TELEPATHIC AND MESMERIC SPOOFS
Real spiritualism and sham mesmerism--Spoof séances--I ring one
off on my landlady--The self-playing piano--The spirit that
walked upside-down--Some simple explanations--Manufacturing a
telepathist to order--Thought-reading extraordinary--The colour
test--Telepathy by wire--A brief dream of wealth--A sleepy
wife and a hidden match-box--The head-head who was spoofed--A
disconcerting reception--Story of Houdini, the “Handcuff King”--
More telepathy--Over the telephone this time--A puzzling link
--And the explanation.
One of the most famous conjurors who ever lived publicly expressed his
disbelief in spiritualism. He held the view that it is all a fake, got
up by clever swindlers in order to bamboozle credulous fools.
With all due respect to the late Mr. Maskelyne’s undoubtedly sincere
views I disagree with them. That there is a lot of spoof spiritualism
knocking about nobody can deny. In fact I will go further and assert
that in the vast majority of instances the ordinary séance, for which
one pays one’s guinea or two for the privilege of being present, is
neither more nor less than a fake and a swindle of the most pronounced
kind.
But, admitting all this, the fact remains that there are phenomena in
connection with spiritualism that cannot be explained away by any known
rule of logic or reasoning. At least, such is my opinion. Why, I have
heard a little Cockney wench of sixteen, who to my certain knowledge
has never been any nearer to South Africa than the Battersea Park
Road, hold forth in pure Zulu dialect while in a state of trance at
a private séance in a house near Clapham Junction. And when she came
to, she didn’t know a word of what she had been saying. She spoke Zulu
with the proper native accent, too, and not as an ordinary Englishman
or Englishwoman does when trying to imitate their guttural clicks and
clucks. I know. I’ve been there.
All the same, I would not advise any of my readers to “go in” for
spiritualism. That way madness lies. I once tried it myself, but had to
give it up. Better stick to the things of this world, and leave those
pertaining to the spirit world severely alone.
Telepathy stands on an altogether different footing. I don’t believe in
it one little bit. As I have already had occasion to remark, so-called
thought-reading is merely trickery, clever trickery, no doubt, but
none the less trickery. To the ordinary man the feats performed by the
Zancigs and others seem absolutely inexplicable. But then so, too, do
some of my card tricks.
Reverting to the subject of spiritualism! I once engineered a spoof
séance all on my own. Not in order to make money; but just for a lark.
I was performing at Hastings, and as it happened the landlady of the
house where I was staying was a firm believer. Of course, I was not
long in finding this out; whereupon I pretended that I also was one of
the elect, and just before the termination of my engagement there I
suggested that she should invite a few friends to a private séance. To
this she assented, and at my suggestion it was held in my sitting-room,
where was the usual collection of plants in pots, gimcrack pictures,
and worthless ornaments, together with an ancient and asthmatic piano
such as is to be found in most “pro.’s’” lodging-houses.
That evening after my performance at the theatre, and shortly before
the witching hour of midnight, the séance began. The landlady asked
us all to attune our minds to receive humbly and without scepticism
the spirit manifestations which she hoped and trusted were about to be
vouchsafed to us. The lights were turned down, and a young lady with a
greenery-yallery complexion and straight black hair sang very soft and
low “Lead, kindly Light,” with mandoline accompaniment.
When she had finished, the landlady invited us to sit round the table
and place our hands upon it. This we did. Pretty soon the table began
to wobble about and rotate.
“Wonderful!” ejaculated everybody in a series of hoarse whispers.
“Not at all,” I replied. Then, in low solemn tones, I called upon the
spirit present to manifest itself in regard to an aspidistra plant that
stood in the far corner of the room.
No sooner were the words out of my mouth than the leaves of the plant
were violently agitated, the rustling noise being plainly audible to
everybody.
“Wonderful!” cried everybody once more. “The spirits are indeed with us
to-night.”
“They are indeed,” I replied, “and we’ll make the most of ’em.”
Then in lower tones: “Spirit, if it be thy will, let us have a
manifestation in regard to that vase on the mantelshelf.”
Instantly, and without more ado, the vase jumped up of its own accord
and came crashing to the floor.
At this something like consternation reigned. By the dim light of the
single turned-down gas-jet I could see that the eyes of my neighbours
on the right and left were fixed on me in awe, and I could feel their
hands tremble as they sought mine on the table.
“The piano!” I cried in a stage whisper, pretending to get wildly
excited, and jumping to my feet. “The piano! I’m going to ask the
spirits to take it out at the window, and bring it in at the door.”
But this was too much for even my landlady. “Mr. Carlton,” she
exclaimed, “please don’t joke. The spirits are all about us. Never
before have I seen such manifestations.”
“All right!” I replied, “If you think they’d be offended at my asking
them to move the piano, why I won’t ask them. But I’ll tell you what we
will do. We’ll ask ’em to give us a tune on it.”
“No! No!” objected the landlady. “Impossible! Such a thing is unheard
of. The spirits can’t do it.”
“Well, let’s try anyway,” I said. “Come along!” And suiting the action
to the word I got up and went over to the piano, which I locked, and
put the key in my pocket.
Then we all put our hands on the closed cover of the instrument and
waited. For a while nothing happened. Then suddenly from one of the
lower notes there came a deep resonant “boom,” followed by another, and
another.
There could be no mistaking whence the sound came. Somebody was playing
on the closed and locked piano.
At that moment there was a loud shriek, followed by a heavy thud on
the floor. One of the women, completely overwrought, had screamed
and fainted. That was the end of the séance. Somebody turned up the
lights. The girl who had swooned--she was the same who had played
the mandoline--was brought to with water and smelling-salts, and the
awe-stricken guests took their departure.
Now for the explanation. Before summoning the landlady and her friends
to the séance, I had gone to the trouble of fixing threads leading from
where I was sitting to the aspidistra plant and the vase, and I had
also affixed similar threads, half a dozen of them, to the hammers of
the notes of the piano underneath the keyboard, allowing them to dangle
down in such a way that I could easily reach them by stretching out my
hand.
Simple, isn’t it! Yet it spoofed completely everybody there that night;
and to this day, I suppose, they believe that they witnessed some very
wonderful and perfectly genuine spirit manifestations.
The following morning early I made up my face delicately with hollow
eyes, and wan cheeks, so as to suggest a sleepless night, and when the
landlady came in with my morning cup of tea I remarked in awestricken
tones that I believed her house was haunted by the spirits. “Why,”
I said, “they’ve been walking about in the night upside-down on the
ceiling above my head.”
Instinctively the good lady turned her eyes up to the ceiling. Then she
let out a yell, dropped the tray she was holding with a crash, and fell
gasping and shaking into a near-by arm-chair.
And small wonder! For there on the white plaster of the ceiling,
plainly visible, were the marks of naked feet, circling the room and
leading out at the door.
And now for another simple explanation. The next bedroom was occupied
by a friend of mine, an acrobat. After the household had gone to bed
on the previous night, he had stolen into my room, slightly blackened
the soles of his bare feet with soot from the chimney, and then,
balancing himself upside-down with his hands on my shoulders, he
had made the prints on the ceiling which so puzzled and alarmed the
landlady.
So simple! And yet she never guessed.
I once persuaded a fat chap who used to work for my show that he was a
telepathist. The beginning of it was this way. I used to perform feats
of the so-called thought-reading variety that were as genuine as such
feats ever are. The fat chap used to try to imitate them. There was,
for instance, the trick of walking blindfold into a room, and finding
an article that had previously been hidden.
One day when there were a lot of us together in my dressing-room at the
Hippodrome, Sheffield, I turned the conversation on to my assistant’s
wonderful telepathic gifts, flattering him to the top of his bent.
Previously, I had put the others up to it, and they one and all
clamoured for an exhibition of his powers.
Fatty was nothing loth, and at my instigation he was taken from the
room and blindfolded. An article was supposed to have been previously
hidden somewhere within the room by one of the crowd, and I was deputed
to walk behind him and “will” him the way he was to go in order to find
it.
“You must,” I told him, “stand perfectly upright with your heels
and toes close together, and presently you will feel my will power
urging you forward in the direction you ought to go. Don’t resist the
influence. Let yourself go. And you will find that, if my will power is
sufficiently strong, it will lead you to where the hidden article is.”
Now it is a fact, as the reader can easily prove for himself, that if
a man stands upright, blindfolded, or even with his eyes tightly shut,
and with his heels and toes close together, his body will automatically
sway forward; and this is precisely what happened to Fatty.
“I can feel the influence pushing me on,” he exclaimed excitedly, and
started groping about the room. In a minute or two one of the men
present quietly placed a cigarette-case on the table in front of his
outstretched hand, and of course he grabbed it.
“Wonderful!” they shouted. “He’s found it.”
Fatty pulled the bandage from his eyes, and stood triumphant, his big,
round, simple face beaming with pleasure and pride.
“I didn’t think I could do it,” he cried. “I didn’t think it was in me.
I’m a marvel.”
But I pretended to be in doubt.
“Some of you chaps are having a lark with us,” I said.
“No! No, we’re not. It’s all fair and aboveboard; isn’t it, Fatty?”
they cried.
And Fatty, of course, assured me on his word of honour as a man and
a gentleman that he did not even know what was the article he had to
find. Which was quite true. And neither did we in the beginning.
“Well,” I replied, as if still unconvinced, “I’ll mark a penny myself,
and we’ll see if you can find that.”
Again Fatty was led from the room, blindfolded, and the same rigmarole
gone through, the penny being slipped right under his hand as he groped
along the mantelpiece.
“My God!” he cried excitedly. “I’m a marvel. I’ve found it.”
I pretended to be surprised, but still somewhat incredulous.
“Look here,” I said, picking up a piece of paper and an envelope from
my dressing-table, “we will have one more test. I am going to write the
name of a colour on this sheet of paper, seal it up in the envelope,
and place it inside my coat-pocket. Then you must leave your mind a
blank, and I will try and will you to tell me the colour I have written
down.”
This test also succeeded. He named a colour, and it proved to be the
one written on the paper inside the envelope I took from my pocket.
As a matter of fact I had a dozen or so envelopes in rotation in
my pocket, each with a different colour-name inside, so that was
impossible that the test should have failed. But this, of course, Fatty
did not know.
I made out to be really and truly surprised now. So did all the others.
Nevertheless, I suggested one more final test, a drastic one that would
place the matter beyond doubt for evermore; or, at least, so I told him.
I knew that he had a brother who was manager of a well-known London
music-hall, so when I asked him suddenly if he knew well anybody in
Town whom he could send a wire with the probability of being able to
get an immediate reply, I was not at all surprised when he answered:
“Yes. There’s my brother, who manages the Holborn Empire.”
“Right!” I exclaimed. “He’ll do.” And taking a pack of cards from my
pocket, I spread them out face downward on the table.
“Now,” I said, “I want you to select one card at haphazard from this
pack, and when you have examined it you are to send a reply-paid
telegram to your brother asking him what card you are thinking of. You
must concentrate your thoughts on your brother, and try and tell him
mentally which is the card you hold in your hand. Meanwhile, in order
to avoid any chance of collusion, no one is to leave the dressing-room
until the answer comes back.”
“I’ll try,” said Fatty haltingly, as if doubtful of the result. “I’ll
try my best.”
He took up a card. It was the ace of spades. Then he wrote out a
telegram as follows: “Dear brother. What card am I thinking of? Please
wire immediately.”
The telegram was given to a messenger to send off. Then we lit cigars,
poured out whiskies-and-sodas, and sat down to wait--and chat. Fatty
sat by himself in a corner, his head between his hands, intent on
conveying a telepathic message to his brother two hundred miles away in
London.
Presently the messenger entered with the reply wire. Fatty seized it,
tore it open.
“My God!” he cried, reading it aloud. “It says ‘the ace of spades.’
_Now_, gentlemen, will you believe in me?”
“We will,” we said solemnly. “That settles it.”
For the benefit of the reader I may explain that the pack of cards I
took from my pocket and spread out face downwards on the table was a
trick pack, of the kind used by conjurors. Every one of the fifty-two
cards comprising it was an ace of spades.
Also Fatty’s brother in London, who was of course well known to me,
had previously been instructed by me to reply “ace of spades” in case
he received a wire from anybody inquiring, “What card am I thinking
of?” In fact I have quite a number of people all over England who have
received similar instructions, for I frequently work this particular
wheeze, but in a slightly different form, at conjuring entertainments
at private houses.
I lost sight of Fatty soon after the occurrence narrated above, but
I have been given to understand that he believes to this day that
he became for a brief while, and under my influence, a genuine,
first-class telepathist. Nor did the fact that all his further
experiments in the same direction resulted in complete failure shake
his confidence in the least. He attributed it to the fact that the
people he selected to influence him did not possess a sufficiency of
will power.
Another man who used to work for me, and whom we christened Talking
Tommy, holds a similar opinion. We worked the spoof on him, too, and
he went home, after having a few drinks at about three o’clock in the
morning, and tried the experiment on his wife, who was in bed and
asleep.
Waking her up, he said: “Get out of bed, dear; I’m a telepathist.
I want you to hide this matchbox downstairs somewhere. Then I’ll
blindfold myself, and you shall will me to find it.”
“But I don’t want to will; I want to go to sleep,” expostulated the
poor lady.
“Just this once, darling,” pleaded Tommy. “There’s a fortune awaiting
us if we succeed. I can see us working it on the Halls together at one
hundred pounds a week. It all depends on whether or no you possess
sufficient will power. Hide the box, then concentrate your whole
attention on guiding me mentally to the place where you have hidden
it.”
Thus adjured, the sleepy lady arose, and for the next half-hour she was
wandering round the house in her bare feet, upstairs and downstairs,
trying to will her blindfold husband to where the matchbox was. Of
course she failed. Tommy fell over the coal-box, knocked two of his
choice vases off the mantelpiece, but found no match-box. Then, in the
end, he got wild, and told her it was all her fault, she hadn’t got as
much will power as a she tabby cat.
Tommy was one of the most simple-minded men I ever came across. He had
a lawn at home. It was almost as big as an ordinary billiard table,
but Tommy was awfully proud of it. One year, however, the grass grew
patchy. Tommy was quite upset about it, and used to bewail his ill luck
to all and sundry.
“Oh,” said one of the dressers, “if that’s all, I can easily put things
right for you”; and he went and mixed some permanganate of potash in
a bottle, and told Tommy to take it home, dilute it with plenty of
water, and sprinkle his lawn with the mixture at night before going
to bed. “It’s the most wonderful fertiliser ever known,” concluded
this champion liar, “and in the morning you’ll find your lawn a lovely
velvety green all over.”
Tommy did as he was bid. But the lawn wasn’t green in the morning. It
was a dull brick-red colour, and looked as if it had been devastated by
a first-class prairie fire.
Another time Tommy came to me while I was showing at the Oxford, and
asked me to pass two or three of his friends in. At first I was rather
taken aback, for, of course, it is entirely against the etiquette of
the profession for a performer to ask for free admission for even his
most intimate friends or relations. And rightly so! We get paid our
salaries, and we have no earthly right to try to sponge on managers for
seats.
Tommy, however, I could see, had no idea of all this. To him his
request appeared in the light of a quite natural one. And this gave me
an idea.
I told him to get some cards printed with his name and address, and
underneath the words: “Super and Comedian to ‘Carlton!’”
“These cards,” I said quite solemnly, “will pass you and your friends
into the best seats in any Hall in London. All you will have to do is
to ask for the manager and hand him one, stating how many seats you
require.”
Tommy thought this an excellent idea, and went off there and then and
got his cards printed.
“Where shall I go first?” he asked me later on in the day.
“Doesn’t matter!” I replied off-handedly. “Why not try the Oxford? Come
to-morrow night, and bring half a dozen pals with you.”
“Right,” replied Tommy, beaming with pleasurable anticipation, “I will.”
And he did.
Meanwhile I had seen Mr. Blythe Pratt, the Manager, and told him about
the joke; with the result that when Tommy appeared, with six rather
nondescript-looking friends, he was received with every courtesy, and
given a private box for the evening.
Of course he was delighted. Vistas of unlimited free entertainments
loomed before his excited imagination.
“Where shall I go to-morrow night?” he asked.
“Oh,” I said. “Why not try the T----,” mentioning a Hall where there
was, I knew, an unusually grumpy and quick-tempered manager.
He went. What exactly transpired there I never heard. But I can imagine
the scene.
Tommy was quite upset about it.
“Oh,” there must have been some mistake, I told him. “Try the Palace
to-night.”
And he actually did try it. But that finished it. The reception he met
with there finally cured him of all further desire in the direction of
cadging for free seats.
By the way, here is a funny story that occurs to me as I write.
Although it is not generally known to the public, it is, nevertheless,
a fact that Houdini, the world-famous “Handcuff King,” and Hardeen, his
rival in the business, are brothers.
They are, however, on the best of terms with one another personally,
being rivals only professionally. Once it happened that Houdini had a
week’s engagement at Leeds at the same time that Hardeen was appearing
at Bradford.
Houdini arrived in the former town very late at night, and desiring
to see his brother on an urgent matter of business he went over to
Bradford, arriving there about two o’clock in the morning, when, of
course, everybody had gone to bed.
However, Houdini made the best of his way to where his brother lodged,
and after he had been knocking and hammering at the door for about
twenty minutes, “loud enough,” as he expressed it, “to wake the dead,”
the landlord put his head out of the window.
“Who are you? What do you want?” he asked rather irately.
“I’m Houdini, the handcuff king, and I want to see my brother, Mr.
Hardeen, on important business,” was the reply. “Come down and open the
door.”
The landlord grunted. Then--“Oh, you’re Houdini, are you? That there
chap as can open any lock?”
“Yes! Yes! That’s me!” cried the Handcuff King impatiently.
“Well then,” quoth the landlord, “if that be so, why don’t ’ee open t’
lock o’ front door, an’ walk right in? What dost want to knock me up
for? I’m going back to bed.”
And go back to bed he did, leaving poor Houdini cooling his heels on
the doorstep, until such time as he chose to take his departure and
return to Leeds.
Here is a little telepathic spoof that anyone can accomplish who has a
telephone in their house, or if not they can make use of the telegraph
service.
Say you have a friend, or friends, dining with you. You lead the
conversation round gradually to the subject of telepathy, mentioning
incidentally that you yourself possess certain gifts in that direction.
Probably your statement will be received with polite incredulity;
whereupon, pretending to get huffed, you take a pack of cards, spread
them out on the table face uppermost, and invite any one of your guests
to select any card he pleases.
He picks out, we will say, the three of hearts. Then you say to him:
“Now I have a friend living at Hampstead (or wherever the place may be)
who is telepathically _en rapport_ with me. If you will keep perfectly
still for a minute or so, I will try and place myself in communication
with him, and let him know by means of telepathy which card you have
chosen.”
You then bury your head in your arms on the table, pretending to be
thinking deeply for a short while; then presently you look up with an
air of relief, heave a deep sigh of satisfaction, ejaculate “Sakabona!
I’ve got him!” or some similar phrase, and tell your friend to go to
your telephone, and ring up a certain number, which you give him.
You then tell him to ask for “Charlie,” which, you explain, is your
friend’s name, and say to him, “What card have I chosen?”
Wonderingly, and not a little sceptical, your friend does as he is bid.
But his scepticism vanishes when the correct answer comes back over the
’phone.
“What card have I chosen?” he asks. And almost instantly the answer
comes back: “The three of hearts.”
Now for the explanation of this very puzzling trick; puzzling, that is
to say, to the uninitiated.
Like most other tricks of the kind, it is very simple, once you know
how it is done.
There is, of course, no telepathy about it. The real fact of the matter
is that the “spoof” is worked by means of a code previously arranged
between yourself and your friend at the other end of the wire. On the
wall near his telephone-box is a card made out as follows:--
HEARTS DIAMONDS CLUBS SPADES
1. Jim Ronald Philip Ted
2. Bill Archie Claude Adam
3. Charlie Reggie Ernest Matthew
4. Jack Gus Fred Doc
5. Harry Victor Geoffrey David
6. Brown Robin Jesse Andrew
7. Smith Norman Jacob Isaac
8. Robinson Gerald Joe Sam
9. Eric Frank Bert Mike
10. Tom Arthur John Mac
Jack George Oliver Hal Eli
Queen Stevens Harold Ben Leonard
King Bert Stanley Dick Hubert
Glancing at this immediately on receipt of the message, he sees that
“Charlie,” the name he is addressed by, stands for the three of hearts,
and he ’phones back accordingly. Had your friend chosen the ten of
spades, you would have instructed him to ask for “Mac,” and so on
throughout the whole pack of fifty-two cards.