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From: rb@cci632.UUCP (Rex Ballard)
Newsgroups: net.sci
Subject: Houdini (Re: Spiritual Energy?
Message-ID: <234@cci632.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 20-Jul-86 17:29:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: cci632.234
Posted: Sun Jul 20 17:29:23 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 22-Jul-86 02:26:11 EDT
References: <877@hoptoad.uucp> <191@cci632.UUCP> <2162@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Reply-To: rb@ccird1.UUCP (Rex Ballard)
Organization: CCI, Rochester Development, Rochester, NY
Lines: 39
Summary: Message from the grave?

In article <2162@brl-smoke.ARPA> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>) writes:
>In article <191@cci632.UUCP> rb@ccird1.UUCP (Rex Ballard) writes:
>>The sincerety of clairvoyants and "psychics" is too common.  It is interesting
>>that even though Houdini proved a famous "medium" to be a fake, that same
>>medium did accurately predict his death.  Without the props, it wasn't as
>>convincing, but it was accurate.
>
>Houdini and his wife really wanted to believe in the afterlife,
>but they became disappointed by the dismal performance of the
>many mediums they consulted.  Houdini made a solemn pact with
>his wife that after his death, if it was at all possible, he
>would make every effort to contact his wife.  They arranged a
>secret way for her to be able to check that it was really him.
>After Houdini died, his wife tried for a long time to contact
>his "spirit" through mediums, without success.  Many people
>think that this was an excellent test of that phenomenon, since
>if anyone would be able to communicate from the dead, certainly
>Houdini would.

Actually, one of the ironies here is that the "message" was delivered
by a "spiritualist".  In fact Mrs. Houdini even put out a number of
public announcements to that effect.  Later, the "spiritualist" was
accused of knowing the code, and the message.  Critics pointed out
that Houdini's code was a simple cypher, used in their early acts,
before he made his name as an escape artist.  The spiritualist denied
all of this, but the critics won.

The interesting thing, of course, was that no one knew what the test
was until after it had been passed.  Once the nature of the test was
revealed, 20/20 hindsight made the answer obvious.

Of course, there is the possibility that the "spiritualist" was able
to "subconciously derive" the message.  He would have had to know an
awful lot about Houdini though.

Appearantly, there is another test, even more difficult, which is still
used each year at Halloween to test one psychic.  This test has never
been passed.  Only one person knows the test at any given time.  There
is no reward (as there was in the "Rosabelle Believe" test).