I found records on a great case that Houdini took up and is very well known, enjoy!:
Houdini v. The Blond Witch of Lime Street: A Historical Lesson in Skepticism
In the century-long history of serious psychic research, the "Margery"
episode is probably one of the most interesting. No other medium since
D. D. Home, not even Eusapia Palladino, had been able to attract as much
interest and controversy as Mina Stinson, also known as Margery, the
"Blond Witch of Lime Street." Like Home, Mina Stinson (her birth name)
didn't ask for money for her demonstrations but, unlike her predecessor,
she refused even donations or jewels. No ignorant peasant coming from a
country town like Eusapia, she was instead the wife of a respected and
wealthy Boston physician, Dr. Le Roy Goddard Crandon. By all accounts
Stinson was a brilliant, quick witted, and, in her early thirties,
blue-eyed and with long-brown hair, a very attractive woman. Margery was
the last famous case of physical mediumship to be presented as proof of
the reality of the powers of mind over matter, or psychokinesis, until
the arrival 50 years later of Uri Geller. With her ended the era of the
great mediums that began with Daniel Home .
Life at Lime Street
The events that interest us began in the spring of 1923, at number 10
Lime Street, a four-story brick house in the stylish neighborhood of
Bacon Hill in Boston. Margery's husband, Dr. Le Roy Goddard Crandon, was
a dour and aristocratic man, with many hobbies and interests beyond
medicine, ranging from a passion for the sea to the study of the
writings of Abraham Lincoln. It was inevitable that this nimble mind
would turn to a subject that interested everybody in the 1920s-psychic
research. His interest was sparked by a meeting he had with Sir Oliver
Lodge (1851-1940), a physicist of great renown who, after the death of
his son Raymond during the war, had announced he believed in human
survival after death and in the possibility of communicating with the
dead. Lodge had suggested a book to Crandon, _The Physical Structures of
the Goligher Circle_ by Dr. Crawford. After reading the story of
Kathleen Goligher and her family, strange thoughts crept into the
doctor's mind. Was it really possible, wondered Crandon, that the
"psychic cantilevers" that Crawford talked about existed? And if so, how
could these "pseudopods" have the strength to lift even a table?
Crandon decided to try to find out for himself and in a few weeks had a
table built to the exact specifications of the one that had been used in
the Goligher case. On May 27 Crandon sat around the table with his wife
and a few friends on the top floor of the house in Lime Street. The
chamber was darkened and following Crandon's instructions, the sitters
joined hands and waited. Suddenly, the table moved slightly. Then it
moved again and tilted up on two legs. Someone suggested they try to
find out which one of them might be the medium, so one at a time each
sitter left the room. Since the table continued to rock and stopped only
when Mina, the doctor's wife, departed, there was no doubt: she was the
medium.
Mina the Medium
Mina (1888-1941) had originally been married to the owner of a small
grocery store, Earl P. Rand, and had always been a vivacious, active
woman. As a teenager she had played in various professional bands and
orchestras, had worked as a secretary, loved sports, and was active in
various social action church groups. The marriage with Crandon required
that she give up her dynamic lifestyle, in those days not suitable for a
physician's wife. The new experience of the seance of May 27 provided a
pleasant change from the confined life of leisure of a wealthy woman.
For the whole summer the Crandons held private seances in their home.
The doctor became more and more excited every time he discovered his
wife had a new "power." Her abilities seemed limitless and he only had
to read about some new mystery and "Psyche"-as he had begun to fondly
call her-would duplicate it at the next seance. Raps and flashes of
light were among the earliest phenomena to appear in the darkness of her
seances and, along with more traditional effects like the movement of
the table, Mina appeared to be able to stop a watch simply by
concentrating on it, or to produce dollar bills and live pigeons, things
that seemed to be taken directly from the repertoire of a magician.
Soon there was a new turn. Mina had conducted her seances awake and
fully conscious of what was happening around her when her husband
suggested that she try to fall into a trance. The request met with
immediate success and various "entities" started to communicate through
the medium. One of these began to appear more frequently and came to
dominate. Dr. Crandon and the others agreed that this visitor had to be
Walter, Mina's brother. Walter Stinson had died 12 years earlier, at
the age of 28, crushed by a railroad boxcar. Walter's voice, which
became Mina's spirit control for 18 years, not surprisingly was the same
as Mina's, only a little more hoarse. His language was scurrilous and
he had a ready wit and irritable manners, a personality quite foreign to
the kind and polite lady medium. In August of 1923 Dr. Crandon wrote an
enthusiastic letter to Conan Doyle, telling him about his wife's
wonderful abilities. Before he even met her, Doyle immediately declared
that he was convinced the phenomena was genuine. Deeply impressed, Conan
Doyle told J. Malcolm Bird, the Secretary of the Scientific American
committee for the investigation of spiritualism, about her.
Scientific American Investigates
In November, 1923, Bird paid a visit to the Crandons and met an
undoubtedly interesting couple: a somber doctor and a spirited and
fascinating woman. Mina's charm clearly effected him, so much so that
many would later question the reliability of his observations. Bird had
already given the same impression when he commented with particular
kindness on the demonstrations of a medium about whom others had serious
doubts. On that occasion, Walter Franklin Prince, reviewing Bird's
book, _My Psychic Adventures_, wrote:
Mr. Bird, if he wishes
to achieve the authority in psychical research which I invoke for him,
must hereafter avoid falling in love with the medium. (Prince, 1923)
Before leaving Boston, Bird invited Mina to enter the contest announced
by Scientific American. She agreed and specified that if she won the
prize would go to psychic research. She even insisted in paying all the
expenses that might arise from the investigation, including those for
the committee's stay in Boston. The only condition that she imposed was
that the committee should come to her instead of her going to them. The
Crandons would lend their house to the investigators. An article about
the medium, written by Bird, appeared in the July, 1924 issue of
Scientific American. To protect Mina's privacy, Bird rebaptized her
"Margery"; "Walter" was called "Chester," and Dr. Crandon "F. H.". The
readers of Scientific American learned that at last a potential winner
of the prize had arrived: "With 'Margery'", Bird wrote, "(...) the
initial probability of genuineness are much greater than in any previous
case which the Committe has handled.
(Bird, 1924, p. 29). The
committee then moved to Boston; Bird and Hereward Carrington (a famous
psychic investigator), and occasionally the other members of the
Committee, gladly agreed to be guests of the Crandons during the
investigation. William McDougall, psychologist at Harvard, living in
Boston, remained at his home while W. F. Prince, chief research officer
of the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR), preferred to stay
at a hotel. Harry Houdini, the only member of the committee who was not
informed about the investigation, had to rely on the newspapers to find
out what was happening, and what he read piqued his skeptical interest,
to say the least: "Margery, the Boston Medium, Passes all Psychic
Tests"; "Scientists Find No Trickery in a Score of Seances"; "Versatile
Spook Puzzles Investigators By Variety of His Demonstrations." The
surprise was even greater when, opening the July issue of Scientific
American, Houdini learned that the investigators of Margery's claims
where his colleagues on the committee. Houdini was furious: why hadn't
he been informed? Bird explained to Houdini in a letter:
Our
original idea was not to bother you with it unless, and until it got to a
stage where there seemed serious prospects that it was either genuine,
or a type of fraud which our other Committeemen could not deal with...
Mr. Munn feels that the case has taken a turn which makes it desirable
for us to discuss it with you. (Houdini, 1924, P. 4)
Houdini
arrived at the New York's offices and asked Bird directly: "Do you
believe that this medium is genuine?" "Why, yes", answered Bird, "she is
genuine. She does resort to trickery at times, but I believe she is
fifty or sixty per cent genuine." "Then you mean that this medium will
be entitled to get the Scientific American prize?," Houdini responded.
"Most decidedly," Bird confessed. Houdini pulled no punches:
Mr. Bird, you have nothing to lose but your position and very likely you
can readily get another if you are wrong, but if I am wrong it will
mean the loss of reputation and as I have been selected to be one of the
Committee I do not think it will be fair for you to give this medium
the award unless I am permitted to go up to Boston and investigate her
claims, and from what you tell me I am certain that this medium is
either the most wonderful in the world or else a very clever deceiver.
If she is a fraudulent medium I will guarantee to expose her and if she
is genuine I will come back and be one of her most strenuous supporters.
(Ibid., p. 5)
The Wizard and the Witch
Houdini and Munn arrived in Boston on July 22 and took rooms at the
Copley Plaza Hotel. Houdini was shocked at hearing that Bird and
Carrington had accepted the Crandon's hospitality. How unbiased could
their judgment be if they were guests of the party that they were asked
to investigate? But the accommodations, as later became known, were not
the only blandishment offered to the members of the committee.
Carrington, for example, had borrowed some money from Dr. Crandon, and
Bird had even received a blank check for his expenses. An even more
dangerous influence, however, threatened the integrity of the
investigators: the attractions of Mina, who wore only a filmy dressing
gown and silk stockings during the seances. She obviously enchanted Bird
and only many years later was it known that she and Carrington had
often slept together. "It is not possible to stop at one's house (sic)",
Houdini explained, "break bread with _him_ frequently, then investigate
_him_ and render an impartial verdict". (Ibid., p. 5)
On July
23, 1924 Houdini participated for the first time in a seance with the
medium. A feat that had baffled the members of the committee involved
the use of a wooden box with an electric switch that when pressed would
ring a bell placed inside the box. In the previous sittings the box had
been put on the floor between Margery's feet, and the bell had rung even
while the medium's hands and feet were supposedly being held. For
control there was a member of the committee on the left and her husband
presumably doing the same on the right. With the medium so
"immobilized," the sitters reasoned the one responsible for the
phenomena could only be Walter the spirit-guide. When Houdini arrived he
sat on the medium's left and the box was placed between his feet. His
hand held that of the medium while his ankle would control her leg.
Houdini picks up the story from there:
All that day I had worn
a silk rubber bandage around that leg just below the knee. By night the
part of the leg below the bandage had become swollen and painfully
tender, thus giving me a much keener sense of feeling and making it
easier to notice the slightest sliding of Mrs. Crandon's ankle or
flexing her muscles. (Ibid., p. 6)
The precaution appeared to
be crucial when, after pulling her skirts well up above her knees,
Margery asked for darkness. In fact, continued Houdini in his account of
the seance, I could distinctly feel her ankle slowly and spasmodically
sliding as it pressed against mine while she gained space to raise her
foot off the floor and touch the top of the box. To the ordinary sense
of touch the contact would seem the same while this was being done. At
times she would say: "Just press hard against my ankle so you can see
that my ankle is there," and as she pressed I could feel her gain
another half inch. When she had finally maneuvered her foot around to a
point where she could get at the top of the box the bell ringing began
and I positively felt the tendons of her leg flex and tighten as she
repeatedly touched the ringing apparatus. (Ibid., p. 7)
When
the bell stopped ringing, Houdini felt the leg of the medium slowly
sliding back to the original position on the floor. Bird sat at her
right with one hand free to "explore" and the other on top of those of
both the medium and Dr. Crandon. Suddenly, Walter asked for an
illuminated plaque to be placed on the lid of the box that held the
bell. Bird got up to get it and at that moment Walter called for
control. Margery placed her free hand in Houdini's and immediately the
cabinet was violently thrown backward. The medium then gave Houdini her
right foot and said: "You have now both hands and both feet." Then
Walter called out: "The megaphone is in the air. Have Houdini tell me
where to throw it." "Toward me", replied the magician and it instantly
fell at Houdini's feet. Notwithstanding the clever work of misdirection
created by the medium, Houdini had been able to understand what had
really happened in the darkness. When Bird had left the room to search
for the luminous plaque, Margery was left with her right hand and foot
free. This had allowed her to tilt the corner of the cabinet enough to
get her free foot under it; then, picking up the megaphone she placed it
on her head, dunce-cap fashion. She was then able to throw the cabinet
using her right foot which she would later give to Houdini. While it
would appear that Margery was under complete control by Houdini, simply
jerking her head would cause the megaphone to fall at his feet. After
the seance, Houdini commented: "This is the _slickest_ ruse I have ever
detected." (Ibid., p. 8) Houdini had seen through deceptions after just
one seance, while the other members of the Committe hadn't, even after
thirty. Bird resented this air of superiority and was close to Dr.
Crandon in his dislike of the man. Crandon, as well as Bird, had also
shown racial hate for Houdini, when in a letter to Doyle had expressed
his regret that "this low-minded Jew has any claim on the word American (Silverman, 1996, p. 325).
The Second Seance
The following night, Margery agreed to hold the seance in the hotel
suite in which Dr. Comstock stayed. This time, the group sat around a
table, with Houdini to the left of the medium. Walter ordered everyone
to move back from the table so that he might gather the necessary force
to lift it. "This," commented Houdini, "was simply another ruse on the
medium's part, for when all the rest moved back she moved back also and
this gave her room enough to bend her head and push the table up and
over." (Houdini, op. cit., p. 9). Houdini could confirm his theory when,
after letting go of Munn's hand, he began groping around under the
table until he felt the medium's head. The magician whispered to Munn
that he could denounce and expose her at once but the editor proposed to
wait and the seance continued. It was then time for the bell-box. Again
it was placed between Houdini's feet, again Margery put her ankle
against that of the magician and again, in the darkness, Houdini, who
had rolled up his trouser leg like the night before, felt her stretching
her foot to ring the bell. The buckle of Houdini's garter, however, had
caught the medium's stocking, preventing her from reaching the box.
"You have garters on, haven't you?", she asked. "Yes", replied Houdini.
"Well, the buckle hurts me." After taking the garter off, Houdini felt
the woman's leg stretching again and the bell ringing each time her
muscles extended. The seance over, Crandon left the room and the
committee discussed what had happened. Houdini told the others about his
discovery and gave a practical demonstration. The committee, however,
decided to wait until they were back in New York before issuing a press
release. Meanwhile, it was necessary that the Crandons be left in the
dark about Houdini's discoveries. Munn and Houdini left for New York and
Bird remained as a guest with the Crandons for three more days. Later
it became known that he had told Mina and her husband what Houdini had
discovered and what the committee intended to do. From that moment on
Margery would be on guard. Arriving in New York, Munn spiked an article
by Bird for Scientific American, already in print, in which he praised
Margery's abilities. He couldn't stop newspapers from reporting Bird's
declarations. Some headlines that appeared in the newspapers of the day
read: "Boston Medium Baffles Experts"; "Baffles Scientists With
Revelations, Psychic Power of Margery Established"; "Experts Vainly Seek
Trickery in Spiritualist Demonstration"; and then one that had the
magician boiling with rage: "Houdini the Magician Stumped."
Houdini's Wrong Step
When the committee met a month later there clearly was open war between
Houdini, who wanted to expose the medium once and for all, and Margery,
who wanted to make Houdini look the fool. It was then that Houdini made
his worst move, introducing in the experimental setting a ridiculous
constraint to control the medium. It was a big wooden box inside which
the medium would sit leaving only her head and hands sticking out. The
main problem with such an extreme form of control is that it gave the
medium the opportunity to complain that the cabinet prevented the
materialization of the "pseudopods" needed to perform the phenomena and
gave her an alibi for a possible absence of the same. There was also
another drawback: if the cabinet wasn't really fraud-proof as Houdini
believed it to be, and Margery could find a way to do some tricks, it
could become proof of a true paranormal demonstration. If the fraud were
later discovered, Houdini would have appeared incompetent. On August
25, in the apartment of Dr. Comstock, Margery was "boxed" and the lights
turned out. The box with the bell, placed on a table in front of the
cabinet, rang but, when the lights were turned on, the lid on the
cabinet appeared to have been forced open. Houdini suggested that, with
the lid open, Margery could have rung the bell by projecting her head
forward. The medium denied any responsibility claiming that Walter had
forced open the cabinet-box. The cabinet had proved its uselessness but
Houdini wanted to try again. He had the lid sealed with steel strips and
locks and prepared for the next night. That evening began with the
dramatic entrance of Bird who demanded to know why he had been left out
of the seances. Houdini answered coldly, "I object to Mr. Bird being in
the seance room because he has betrayed the Committee and hindered their
work. He has not kept to himself things told him in strictest
confidence as he should as Secretary to the Committee." (Ibid., p. 15)
Bird at first denied but then admitted that Margery, worried, had
convinced him to tell her the facts. Having said so, he resigned from
the committee and left. There and then Prince was elected as the new
Secretary. The seance began with Margery confined in the cabinet-box and
Houdini and Prince at her sides holding her hands. Houdini particularly
insisted that Prince never let go of the medium's hand until the seance
was over. This provoked Margery to ask Houdini what he had on his mind.
"Do you really want to know?", asked Houdini. "Yes", said the medium.
"Well I will tell you. In case you have smuggled anything in to the
cabinet-box you can not now conceal it as both your hands are secured
and as far as they are concerned you are helpless". "Do you want to
search me?", she asked. "No, never mind, let it go", said Houdini. "I am
not a physician." Soon after Walter appeared in the circle saying:
"Houdini, you are very clever indeed but it won't work. I suppose it was
an accident those things were left in the cabinet?" 'What was left in
the cabinet?", asked the magician. "Pure accident was it? You were not
here but your assistant was." Walter went on and then stated that a
ruler would be found in the cabinet box under a pillow at the medium's
feet and accused Houdini of having had his assistant put it there to
throw suspicion on his sister. Then he finished with a violent outburst
in which he exclaimed: "Houdini, you God damned son of a bitch, get the
hell out of here and never come back. If you don't I will!" A search of
the cabinet revealed the presence of a collapsible carpenter rule. But
the question remained: who put it there? Houdini claimed that it was
Margery. By sticking the rule through the neck opening, the magician
explained, she could have easily rung the bell. Also, the medium had
suggested that the arm holes in the sides of the cabinet be boarded up
which would allow her to move her hands freely and uncontrolled inside
the cabinet. Margery rejected the accusations and accused Houdini,
suggesting that his assistent Jim Collins had hidden the ruler to
discredit her. However, Collins was interrogated that same night, in
Houdini's absence, and took an oath that he did not place any ruler
inside the cabinet, that he had never seen that ruler, and that his
ruler was in his pocket. According to writer William Lindsay Gresham,
Collins had hid the ruler: "I chucked it in the box myself. The Boss
told me to do it. E wanted to fix her good". (Gresham, 1961, p. 219).
Milbourne Christopher, magician and magic historian, expressed doubt
about this incident in _Houdini the Untold Story_:
The source
of this story, though not given by Gresham, was Fred Keating, a magician
who had been a guest of the Crandons in their house on Lime Street at
the time Carrington was investigating the medium. Keating, however, was
not unbiased. Several days before Gresham spoke to him, Keating had seen
an unpublished manuscript in this author's collection in which Houdini,
while praising Keating as a magician, had commented in unflattering
terms on Keating's abilities as an investigator of psychic phenomena. In
this writer's opinion, the story of Collins' admission is sheer fiction.
(Christopher, 1969, p. 198). The incident remains doubtful to this day.
It could have been revealing if at the time a laboratory could have
examined the ruler found inside the box for fingerprints or other useful
traces. Evidently the Scientific American committee was not that
scientific after all.
The Last Seance
A last seance was planned for August 27. That afternoon Munn, Prince,
Dr. Crandon, Mina and Houdini dined together outside Boston. The medium,
upon hearing that Houdini was about to denounce her from the stage at
Keith's Theatre in Boston protested that she didn't want her
twelve-year-old son to read that his mother was a fraud.
Then don't be a fraud,
Houdini told her. To which she said that if he misrepresented the facts
some of her friends would come up on stage and give him a good beating.
Houdini replied that he was not going to misrepresent her. Dr. Comstock
had invented a device to immobilize the medium for the committee's last
seance. It was a low box into which Margery and one investigator,
sitting one in front of the other, would put their feet. A board,
connected to the box, would have been locked on top of the knees,
preventing withdrawal of the feet. The sides of the box remained open
allowing any possible "psychic structure" to operate. Her hands were
held by the investigator and the box with the bell was placed outside
the control-box, all was ready for the the seance to begin. While
waiting for something to happen, Dr. Crandon remarked: "Some day,
Houdini, you will see the light and if it were to occur this evening, I
would gladly give ten thousand dollars to charity". "It may happen",
replied Houdini, "but I doubt it". "Yes sir", Dr. Crandon repeated, "if
you were converted this evening I would willingly give $10,000 to some
charity." (Ibid., pp. 21-2). It was an uneventful seance, that is,
nothing happened: Houdini was not converted and Dr. Crandon kept his
$10,000 which Houdini had interpreted as an attempted bribe. Dr.
Comstock's device, obviously better than the one used by Houdini, had
shown that when the medium was immobilized and controlled by an
investigator (rather than by her husband) the phenomena disappeared. As
usually happens in such cases: when controls are 0 phenomena are 100,
when control are 100 phenomena are 0. Margery didn't win the Scientific
American prize. In the eyes of the public, the doubt cast over her
honesty by the committee investigation was not enough to destroy her.
Malcolm Bird resigned from Scientific American after Houdini anounced on
a radio program: "I publicly denounce here Malcolm Bird as being an
accomplice of Margery!" After resigning, Bird spent his time promoting
Margery.
Different Opinions
Houdini, convinced that he had indisputably debunked Margery, wrote in one of his pamphlets:
I charge Mrs. Crandon with practicing her feats daily like a
professional conjuror. Also that because of her training as a secretary,
her long experience as a professional musician, and her athletic build
she is not simple and guileless but a shrewd, cunning woman, resourceful
in the extreme, and taking advantage of every opportunity to produce a
"manifestation
. (Ibid., p. 23)
Carrington, the first to defend
her, charged Houdini with being interested only in publicity and
declared: "The reason I didn't go to Boston when he [Houdini] held his
sittings with 'Margery' was that I knew he distrusted me and I knew that
anything he could not explain he would bring to my presence there.
(_Boston Herald_, January 26, 1925). Finally, it comes as no surprise
that one of the most strenuous defenders of the medium was Conan Doyle:
[T]his self-sacrificing couple bore with exemplary patience all the
irritations arising from the incursions of these fractious and
unreasonable people, while even the gross insult which was inflicted
upon them by one member of the committee did not prevent them from
continuing the sittings. Personally, I think that they erred upon the
side of virtue, and that from the moment Houdini uttered the word
"fraud" the committee should have been compelled either to disown him or
cease their visits. (Doyle, 1930)
According to Conan Doyle, the
only honest and trustworthy members of the committee were Carrington and
Bird. Regarding Bird, Conan Doyle said that he had a "better brain than
Houdini's" because after 50 seances "he was completely convinced of the
genuinity of the phenomena." (Ibid., p. 18) In the past, Conan Doyle
had expressed his opinion on how to form an "impartial" committee: "What
I wanted was five good clear-headed men who would stick to it without
prejudice at all-like the Dialectical Society of London, who unanimously
endorsed the phenomena." (_Progressive Thinker_, April 18, 1925) Conan
Doyle's curious definition of the term "open mind" connected it with the
phrase "believe in the phenomena and endorse it." Houdini didn't have
an "open mind" as Conan Doyle intended it and he also expressed his
surprise that a committee consisting of gentleman should have permitted
an attack on the reputation of a lady, and allowed a man "with entirely
different standards to make this outrageous attack". The official report
of the committee took six months to be completed. Committee members had
been sworn to reveal nothing about the sittings until the publication
of the report, while Bird and Dr. Crandon, not restricted by such
burden, kept on telling journalists what Houdini considered to be "black
lies". While Houdini's irritation, and the public curiosity for the
Committee verdict, mounted a preliminary report was published in October
in Scientific American. It only reported the singular members views
but, at least, freed them from their vow of confidentiality. Houdini,
then, published at his own cost a pamphlet entitled _Houdini Exposes the
Tricks Used by the Boston Medium "Margery"_ and started a tour where he
completely exposed Margery's act.
Margery's Suspicious Looking Ectoplasm
In 1924, while the discussions continued, Margery had begun to produce
ectoplasm during her seances. Like another famous medium, Eva C., her
substance also was said to pour out from her bodily orifices. This is a
supposition, of course, since she like Eva used to perform in the dark.
Meanwhile, Margery's fame had arrived in Europe and she was particularly
well known in England. Conan Doyle, who had already met the Crandons,
had expressed the wish to participate in new sittings with the medium,
but the meeting never took place and the newspapers reported: "Margery
Fears Fog May Block London Seances". The American Society for Psychical
Research was also interested in the case and if the medium wouldn't come
to the Society, the Society would go to the medium. This happened
through English researcher Eric J. Dingwall who was duly impressed when,
during a seance in the red light of an electric torch turned on and off
by Dr. Crandon following the orders of Walter, things that looked like
materialized hands rested on Margery's lap. Excited, he wrote to psychic
researcher Von Shrenck-Notzing:
It is the most beautiful case of
teleplastic telekinetics with which I am acquainted. One can freely
touch the teleplasm. The materialized hands are joined by cords to the
medium's body; they seize objects and move these. The teleplastic masses
are visible and tangible upon the table, in excellent red light I hold
the medium's hands; I see angers and feel them in good light. The
control is irreproachable. (Dingwall, 1928).
The enthusiasm,
however, died quickly and Dingwall began to have doubts. He realized
that he had never been able to actually see the ectoplasm pouring out of
the medium's body. The faint light was not as good as he had earlier
enthusiastically described, the hands were partially or completely
formed and were static rather than moving. Dingwall remembered that when
he was allowed to hold the materialized substance, the medium at once
began to turn in her chair and the mass was pulled out of my hand. It
seemed simply an elastic bag and crumpled up as it was pulled away. I
tried to follow it when it fell into the medium's lap, but she resisted
strenuously, throwing her left leg on to the table and forcing my hand
away from it with her own. Another crucial test had failed completely.
(Ibid.) The substance was clearly lifeless. At one point, as the
materializing ectoplasm was spotlighted, Margery actually put her hand
down with Dingwall's hand still controlling it, and threw the mass upon
the table. But what was this substance made from? The pictures taken by
Dingwall show a very doubtful ectoplasm. The mass had the appearance of
animal tissue and an examination of the enlargements of the photographs
displayed certain ring markings that "strongly resembled the
cartilaginous rings found in the mammalia trachea. This discovery led to
the theory that the 'hands' had been faked from some animal lung
material, the tissue cut and joined, and that part of the trachea had
been used for the same purpose". (Ibid.) Further examinations of the
pictures by biologists at Harvard led to the same conclusion-the
ectoplasm "undoubtedly was composed of the lung tissue of some animal."
(Tietze, 1973). In addition to going to any butcher and obtaining
material, Dr. Crandon wouldn't have any difficulty in obtaining the
needed substances since he worked at Boston Hospital. In his report,
Dingwall preferred not to draw any conclusion, but suggested that the
medium could hide the faked ectoplasm in her bodily cavities and could
expel it afterward by way of muscular contraction. In the meantime, the
Scientific American Committee had at last issued its official verdict on
Febraury, 11 1925.
We have observed phenomena, the report stated,
the
method of production of which we cannot in every case claim to have
discovered. But we have observed no phenomena of which we can assert
that they could not have been produced by normal means. Hardly what Houdini would have liked. In any case, this meant that Margery didn't win the prize.
The Harvard Investigation
Though refused entrance to any more seances with Margery, Houdini had
been able to infiltrate a friend journalist, Stewart Griscom, who kept
him updated on the latest developments; this allowed the magician to
continuosly update his stage exposé to the amazement of Margery's
followers. Houdini's attacks received support from an investigation
conducted in the late spring of 1925 by a group of psychologists from
Harvard University. In the results, published in the _Atlantic Monthly_
(November 1925), it was revealed that Margery had been observed
performing various kind of subterfuges. She took off a luminous band
placed on her ankle to track her movement and with her free foot managed
to
float a luminous disk; the Harvard group also established she
had been able to use her right foot to ring a bell and to touch
sitters. Finally, Margery fell into a trap. One experimenter sitting at
one side offered to free her hand: she immediately accepted and used it
to take some fake ectoplasm out of her lap and put it on the table.
Suspicions and More Suspicions
One investigator after another remained unsatisfied by Margery's
seances and after Dingwall and the Harvard group it was time for Joseph
Banks Rhine, professor at Duke University, Carolina, who in 1935 would
start the study of parapsychology in a scientific laboratory. Invited by
the ever enthusiastic Bird, Rhine arrived in Lime Street on July 1 1926
and the Crandons greeted him with the usual hospitality. From the start
Rhine and his wife knew that it would have been impossible to test the
facts as they would have liked to. For example, they couldn't examine
the substance with the lights turned on and Rhine was prevented by
Crandon from examining the various instruments that filled the seance
room that were supposed to document and measure this or that phenomena. ,
Still the professor was able to notice that the ropes of a device that
was supposed to hold the medium had been removed, allowing complete
freedom of movement. When Rhine saw Margery's foot kicking a megaphone
during a seance to give the impression that it was levitating the
crudity of the deception was clear. If he had been able to detect all
these things in one seance, wondered Rhine, why didn't Bird with three
years of experience have any suspicions? Could he be a confederate of
the medium? Bird denied the accusations saying that they were Rhine's
"personal opinions," but the professor wondered what could have led men
like Bird or Carrington to play the medium's game, and observed: It is
evidently of very great advantage to a medium, especially if fraudulent,
to be personally attractive; it aids in the "fly-catching business."
Our report would be incomplete without mention of the fact that this
"business" reached the point of actual kissing and embracing at our
sitting, in the case of one of the medium's more ardent admirers. Could
this man be expected to detect trickery in her? (Rhine, J. B and Rhine,
L. E., 1927) This could partially explain the motives of Bird and
colleagues, but what about Dr. Crandon? If he was a confederate too he
certainly couldn't be motivated by the desire of a love affair with the
medium since she already was his wife. Rhine offered the following
motive:
(Crandon) gradually found out she was deceiving him, but
had already begun to enjoy the notoriety it gave him the groups of
admiring society it brought to his home to hear him lecture and to be
entertained, the interest and fame aroused in this country and Europe,
etc. This was especially appreciated by him in view of decided loss of
position and prestige suffered in recent years. (Ibid.)
The
publication of Rhine's report in the Journal of Abnormal Social
Psychology (the ASPR, whose new chief research officer was now Bird, had
refused it because of its skeptical nature) caused the inevitable
protests by Margery's supporters. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle bought space in
the Boston newspapers and inserted an ungentlemanly black-bordered
notice stating simply: "J. B. Rhine is an Ass."
Malcolm Bird Sings
What had happened to Bird? After 1931 his name disappeared from the
list of contributors of the ASPR. He vanished and nothing was ever heard
of him. Hypotheses about his fate ranged from personal jealousy inside
the Society to his accepting a tempting work offer, but only recently
with the discovery of some unpublished documents, some new facts
regarding the relationship between Bird and Margery were made public.
Prince, in whose files the documents were found, hinted of it in 1933 in
an article he wrote for Scientific American:
About two years ago
(...) he (Bird) sent in to his employers a long paper claiming the
discovery of an act of fraud and reconstructing his view of the case to
admit a factor of fraud from the beginning. This paper has not been
printed and very few of the believers in Europe or America know of its
existence. (Prince, 1933).
Here are some extracts from this report/confession by Bird to the Board of Trustees of the ASPR (May 1930):
Since May 1924 when I first concluded that the case was one of valid
mediumship, my observations have never been directed in any large sense
toward the detection of fraud, and even less toward its demonstration.
As I went along with my seances, here and there I made, as a matter of
routine, observations that some particular episode was normal in its
causation. All that the present report aims to do is to acquaint the
Board with the date upon which is based in my own mind, the statement
which I have made whenever occasion has arisen to make it: that the
Margery phenomena are not one hundred per cent supernormal. It is not
now possible for me to state positively whether the episode occurred in
July or in August, 1924 ... The occasion was one of Houdini's visits to
Boston for the purpose of sitting.... She sought a private interview
with me and tried to get me to agree, in the event that phenomena did
not occur, that I would ring the bell-box myself, or produce something
else that might pass as activity by Walter. This proposal was clearly
the result of Margery's wrought-up state of mind. Nevertheless it seems
to me of paramount importance, in that it shows her, fully conscious and
fully normal, in a situation where she thought she might have to choose
between fraud and a blank seance; and she was willing to choose fraud.
(Tietze, op. cit., p. 137).
Margery's Wrong Step
Around 1926 Margery added a new effect to her repertoire; maybe one too
many, as we shall see. Walter claimed that his ethereal body was such
an exact replica of the one he had while alive that to prove his
presence he could even create a fingerprint of his thumb in wax. Mina
paid a visit to her dentist, Dr. Frederick Caldwell, to ask for a
suggestion in carring out the experiment. The doctor suggested the use
of dental wax which would make a detailed print. He softened a piece of
wax in boiling water and pressed his thumbs in to show the practicality
of his proposal. Mina took Caldwell's sample and asked for a few pieces
of wax. That evening at a seance she tried the experiment. She put some
wax in a small basin and after the seance two prints were found. Margery
claimed they were those of Walter. Dr. Crandon insisted on having an
expert of his acquaintance to authenticate the prints. This shadowy
figure, most probably a confederate, was named John Fife and claimed to
be Chief of Police, at Charlestown Navy Yard, and a recognized expert on
fingerprints. W. F. Prince, who after the Scientific American
investigations had continued to collect a file of private information
regarding personal investigations on Margery's case, found out that the
Boston Police Department had never heard of Fife. Crandon, however,
claimed that the man had found thumb prints on Walters' razor that
perfectly matched those left in the wax by the "spirit." The success of
this novelty led Dr. Crandon to employ on his own expense a Margery
supporter, E. E. Dudley, to catalog every fingerprint left by Walter
during the seances. Around 1931 Dudley began on his own initiative to
collect the fingerprints of every person who attended a sitting with
Margery. This way he could disprove the claims of those who said that
the prints did not belong to Walter but to a live confederate. Dudley
was ending his weekly visits to collect the fingerprints of those who
had participated in seances from 1923 to 1924 when he examined the
prints of Dr. Caldwell, Crandon's dentist. Once at home to compare the
prints with those of Walter he made a bewildering discovery. He
carefully examined both sets of prints to be sure, but there was no
mistake: the thumbprints that Margery claimed had belonged to Walter
were identical in every respect to Dr. Caldwell's! Dudley counted no
less than 24 absolute correspondences. Clearly, the medium had used the
wax samples on which Dr. Caldwell had pressed his thumbs to show Mina
the procedure and had obtained imprint moulds. It was easy in the dark
to press the moulds in the wax and obtain the effect that an entity
foreign to the circle of sitters was the author. Dudley informed the
ASPR about his discovery but W. H. Button, then president of the ASPR,
replied that he wasn't interested in publishing the news. The image of
the Society was by then too connected with that of the medium since
often they had defended her and had hidden unpleasant information about
her. Prince, who had left the ASPR for this reason and had founded the
Boston Society for Psychical Research (BSPR), had had enough. He
accepted the Dudley revelation and an article was published in the
Society Journal (Vol. XVIII, October, 1932). The scandal that followed
had disastrous effects. It was no mere case of somebody claiming to see
the medium use her foot to move a table; this time the proof of fraud
was damning and definitive.
A Woman in Decline
The supporters left Margery one after another, and the woman, older and
heavier, began to look for consolation in alcohol. The seances,
meanwhile, continued and Crandon tried for some time to keep alive the
interest in her "Psyche" by resorting to any stratagem he might think
of. At one of these sittings, for example, Margery tried to repeat the
famous experiment of linking two wooden rings attempted 50 years before
by prof. Zollner with medium Henry Slade. "Success!", rejoiced Dr.
Crandon: Margery had been able to link two rings made of different
woods. At last a definitive proof, something solid that defied physics,
matter through matter. Since it is not difficult to finish the wood
along the split in such a way to render invisible to the eye, it was
claimed that only the X-rays could establish the truth. The rings were
then sent to Sir Oliver Lodge in England for independent testing. When
Lodge opened the parcel sent by the Crandons, however, he found that one
of the rings had gone to pieces, probably during the trip. What could
have been the only solid existing proof of the reality of the
supernatural, the "Rosetta Stone" of spiritualism hadn't even been well
packed. What a pity! In 1939 Dr. Crandon died and Mina, an inveterate
alcoholic, went into a state of deep depression. At one of her last
seances she even tried to jump off the roof of the house. In Prince
files at the ASPR still lays a collection of documents and reports
unpublished, written by the Harvard scientists and by various psychic
researchers, from which emerges an interesting theory to explain the
Margery seances (Silverman, op. cit., pp. 380-381).
The seances
were a sort of marital charade. Margery's audience being not Houdini or
the Scientific American group or the other investigators but her
husband, whom she helped to delude himself in order to save their
collapsing marriage. They were too different one another, and Crandon
got quickly bored by her after marriage; however, he also had a strong
fear of death. In trying to keep him by his side, Margery hit on the
idea of manifesting spirits for him and it worked. He now felt like a
new Galileo for the half a million followers of Margery, and demanded
always new phenomena . He came to force her wife for new demonstrations
with «downright brutality».
The opinion of the various experts was
that Margery would have liked to give up seances and confess to fraud,
except for knowing that it would end her marriage. Houdini's spy,
Griscom, had even revealed to the magician that once, when he was alone
with the medium, she disclosed to him her admiration for Houdini for not
being taken in by her, and for not being afraid
to say where he stands.
I respect Houdini, she said to Griscom,
more than any of the bunch. He has both feet on the ground all the time
(Ibid., p. 383). Margery's story ends with a tale that sounds folkloric
but duly suits the mysterious character that the medium had built for
herself. Sitting beside Margery's bed in the last days of her life,
psychic researcher Nandon Fodor suggested to her that she would depart
happier should she dictate a confession to him and reveal the methods
she had used to obtain her phenomena. Mina muttered something
indiscernible. Fodor asked to repeat. "Sure", she said, "I said you
could go to hell. All you 'psychic researchers' can go to hell." Then,
something very like the old familiar twinkle of merriment in her eyes
she looked at him and chuckled softly: "Why don't you guess?" she said,
and chuckled again. "You'all be guessing... for the rest of your lives."
(Tietze, op. cit. p. 184-5)
SUBSCRIBE FOR MORE LOGIC
REFRENCES
- Bird, J. M. 1924. Our Next Psychic, _Scientific American_, July 1924.
- Christopher, M. 1969. _Houdini: The Untold Story_. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell.
- Dingwall, E. J. 1928. Report on a Series of Sittings with the Medium Margery. _Proceedings of the SPR_, vol. XXXVI.
- Doyle, A. C. 1930. _The Edge of the Unknown_. Reprint: 1992, New York: Barnes & Noble.
- Gresham, W. L. 1961. _Houdini: The Man Who Wlaked Through Walls_. New York: Macfadden Books.
- Houdini, H. 1924. _Houdini Exposes the Tricks Used by Boston Medium "Margery"_. New York: Adams Press Publishers.
- Polidoro, M. 1995. _Viaggio tra gli spiriti_. Carnago (VA): Sugarco.
- Prince, W. F. 1923. Review of _My Psychic Adventure_, _Journal of the ASPR_, vol. XVIII.
- Prince, W. F. 1933. The Case Against Margery, _Scientific American_, May 1933.
- Rhine, J. B and Rhine, L. E. 1927. One Evening's Observations on the
Margery Mediumship. _Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology_
- Silverman, K. 1996. _Houdini!!! The Career of Ehrich Weiss_. New York: Harper Collins. Silverman, K.
- 1996. _Notes to Houdini!!!_. New York: Kaufman and Greenberg. Tietze, T. R.
- 1973. _Margery_. New York: Harper & Row
