This is the final episode of a three part series.
You can enjoy it on a standalone basis, but if
you've not heard episodes one and two, you might prefer
to listen to them first. Rose Mackenberg picked up her
(00:36):
morning newspaper, saw the headline on the front page, and
choked on her coffee.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
She was genuinely staggered.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
She later wrote, if this was true, it.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Was the story of the century, an actual, factual miracle.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
The headline Houdini sends from grave, the word he promised wife.
The date was January the ninth, nineteen twenty nine. Two
in a bit years had passed since the death of
Harry Houdini at the age of just fifty two. Rose
(01:15):
Mackenberg had worked for Houdini as his chief investigator of
fraudulent mediums, as Houdini transformed himself from a magician and
escape artist into a crusader for critical thinking about supernatural ideas,
in particular the fast growing religion of spiritualism, with its
(01:36):
claim to enable communication between the living and the dead.
Rose read the article in her newspaper. Houdini and his
wife Bess had a secret code, It said, the previous dad,
the medium arthur Ford had visited Bess and delivered her
(01:57):
a message in the Secret Code. Having thus established his identity,
Harry went.
Speaker 4 (02:04):
On, spare no time or money to undo my attitude
of doubt. While on earth, place the truth before all
those who have lost the faith. Tell the world there
is no death. Tell the world that Harry Houdini lives
and will prove it a thousand times.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Hmm. That sounded suspiciously like just what a spiritualist minister
would want the ghost of Harry Houdini to say. But
what about that secret code? The newspaper carried a statement
by Bess.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
I wish to declare that the message is a correct
message pre arranged between mister Houdini and myself. Beatrice Houdini.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Rose Mackenberg didn't dismiss the idea that there was life
after death. She was smart, skeptical, and open minded. That's
why Houdini trusted her. As Rose said, he wanted to believe,
he thought, but one.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Thing truth.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Still, though surely not.
Speaker 5 (03:17):
For a flash.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Even my composure was shaken, and then my memory began
to function.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening to cautionary tales. In
(03:52):
the summer of nineteen twenty six, Harry Houdini should have
been having arrest. Had just been to Washington, d C.
Giving evidence at raucous congressional hearings into a bill that
proposed to ban mediums. In autumn, he'd be embarking on
a grueling five month coast to coast tour from Boston
(04:16):
to Providence, Albany, Schenectady, Montreal, Detroit. Houdini was getting older,
but he couldn't stop touring. He needed the money. It's
not that he had expensive tastes in things like food
or clothes. Growing up in poverty had left him with
frugal habits, so much so Bess had to periodically retire
(04:40):
his tatteoust underwear and slip new ones into the drawer
without telling him. The drain on his resources was what
he saw as his sacred duty, his crusade for critical thinking.
He was spending tens of thousands of dollars a year
millions in today's money, on his team of psychic investigators
(05:05):
headed by Rose Mackenberg, and lawyers to fight off an
endless stream of lawsuits as the fraudulent mediums he exposed
sued him for slander. Sure he'd win the lawsuits. They
were stressful and expensive, nonetheless, but the plan for arrest
hit a snag when Houdini heard about the latest stage
(05:29):
sensation in New York, a self styled Egyptian fekia whose
showpiece was to survive being sealed in an air tight casket. This,
claimed the Fekia, was due to his unique ability to
enter into a special state he called cataleptic anesthesia. Houdini
(05:53):
was irked. This was uncomfortably close to his wheelhouse, being
confined in a tight space and getting out alive and
cataleptic anesthesia was mumbo jumbo. Anyone could train themselves to
survive on little air for a while if they were
fit enough and disciplined enough to take short, calm, shallow breaths.
(06:15):
Hoodini issued a challenge, however long this fekir survives in
a sealed coffin, I'll do it for longer. The fakir
called the city's media to a swimming pool to lay
down his marker. He had himself soldered in a zinc coffin,
which was submerged in the pool by six men standing
(06:38):
on it. After fifty nine minutes, they cut open the coffin.
He was alive, Houdini called the Press to another swimming
pool and had himself soldered into a bronze coffin that
had had specially made A telephone wire poking through the
(06:58):
lid would let him call for help if he needed it.
A half hour passed, an hour and a quarter. It
was hot in this swimming pool. The temperature inside the
coffin neared one hundred degrees. If I'd die, Podini had
(07:20):
said beforehand to the assembled Press.
Speaker 5 (07:23):
It will be the will of God and my own foolishness.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Hoodini wasn't as fit as he used to be. He'd
put on twenty pounds since his younger days. Yes, he'd
just put himself through a vigorous workout regime to get
back in shape. But had he done enough. After an
hour and twenty eight minutes, Hoodini started to feel himself
(07:51):
drifting off.
Speaker 5 (07:55):
Bring me up in two minutes, he.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Breathed into the phone line. They did. The soul That
coffin lid was peeled back like a sardine can reveal
Houdini caked in sweat, deathly white, but alive, pulse racing.
He hadn't just beaten the Fekiir's record. He had obliterated it.
(08:25):
Hoodini might have been sanguine about the prospect of accidentally
dying in one of his own stunts, but another kind
of threat to his life made him increasingly paranoid.
Speaker 5 (08:37):
They're going to kill me.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Houdini had taken to calling a friend at all hours
of the day and night.
Speaker 6 (08:45):
Don't laugh every night.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
They're holding seances and praying for my death.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Spiritualist mediums did keep predicting Whodini's imminent demise. That's got
to be unsettling. When does a prediction become a veiled threat?
And those lawsuits were mounting up. No sooner had Houdini
embarked on his big autumn tour than he had to
travel back overnight to New York for an urgent meeting
(09:16):
with his lawyer, and then another overnight train to Albany
to get straight back on stage. And in Albany disaster,
Houdini was performing his trademark Chinese water torture escape. His
feet were clamped in wooden stocks and he was hoisted
(09:37):
upside down then lowered into a cabinet filled with water.
But as he dangled in the air, the stocks cracked
and fractured. Houdini's ankle. He finished the show on one
leg and hobbled through the rest of his stint in Albany,
Schenectady and on to Montreal. Nearing the end of his run.
(10:03):
In Montreal, Houdini was in his dressing room, reclining on
a couch to rest his healing ankle and amiably chatting
to two young students, an artist and his friend. The
artist was sketching Houdini's portrait. A third student came into
the room, not known to the first two. He'd borrowed
(10:23):
a book from Houdini, and he'd come to give it back.
The new arrival seemed to be annoyingly lacking in social awareness.
He dominated the conversation, bombarding Houdini with question after unrelated question.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
Is it true, mister Houdini, that you can resist the
hardest blows struck to the abdomen?
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Houdini tactfully tried to deflect. Fill my muscles, ha, they
are like iron. The three students took turns to feel
Houdini's arms. They were indeed like iron.
Speaker 4 (10:58):
But would you mind if I delivered a few blows
to your abdomen, mister Houdini.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Houdini clearly wasn't in the mood to be hit in
the abdomen, but the student wasn't getting it, and Houdini's
ego was a powerful thing, all right, he said. He
began to shift on the couch so he could stand
up and brace himself, but the student didn't wait. He
stood over the couch, pummeling Houdini in the stomach. Blow
(11:27):
after crunching blow, the artist's friend leaped up. What are
you doing? Are you crazy? Houdini raised a hand.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
That will do.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
The artist finished his portrait and presented it to Houdini.
Speaker 5 (11:44):
You make me look a little tired in this picture.
The truth is I don't feel so well.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
By nighttime, Houdini was complaining of crippling pains in his stomach,
but he had the final shows in Montreal to get through,
and then an overnight train to try, then straight on
stage for another show in Detroit. He can barely stand,
touching his side two weak to complete a simple magic
(12:21):
trick of pulling a silk streamer from a bowl. When
the curtain falls, Houdini collapses. He's running a fever of
one hundred and four by the time he gets to
hospital and the surgeon opens him up an infection that
began in his appendix has spread to the lining of
(12:41):
his stomach. Hoodini's insides are a mass of pass in
a world before antibiotics, this isn't survivable. Hoodini holds on
for a few more days.
Speaker 5 (12:59):
I suppose we'll get over this waveiness in no time
until at last, Yes, I'm all through Friday.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
They're going to kill me, Houdini had said, had he
been right to fear that his spiritualist enemies had been
not just predicting his death but plotting it. Maybe, but
punching someone in the stomach is hardly a reliable way
to kill them. Even in hindsight. We don't know if
(13:35):
those punches made any difference, or if Houdini was already
suffering from a burst appendix. It seems more likely that
what's true of Houdini's death is true perhaps of death
more generally. There is no deeper narrative that makes sense
of it all, much as we'd love to believe there is.
(13:56):
It's all just chance and happenstance. Harry Houdini died on
the thirty first of October nineteen twenty six. He was
buried in the Bronze coffin it had made for his
swimming pool stunt. But from that coffin would he discover
(14:17):
a telephone line to the living Cautionary tales will be
back after the break. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the great
(14:44):
author and famous spiritualist, had a curious kind of friendship
with Harry Houdini. They kept up a cordial private correspondence
for some time after they started bitterly ripping into each
other in public. The two men fascinated each other. Houdini
was intrigued by how someone as obviously smart as Sir
(15:06):
Arthur could be so credulous. He believed in fairies and
goblins for goodness sake. As for Sir Arthur, he was
convinced that Houdini himself had supernatural powers. How else could
he manage his astonishing tricks and escapes. When he heard
(15:27):
of Houdini's death, Conan Doyle put out a statement, his.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Death is a great shock and a deep mystery to me.
I greatly admired him and cannot understand how the end
came for one so youthful.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
In private, though Conan Doyle wasn't shocked at all, his.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Death was most certainly decreed from the other side.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
After all, thought Sir Arthur. If Houdini had been hiding
the help he got from the spirit world, while at
the same time cruelly mocking the mediums who brought messages
from the spirit world, well it stands to reason that
the spirits would be incensed. Still, Conan Oyle spied an opportunity.
(16:16):
He'd always hoped to persuade Houdini to admit that he
was in fact a powerful spirit medium himself. Perhaps he'd
have better luck in recruiting Houdini to the cause now
that Houdini was dead. He began writing letters to Houdini's widow, Bess.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
I am sorry that shadows grew up between.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Us, my dear Sir Arthur. Bess replied, Houdini would have
been the happiest man in the world had he been
able to agree with your views.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Conan Oyle turned on the flattery.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Any man who wins the love and respect of a
good woman must himself be a fine and honest man.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Bess began to open up.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
If only you knew how my heart yearns to hear
the precious message from my beloved.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
I am quite sure, Knowing has determined character that he
will get back to you.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Every day Bess sat and stared at Houdini's picture. If
only he could speak. She announced a prize of ten
thousand dollars for anyone who could send her a message
she'd recognize as having come from Houdini. That went about
as well as you'd expect. Every crank in the country
(17:40):
sent in messages purportedly from Houdini, saying things like God
is Truth, God is Love, and tussel with death was agony.
With every new message, Bess became more despondent.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Houdini was an unusually intelligent man. All these messages, without exception,
have been silly.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Sir Arthur kept writing. He might be a laughing stock
in some circles. He had just published a second edition
of his much ridiculed book, The Coming of the Fairies,
but the author of the Sherlock Holmes Mysteries still had
away with words in his speeches on spiritualism. He could
be very persuasive as a journalist. Once remarked Conan Doyle
(18:32):
could sell you a house with its roof missing by
means of an eloquent and sustained eulogy of the features
that remained. In one letter, Bess mentioned that a mirror
had fallen from the wall and smashed. Might that have
some kind of significance? So Arthur jumped on the suggestion.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
I think the mirror incident shows every sign of being
a message. After all, such things don't happen elsewhere. No
mirror has ever broken in this house. Why should yours
do so?
Speaker 1 (19:07):
So, arthur fear eye is that if the spirits were
cross with Houdini for denying his supernatural powers in his lifetime,
they may now be temporarily forbidding him to get clear
messages back as a kind of punishment. And if that
was happening, how might Houdini express his frustration fus by
smashing a mirror?
Speaker 2 (19:29):
It is just the sort of energetic thing one could
expect from him.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
So Arthur had trained the full force of his persuasive
powers onto the grief stricken Bess Houdini. What a coup
it would be if he could get her to publicly
state that Houdini had returned. But even Sir Arthur could
see he'd need something more than a smashed mirror to
(19:54):
convince the skeptics. As he wrote to a spiritualist friend.
Speaker 7 (19:59):
I am in quite intimate touch with missus h who
was a splendid, loyal little woman. She seems quite to
accept our point of view, but does keen on getting
some evidence which she can give to the world.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Just afternoon on January eighth, nineteen twenty nine, the charming
young medium arthur Ford arrived at Bess Houdini's house. Some
of arthur Ford's followers came with him. Some of Bess's
friends were there, and two journalists. Bess was lying on
(20:39):
a sofa, covered in a blanket with a bandaged head
she'd fallen over at a New Year's party. Arthur Ford
sat down, wrapped a silk blindfold around his eyes, and
began to shake.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Hoodini is here. He tells me to say hello, best sweetheart.
He wants me to give you these words Rosa bel answer, Tell, pray, answer,
look book, tell, answer, answer tell. He wants you to
tell him whether they are right or not.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
Yes, they are.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
He tells you to take off your wedding ring and
tell them what rosa bell means.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Bess removed her wedding ring. Inside was inscribed the word Rosabel.
It was their song, she explained, way back when they
first met.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
Rouse see sweet Rosea Bell. I love her more than
I can tell.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
Than the secret code answer tell, pray answer look tell
answer answer, Tell what was that about? Back when Bess
and Houdini had been performing mind reading the circus, They'd
devised a way to communicate. They picked out some words
(22:14):
that wouldn't look incongruous in the context of their act,
and made each correspond to a number. Answer was two,
tell was five, and so on. Bess might, for example,
ask someone in the audience to guess a number and
write it down for her. Then Bess would call out
(22:36):
to Houdini something like.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Pray, tell what the answer is? Speak quickly.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Now Houdini would note the order of the code words
and ignore the other words in the sentence, convert them
back into numbers, and he'd know what the audience member
had written down. Depending on the context, those numbers could
be translated into letters too, according to their place in
the alphabet. Answer two the letter B tell five E
(23:08):
spell it out, and the words Arthur Ford had delivered
spelled B E L I E V E believe.
Speaker 4 (23:24):
Rosa bell believe is that the right message.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Bess nodded tearfully, and Ford continued in triumph.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
He says, tell the world that Harry Houdini lives and
will prove it a thousand times.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle read the news, he was
exultant all at once. Whodini had become.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
The classical case of after death return.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Doyle got to work drafting a lengthy article.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
If these loving hands can meet through the veil, then
hours also can do so.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
When Rose Mackenberg read the news for a flash, her
composure was shaken. Then, as she recalled, my memory began
to function. Rose bel but that was hardly a secret.
Anyone who knew the Houdinis knew the significance of roose belt.
(24:40):
And as for those numbered code words, Rose thought, had
she read them somewhere since Houdini's death. She went to
her bookshelf and took down a biography of Houdini published
the previous year. Sure enough, tucked away on page one
hundred and five, there it was Pray one, answer two.
(25:05):
Rose closed the book. She could only get that the
details of how Ford had pulled off his trick. But
if the so called secret code was not so secret
after all, it clearly was a trick that was enough
to restore Rose's composure. As it happened, those details were surprising.
(25:27):
They were set out in an article on the front
page of the next morning's newspaper under an even bigger headline,
who DNI message a big HOPX cautionary tales will be
back in a moment? Who DENI message a big hoax?
(25:58):
The article was written by a journalist called Raya Howray.
She'd been at Bessie's house for the seance. She'd also
been at Bessie's house a couple of days before, when
she reported she had found Bess in a state of
semi delirium, intermittently blacking out. Under the constant care of physicians.
(26:19):
Bess was suffering from flu. It seemed she was also
still recovering from that bang to the head of the
New Year's party. But there was more to the story.
Bess had fallen because she was drunk. She'd been drinking
a lot lately and taking drugs and partying with younger men.
(26:40):
One of those younger men was none other than the dashing,
charming medium Arthur Ford. The journalist Raya Howrey had been
at some of those parties with Bess and Arthur Ford.
She knew how well they knew each other. She may
not have known that Bessi's semi delirium wasn't just from
(27:03):
drink or flu. She'd also swallowed lots of sleeping pills.
She'd left a note for Harry's lawyer, I am.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
So ill, I want to go to Harry.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
The semi delirious Bess told Raya all about the seance
she and Arthur Ford had planned. Arthur would give her
the coded message, she'd take off her wedding ring, explain
roose belt, and so on. Raya took careful notes. She
(27:39):
realized that Bess planning a seance wasn't much of a story,
but she could get two days of front page headlines
if she first reported on the seance, then reported on
the hoax. On the day after the seance, Raya invited
(28:01):
Arthur Ford to her house. Ford was delighted with the
newspaper coverage. Houdini's return was on all the front pages.
Raya led Ford into a discussion of the party where
she'd first met Ford and Bess didn't he remember? Oh? Yes,
Ford happily reminisced. Then Raya told Ford how she was
(28:26):
going to write another story about how Bess had told
her exactly how the seance would unfold. She showed him
the notes she'd taken. She had also shown those notes
to her editor before the seance. Ford was horrified.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
But you must play ball, really, I would be glad
to make financial compensation.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
The editor was hiding in the next room listening to everything.
When the hoax story was published, Arthur Ford insisted he
had been the victim of an impersonation attempt. It didn't
seem to harm his career as a medium. Houdini's lawyer
(29:12):
hand wrote a letter to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, handwritten
because this was in strictest confidence. He didn't even want
his secretary to see the contents. He thought Sir Arthur
should know just how desperate Bessie's mental decline had become
before that seance. Sir Arthur judiciously inserted one word into
(29:34):
his long article about Whodini's return. Apparently, then he tacked
a couple of sentences on to the end.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
It is true that in the last resort we are
dependent upon the veracity and honesty of missus Houdini. But I,
for one, am not cynical enough to question it.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Perhaps it wasn't just grief about Harry's death that caused
bess to play along, but also what Bess had found
among Harry's belongings after his death, letters from other women
women she knew, women who privately referred to Harry as
(30:18):
my magic man or magic lover. Bess invited each of
them to lunch, but when they rang the doorbell, it
was Bessi's maid who answered, Missus Houdini is indisposed. She
asked me to give you this handing over a bundle
of their correspondence. In their book The Secret Life of Houdini,
(30:44):
the authors William Callush and Larry Slowman argue that Bess
was desperate for Harry to come back publicly to her.
She wanted to claim his spirit for the cause of
her marriage, just as Sir Arthur wanted to claim Houdini
for his religion. When the plan backfired, Bess spiraled further more,
(31:07):
drink ever younger Jiggilows, Pudini's brother, stepped in to safeguard
what was left of her inheritance. Bess checked herself into
a sanatorium. Hoodini had investigated enough mediums to know their
target market, the bereaved, made vulnerable by their grief. He
(31:33):
must have guessed that if he went first, Bess might
struggle to resist, so he didn't make a code just
with Bess. He made codes with everyone he felt he
could trust. One day, for instance, years before his death,
Hoodini stopped by the office of a friend and gave
him a present, a copy of Roget's Thesaurus. Inside was
(31:58):
a penciled note.
Speaker 5 (32:01):
There is our cold.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Never breathed to a living soul. In his book A
Magician among the Spirits, Whodini said he had made pacts
like this with a dozen friends, every code unique. By
the time he died, it may have been more than twenty.
Whichever of us dies first, who Deni would explain, if
(32:27):
we find we still live and we can get through
with a message, include those words. When faced with an
intractable question, we can sometimes find an imaginative way to
generate evidence, And few questions are more intractable than do
we live on after death? The only evidence we'll ever
(32:50):
get is if someone comes back from the dead to
tell us. But how can we be sure if a
message from the other side is genuine? Wishful thinking is powerful,
Frauds can be convincing. Who Deni tried to make sure
that his audiences knew that. But what impresses me about Houdini.
(33:13):
Isn't just his efforts to debunk the lies. It's his
dedication to uncovering the truth. Houdini wanted to believe, but
he wasn't credulous like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He was
curious and systematic. He set up a one man experiment
(33:34):
that was not only ingenious but selfless, because he knew
he might not be the one to gather the evidence
if he died first, it would be his friends whould
have to piece that evidence together, either the various different
code words coming through which would strongly suggest that communication
(33:55):
with the dead was possible, or not, as the case
may be. Some of the friends Houdini made pacts with
died before him. One even called him to her deathbed
to reassure him that she remembered their code, a secret handshake.
She held out her hand and grasped Houdini's in the
(34:18):
grip they'd agreed, if I can get through, she said,
I'll have someone shake your hand like that. Nobody ever did.
After Houdini died, nobody apart from Bess ever said he
(34:41):
came through with the code they arranged. One of his
secret codes was with of course, Rose Mackenberg. Rose spent
three decades after Houdini's death investigating mediums. They gave her
messages from fifteen hundred fictitious dead husbands, but nobody mentioned
(35:03):
the words she had agreed with Houdini. If just one
of those mediums really did have a hotline to the
spirit world, you'd think that Houdini might have picked up.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle died in nineteen thirty. His widow,
(35:23):
Lady Doyle, invited a trusted medium to bring her husband back,
A good friend of Sir Arthur, a protege. Indeed, that
medium Arthur Ford. Lady Doyle was perfectly satisfied that Sir
Arthur had come through. Lady Doyle was less pleased when
(35:45):
some other medium published a book which claimed to contain
interviews with her dead husband, Arthur Conan Doyle's Book of
the Beyond. How dare they use his name like that?
It seemed that any old chancer could commandeer Sir Arthur's
spirit for their own purposes, and there was nothing Ladied
(36:09):
Oil could do about it. Who would have thought? Bess
eventually found a good man. His name was Edward Saint,
and he'd made his living in the circus, just like
Harry and Bess all those years ago. His act, he'd
(36:30):
challenged the audience to make him laugh, crack a joke,
and hid stays stony faced. If you got so much
as a smile out of him, you'd win a thousand dollars.
The money was never in danger. Saint had a partially
paralyzed face. Edward Saint revered Houdini and looked after Bess.
(36:56):
Years after her seance with Arthur Ford, she told an interviewer.
Speaker 3 (37:01):
There was a time when I wanted intensely to hear
from Harry. I was ill, both physically and me, and
such was my eagerness that spiritualists were able to prey
upon my mind.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
To her friends, she added a few more words about
Arthur Ford.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
But he was such a handsome young man.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
On the tenth anniversary of Houdini's death, the thirty first
of October nineteen thirty six, Edward Saint and Bess organized
a seance, the Final Seance, one last chance for Harry
to come through. Hundreds of guests gathered under the stars
(37:49):
on the rooftop of a Hollywood hotel. Millions more listened
to the live radio broadcast. A portrait of Houdini, lit
by a single red light bulb, looked down on a
table on which stood various devices of the medium's trade,
a trumpet, a bell, slates with chalk. Saint explained why
(38:16):
every facility has been provided tonight that might aid in
opening a pathway.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
To the spirit world.
Speaker 6 (38:23):
Are you here, Houdini, please manifest yourself in any way possible.
Let it take the table, spell out a code, Harry
ring the bell.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
Everyone waited, nothing happened. Saint turned to Bess, missus Houdini,
have you reached a verdict?
Speaker 3 (38:52):
Yes, I do not believe that Houdini can come back
to me or to anyone.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
It is finished. Bess looked up at the portrait of
Harry Houdini.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
Good Night, Harry.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
She turned out the light. By Houdini Trilogy drew on
(39:38):
books such as Final Seance by Massimo Polydoro and The
Life and Afterlife of Harry Houdini by Joe Posnanski. For
a fullest of our sources, see the show notes at
Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales is written by me Tim
Harford with Andrew Wright, Alice Fines, and Ryan Dilly. It's
(40:02):
produced by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust. The sound design
and original music are the work of Pascal wi. Additional
sound design is by Carlos San Juan at Brain Audio.
Bend A Dafhaffrey edited the scripts. The show features the
voice talents of Melanie Guttridge, Stella Harford, Oliver Hembrough, Sarah Jupp,
(40:23):
massaam Monroe, Jamal Westman, and rufus Wright. The show also
wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg,
Greta Cohne, Sarah Nix, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody, Christina Sullivan,
Kira Posey, and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production
of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at Wardoor Studios in London
(40:46):
by Tom Berry. If you like the show, please remember
to share, rate and review. It really makes a difference
to us and if you want to hear the show,
add free sign up to Pushkin Plus on the show
page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm, slash
plus
Host
Tim Harford
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Ridiculous History
History is beautiful, brutal and, often, ridiculous. Join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown as they dive into some of the weirdest stories from across the span of human civilization in Ridiculous History, a podcast by iHeartRadio.