The Magician And The Author – How An Unlikely Friendship Turned Sour

I’m back!

My break lasted a little bit longer than I had planned, because I keep forgetting it takes me twice as long to do anything with my disabilities. So packing up my old place, and moving to my new place, then unpacking and finding a home for everything, all took a little while. But now I’m all settled and ready to get back in to some kind of normality again.

I wanted to share a picture of my new front door in all its medieval studded glory. Mainly because it’s just the perfect front door! And I also found the perfect doorstop to prevent it slamming closed on any poor suspecting human appendage, because it’s pretty heavy.

I’m not really a sheep or hedgehog kind of gal, so thank goodness it’s almost Halloween and I managed to get a little ghostie doorstop.

Now that I’m an ‘ancient cottage in the country’ gal, all I look for when I’m out and about is an unusual doorstop, so if you see any, feel free to email me the details – info@scepticonline.com

Now on to business.

Eons ago, when I started out with the idea of a television series called ‘Sceptic’ – the research that I’m sharing with you on here – I had heard about the friendship between Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but had always thought that they had been firm friends with their interest in the supernatural, and that they had made a pact that whomever died first should come back and contact the other, to prove that there was life after death.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

For anybody out there who doesn’t know these two very famous men, let me give you a quick outline of who they are.

Harry Houdini

Harry Houdini was a working class immigrant from Hungary, whose only education was what he picked up on the road as he performed. Many of his early performances were with small groups in local halls and on the streets, until he was ‘discovered’ when he started doing illusions. This was how he became known world wide – as an illusionist and escape artist who got buried alive and immersed, handcuffed and chained, into huge tanks of water.

Houdini’s two sweethearts were his wife Bess, who was his assistant on stage, and his beloved mother Cecilia. The latter became central to his falling out with Conan Doyle.

Many people believed that Houdini possessed supernatural powers that enabled him to perform his elaborate tricks, but he would always insist that this was very far from the truth, even trying to explain some of his tricks to quash the rumours.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Conan Doyle, supported by rich uncles, was educated in Austria, among other places, and went on to study medicine in Edinburgh. He served as a Doctor and Ship’s Surgeon on many vessels, before he completed his MD and then set up a medical practice with an old classmate.

When being a doctor didn’t work out, Conan Doyle started writing, creating the detective that he is most famous for – Sherlock Holmes. He also wrote many essays, articles and letters about less fictional subjects such as divorce and medicine, his letters being published almost daily in the newspapers.

Doyle was a true believer of the paranormal and even thought of himself as a bit of a spiritualist medium. He spent much of the early 1900’s trying to prove that mediums were genuine and possessed a real talent. Most of his letters and essays at this time were about spiritualism and it became a bit of an obsession. In one such letter, titled ‘Are The Dead Alive?‘ published in 1919, he said “There was a time in my life when I believed that death ended all. Finally after long study extending over many years I came to the conclusion that the more advanced psychical students were right, and that after making every deduction for fraud and self-delusion there was no question at all as to the validity of the evidence which pointed to a future world so near to our own that the veil could be torn or lifted.“

Further on he calls it “a new revelation from beyond, and which has practically done away with death! It is the greatest message of joy which our race has had for 2000 years.“

One of his most famous investigations was that of the Cottingley Fairies, where cousins Francis Griffiths and Elsie Wright said that they had fairies living at the bottom of the garden and had taken photographs of them to prove it. It was one of the cases he used to try and convince Houdini that the paranormal was real, which he was desperate to do.

Conan Doyle was married to Jean Leckie, a woman who he had met whilst his first wife Louisa was dying of tuberculosis. They married pretty quickly after Louisa died, giving speculation to the fact that they had been lovers far longer than they appeared to admit. By 1920, Jean Conan Doyle was peddling herself as a spiritualist medium specialising in automatic or spirit writing – a process where a spirit would allegedly take control of the mediums hand and make them write their message.

Houdini and Conan Doyle First Meet

In 1920, Harry Houdini and Arthur Conan Doyle were huge celebrities of their time. Doyle was a famous author, and Houdini the famous magician and escape artist who toured the world with his tricks.

The two unlikely friends met at one of Houdini’s theatre performances, where Conan Doyle had watched the magician on stage, awe struck at how he was able to do what he did.

Doyle invited Houdini and his wife to his country house for a visit, and they became a partnership of sceptic and believer, with Doyle convinced he could turn Houdini to the dark side.

Houdini’s Investigations

Houdini was initially a believer of the supernatural, and thought that spiritualist mediums could speak to the other side.

He spent a lot of time attending seances and readings, along with theatre shows, where mediums would perform, mesmorised by what he saw.

It didn’t take long for Houdini to spot the same tricks he had seen performed by magicians being employed by the spiritualists before him. He’d used a lot of the tricks himself.

When it became clear to him that spiritualism was all smoke and mirrors, he set about trying to expose as many of them as he could. He saw spiritualist mediums as nothing but frauds, taking advantage of the grief of millions of people who were desperate to talk to their dear departed loved ones.

He himself was desperate to see if it was true, whether people could actually talk to the dead, but he never once found anybody who could actually do it.

The Friendship Sours

Publishing wasn’t confined to Arthur Conan Doyle, and Harry Houdini wrote many books of his own. He wrote about magic and magicians tricks, but also documented all his investigations into debunking mediums.

He was polite in his dealings with Conan Doyle when he was invited to seance after seance, continuously trying to show the author how the tricks were done, and how the mediums were getting their information, but Doyle would have none of it.

Houdini saw Doyle as extremely gullible and liked to tease him with letters and articles, making fun of his beliefs way before they fell out.

Even though there was no belief on the part of Houdini, he allowed Conan Doyle one last try to persuade him, with a seance to try and contact his dear departed Mother, Cecilia. Harry missed her immensely since she had passed away, and much like myself, would be ecstatic for anyone to prove that there was life after death, even if it seemed as unbelievable as it was.

Mr and Mrs Houdini were invited to Atlantic City by Sir Arthur and Lady Doyle to stay at the Ambassador Hotel, and they accepted the invitation. During this trip, Lady Doyle offered to do a personal seance for Houdini, because Lady Doyle had a ‘feeling’ that she may have a special message come through. They asked that Mrs Houdini stay back and let Harry attend alone, which she agreed to.

The day had a special meaning for Harry Houdini – it would have been his Mother’s 90th birthday, 17th June. So in his search for any evidence that there was life after death, Houdini thought that this day in 1922 would be the one that would prove it.

Before Houdini went into the seance, Bess explained that she had spoken in great length the night before with Jean Doyle about the love he had for his Mother and the special relationship they had.

As Houdini sat down with Sir Arthur and Lady Doyle that day, he says in his book “A Magician Among The Spirits” that “I was willing to believe, even wanted to believe.“

He says that it wasn’t long before the alleged spirit of his Mother took hold of Lady Doyle’s hand and began to write a long letter.

The letter is printed in full in Houdini’s book, and it is extremely long winded. What strikes me most about it is how much praise and thanks it gives to Sir Arthur and Lady Doyle for enabling his Mother to speak to him.

Houdini says this about the encounter – “The letter, purported to have come from my Mother, I cannot accept as having been written or inspired by the soul of spirit of my sweet Mother.“

The reasons for this, he explains in a letter to Doyle dated 15th December 1922. “I was heartily in accord and sympathy at that seance, but the letter was written entirely in English and my sainted Mother could not read, write or speak the English language. I did not care to discuss it at the time because of my emotion in trying to sense the presence of my Mother, if there was such a thing possible, to keep me quiet until time passed, and I could give it the proper deduction.”

The Houdinis and the Doyles friendship suffered from here on.

All accounts seem to make out that there was anger between the two regarding the seance, but it seems that Houdini was ever the gentleman, even though he believed Lady Doyle to be a fraud. They continued to spar in letters sent to and printed in newspapers, with Houdini teasingly denouncing every incident that Doyle published.

Afterwards

Harry Houdini died on 31st October 1926 from acute swelling of the abdomen. There seem to be conflicting reports as to how this had happened – some say it was from blows he had received to his stomach, others say it was from appendicitis. He was 52 years old.

His widow, Bess, held a seance every year on Halloween, the day of his death, hoping to hear from her beloved Harry. They had made a pact that either one would try and contact the other from the other side, with a code to prove it was them.

He never showed up.

Bess gave up trying in 1936, declaring that “10 years is long enough to wait for any man.”

If there was any one person who had ‘crossed over’ and was able to come back and prove that there was life after death, I would think that Harry Houdini would be it. Or even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

As far as I am aware, it’s never happened.