"THE ESCAPIST"
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...