The Secret Life of Houdini (88 page)

In November, Sir Arthur began a correspondence with Bess, after he had a report that Houdini had come back to a medium. Unfortunately Bess’s response never surfaced but it may have been similar to what she told
The New York Times
when asked for comment about a message from Houdini that was received from an Attleboro, Massachusetts, medium. Houdini’s communication was largely garbled but a few phrases were decipherable. “Tussle with death was agony” was one, along with “God is truth, God is love, God is without peer” and “See some of my friends and tell them Houdini still lives.”

“Houdini was an unusually intelligent and brilliant man,” Bess told the
Times
. “All these messages without exception have been silly…I alone have the key to any messages which might be received, a quotation which Houdini used in his work, and which would enable me to recognize anything which really came through.”

It wasn’t as if Bess wasn’t trying. She told
The N.Y. Evening Journal
that every day on the hour of his death she sat in front of his picture and waited for a sign. “Before he died he promised to come back to me then if he could…. As I sit before his picture, I feel he is guiding me and telling me what to do. But if only he could speak!”

Bess had at least one person who agreed with her that all of the Houdini messages to date had been “false and ridiculous.” Dr. L. R. G. Crandon, now identified as a lecturer on psychic matters, scoffed at the notion that Houdini could be back. “If we know anything at all, we do know that people cannot communicate with us until they have been in the sleep for four or five years. We learned that from Walter.” That explained why Margery had made no attempt to communicate with Houdini, the doctor added.

By December, Doyle was exchanging weekly letters with Bess. After both sides regretted the estrangement that grew between Houdini and Doyle, the two began a debate over whether Houdini truly had psychic powers. The closest Bess got to agreeing was to entertain the notion that if he did have psychic power he might not have known it. Meanwhile, Bess let Doyle know that she was hopeful contact would still be made. “Surely, our beloved God will let him bring me the message for which I wait, and not the silly messages I get from the various people who claim they hear from him. Please believe me when I say that I have taken an oath to tell the world when I do hear from him—also if a message directly to you, with our code comes through. The hour his soul went to his Maker (Sunday at 1:26
P.M.
, October 31, 1926) and every Sunday at the same hour, I spend with him, alone, in prayer.”

With the New Year, the intensity of the Doyle-Bess correspondence grew. Doyle sent Bess the letter he had received from Clarke in Montreal reporting that Houdini threatened to tear him “to ribbons.” On the defensive, Bess claimed that Houdini would never have said such a thing and that he in fact had said that he would tear any Spiritualist books to ribbons. By now, Doyle was sending Bess to New York mediums he knew and enclosing letters of introduction for her. One or two minor “communications” had impressed Bess and she had reported them to Sir Arthur. “I am most thankful that you have got so far,” he wrote her back on March 8. “Thank you for your bravery & frankness in admitting the facts. You have now earned the fulfilment. It
may
have been a test of you.”

Bess was now offering $10,000 to any medium who could put her in touch with her beloved husband. She began to be inundated with letters from every crank in the country. As the first anniversary of Houdini’s death loomed, Bess began to fall apart. On October 10, she attended a debate at Carnegie Hall between Arthur Ford, who spoke for the Spiritualist view, and Howard Thurston, who represented the magic community. It was a strange encounter. Ford denounced Thurston for claiming that most spiritualistic phenomena could be reproduced by using an instrument the size of a watch and bet him $10,000 that he couldn’t. He referred to Lady Doyle as one of the world’s best trance mediums and claimed that “all spiritualistic phenomena stand or fall with Margery.” When Thurston spoke, he backtracked and claimed that he had seen mediums do things that he could never explain.

A week later, the unveiling of Houdini’s gravestone found Bess near collapse. At the service, Houdini’s lawyer Bernard Ernst read Bess a letter from Conan Doyle. “I should like to send a message of good will upon the occasion of the unveiling of your husband’s monument. All differences must be suspended at such a time. He was a great master of his profession and, in some ways, the most remarkable man I have ever known.”

Doyle wrote her again and sent some clippings. A month later, Bess responded, explaining that she had been “very ill” since the unveiling. In December, out of the blue, Bess announced that she was going to do a vaudeville turn, and freeze a man in a cake of ice, an effect that Houdini had been working on years earlier in England. She called a press conference in a vacant store in Manhattan where Waka Tanka, a Sioux Indian mystery man wearing a rubber suit, was lowered into a metal container and a ton and a half of ice was frozen around him. Once the ice had formed, a hole was chopped in the front to expose his face. Bess told the assembled press that along with the ice stunt, she planned to escape from either handcuffs or a straitjacket. A month later, Bess and the Indian performed another demonstration of the man in ice, and she was overcome by fumes from the carbon dioxide used to produce the ice. According to the papers, she was taken to a doctor while “the Indian looked for a hot fire.” Bess’s show never made the circuit.

She had one admirer, though. “I wish you every possible success with your new act,” Conan Doyle wrote her on February 12, 1928. “May all go well.” Then he responded to Bess’s report that Houdini may have been responsible for a mirror breaking in her house. “I think the mirror incident shows every sign of being a message. After all such things don’t happen elsewhere. No mirror has ever broken in this house. Why should yours do so? And it is just the sort of energetic thing one could expect from him if for some reason he could not get his message. Supposing our view of the future is true is it not possible that the Powers that be might for a time forbid him to use those gifts which he was foremost in his life in denying. But you will get your test—I feel convinced of that.”

From the collection of Dr. Bruce Averbook

J
UST AFTER NOON ON JANUARY
8, 1929,
REVEREND
Arthur Ford and his followers arrived at Bess Houdini’s home on Payton Avenue. She had taken a nasty fall a few days earlier and she was lying on her French sofa, her head wrapped in a bandage, covered with a blanket. Ford arranged some chairs around her in a semicircle and then lowered the blinds to shut out the sunlight. Accompanying the medium were members of his circle. There were Francis Fast, a wealthy businessman with whom he shared an apartment; John Stafford, an associate editor at
Scientific American
; his wife, Dorothy; and another lady named Helen Morris. Besides them, there were two reporters present, Harry Zander of the United Press and Rea Jaure, the women’s editor of
The New York Evening Graphic
. Bess’s press agent, Charles Williams, and her old dear friend Minnie Chester were also in attendance.

Ford was there to deliver a coded message from Houdini from the other side.

For almost a year now, the medium had been receiving messages from both Houdini’s mother and from Houdini himself. On February 8 of the previous year, in a trance, David Fletcher, Ford’s control, had brought Mrs. Weiss to the circle. She had one word to transmit—
forgive
. A letter had been dispatched to Bess from Ford’s First Spiritualist Church in Manhattan, informing her of the breakthrough.

Bess wrote back, impressed. “It was indeed the message for which he always secretly hoped…this is the first message which I have received which has an appearance of truth.”

After spending months in England and Europe, Arthur Ford returned to New York and resumed his sittings. From October 9 to January 5, both Mrs. Weiss and Houdini visited his circle and gave them a ten-word code, which they were to bring to Bess. When she heard the code, she was to complete the prearranged message with Houdini. Getting this through was of vital importance to Houdini.

The Reverend Arthur Ford poses next to a bandaged and sedated Bess right after channeling Houdini’s spirit.
From the collection of Patrick Culliton

“
I came to impress you that this is of great importance—greater than you have ever dreamed,
” Houdini said through Ford’s voice. “
I desire to bring this message before the world. It will make your names, coupled with mine, appear in headlines in all the papers of America and Europe, in the statement that Houdini has proved to the world that survival after death is a fact
.”

Houdini’s code, as delivered by Houdini through Fletcher, was:
Rosabelle—answer—tell—pray—answer—look—tell—answer—answer—tell
. “Houdini says the code is known only to him and his wife, and that no one on earth but those two know it,” Fletcher told the group. “He says that she must make it public. It must come from her; you are nothing more than agents. He says that when this comes through there will be a veritable storm, that many will seek to destroy her and she will be accused of everything that is not good, but she is honest enough to keep the pact which they repeated over and over before his death.”

Now, armed with the message, they were at Bess’s house for the conclusion of the process. Ford sat down in a chair and covered his eyes with a Liberty silk blindfold. He relaxed and went into a trance. When his body quivered, it was a signal that Fletcher had come through.

“This man is coming now,” Fletcher said. “The same one who came the other night. Houdini is here and wishes his wife as faithful in death as in life to receive his message. He tells me to say, ‘Hello, Bess, sweetheart,’ and he wants to repeat the message and finish it for you. The code, he says, is the one you used to use in one of your secret mind-reading acts.”

He repeated the ten words to Bess.

“He wants you to tell him whether they are right or not,” Fletcher said.

“Yes, they are,” Bess said.

“He smiles and says, ‘Thank you.’ Now I can go on. He tells you to take off your wedding ring and tell them what
Rosabelle
means.”

Bess pulled her left hand from under the blanket and slowly took the ring off her finger. Holding it before her, she began to sing in a weak voice:

Rosabelle, sweet Rosabelle, I love you more than I can tell;

O’er me you cast a spell, I love you! My Rosabelle!”

Bess wiped a tear from her eye.

“He says, ‘I thank you, darling. The first time I heard you sing that was in our first show together years ago,’” Fletcher relayed.

Bess nodded assent.

“Then there is something that he wants to tell me that no one but his wife knows. He smiles now and shows me a picture and draws the curtain so, or in this manner,” Fletcher said.

Bess picked up the cue. “
Je tire le rideau comme ça
,” she said. It was the French phrase that Houdini had taught her when she drew the curtain while performing the Metamorphosis in France.

“And now the nine words besides
Rosabelle
spell a word in our code,” Fletcher relayed Houdini’s message. Houdini explained how in their code
answer
stood for the letter
B
,
tell
the letter
E
,
pray
,
answer
the letter
L
,
look
the letter
I
, and
answer, answer
represented
V
. When the code was translated, it spelled out the word
believe
.

“The message I want to send back to my wife is ‘
Rosabelle, believe,
’” Fletcher relayed. “Is that right?”