I wonder how long it took the author, David Jaher, to come up with that book title. Anyway, I do like historical fiction and this was a true event. Shortly after WWI, with the loss of tens of millions from the war and the Spanish (flu) plague, the age of Spiritualism commenced. Why people suddenly had the urge to speak to the dead seems strange to me, but a necromancer (or medium) could make some pretty good money fooling the public. Notwithstanding, some upper echelon people, such as, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (yes, he of the Sherlock Holmes novels), and Sir Oliver Lodge (a leading British physicist) became vocal supporters of Spiritualism in England. Both Doyle and Lodge lost sons and had a desire to speak to them after their deaths. Doyle asked, “What is the outcome of death?” and spoke of the New Revelation. Sir Lodge, President of The British Society for Psychical Research, claimed to speak to his deceased son, Raymond, through seances with a medium as did Sir Doyle with his deceased son via a former nanny turned medium. In January of 1920, Sir Oliver Lodge arrived in NYC to lecture his Ether of Space theory. The rage in the USA was the Ouija board game and even Thomas Edison was working on a way to communicate with the dead. At the same time Albert Einstein considered the possibility of contacting the dead before dropping the idea.
During Sir Oliver Lodge’s lecture in Boston, he said, “We all have etheric bodies, he explained, which psychics see as bands of variegated light. When a soldier was cut down, he abandoned his physical body-like a shriveled cocoon-for his perfect and permanent form.” After his lecture, he met Dr. Le Roi Crandon and his wife, Mina.The Globe reported, “Sir Oliver Lodge has put the whole question of spiritism and survival after death in a somewhat new light- a light that appeals to many intellectual people.” Dr. Crandon thought that Lodge’s theory was intriguing, but eccentric. Dr. Crandon’s wife, Mina, finds out that she has the talent to communicate with the dead (primarily with her dead brother, Walter) via her seances in the Beacon Hill area of Boston. “Mrs. Crandon’s forte was the motion of objects without apparent cause. Whether Walter (her brother) was in a violent mood or delivering one of his soothing poems, the Victrola (a old record player) piped his favorite songs.” In 1922, Sir Arthur Doyle arrived in NYC to preach his thoughts on spiritualism and spirit photography. Scientific American Magazine’s publisher, Orson Munn, and his editor, James Bird, became interested in all this talk about psychic research. Sir Arthur Doyle challenged the magazine “to conduct an investigation of psychic phenomena.” Munn’s magazine offered two $2,500 prizes for any medium that can prove physical phenomena or spirit photography. “It was ghost they were after.”
Meanwhile the reader is schooled on the life of Ehrich Weiss, the son of a Rabbi from Hungary. Ehrich will later change his name to Harry Houdini. After the Rabbi died, Harry attended seances in an attempt to contact his father. “The disappointing results, not to mention Houdini’s encounters with spooks on the flimflam circuit, were convincing him that there was no such thing as genuine mediumistic power.” Harry and his brother, Dash, then started work as magicians. Harry marries eighteen year old Bess Rahner (a German/Brooklyn girl), who becomes Harry’s show partner, but the show goes badly, and Harry hires on to Dr. Hill’s Traveling Medicine Show (the lowest rung in entertainment). The owner of the largest chain of vaudeville theaters, Martin Beck, sees talent in Harry and offers to take him on. Houdini becomes known as ‘The Handcuff King’ escaping virtually any kind of restraint. The rest is history. Houdini will spend a lot of time exposing mediums as frauds, so when he was offered a position as one of the five judges in Mr. Munn’s magazine contest...he jumps at the chance to expose more fakes. Many mediums take a crack at the prize money and fail to convince the five judges that they are really contacting the dead. By the way, all of this happens very early in the book (the book is 435 pages). The guts of the story is when the judges run into the convincing seances of the above mentioned Mina Crandon (now known as Margery). “Margery’s challenge was to prove that her brother lived after death.” Houdini needed to prove her a fraud. Let the battle begin!
Although sprinkled with some boring and repetitive seance chapters (from 1924-1926), the book was very informative. I had no idea this was going on after WWI, did you? The book culminates with the deaths of all the main characters, including the great Harry Houdini. Now don’t tell me that I should have a spoiler alert...I think that we all know that these people are no longer living. I believe the author did all he could do to make this book as accurate as possible. I do recommend this book, if anything else, at least to increase the knowledge in your noggin.
RATING: 4 out of 5 stars
Comment: I think that it's fascinating to reproduce the original ad for Munn’s $5,000 challenge:
ANNOUNCING
$5000 FOR PSYCHIC PHENOMENA
As a CONTRIBUTION toward psychic research, the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN pledges the sum of $5000 to be awarded for conclusive psychic manifestations.
On the basis of existing data we are unable to reach a definite conclusion as to the validity of psychic claims. In the effort to clear up this confusion, and to present our readers with first-hand and authenticated information regarding this most baffling of all studies, we are making this offer.
The SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN will pay $2500 to the first person who produces a psychic photograph under its test conditions and to the full satisfaction of the eminent men who will act as judges.
This is merely a preliminary announcement. The names of the judges, the conditions applying to the seances, the period for which this offer will remain open, etc., will appear in our January issue.
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