" SPIRIT " MESSAGE.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 18888, 31 December 1926, Page 5

" SPIRIT " MESSAGE.

VAIN ATTEMPTS. CFBOM OCB OWB COBBESr-OSTDENT.) SAN FRANCISCO, November 23. . Harry Houdini, the world-renowned king of magicians, who died on October 31st last, had three compacts by which he planned to try to get messages over from the spirit world, his wife has just stated in New York. The magician, who, duriug thirty-five years of activity, did much to expose fraudulent practices of fake mediums, composed a quotation of ten words, of which his wife alone shared the knowledge he took to his grave. Of the "dozens and dozens of messages" which she now stated that mediums had given her as coming from her departed husband, Mrs Beatrice Houdini said that not one held the key words that would identify it as Houdini 's. The "Scientific American." a weekly magazine which has devoted yeara to investigating the claims of spiritualists, and has proven such claims _ to be mythical, has released for publication a message received by a medium in Attleboro, Massachusetts, on November 2nd, which she submitted as the attempt of Houdini to get in touch with this world. The medium, who asked that her name be kept secret, used automatic writing a 9 her means of "establishing contact," and obtained three messages, a brief one, and two longer compositions. . "Astral soul is vested at last. Weiss (Houdini's original name) says God is welcome greater—God is truth—God j 3 Jove—God is without peer," one of the messages started, and ended: "See some of my friends and ten them Houdini lives." Mrs Houdini was reached by telephone at Atlantic City, where she has been convalescing from the illness which has kept her in bed since her husband's untimelv death. The messages were read to "her in full, and she denied that they contained anything similar to the" quotations composed by her husband and agreed upon by them as a means of communicating with her if communication were found possible. "If Houdini can communicate he will do so, I know, and he will get his message over to me in the words of our quotation," she said. "We were very close, and I am hoping that I may hear from him. But since his death there have been so many 'messages' that mediums have brought me—dozens and dozens of them—and none of them contains the key words."