ANOTHER SPIRITUALIST FAILURE

Hokitika Guardian, 5 June 1928, Page 4

ANOTHER SPIRITUALIST FAILURE

An attempt by a self-styled medium to materialise tlio spirit of Harry Homlini before a critical audience in New York was classed as a complete failure. The attempt was made at the offices of “Science and Invention,’’ a publication which lias offered a prize of 21,000 dollars for any phenomenon that cannot lie duplicated or explained bv natural scientific means. Mrs Homlini, widow of the famous magician, who, during bis lifetime spent hundreds of thousands of dollars exposing spiritualism and its exponents, attended the seance. Mrs Hnudini, incidentally, also lias offered 10,000 dollars to anyone who will bring her a ton-word message her husband wrote during his life and which be told her lie would repeat after death if possible.

The medium, Nino Pecoraro, a portrait painter from the Bronx district of New York, was stripped, then dressed in a white shirt and trousers, strapped to a chair, tied hand and foot, with ropes, and the mittens bo donned wer© sewed to bis shirt sleeves. All knots were nealed with wax. .and be then was placed behind a black curtain and the lights were turned out. After a short while a voice purporting to be that of bis “spirit centre.!,’’ came from behind tbe curtain saying Homlini would “come through.” The voice said she would count three in Italian and then the cameras which bad been prepared to photograph anything that .might appear were to “shoot.”

But no materialisation took place, although several times what was purported to lie the voice of Houdini wps heard. At the conclusion of tbe seance Joseph Dunninger, chairman of Science and Invention’s Scientific Invcxtign-

tion Committee, said that lie could J duplicate by natural scientific means i within ‘far less time all that Pecoraro had accomplished in two Hours.