Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford - Houdini: The Phone Call from the Coffin (Part 3)

Episode Date: March 28, 2025

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/pushkinSubscribe on Pushkin: pushkin.fm/plusSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pushkin 1942 Europe soldiers find a boy surviving alone in the woods they make him a member of Hitler's army but what no one would know for decades he was Jewish. Could a story so unbelievable be true? I'm Dan Goldberg, and from CBC's personally, Toy Soldier. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.

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 Mackenburg picked up her morning newspaper, saw the headline on the front page, and choked on her coffee. She was… …genuinely staggered, she later wrote. If this was true, it was the story of the century, an actual factual miracle. The headline? Houdini sends from grave the word he promised wife. The date was January 9, 1929. Two and a bit years had passed since the death of Harry Houdini at the age of just 52.

Rose Mackenburg 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 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 day, the medium Arthur Ford had visited Bess

and delivered her a message in the secret code. Having thus established his identity, Harry went 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. 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. newspaper carried a statement by Bess. I wish to declare that the message is the correct message, pre-arranged between Mr.

Houdini and myself, Beatrice Houdini. Rose Machenberg didn't dismiss the idea that there was life after death. She was smart, sceptical and open-minded. That's why Houdini trusted her. As Rose said, He wanted to believe. He sought but one thing. Truth. Still though, surely not. For a flash, even my composure was shaken. And then my memory began to function. I'm Tim Harford and you're listening to Cautionary Tales. In the summer of 1926, Harry Houdini should have been having a rest. He'd just been to Washington DC, giving evidence at raucous congressional hearings

into a bill that proposed to ban mediums. In autumn, he'd be embarking on a gruelling five-month coast-to-coast tour, from Boston 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 his tattiest underwear and slip new ones into the draw 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, headed by Rose Makenberg, 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 sensation in

New York. A self-styled Egyptian fekir whose showpiece was to survive being sealed in an airtight casket. This claimed the fekir was due to his unique ability to enter into a special state he called cataleptic anaesthesia. Houdini was irked. This was uncomfortably close to his wheelhouse, being confined in a tight space and getting out alive. And cataleptic anaesthesia 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. Houdini issued a challenge. However long this fekir survives in a sealed coffin, I'll do it for longer. The fekir 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 on it. After 59 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 he'd had specially made. A telephone wire poking through the lid would let him call for help if he needed it. A half hour passed. An hour. An hour and a quarter. It was hot in this swimming pool. The temperature inside the coffin neared a hundred degrees. If I die, Poudini had said beforehand to the assembled press, it will be the will of God

and my own foolishness. Houdini wasn't as fit as he used to be. He'd put on 20 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 28 minutes, Houdini started to feel himself drifting off. Bring me up in two minutes. He breathed into the phone line. They did.

The soldered coffin lid was peeled back like a sardine can to reveal Houdini, caked in sweat, deathly white. But alive, pulse racing, he hadn't just beaten the Fekir's record. He'd obliterated it. Houdini 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. They're going to kill me.

Houdini had taken to calling a friend at all hours of the day and night. Don't laugh. Every night they're holding seances and praying for my death. Spiritualist mediums did keep predicting Houdini'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 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 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 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 had borrowed a book from Houdini, and had 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. Is it true, Mr. Houdini, that you can resist the hardest blows struck to the abdomen?"

Houdini tactfully tried to deflect. Houdini. Feel my muscles. They are like iron. The three students took turns to feel Houdini's arms. They were indeed like iron. But… Houdini.

Would you mind if I delivered a few blows to your abdomen, Mr. Houdini? 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 after crunching blow. The artist's friend leaped up. What are you doing?

Are you crazy? Houdini raised a hand. That will do. The artist finished his portrait and presented it to Houdini. You make me look a little tired in this picture. The truth is, I don't feel so well. By night time, 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 Detroit, then straight on stage for another show. In Detroit, he can barely stand, touching his side. Too weak to complete a simple magic trick of pulling a silk streamer from a bowl. When the curtain falls, Houdini collapses. He's running a fever of 104. 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 his stomach. Houdini's insides are a mass of pus.

In a world before antibiotics, this isn't survivable. Houdini holds on for a few more days. I suppose I will get over this waviness in no time." Until at last… Houdini. I guess I'm all through fighting. 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 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. It's all just chance and happenstance. Harry Houdini died on the 31st of October 1926.

He was buried in the bronze coffin he had made for his swimming pool stunt. But from that coffin, would he discover a telephone line to the living? Cautionary Tales will be back after the break. 1942, Europe. Soldiers find a boy surviving alone in the woods. They make him a member of Hitler's army. But what no one would know for decades, he was Jewish. Could a story so unbelievable be true? I'm Dan Goldberg, and from CBC's Personally, Toy Soldier.

Available now, wherever you get your podcasts. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the great 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 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 of Houdini's death, Conan Doyle put out a statement. His 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. In private, though, Conan Doyle wasn't shocked at all. His death was most certainly decreed from the other side. 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 Doyle spied an opportunity. 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. I am sorry that shadows grew up between 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. Conan Doyle turned on the flattery. Any man who wins the love and respect of a good woman must himself be a fine and honest man. Bess began to open up. If only you knew how my heart yearns to hear the precious message from my beloved.

I am quite sure, knowing his determined character, that he will get back to you." 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 had recognised as having come from Houdini. That went about as well as you'd expect. Every crank in the country sent in messages purportedly from Houdini, saying things like, God is truth, God is love, and Tussle with death was agony. With every new message, Bess became more

despondent. Houdini was an unusually intelligent man. All these messages, without exception, have been silly. Sir Arthur kept writing. He might be a laughing stock in some circles – he'd 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 a way with words. In his speeches on spiritualism, he could be very persuasive. As a journalist once remarked, Conan Doyle 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? Sir Arthur jumped on the suggestion. 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? Sir Arthur theorised 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? Why, by smashing a mirror? It is just the sort of energetic thing one could expect from him.

Sir 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 convince the sceptics. As he wrote to a spiritualist friend, I am in quite intimate touch with Mrs H, who is a splendid, loyal little woman. She seems quite to accept our point of view, but is keen on getting some evidence which she can give to the world.

Just after noon on January 8th, 1929, 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 a sofa, covered in a blanket with a bandaged head. She had fallen over at a New Year's party. Arthur Ford sat down, wrapped a silk blindfold around his eyes, and began to shake. Houdini is here. He tells me to say,

Hello, best sweetheart. He wants me to give you these words. Rosabelle, answer. Tell. Pray, answer. Look, tell. Answer, answer. Tell. He wants you to tell him whether they are right or not. Yes, they are. He tells you to take off your wedding ring and tell them what Rosabel means. Bess removed her wedding ring.

Inside was inscribed the word Rosabel. It was their song, she explained, way back when they first met. Rosy, sweet Rosabel, I love her more than I can tell. Then 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 tricks at the circus, they'd devised a way to communicate. They picked out some words that wouldn't look incongruous in the context of their act, and made each correspond to a number. Answer was 2, tell was 5, 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 to Houdini, something like, Pray, tell what the answer is. Speak quickly 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. To.

The letter B. Tell. Five. E. Spell it out. And the words Arthur Ford had delivered, spelled B-E-L-I-E-V-E. Believe. Rosabel, believe. Is that the right message?

Bess nodded tearfully, and Ford continued in triumph. He says, tell the world that Harry Houdini lives, and will prove it a thousand times. When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle read the news, he was exultant. All at once, Houdini had become... The classical case of after-death return. Doyle got to work drafting a lengthy article. If these loving hands can meet through the veil, then ours also can do so. When Rose Mackenburg read the news, for a flash her composure was shaken. Then, as she recalled, my memory began to function.

Rosabelle? Well, that was hardly a secret. Anyone who knew the Houdinis knew the significance of Roosevelt. And as for those numbered code words, Rose thought, hadn't 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 105, there it was. Pray 1. Answer 2. Rose closed the book. She could only guess at 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. They were set out in an article on the front page of the next morning's newspaper under an even bigger headline. Houdini message, a big hoax. Cautionary a boy surviving alone in the woods. They make him a member of Hitler's army. But what no one would know for decades, he was Jewish. Could a story so unbelievable be true? I'm Dan Goldberg, and from CBC's Personally, The article was written by a journalist called Raya Hauray. She'd been at Bess's house

for the séance. She'd also been at Bess's house a couple of days before. When, she reported, she'd found Bess in a state of semi-delirium, intermittently blacking out under the constant care of physicians. Bess was suffering from flu, it seemed. She was also still recovering from that bang to the head at 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.

One of those younger men was none other than the dashing, charming medium, Arthur Ford. The journalist Raya Hauray 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 Bess's semi-delirium wasn't just from drink or flu. She'd also swallowed lots of sleeping pills. She'd left a note for Harry's lawyer. I'm so ill. I want to go to Harry. The semi-delirious Bess told Rhea 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 Roosevelt and so on. Rhea took careful notes. She realised 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 séance, then reported on the hoax. On the day after the séance, Rea invited Arthur Ford to her house. Ford was delighted with the newspaper coverage. Houdini's return was on all the front pages. Rea led Ford into a discussion of the party

where she'd first met Ford and Bess. Did he remember? Oh yes, Ford happily reminisced. Then Rea told Ford how she was 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'd also shown those notes to her editor before the seance. Ford was horrified. But you must play ball. Really? response. Ford was horrified. 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 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 séance. Sir Arthur judiciously inserted one word into his long article about Houdini's return. Apparently. Then he tacked a couple of sentences onto the end. It is true that in the last resort we are dependent upon the veracity and honesty of Mrs. Houdini.

But I, for one, am not cynical enough to question it. 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 my magic man or magic lover. Bess invited each of them to lunch, but when they rang the doorbell, it was Bess's maid who answered.

Mrs. 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, the authors William Kalush and Larry Sloman 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 spiralled further. More drink. Ever younger gigolos.

Houdini's brother stepped in to safeguard what was left of her inheritance. Bess checked herself into a sanatorium. Houdini had investigated enough mediums to know their target market, the bereaved, made vulnerable by their grief. He 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, Houdini stopped by the office of a friend

and gave him a present, a copy of Roger's Thesaurus. Inside was a penciled note. There is our code. Never breathe it to a living soul. In his book, A Magician Among the Spirits, Houdini said he'd made pacts like this with a dozen friends, every code unique. By the time he died, it may have been more than 20.

Whichever of us dies first, Houdini would explain, if 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 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. Houdini tried to

make sure that his audiences knew that. But what impresses me about Houdini 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 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 who'd have to piece that evidence together. Either the various different code words coming through, which would strongly suggest that communication 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 grip that 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 came through with the code they arranged. One of his secret codes was with, of course, Rose Makenberg. Rose spent three decades after Houdini's death investigating mediums. They gave her messages from 1500 fictitious dead husbands, but nobody mentioned 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 1930. His widow, Lady Doyle, invited a trusted medium to bring her husband back. A good friend of Sir Arthur. A protégé indeed. That medium? Arthur Ford. Lady Doyle was perfectly satisfied that Sir Arthur had come through. Lady Doyle was less pleased when 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 Lady Doyle 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 challenge the audience to make him laugh. Crack a joke and he'd stay 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 paralysed face. Edward Saint revered Houdini and looked after Bess. Years after her seance with Arthur Ford, she told an interviewer.

There was a time when I wanted intensely to hear from Harry. I was ill both physically and mentally and Such was my eagerness that spiritualists were able to prey upon my mind To her friends she added a few more words about Arthur Ford, but he was such a handsome young man. On the 10th anniversary of Houdini's death, the 31st of October 1936, Edward Saint and Bess organised a séance, the final séance, one last chance for Harry to come through. Hundreds of guests gathered under the stars 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. The saint explained why. Every facility has been provided tonight that might aid in opening a pathway to the spirit world. Are you here, Houdini? Please manifest yourself in any way possible. Levitate the table.

Spell out a code, Harry. Ring the bell. Everyone waited. Nothing happened. Saint turned to Bess. Mrs. Houdini, have you reached a verdict? Yes. I do not believe that Houdini can come back to me, or to anyone. It is finished.

Bess looked up at the portrait of Harry Houdini. Good night, Harry. She turned out the light. Our Houdini trilogy drew on books such as Final Seance by Massimo Polidoro, and The Life and Afterlife of Harry Houdini by Joe Poznanski. 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 Fiennes, 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, Marcea 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. Co-Optionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at Wardour Studios

in London 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 ad-free, sign up to Pushkin Plus on the show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm slash plus. 1942, Europe. Soldiers find a boy surviving alone in the woods. They make him a member of Hitler's army. But what no one would know for decades, he was Jewish. Could a story so unbelievable be true? I'm Dan Goldberg, I'm from CBC's Could a story so unbelievable be true?

I'm Dan Goldberg, and from CBC's personally, Toy Soldier. Available now, wherever you get your podcasts.