Houdini returned

It is frequently stated in mainstream literature that Houdini never did return in spirit. However, there is evidence that suggests otherwise. According to Joseph Rinn, and others since, Beatrice Houdini offered a reward of $10,000 to any medium able to prove, to her satisfaction, the survival of her husband in the spirit world. I cannot fathom why, because mediums do not charge a great deal for their services, and most do not charge anything. Although Joseph Rinn was obsessed with high-profile monetary challenges, Houdini was completely against them, his view being, quite correctly, that they served no purpose whatsoever in psychical research, which makes one wonder why his widow would indulge in such foolishness. The answer has to be that she was ‘advised’ to do so by a ‘friend.’

There was one event that transpired three years after Houdini’s death in January of 1929, that plainly demonstrates the destructive nature of the debunking network.

Beatrice Houdini had been feeling unwell when she fell and cut her head, and so had taken to bed to recover. During this time, according to some accounts, the Reverend Arthur Ford, the minister of the First Spiritualist Church in New York City, happened to call on Mrs. Houdini. In fact it was she who requested his presence. The previous year, on 8 February, 1928, Houdini’s mother made contact with Arthur Ford while he was in a trance state. She passed to him the word ‘forgive,’ adding, that Bess, and Bess alone would understand. She did. This was the very word that Houdini longed to hear his mother say to him. Sceptics, clutching at straws, cited everything and anything from a newspaper article that supposedly revealed one of the words, to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who had met Arthur Ford when Ford was in England.

Now, almost a year later, Beatrice Houdini asked for the Rev. Ford to come and see her at her home. He duly arrived, and while there, went into a trance and relayed a message to Mrs. Houdini, apparently from her late husband. The message contained ten words, one single word, plus a nine-word code that she and Houdini had secretly arranged for this very purpose - as proof of life after death. The code itself was the same one that she and Houdini had used many years before in the psuedo-mindreading act. It consisted of ten words, each word representing a number. That number in turn represented a letter of the alphabet. Here is the code with the first ten letters of the alphabet:

Pray = 1 A * Answer = 2 B * Say = 3 C * Now = 4 D * Tell = 5 E

Please = 6 F * Speak = 7 G * Quickly = 8 H * Look = 9 I * Be Quick = 10 J

To secretly convey the letter F, one has only to begin a sentence with the word, such as, ‘Please, concentrate a little harder.’ By using combinations of the above words, any letter can be conveyed. For example, if the performer said, ‘Answer now!’ That represents the numbers 2 and 4, and the 24th letter in the alphabet is X. A good two-person act using a code like this will conceal the target words in longer sentences, and humorous remarks made to the audience. It is never quite as deliberate as the examples given. You must also remember that complete words need to be conveyed to the assistant, therefore the code has to become second nature to the partnership - a hidden language that is both automatic and natural. The first word delivered was ‘Rosabelle,’ the name of a song that Beatrice had sang during the first show that she and Houdini had done together. The nine words, or phrases, that followed had to be decoded using the system just given. This spelled out the word ‘B-E-L-I-E-V-E.’

Mrs. Houdini, totally convinced that the message was genuine, signed an affidavit to that effect. She had no doubts.

http://www.ial.goldthread.com/houdini.html

I'll need to look into this as its the first i've heard of this claim.

placeholder sceptical gif until then

Waiting with interest.

Here we go, Took me a while to remember this one mainly because the original article posted bent the facts so out of proportion I didn't recognise the story.

Is this the debunking network the author spoke of ?

If the facts don't fit your argument, blame a shadowy underworld conspiracy perpetrated by the media, science and the Pope. Yes, far more believable than Ford being just another fraud.

Oh, what a surprise, a 'medium' using fraud to gain information.

He was the original hot reader and very honest about his clients.