Harry Houdini and the Spirit Lover: A Tale With a Twist

Legendary magician Harry Houdini had a side-career of investigating and exposing fraudulent mediums. In the April 1924 issue of “Weird Tales,” Houdini told the story of one of these inquiries which proved to be far, far more than even he bargained for.

In 1920, Houdini happened to be staying in a Montana town. Three men came to his hotel room to tell him of a local medium whose powers seemed truly incredible. The men knew he had to be a fraud, but their most diligent attempts to prove his chicanery had, to date, failed. One of them admitted that he was very nearly convinced the medium had genuine supernatural powers. He explained, “The three of us attended a seance last night, in the third story of an office building. We locked the door, locked the window, examined the room carefully, examined the medium’s portable cabinet, and then the lights were extinguished, and spirit materializations took place. There was no possible chance for the medium to have confederates enter the room, nor is there any explanation of the materializations except that given by the medium.”

The trio had heard of Houdini’s prior successes in exposing fraudulent talkers-to-the-dead. In order to prevent, in the words of one of them, “a wave of superstition and charlatanry,” would the magician scrutinize the medium for himself, and, hopefully, expose him as a crook?

The following night, Houdini (who introduced himself to the medium as “Mr. Koehler,”) and the three men attended a seance. The medium began by remarking that “there were certain psychic influences in the room that worked against any spiritualistic manifestations.” As he spoke, he gazed pointedly at one of the other attendees, a grocer with “cold, skeptical gray eyes and rather a determined chin.”

As the man spoke, Houdini examined the room. There was only one window, and the door was fastened with a Yale lock which could be opened from the inside. It occurred to him that the medium could hide a confederate in the room who would secretly open the door and “admit the materialization,” but the grocer pointed out to him that this was impossible. There was a light on in the outside hall, which would be visible to everyone in the room if the door were opened. Houdini responded that it would be easy enough to merely turn out the light first. The grocer shrugged.

Houdini’s suspicions were aroused when the medium threw a double curtain over the window. It was a dark night, indicating that one curtain would have been sufficient to keep out any light. He suspected that the medium was trying to conceal the entrance of someone through the window. There was no way of getting to the window from outside, as they were two stories from the ground, and had no fire escape, but he was certain that the curtains were significant.

The group joined hands around a table, and the lights were put out. They sang a hymn while the medium, who was now tied up in a black bag, went into his trance. The manifestations soon began. It was the standard array of spiritual tricks: table rappings, the sounds of mandolins and trumpets playing, the touch of ghostly hands. Houdini had experienced such things a hundred times, and was feeling a bit bored. They were visited by the spirit of an Irishman named Mike, talking in the stereotypical brogue, cracking bad jokes, and hitting the grocer--who had obviously made it clear in the past that he was no friend to the spirit world--over the head with a mandolin.

Mike asked everyone in the room to concentrate on some dead loved one they wished to see. The small room had grown hot and stuffy, but Houdini suddenly sensed fresh air, signaling that the window had been opened. The grocer was sitting to his left. Very slowly and carefully, Houdini freed his hand from that on the woman sitting to his right, and substituted the hand of the grocer. There was now a “phosphorescent glow” emerging from the cabinet. He very badly wanted to take a look at that window, which he was sure was the key to this new materialization.

When he crept to the window, he saw that it was indeed now wide open. When he looked outside, he saw that to the left of the window an extendable ladder was hanging from the roof above his head. He now knew how the “ghosts” had arrived in the room.

Behind him, he heard a girl suddenly scream the name “Marion!” several times. He ignored the commotion and continued his examination of the ladder. He saw that he could not dislodge the ladder from below, as it was securely hooked to the roof. He climbed out and went up to the window in the next story. Back in the room, the girl was still crying, “Marion! Marion! Oh, God, it’s Marion!”

The window in the top story was open. Houdini sat on the sill, unhooked the ladder, and brought it into the room. The medium’s little spook helpers had lost their escape route.

When he returned to the seance, he found a scene of complete chaos. He learned that in his absence, the grocer had taken out a flashlight he had hidden in his pocket and shined it on the humanlike “phosphorescent glow.” Someone immediately knocked the flashlight from his hand, but it was too late. The “manifestation” had been recognized. A young woman threw her arms around the ghost, kissing him frantically and screaming “Marion, Marion! It’s you!” The panicked medium began hitting the girl with a blackjack while the “ghost” endeavored to break the girl’s hold, pleading, “Frances, let go of me; you’re smothering me, Frances.”

The show was definitely over.

“Frances” had attended the seance in a sincere effort to contact the departed. When the guests were asked to concentrate on a deceased loved one, she thought of her fiance, who had died less than a year before. The glowing figure emerged from the cabinet. When the grocer illuminated the “ghost,” Frances recognized it. It was her fiance, the man who was dead and gone, presumably forever. It was hard to say what gave the poor girl the bigger shock: when she thought she was seeing her beloved’s ghost, or when she realized he was quite alive, if not exactly well.

It turned out that Marion was a Chicago resident who had a twin brother in Wyoming who was dying of tuberculosis. Frances knew of this brother, but had never met him. Marion, realizing that his twin did not have long to live, heavily insured himself in his brother’s name. When Frances was in Montana visiting relatives, Marion brought his brother to Chicago. Then, Marion moved from his lodgings, broke all contact with everyone he knew, and he and his twin swapped identities. While Marion, posing as his brother, went to Wyoming, the brother entered a Chicago hospital under Marion’s name, where he soon died. Letters from Frances were found in the dead man’s pockets, and a telegram was sent to her telling of her sad loss. The stunned and heartbroken girl returned from Montana to attend her betrothed’s funeral. Meanwhile, Marion started a new life in Wyoming, with the help of all that sweet life insurance money he collected on his own death.

Unfortunately for Marion, this particular crime did not pay. He frittered it all away on stupid investments and even more stupid gambling, and was soon flat broke. He then found work as assistant to the fake medium, smearing his face with phosphorescent paint and doing his best imitation of a ghost. Until he encountered the grocer’s flashlight--and Frances--it had been a most successful scam.

After that disastrous night, the medium swiftly left town, to ply his singular trade in parts unknown. The insurance company prosecuted Marion for fraud. Frances--no doubt feeling she had had a very lucky escape by not marrying Marion before he “died”--gave him the boot.  After a short stay in a hospital to recover from the emotional shock, she returned to Chicago.

Houdini called the unexpected reunion of Marion and Frances “a coincidence so remarkable that if a story or a novel were built around it the incident would be considered so highly improbable that the yarn would be entirely unconvincing.”

As Frances’ former love found out, some men really are better off dead.