Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford - Houdini: A Message from the Spirits (Part 1)

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

Harry Houdini is remembered today for his legendary escapes and illusions, but he also had a lifelong obsession with the paranormal. After dabbling in fake seances himself, Houdini made it his mission to uncover frauds and expose mediums. This would put him on a collision course with his spiritualist friend, Arthur Conan Doyle, and leave him fearing for his life. This is the first of a three-part series. 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, exclusive audiobook binges, and bonus content for all Pushkin shows.  Subscribe on Apple: apple.co/pushkinSubscribe on Pushkin.fm: pushkin.fm/plusSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pushkin In summer 1922, outside the Ambassador Hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey, two of the world's most famous men are relaxing in deck chairs with their wives. One man is famous for his astonishing escapes from handcuffs, straight jackets or being buried alive. Harry Houdini, the world's greatest mystified. The other man is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, famous for his novels about the world's greatest solver of mysteries, Sherlock Holmes. As the celebrated detective liked to say,

When you've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is not only a famous author, but also the best known advocate for the new religion of spiritualism. That religion is growing quickly. Spiritualist mediums say they can pass on messages from departed loved ones, and the world has no shortage of bereaved relatives. The Great War and the Spanish Flu have cut down swathes of young people, including Sir Arthur's son. Sir Arthur has no doubt whatsoever that it's possible to communicate with the dead. Houdini is keenly interested in whether or not that's true. A couple of years earlier, Sir Arthur

had seen Houdini's show and invited him for lunch. They've been friends ever since. Houdini, if agreeable, Lady Doyle will give you a special séance, as she has a feeling that she might have a message come through. At any rate, she is willing to try. The message in question would be from Houdini's mother, whose death nine years earlier had devastated the great magician. As Houdini once said, If God, in his infinite wisdom, ever sent an angel upon earth in human form,

it was my mother." Houdini had always been a mother's boy. Even as a grown adult, he liked to lie with his head on her breast to listen to her heartbeat. In the weeks before her death, he'd had some strange sense of foreboding. Visiting his father's grave, Houdini suddenly felt an urge to lie down in the dirt. What on earth are you doing? asked his brother. I want to lie on the spot where our mother will one day rest, Houdini replied. For goodness sake, said his brother, don't be so morose.

But their mother too may have had a premonition. As Harry boarded a ship to cross the Atlantic for a month's long tour of Europe, she whispered, perhaps I won't be here when you return. Then again, she said that every time he went away. Houdini was just about to go on stage in Copenhagen when he got a telegram. He slipped it in his pocket. No time to read it now.

The show was a triumph, the after-party and full swing when Houdini remembered the telegram and took it from his pocket. His mother was dead. A stroke, aged 72. Houdini promptly fainted. When he came back around, he cancelled the rest of his tour and took the first ship back to New York, where he spent night after night, week after week, sitting solemnly by his mother's grave.

A can't seem to get over it, he wrote to his brother. I believe in a hereafter, Houdini later said. And no greater blessing could be bestowed upon me than the opportunity once again to speak to my sainted mother. And so on the beach in Atlantic City, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle turns to Houdini's wife, Bess. You understand, Mrs Houdini, that this will be a test to see whether we can make any spirit come through for Houdini, and conditions may prove better if no other force is present.

You do not mind if we make the experiment without you. Go right ahead, Sir Arthur. I will leave Houdini in your charge. Sir Arthur and his wife lead Houdini to their suite in the Ambassador Hotel. They draw the curtains and invite Houdini to sit with them around the table, on which is placed a pencil and pad of paper. The three of them sit with their hands on the table until Lady Doyle's hands begin to shake. Spirits, do you have a message? Lady Doyle's whole body begins to convulse. Her hands thump on the table. Then she grabs the pencil and starts to write.

I'm Tim Harford and you're listening to Cautionary Tales. This is the first in a series of three cautionary tales about Harry Houdini and the afterlife. We're going to go with Houdini on a journey from that seance in Atlantic City. A journey that will take him in front of lawmakers in Washington DC, make him powerful enemies, cost him a friendship and a fortune, and leave him fearing for his life. They're going to kill me. That's to come. Our story starts in 1874, when Harry Houdini was born in Appleton, Wisconsin. Or, that was the story he liked to tell. It wasn't true.

The baby boy who would become Harry Houdini was born Eric Weiss in Budapest in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Eric was four years old when his father took the family to America. They settled in Appleton, where Erich's dad had friends, who installed him as the local rabbi. Young Erich developed a strange fascination with locks. He went around the house using a button hook to pick the locks of drawers and closets. When he ran out of locks at home, he sneaked out one night and worked his way down the town's main street, picking the locks on the doors

to every shop. Here's another story Houdini liked to tell. At age 11, he worked as an apprentice in the town's locksmith shop. One day, the sheriff came in with a handcuffed prisoner. They'd come from the courthouse. This man's been let off, the sheriff explained. But I can't find the key to the cuffs. Can you get them off him? The locksmith handed Erich a hacksaw and said,

you do it, I'll go for a beer with the sheriff. Erich was left alone in the shop with the burly, rough-looking prisoner. He worked away at the handcuffs, but the hacksaw blade made no impression in the steel. Then the blade snapped, and so did the prisoner. You're lucky you didn't cut me up! Soaring through the cuffs would take forever, and Erich really didn't want to find out

what would happen if he did cut the prisoner up. Might a button hook work? Handcuff locks must be harder to pick than those of drawers and closets and shop doors, but it was worth a go. Erich found a loop of piano wire and improvised a hook. He poked and probed, wiggled and jiggled. This was harder to pick than all those other locks, but after a minute the cuff popped open. The 11-year-old boy and the big burly prisoner looked at each other in astonishment.

Erich got to work on the other cuff. That came off more quickly. Then the shop door opened. Back came the locksmith and the sheriff. Erich quickly hid his piano wire. All the locksmiths saw was that the handcuffs were off. Well done, Erich, said the locksmith. Good work.

Much later, after his handcuff escapes had made him famous, Houdini liked to say that only two people had ever seen how he got the handcuffs off. His wife Bess and a rough-looking prisoner he'd met when he was 11 and never saw again. Lady Doyle scribbled furiously on the pad of paper. She was channelling the spirit of Houdini's mother. As she reached the end of the page, Sir Arthur tore it from the pad and solemnly handed it to Houdini. He began to read.

Oh, my darling, thank God, thank God at last I'm through. I've tried oh so often. I want to talk to my boy, my own beloved boy. The message began with a sketch of a crucifix. Curious, thought Harry Houdini, has my mother, the rabbi's wife, converted to Christianity in the afterlife? He keeps reading. I am so happy in this life. It is so full and joyous. So lofty. All sweetness around one." And another thing. Why is she writing in English? Houdini's mum had been well-educated in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. She spoke five languages.

English was not among them. And in all her years in America, she'd never felt the need to learn. Why bother? She thought. Everyone she knew spoke German. Had she finally decided it was important to learn English now that she was dead? So much she wants to say, she says, and yet she isn't actually saying any of it. Nothing personal. Nothing that only a mother would know. She doesn't even mention that today would have been her birthday.

If she'd read his mind, she'd know he'd been thinking about that. No, it's just page after page of this generic, breathless burbling about how much she loves him and looks over him and how happy she is with the afterlife and how happy he'll be when he joins her. Oh, so happy. A happiness awaits him that he has never dreamed of. Tell him I am with him."

What an absolute load of twaddle, thinks Houdini. Did Lady Doyle really believe she'd been channelling the thoughts of Houdini's mother? It seemed so, but who could tell? According to Bess, Lady Doyle had earlier been asking a lot of questions about Houdini and his mum. Sir Arthur, though, had no doubts at all. He was a true believer. He looked at Houdini with pleasure and pride. He was convinced that he had given his friend the greatest of gifts. A message from his beloved mother, prove positive that she lived beyond the grave. Houdini liked Sir Arthur.

He didn't want to say what he was really thinking. So he smiled politely. Cautionary Tales will be back after the break. In Appleton, Wisconsin, in the 1880s, things were not going well for young Eric Weiss's family. Eric's dad, the rabbi, lost his job. His growing congregation, it seemed, wanted someone more in tune with the America they'd come to than the Europe they'd left behind. Possibly they weren't impressed that the rabbi, like his wife, hadn't bothered to learn any English. The family moved to Milwaukee, then to New York,

but work was hard to come by for German-speaking, old-school rabbis in failing health. Teenage Erich chipped into the family finances doing any job he could. He was a shoe-shiner, a newspaper seller, a delivery boy. When he wasn't earning money, he was a boxer, a runner, a swimmer. He trained himself to contort his body. He read every book on magic he could find. And he put on any act he could in any show that would have him. He was the trapeze artist, Erich, the prince of the air. He was the card magician, Erich,

the great. Then he was half of the Brothers Houdini, doing a trick he'd learned from a book. First, the Brothers Houdini asked volunteers from the crowd to come on stage. Lend us your jacket, they asked one. Harry, as Erich had now renamed himself, put on the jacket. The volunteers tied him up with ropes. They put him in a sack.

They tied up the sack. They put him in a trunk and they locked the trunk. Now, said Harry's brother, watch closely. He pulled a curtain in front of himself and the trunk. He clapped once from behind the curtain. He clapped twice. On the third clap, the curtain was thrown aside by Harry, who'd escaped from the trunk. Harry and the volunteers unlocked the trunk, untied the sack and out of it stepped Harry's brother.

Trust up, in just the same way Harry had been a mere few seconds before. They untied the ropes and yes, Harry's brother was wearing the first volunteer's jacket. The brothers Houdini took their act to Coney Island, where they shared a stage with performing monkeys, morbidly obese women, clowns and a singer. Rosie, sweet Rosabelle, I love her more than I can tell. For me she casts a spell. Harry was 20, Bess was 18. In three weeks they were married.

Is three weeks long enough to really get to know someone? I know that your father passed on, says Harry to his new wife, but I still don't know his first name. No wait, don't tell me. Write it on this piece of paper. Don't show me. Now crumple up the paper and put it in the stove. Now you see. I take the ashes of the crumpled paper, rub them on my forearm, and Harry shows Bess his arm.

Her father's name is written on it in blood-red letters. Bess turns white as she suddenly remembers the folklore she'd been taught as a child. The devil, disguised as a handsome young man, lured girls to destruction. It was clear to me that I had of the door. Harry bursts out laughing and races after her, calms her down, brings her home, gets out his magic book and shows her exactly how the trick was done. Soon the brothers Houdini have become the Houdinis. It's Bess who's pulled out of the sack in the trunk.

Audiences love it. But it's over all too quickly. It can't sustain a show on its own. Harry and Bess go on tour with a circus and Harry picks up every skill he can from his fellow acts. From a man who has no arms, he learns how to use his toes as dexterously as his fingers. He learns how to swallow needles and a thread and regurgitate them with the thread through the needles. He starts to do escapes from handcuffs. But life on the road is a struggle. Harry and Bess trek from one obscure small town to another.

They're never earning enough. Nothing they try really catches fire. Until at last, they stumble across an act that they're brilliant at that causes a sensation. In Garnet, Kansas in 1897, over a thousand people are crammed into the grand opera house. That's one in six of the town's entire population. The largest audience ever to fill the building. 23-year-old Harry Houdini is who they've come to see.

Because Harry Houdini, according to the headline in the local newspaper, is apparently a world-famous medium. Houdini takes to the stage. Allow me to introduce my assistant, Mademoiselle Beatrice, a trained psychometric clairvoyant. Bess settles herself in a chair, lets out a groan, and slumps forward. She is in a trance state. The world-famous medium had earlier prepared for the show by walking around the cemetery in Garnet with a notebook, reading the gravestones.

One freshly dug grave belonged to a boy called Joe Osborne. He had recently died at the age of six. I see a little boy," says Bess in her trance state. He's six years old. His name is Joe. He has a message for his parents. Does anyone know a Little Joe? A murmur goes round the crowd. The Osborns? Are the Osborns here?

It seems not. Someone rushes out to their home to fetch them. What is the message from Little Joe? Joe says he is in a happy place. And he says, don't cry, mama. There'll be another one soon to take my place. Joe's dad is furious. How the hell did you know my wife is pregnant?

We haven't told anyone yet. If the crowd had stopped to think, they might have realised it wasn't hard to guess that a bereaved young couple might try for another child. But Houdini simply shrugs, and modestly reminds them that Mamzel Beatrice is a trained clairvoyant, after all. Now, says Houdini, I understand there's recently been a murder in your town. The crowd don't need reminding. Just a few weeks earlier, a local woman called Anna was found dead in her home, bleeding

from the head. The sheriff hasn't solved the case. But Houdini says he can unmask the murderer because "'You cannot hide a nefarious deed from the spirits." He turns to Bess, still slumped in her chair. "'Was Anna murdered in her own home? Yes. With what instrument?

She was hacked 17 times with a butcher's knife. Did she know her killer? Yes. What is the killer's name? Bess was silent. Answer. Now. What is his name? His name is... Is... Ahh!

With a fearsome wail, Bess throws her hands in the air and collapses back on her chair. She's fainted! Is there a doctor in the house? The case of Anna's murderer, alas, would have to remain unsolved. But the people of Garnet have never experienced an evening like this. Harry Houdini has had them eating from the palm of his hand. At this rate, he actually could become a world famous medium. Harry and Bess, after years of struggle, have finally hit upon an act that promises to make their fortune. But they decide they can't keep doing it. Harry is haunted by the looks on the faces of the Osbournes. He'd been playing with their emotions, exploiting their grief. It's not right.

Harry and Bess give up the medium act and go back to scraping a living with their magic tricks. The thing about magic, Harry says, is that you don't have to lie. You tell the audience you're going to deceive them, and you do. Unlike pretending you can raise the dead, magic is an honest way to make a living. A quarter century later, in 1922, a few months have passed since the seance in Atlantic City, where Lady Doyle channelled the spirit of Houdini's dead mum. The New York Sun asks Houdini to write an article about his thoughts on contacting the dead.

Houdini's Dead Mum My mind is open. I am perfectly willing to believe but I have never seen or heard anything that could convince me that there is a possibility of communication with the loved ones who have gone beyond. When a copy of The New York Sun finds its way to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, he's outraged. Or, as he writes to Houdini, I felt rather sore about it. You see, he tells Houdini,

he knows from experience the purity of his wife's mediumship. He reminds Houdini of that utterly convincing message Lady Doyle had received from his mum in Atlantic City. I saw what you got and what the effect was upon you at the time. Houdini, it seems, had been a little too convincing with the politeness of his smile. Cautionary Tales will be back after the break. The young lovers, Harry and Bess struggled on with the travelling circus. Harry would try his hand at anything except pretending to raise the dead. He was the Wizard of Shackles, the King of Cards. He briefly did a turn filling in as the wild man of Mexico, in a cage, growling and eating

raw meat. Harry's brother-in-law gently offered a way out. I know people at the Yale Lock Factory, he said. It'll be steady work. If things are no better in a year, Harry told Bess, I'll take the job. Whenever the circus arrived in a new town, Houdini would present himself at the local police station,

challenge the police to handcuff him, and escape. It would usually get him a few lines in the town's paper. But when he did it in Chicago, everything changed completely unexpectedly for Harry Houdini. The Chicago Journal put him on the front page. Amazes the detectives, read the headline, with a flattering illustration of Houdini and the handcuffs. The publicity bumped him up to the top of the bill. It was the big break Houdini had been waiting for.

Fame begets fame if you work at it. Houdini did. He kept upping the ante. He'd escape from being buried alive under six feet of dirt. He'd be handcuffed on a bridge and tossed into the river below. He'd be put in a straitjacket and dangled upside down from a tall building. Most impressive of all was the Chinese water torture cell. Houdini invited volunteers onto the stage to inspect his cell.

A steel and mahogany cabinet, standing five and a half feet tall, with a glass panel on the front. The volunteers filled it up with buckets of water, while Houdini's legs were locked into wooden stocks. How long can you hold your breath? He asked the audience. I challenge you to hold your breath along with me. Houdini was handcuffed, hoisted upside down, and lowered head first into the cabinet,

with the water splashing over the sides. A curtain was drawn in front of the cell. The band began to play. Time ticked by. One by one, audience members holding their breath gave up and exhaled. Still, time ticked by. The band kept playing. An assistant of Houdini would look with mounting concern at the cell behind the curtain. He's holding an axe, ready to smash the cabinet. Surely something's gone horribly wrong. No one could hold their breath for this long.

Then the curtain would be thrust aside. And there was Houdini, dripping and gasping. How did he do it? It was honest work, as Houdini said. He promised to mystify you, and he did. That's the fun of a magic show. You're mystified by exactly how the magician did it. Even though you know in general terms it's going to be some combination of showmanship

and misdirection, mechanical trickery, hidden compartments and the like, and physical skill on the part of the magician, in Houdini's case, don't underestimate the physical skill. He really did keep himself exceptionally fit. And he wanted you to know it. Feel my muscles. They are like iron, he liked to say. Or even, punch me in the stomach as hard as you like. But as his fame grew, Houdini faced an unusual problem. His tricks were so confounding, some people were sure he must have had supernatural help. Since that night in Garnet, Kansas, when Harry had disgusted himself by pretending to deliver a message from a dead six-year-old. More and more people had come to believe that spirits were real and

powerful. The president of the British College of Psychic Science, for instance, one J. Hewitt Mackenzie described seeing Harry on stage in London. A small iron tank filled with water was deposited upon the stage and in it Houdini was placed, an iron lid was securely locked. I felt a great loss of physical energy, such as is usually experienced by sitters in materialising seances. Houdini's body was completely dematerialised, then materialised on the stagefront, dripping with water. If I actually could do that, said an exasperated Houdini, trust me, I'd tell you. I do not dematerialise or materialise anything. I simply control and manipulate material things in a manner perfectly well understood by myself and equally understandable by any person to

whom I may elect to divulge my secrets." It wasn't only members of the College of Psychic Science who doubted Houdini's insistence that he had no supernatural powers. The famous French actress Sarah Bernhardt, who'd recently had a leg amputated, once draped her arm around Houdini's shoulder and tentatively asked him, Houdini, you do such marvelous things. Couldn't you, could you bring back my leg for me?

Good heavens, madam, certainly not. You're asking me to do the impossible. Bernhard leaned closer. Yes, but you do the impossible. Are you jesting? No, Udini. I've never been more serious in my life. Then there was the time he'd put on a magic show for Teddy Roosevelt, with cards and silk

handkerchiefs and a trick sometimes used by mediums to claim to be getting messages from the other side. He had Roosevelt write a question on a sheet of paper, then seal it in an envelope. Then the answer to the question appeared, mysteriously chalked on a slate. The next morning, Roosevelt put his arm around Houdini's shoulder. Houdini, tell me the truth, man to man. Was that genuine spiritualism last night?

Roosevelt, even the famously astute former president, needed it spelling out to him. No, Colonel. It was hocus pocus. Houdini became more and more frustrated by how credulous even the sharpest minds could be. None more so than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. We've heard in another cautionary tale all about how the brilliant author was embarrassingly duped by children who claimed to photograph fairies at the bottom of their garden. Doyle even wrote to Houdini about the Cottingley fairies. A fake, you will say? No, sir, I think not.

The fairies are about eight inches high. In one photo, there is a goblin dancing. It is a revelation. And then Houdini had what must have seemed like an inspired idea. Perhaps if he could demonstrate to Sir Arthur how easy it Houdini had what must have seemed like an inspired idea. Perhaps if he could demonstrate to Sir Arthur how easy it is to give the false impression of supernatural powers, he might persuade his friend to be a little more sceptical in

future. At his home in New York, Harry Houdini presented Sir Arthur Conan Doyle with a blank, black slate. A perfectly ordinary slate, you agree, Sir Arthur? We shall hang it from the ceiling so it can't be interfered with. And cork balls. Choose one at random. Cut through it. Pure cork balls. Choose one at random. Cut through it.

Pure cork, you see? Now choose another and put it in this ink well so it can soak up white ink. Now take a slip of paper. You have a pencil? Go outside, said Houdini. Walk anywhere you like so you won't be observed, and write on that slip of paper a question or a phrase,

anything you like. Sir Arthur walked outside, found a quiet spot, and wrote an Aramaic phrase from the Bible. Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin. He walked back to Houdini's house. Take this spoon, said Houdini. Lift the cork ball from the ink well and touch it to the left side of the slate. It stuck.

Then slowly it started moving, apparently of its own accord, writing in white ink on the black slate. Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin. Houdini turned to Sir Arthur. I won't tell you how I did it, but I can assure you it was pure trickery. I did it by perfectly normal means. Now I beg of you, Sir Arthur, do not jump to the conclusion that certain things you see are necessarily supernatural

or the work of spirits, just because you cannot explain them. Unfortunately, Houdini's demonstration had the exact opposite effect of the one he'd intended. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle left Houdini's house utterly convinced that Houdini had supernatural powers, and was lying about it. Remember what Sir Arthur liked his protagonist Sherlock Holmes to say? When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. But when a credulous mind meets an accomplished mystifier, Holmes' aphorism breaks down.

Sir Arthur simply couldn't tell where the improbable ended and the impossible began. Over the years, Harry Houdini had been many things. Erich, Prince of the Air, the Handcuff King. Now, approaching the age of 50, he took on his last and greatest role, a champion of critical thinking. He published a book, A Magician Among the Spirits, in which he introduced an aphorism of his own. The simple fact that a thing looks mysterious does not signify anything beyond the necessity of analytic investigation for a fuller understanding. It may not be as pithy as Sherlock Holmes on the improbable and the impossible, but

as a guide for clear thinking, perhaps it's better. If something seems strange, don't assume it's supernatural. Engage your brain instead. Houdini introduced a new element to his sell-out shows. Alongside the tricks and the escapes, he'd expose fraudulent local mediums who cynically preyed on those made vulnerable by grief. He even tried to get the law changed, to have them thrown in prison, as we'll hear about in the next episode of Cautionary Tales.

One night, after a performance, a woman came up to him. I'm from Garnet, Kansas, she said. I was in the audience at the show you did, 26 years ago. Houdini said, do you know the Osborns? The Osborns? His name is Joe. Why, yes, they've moved to California, but I have their address. He has a message for his parents. Houdini took the address and wrote the Osbournes

a long letter of apology. This episode relied on biographies, including The Secret Life of Houdini by William Kalush and Larry Sloman and Houdini and Conan Doyle by Christopher Sandford. For a full list of our sources, see the show notes at timharford.com. Cautionary Tales is written by me, Tim Harford, with Andrew Wright, Alice Vines and Ryan Dilley. It's produced by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music are the work of Pascal Wise. Additional sound design

is by Carlos Sanjuan at Brain Audio. Ben Nadaph Haferi edited the scripts. The show features the voice talents of Melanie Guthridge, Stella Harford, Oliver Hembra, Sarah Jupp, Maseya Monroe, Jamal Westman and Rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Greta Cohn, Sarah Nix, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody, Christina Sullivan, Keira Posey and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at Wardour Studios in London by Tom Berry.

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