Harry Houdini vs. the Ghost Whisperers,Today it’s not uncommon for popular magicians to devote their

Harry Houdini vs. the Ghost Whisperers,Today it’s not uncommon for popular magicians to devote their time debunking woo peddlers and bullshit artists like psychics, faith healers, quack doctors, and others selling fakery in order to make a quick and easy buck.  Some examples that easily come to mind are magicians such as Penn and Teller and or course James “The Amazing” Randi.  The tradition of magicians debunking con artists goes back to the legendary Harry Houdini, who in the 1920′s made it a personal crusade to shut down spiritualists who claimed to be able to communicate with the dead.In the late 19th and early 20th century spiritualism was reaching the height of its popularity.  Spiritualists claimed that they could communicate with the dead, often through a ritual called a seance. People would sit around a table in a dark room with a medium, and during the seance odd events would happen. The table would move without any noticeable force acting on it, weird sounds would be emitted from the walls, sometimes strange lights and apparitions would appear, or people could feels phantom objects brushing up against them. The medium would then convey a message from a dead loved one, and with all the paranormal things that occurred a client, who often paid a large sum of money, was left doubtless that the whole event was legit. As a result, spiritualist mediums became superstars of the day, and thousands of people believed that they were the real deal.Harry Houdini despised mediums, recognizing their fraudulent methods as mere tricks and carny trash. Houdini himself once dabbled in spiritualism, but quit when he found using trickery to take money from grieving people extremely distasteful.  Houdini was also a grieving man who had a close relationship with his mother who passed away in 1913. It angered him to no end that such flim flammers, con artists, and frauds were preying upon innocent people who just wanted to talk to their loved ones again. Thus, in the 1920′s Houdini set out on a personal crusade to expose the mediums as humbuggery. Thus in the 1920′s Houdini cut back on his magic and escape acts and being hosting special shows where he would expose mediums. He did this by offering a cash prize if any medium could prove that their claims were true.. Often the medium would come on stage in front of an audience, demonstrating his or her powers and creating wondrous supernatural feats.  Houdini would then come on stage and replicate those feats with equal of even better quality, then reveal how they were done. It was through this method that Houdini was able to debunks dozens of popular spiritualist mediums, as well as other tricksters like Jaquin Argamasilla, a Spanish man who claimed he could see the numbers on dice through a box with his “X-ray eyes”.Unfortunately Houdini’s crusade against the mediums cost him one of his best friends, author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who was a passionate believer in spiritualism. Doyle believed that Houdini was a genuine medium who was using his powers to eliminate his competition. Today in celebration of Houdini’s crusade, magicians often hold mock seances in honor of Houdini.  Houdini’s offering of cash prizes would also become inspiration for James Randi’s “Million Dollar Challenge”, which is offered to anyone who has paranormal or supernatural claims. No one has every successfully claimed the prize. -- source link

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