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The Spirit Medium Who Exposed Houdini
By Brad Steiger
FATE :: March 2007

Although Harry Houdini died in 1926, his name is still synonymous with magic and daredevil escapes.

For Spiritualist mediums, however, the name “Houdini” invokes memories of an unscrupulous Grand Inquisitor. The famous stage magician and escape artist developed an antipathy toward the spirit world that developed, according to many of his biographers, after he failed to contact the spirit of his deceased mother through a medium.

Houdini’s most famous encounter with a medium was his alleged exposure of the famous Boston medium Mina “Margery” Crandon in 1924. The investigating committee, sponsored by Scientific American, had sought Houdini’s expertise as a magician, but many of the members soon became irritated by his attempts to employ trickery against the medium. Although Houdini claimed that he had caught Mrs. Crandon in fraudulent actions, certain committee members felt that the medium’s spirit guide, Walter, had been the one who had exposed Houdini and the tricks that he used in his attempts to confuse Mrs. Crandon.

Mina “Margery” Crandon (1888–1941) ranks as one of the most thoroughly investigated and controversial mediums of the 20th century. Psychical researchers put the woman in uncomfortable situations, encased her in awkward contraptions, and sometimes wound her in enough adhesive tape to make her look like a mummy. In spite of such strenuous efforts to disprove the validity of her phenomena, Margery again and again materialized spirits and performed astounding feats of psychokinesis.

Mina Stinson was born in Canada in 1888 and moved to Boston when she was quite young. In 1918, after an unsuccessful marriage, she became the wife of a senior Boston surgeon, Dr. Le Roi Goddard Crandon, whose family dated back to the Mayflower. They bought the house at Number 11 Lime Street on Beacon Hill, and became popular in Boston society. Dr. Crandon was a highly respected instructor at Harvard Medical School, and Mina was known as a very attractive lady with a sharp and lively wit.

In 1923, Dr. Crandon became extremely interested in psychical research, and he convinced Mina and a number of their friends to begin to explore the possibilities of contacting the dead. The group began with the customary attempts at table-tipping and spirit raps, and Dr. Crandon was astonished when it became evident that his wife was a very powerful medium.

After a few sessions, Mina’s deceased brother Walter, who had been killed in a train crash in 1911, announced his presence as her spirit control. Walter, speaking in very down-to-earth language, often colored with profanity, stated that it was his mission to perform the process of mind-over-matter, rather than delivering flowery inspirational messages from the other side.

Although Mina began regularly producing dramatic phenomena, attendance at the séances was by invitation only in order to protect Dr. Crandon’s standing at Harvard. Within a few months after they had begun the private séances, the Crandons submitted to the first formal investigation of Mina’s mediumship under the auspices of Professor William McDougall, head of Harvard’s Department of Psychology, and a committee from the university.

In November 1923, J. Malcolm Bird of Scientific American magazine attended one of the Crandons’ séances and was impressed with the spiritistic manifestations which he witnessed. At that time, the magazine was offering a prize of $2,500 to anyone who could provide conclusive proof that psychic phenomena truly existed, and Bird asked Mina to submit to a series of their tests. The investigating committee for the magazine included Harry Houdini, Hereward Carrington, Dr. Walter F. Prince, Dr. D. F. Comstock, Dr. William McDougall, and J. Malcolm Bird, secretary of the committee. To protect Mina Crandon’s social standing as the wife of an prominent Boston surgeon and Harvard professor, Bird gave her the pseudonym of “Margery,” which is how she shall always be remembered in the annals of psychical research.

The tests began in January 1924 under the general supervision of Dr. Crandon. The strictest of control conditions were enforced to insure that fraud of any kind, conscious or unconscious, on the part of the medium, could not go undetected.

The most controversial aspect of the tests has to do with the role of the famous magician in the experiments. Houdini was outspoken in his declarations that he had exposed Margery as a fraud. The medium’s defenders proclaim that the greatest myth in the history of psychical research is that Houdini caught Margery cheating and exposed her. On one point there is agreement: Houdini seemed determined to expose Margery as a fake by whatever means necessary.....

Read the rest of this article in the March 2007 issue of FATE

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