Spirit Photograph by Alexander Martin in Harry Houdini's book "A Magician Among the Spirits" (1924)
The bloody death toll of WWI had left so many bereaved that people who had never been able to say goodbye to loved ones flocked to mediums in hopes of re-establishing contact. One of the key figures stirring the revival in Spiritualism was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who had himself lost a son, a brother and nine other relatives in the war. He became a proselytizer for Spiritualism, writing books about it, including two in 1918 alone, and became one of the public leaders of the movement.
Contemptuous of frauds and fakes, Houdini desperately wanted to believe in things undreamt of in his philosophy, but he was continually disappointed. His time at the carnivals had made him aware of many of the tricks used by unscrupulous mediums, and his experience as an illusionist made it easy for him to disprove them. He began to resent how he and bereaved people in general had been bamboozled by scam-artists who preyed on vulnerability, and he grew active in exposing them. He stepped up his exposure of dishonest mediums with his book “A Magician Among the Spirits,” which revealed the secrets behind floating handkerchiefs, “spirit hands,” and messages from the beyond. Following the deaths of Houdini and Doyle, Spiritualism fell into disrepute, once again the province of carnival fortune tellers and con men. [Source: www.biography.com/news/houdini-arthur-conan-doyle]
Spirit Photograph by Alexander Martin in Harry Houdini's book "A Magician Among the Spirits" (1924)
The bloody death toll of WWI had left so many bereaved that people who had never been able to say goodbye to loved ones flocked to mediums in hopes of re-establishing contact. One of the key figures stirring the revival in Spiritualism was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who had himself lost a son, a brother and nine other relatives in the war. He became a proselytizer for Spiritualism, writing books about it, including two in 1918 alone, and became one of the public leaders of the movement.
Contemptuous of frauds and fakes, Houdini desperately wanted to believe in things undreamt of in his philosophy, but he was continually disappointed. His time at the carnivals had made him aware of many of the tricks used by unscrupulous mediums, and his experience as an illusionist made it easy for him to disprove them. He began to resent how he and bereaved people in general had been bamboozled by scam-artists who preyed on vulnerability, and he grew active in exposing them. He stepped up his exposure of dishonest mediums with his book “A Magician Among the Spirits,” which revealed the secrets behind floating handkerchiefs, “spirit hands,” and messages from the beyond. Following the deaths of Houdini and Doyle, Spiritualism fell into disrepute, once again the province of carnival fortune tellers and con men. [Source: www.biography.com/news/houdini-arthur-conan-doyle]