MISTER MYSTERY RESPONDS

On one occasion, the New York’s ASPR (American Society for Psychical Research) wanted to test a celebrated medium known for speaking in trance with hares from the woods of Pennsylvania. To this end, some of its members traveled to Philadelphia where randomly kidnapped a passer-by and led him with his head covered to the forest where the medium practiced as such. As soon as he stood under the tree where the medium was perched, she immediately recognized the man. She gave his name, address and social security number, as well as many personal data that none of those present knew, not even the man himself, who remained hooded the entire time. When the hood was removed, he was very impressed by the experience and wanted to put the hood back on. He then insisted on walking back home cross-country and with the hood on. As the medium had guessed, at the time of his kidnapping the man mistakenly believed himself to be a few blocks away from his home on the West Coast. He was never seen again....

Percy Philip Pittingball is a wealthy businessman who made his fortune thanks to the “three cup trick”, and is now dedicated to the most lucrative “green goods scam”, in which people are duped into paying for worthless counterfeit money and they cannot report the crime because purchasing counterfeit money is punished by law. He is what is called a self-made man. He belongs to the select group of “The Four Hundred” and to the despicable gang of “The Old Tom Gin”. He is married to three women but they do not know each other even though they live in the same house. So huge the Fifth Avenue Pittingball Mansion is! François de La Rochefoucauld (aka Squattedman) has managed to be invited to attend a séance at Pittingball Mansion. The protagonist is one of the most famous mediums of the time, Etta Wriedt, who communicates with the dead through brass instruments that sound in the darkness of the séance room. Participants are blindfolded before entering the séance room. Each one is accompanie...

It was his interest in sleepwalking that put the father of Psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud in relation with the Society for Psychical Research. One night Sir William Barrett was walking on the sidewalk after leaving a pub in Soho when he crashed into a man who walked with his eyes closed and arms outstretched. The man woke up at that moment, and a few meters behind him Barret heard a voice grumbling and complaining. It was Freud, who was following one of his patients in order to discover where he went every night after leaving home in a state of somnambulism.   At the advice of Freud, the man’s wife did not dare to stop him. And precisely that night Freud had decided to find out where his patient was going every night. (Later it was discovered that his destination was the same tavern that Barret frequented and that sleepwalking was just a stratagem of the man to escape from home at night without his wife preventing him from doing so.) Barret apologized and offered Freud his card wit...

Lavinia Koppelman, the heiress of the immense fortune accumulated by her father the lamplighter Dove Koppelman throughout a lifetime of lighting streetlamps in the London borough of Kensington, organized a séance one warm night of August 1901. On the select list of guests were Viscount Rothermere, Lady Claire Rothermere, Frances Rothermere and the latter's brothers Sir William and Sir Clive Rothermere, baron of Walden. Also, of course, the famous medium Anastasia Prim and her cheerful troupe of spirits. Although the Koppelman mansion had a new installation of electric light, the medium imposed as the only lighting the candles of a four-branched candelabrum. One by one the guests arrived: the five privileged people who would attend the séance convened on the occasion of the recent passing of their relative Conrad, Duke of Rothermere, died recently because of an unfortunate accident occurred in the course of a séance in that same private room. A slight restlessness could be perceiv...

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, ...