SPIRITUALISTS ACCUSED OF KILLING HARRY HOUDINI

SPIRITUALISTS ACCUSED OF KILLING HARRY HOUDINI


On Friday, March 23rd 2007 the authors of "The Secret Life of Harry Houdini: The Making of America's First Superhero.", William Kalush and Larry Sloman, published 28th October 2006, assisted by a PR firm Dan Klores Communications staged a news conference - the Baltimore Sun called it a "Media Spectacle" -- at the American Jewish Historical Society in New York charging that Houdini had been murdered and not just by anybody - but by Spiritualists.

The Associated Press story which zipped round the world and was published in hundreds of newspapers said: "Eighty-one years later, Houdini's great-nephew wants to exhume the escape artist's body to determine if he was poisoned by enemies for debunking their bogus claims of contact with the dead."

"The likeliest murder suspects were a group known as the Spiritualists, which became Houdini's bete noir in his final years." "Kalush and Sloman noted that "the Spiritualist underworld's modus operandiin cases like this was often poisoning - possibly arsenic."

What triggered this accusation is the book details a November 1924 letter in which noted Spiritualist author, Arthur Conan Doyle said Houdini who frequently hounded Spiritualists, would "get his just desserts very exactly meted out.. I think there is a general payday coming soon."

The generally accepted version of Houdini's death held that on October 26th 1926 while on tour in Montreal the 52-year-old suffered a ruptured appendix from a punch in the stomach by a college student who was testing the performer's abdominal muscles. Houdini was not ready for the blow. A doctor in a Detroit hospital tried injecting him with an experimental serum, but he died on Halloween.

The book authors maintain that Houdini was the "victim of a thuggish cabal of psychics." Houdini searched the ranks of Spiritualism for "fraud" and one of his favorite targets was a medium Mina "Margery" Crandon, whose husband, a prominent Boston surgeon named Le Roi Crandon, was supposedly a member of what the authors call "The Psychic Mafia" and the man behind Houdini's poisoning. In the author's telling, Crandon had a confederate inject Houdini with that serum in Detroit and it was meant to kill him, not cure him.

The Cape Argus in Cape Town, South Africa reported that during a 1924 "seance", Margery channelled a "spirit" named Walter who greeted Houdini with a threat: "I put a curse on you now that will follow you every day for the rest of your short life." Thurlow said: "With people that delusional, you have to question what they're capable of."

The "Houdini Murder" stories were published around the world. The International Herald Tribune scooped the story a day early in Paris. The Times of India headlined the story: "Houdini killed? Kin wants to exhume him." The Scotsman in Edinburgh (Conan Doyle's birthplace) noting the story involved the famous creator of Sherlock Holmes, called the story: "The Classic Whodunnit," the Baltimore Sun headlined the story: "Houdini can't
escape mystery," and the Washington Post asked in a headline response to the exhumation story: "Why not just hold a séance?" Australia's biggest daily, the Melbourne Herald-Sun ran the say-it-all headline in the least possible words: "Houdini Dig-Up Bid."

NSAC President Rev.Lelia
Cutler in a newsletter to all churches, said the whole thing was "a tempest
in a teapot to sell books." She says the accusation that a Spiritualist
could have murdered Houdini does not seem reasonable.

"Yes, there was some enmity between Houdini and the Spiritualists of his
day, but it was apparently because he could not find a medium that would
bring his mother from spirit for recognition. We have those same requests
today, and it is never a promise that we can bring any particular spirit
through in a reading or a message. They may be busy elsewhere progressing
in their spirit life."

Now all this excitement while HH was visiting COSC and not mentioning a word?

Cheers all more on HH is to follow

Jim

PIFFLE!

Bill

Bill wrote:PIFFLE!

Bill

Spot on!

Absolutely right the book wasn't selling well enough

Admin wrote:Absolutely right the book wasn't selling well enough

How true x