How would you test a ghost? A Halloween story for New Canaan

A ghost story with the trick left in

Hello New Canaan,

The ghost in this photograph has a familiar face. It’s Abraham Lincoln, apparently keeping Harry Houdini company while the magician looks through a book. Houdini had the picture made to demonstrate how a photographer could manufacture a convincing encounter with the dead. The Library of Congress explains its purpose: this was an exposure of a trick, using the trick itself.

It’s a useful picture to have in mind this Halloween, which marks 100 years since Houdini died on October 31, 1926. The man remembered for getting out of chains also spent years trying to explain apparently impossible things happening inside séance rooms. A séance was a gathering intended to communicate with the dead; the medium was the person claiming to make that communication possible.

And he wasn’t entirely a distant figure. The Stamford History Center’s research bibliography reproduces biographer Kenneth Silverman’s account of Houdini spending the summer of 1905 on a Stamford farm. There were gardens, livestock and an orchard. It is an ordinary setting for someone whose working life depended on making people wonder how anything he did was possible. The local history reference.

The bell in the dark

In 1924, Houdini joined an investigation of Mina Crandon, a Boston medium known as Margery. Scientific American was offering prize money for psychic phenomena demonstrated under test conditions. One claim involved a bell ringing inside a small wooden box. The explanation offered was that Walter, Crandon’s dead brother, had made it ring.

The sitters believed they had accounted for her hands and feet. That was what made the ringing seem so persuasive.

Houdini’s published account of the investigation describes a battery-powered bell whose circuit closed when pressure was applied to the top of the box. He said he felt Crandon slide her ankle against his, gain enough room to reach the box with her foot, then return to her original position after the ringing stopped.

That is Houdini’s account, written to expose her; it deserves to be read with that purpose in mind. But it makes the puzzle concrete. A bell had rung. The question was whether the way the room was arranged actually ruled out a person ringing it.

A magician’s working knowledge mattered here: knowing where a movement could be hidden, or how an apparently secure position might allow more freedom than an observer realized. The Lincoln photograph makes a similar point. Seeing the image clearly does not tell you how it was made.

Scientific American’s committee eventually denied Crandon the prize in February 1925. The PBS chronology describes a case that was still being argued months after Houdini’s first visit.

For a Halloween conversation, try the smaller question first: what would you need to check before deciding who—or what—rang that bell? It gives everyone something more interesting to argue about than whether they believe in ghosts.

A little wonder, close to home

The program notes for New Canaan Library’s October 28 talk, Knock Once for Yes, put these investigations in a larger story. Spiritualism grew around the belief that the living could communicate with the dead, and became connected with abolition and women’s rights. For some participants, the stakes were moral and personal as well as theatrical. The talk falls before the dates covered by this issue, but its historical question is a good one to carry into Halloween.

There is a cheerful way to explore a magician’s craft locally next week, too. Matt Matthews’s Library show promises disappearing and transforming objects—and a trick the children can learn themselves. That plan, along with four others, is below.

Five plans for October 29–November 4

Before you head out

For more options, browse the full New Canaan events calendar. If a downtown stop is part of your plans, our New Canaan shopping guide can help you choose where to go. Check each organizer’s link for current availability before leaving home.

What’s a New Canaan story you’ve always wanted someone to investigate? Reply and tell us.

See you around town,
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