Volume 2 of "The History of Spiritualism" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. NY: George H. Doran, (1926).
Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the highly rational detective Sherlock Holmes, fell for the mumbo-jumbo of spiritualism and was one of its leading proponents in the early twentieth century.
“After holding séances with his wife Jean to get in touch with members of their family killed in the First World War, Conan Doyle came out as a spiritualist. He claimed to converse with the spirits of the dead. Virtually abandoning Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle churned out books on spiritualism and addressed vast audiences around the world on the subject. He proudly adopted the sobriquet "the St Paul of the New Dispensation", ruffling some feathers along the way. In North America he clashed with Harry Houdini, an illusionist, who argued that all spiritualists’ "tricks" could be replicated by a competent magician.” [Source: moreintelligentlife.com/story/conan-doyle-spiritualism]
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. Conan Doyle was one of the key figures stirring the revival in Spiritualism and he 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, Harry 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 in 1924 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]
Volume 2 of "The History of Spiritualism" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. NY: George H. Doran, (1926).
Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the highly rational detective Sherlock Holmes, fell for the mumbo-jumbo of spiritualism and was one of its leading proponents in the early twentieth century.
“After holding séances with his wife Jean to get in touch with members of their family killed in the First World War, Conan Doyle came out as a spiritualist. He claimed to converse with the spirits of the dead. Virtually abandoning Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle churned out books on spiritualism and addressed vast audiences around the world on the subject. He proudly adopted the sobriquet "the St Paul of the New Dispensation", ruffling some feathers along the way. In North America he clashed with Harry Houdini, an illusionist, who argued that all spiritualists’ "tricks" could be replicated by a competent magician.” [Source: moreintelligentlife.com/story/conan-doyle-spiritualism]
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. Conan Doyle was one of the key figures stirring the revival in Spiritualism and he 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, Harry 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 in 1924 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]