rb@cci632.UUCP (Rex Ballard) (07/21/86)
In article <2162@brl-smoke.ARPA> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>) writes: >In article <191@cci632.UUCP> rb@ccird1.UUCP (Rex Ballard) writes: >>The sincerety of clairvoyants and "psychics" is too common. It is interesting >>that even though Houdini proved a famous "medium" to be a fake, that same >>medium did accurately predict his death. Without the props, it wasn't as >>convincing, but it was accurate. > >Houdini and his wife really wanted to believe in the afterlife, >but they became disappointed by the dismal performance of the >many mediums they consulted. Houdini made a solemn pact with >his wife that after his death, if it was at all possible, he >would make every effort to contact his wife. They arranged a >secret way for her to be able to check that it was really him. >After Houdini died, his wife tried for a long time to contact >his "spirit" through mediums, without success. Many people >think that this was an excellent test of that phenomenon, since >if anyone would be able to communicate from the dead, certainly >Houdini would. Actually, one of the ironies here is that the "message" was delivered by a "spiritualist". In fact Mrs. Houdini even put out a number of public announcements to that effect. Later, the "spiritualist" was accused of knowing the code, and the message. Critics pointed out that Houdini's code was a simple cypher, used in their early acts, before he made his name as an escape artist. The spiritualist denied all of this, but the critics won. The interesting thing, of course, was that no one knew what the test was until after it had been passed. Once the nature of the test was revealed, 20/20 hindsight made the answer obvious. Of course, there is the possibility that the "spiritualist" was able to "subconciously derive" the message. He would have had to know an awful lot about Houdini though. Appearantly, there is another test, even more difficult, which is still used each year at Halloween to test one psychic. This test has never been passed. Only one person knows the test at any given time. There is no reward (as there was in the "Rosabelle Believe" test).
gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn ) (07/28/86)
I just finished some research to refresh my memory of the circumstances of Houdini's attempt to communicate with his wife Bess after his death. The first thing I found is that every biographer of Houdini gives a slightly different account. Putting the pieces together, I gather that the reported "success" was obtained while Bess was quite ill (including "nervous exhaustion") and that after she recovered, Bess retracted her endorsement of the "success". To show you how ill Bess was, she forgot that she had divulged the simple word code that she and Houdini used to a biographer who had published it before the medium, Ford, who had been previously exposed by the Houdinis as a fraud, exploited it for the "success". Rex Ballard gave some other details in a previous posting. The bottom line is, the situation was ideal for a good test of this psychic phenomenon, but sloppy procedures ruined it, too, alas.
rb@cci632.UUCP (Rex Ballard) (08/02/86)
In article <2606@brl-smoke.ARPA> gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn ) writes: >I just finished some research to refresh my memory of the circumstances >of Houdini's attempt to communicate with his wife Bess after his death. > >The first thing I found is that every biographer of Houdini gives a >slightly different account. > >Putting the pieces together, I gather that the reported "success" >was obtained while Bess was quite ill (including "nervous exhaustion") >and that after she recovered, Bess retracted her endorsement of the >"success". To show you how ill Bess was, she forgot that she had >divulged the simple word code that she and Houdini used to a biographer >who had published it before the medium, Ford, who had been previously >exposed by the Houdinis as a fraud, exploited it for the "success". As I understood it, she only disclosed that the code was used, but not the code itself, or the message. There is a good chance that the code and message were "Revealed" to Ford prior to his "presentation", but it is unclear as to how. Is the word code itself contained in any autobiography or biography? Several "made up" examples of the code have been used in the various biographies, but which one is the "real code"? The allegation is that Ford observed Houdini's act in order to learn the code. Ford would have had to have been a Houdini fan before Houdini was really famous, but he could have done so. This leaves only the message. This is also possibly discernable. Rosabelle was the name of a song Bess used to sing, before she hooked up as Houdinis assistant and wife. It was never succesfully proven that Ford had "intellectually" learned this information (through research, observation, or study), but it is quite possible that he could have learned it "subconciously". >Rex Ballard gave some other details in a previous posting. > >The bottom line is, the situation was ideal for a good test of this >psychic phenomenon, but sloppy procedures ruined it, too, alas. Agreed.