In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the belief that the living could communicate with the dead through mediums gained extraordinary traction. World War I and the 1918 influenza pandemic left millions grieving. The war claimed the lives of some 20 million soldiers, and influenza took at least 50 million lives. In both cases, most victims were young—between 20 and 40 in the case of the flu—and left behind parents, spouses, sweethearts, and children. Séances, Ouija boards, and spirit photography offered solace in a time of mass death. Spiritualism was not a fringe belief: It attracted millions of adherents and found champions among scientists, writers, and social elites.

Houdini himself was initially sympathetic. The death of his beloved mother in 1913 devastated him, and he attended séances hoping to connect with her spirit. But the results were disillusioning. Mediums claimed messages from beyond, yet none conveyed anything his mother would plausibly say. Houdini began to suspect that what passed for spiritual communication was something else entirely.

As a professional magician, Houdini possessed a rare advantage when it came to examining the techniques mediums employed. He understood how illusions worked—how sound could be thrown, objects manipulated unseen, and darkness exploited. What others interpreted as supernatural phenomena looked, to him, like stagecraft.

By the early 1920s, Houdini’s skepticism hardened into a moral crusade. Spiritualism was booming, and professional mediums charged high fees for séances, promising reunion with lost loved ones. Houdini increasingly saw this not as a harmless belief but as an exploitation of grief.

Rather than quietly dismiss spiritualism, Houdini chose confrontation. He began attending séances in disguise, carefully observing the mechanics of tables, cabinets, and ectoplasm manifestations.

Houdini capitalized on the controversy over spiritualism by turning exposé into performance. On lecture tours across the United States and Europe, he demonstrated how mediums could produce spirit writing, levitate objects, and project ghostly voices—then explained the techniques in detail. His shows blended education and entertainment, but the message was uncompromising: These phenomena required no spirits, only skill and deception.

Houdini’s most famous detractor was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes and an ardent believer in spiritualism. Once friends, the two men fell into an increasingly public and acrimonious feud. Doyle believed Houdini possessed genuine supernatural powers that he refused to acknowledge; Houdini believed Doyle had been tragically duped.

Their disagreements spilled into newspapers, lectures, and books, becoming emblematic of a broader cultural divide between skepticism and belief. For Houdini, the feud underscored what he saw as spiritualism’s danger: Even brilliant minds could be misled when emotion overrode evidence.

Houdini’s campaign reached national prominence through his involvement with Scientific American, which in 1922 offered a $2,500 prize to any medium who could demonstrate genuine paranormal ability under controlled conditions. And that’s where the subject of my latest novel, Margery Crandon, comes in. Margery’s husband, a respected surgeon in Boston, entered Margery in the contest, and what ensued was a great battle between Margery and Harry Houdini, one of the members of the Scientific American prize committee. All the scientists on the committee thought Margery was a genuine psychic, but Houdini insisted she was a fraud. The story of her quest for the prize and Houdini’s attempts to undo her created a sensation in America and Europe. And their contest proved an irresistible subject for this novelist!