MISTER MYSTERY RESPONDS

Harry Houdini was not the only escapist interested in unmasking the false mediums that abounded in the Victorian era. One of his most outstanding disciples called himself Wolfang  the Wizard of the North, and he had invented a trick of escapism whose secret not even the great Houdini was able to discover. Wolfang was chained from head to toe, then pulled into a hermetically sealed box. This box was thrown into the Hudson River with a one-tonne anchor and the public was authorized to shoot him if they saw him lean out to the surface. The end was spectacular: after half an hour the box was raised up completely empty, and at the same time Wolfang reappeared in Wichita, Kansas, still chained and with a raised blue-purple color on his face. This Wolfang had resolved to unmask a fake medium named Sarah Toul, whose services were disputed by New York's high society. For this he used his celebrated trick of escapism: during one of his performances, he did not reappear in Wichita, so he was...

In 1890, on the outskirts of Croydon, South London, stood a stately mansion of victorian style surrounded by a six-meter wall. The exaggerated height of the wall was due not to the fear that someone would slip into the mansion but that someone could escape from it. No, it was not a prison: it was the most elitist asylum for men in all of England. It was such a select establishment that it was only allowed to madmen who thought themselves to be historical figures of lineage such as  Henry VIII, Benjamin Franklin, Ramses II or Frederick the Great. When several individuals coincided with the same obsession, a court of experts decided which of them was the real personality, and the impostors were rejected. However, the case that we will now deal with is not that of a historical celebrity but that of a fictional character of the time, protagonist of a series of famous cheap serialized booklets, named Spring Heeled Jack. Since in the asylum there was already a Spring Heeled Jack, the co...

One of the most famous, although not the most reputed, was Claudia Poshnik, who was said to have many well-paid spirits at her service. In a state of trance, Poshnik summoned her spirits by telephone (a recent invention) and they obeyed her without question. (One of them, a certain Josh Milgrawe, once dared to contradict her and she dismissed him ruthlessly, so the poor spirit ended in indigence). Poshnik mixed in the high society of Boston, very fond of séances and bridge games. In fact, she was often required at the famous bridge games of Huntington mansion. It was rumored that Mr. J. P. Huntington amassed a fortune at the expense of his bridge opponents, who watched with some suspicion a continuous transfer of flying cards. Because of this, some rich Bostonians were ruined and ended in indigence. The medium herself ended in indigence when the magician and professional escapist Harry Houdini attended one of these sessions disguised as scarecrow and exposed the fraud. A small don...

H. Houdini was a famous illusionist specialized in escapism. But he is also known for having uncovered numerous fakes among the mediums who frequented the high society of New York. For example, on one occasion he unmask a medium who pretended to be in contact with a spirit named Alfred who played the tambourine and made capers. Already in his lifetime he had dedicated himself to this activity, thanks to which he allegedly became one of the richest men in New York, becoming associated with the banker J. P. Morgan in a famous number of vaudeville in which Morgan played the castanets. During the séances to which Alfred was summoned, a tambourine rattled endlessly floating around the room while a voice from beyond the grave exclaimed "alehop, alehop!". Houdini distrusted Alfred's story. In one of the sessions he demanded that the lights be left on, but the medium refused. Houdini pretended to give up, but in the middle of the session he slipped silently to the light switch, ...