"The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt"
So what about Houdini's other two stories in Weird Tales? Well, "The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt" came first. It's a two-part serial that appeared in the issues of March and April 1924. Although it was in two parts, I'll call it one story.
"The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt" is the lead story in the March issue of 1924. On page 3 is an illustration by William F. Heitman of Houdini facing a turbaned medium. He is Popkens, a schemer, faker, blackmailer, kidnapper, and scoundrel. On the tabletop separating the two men is a crystal ball and a display of cards. Houdini is flanked by two women, the Countess D--- and her sister Rosicka (a Bohemian place name), both wearing ornate 1920s dress and headbands. On the following page is an introduction to the story, attributed to "The Editor." I take that to mean Edwin Baird, but the prose is clunky, old-fashioned, boosterish, and journalistic. Maybe J.C. Henneberger was its true author.
Houdini was renowned for his private library. "Houdini is a lover of books," The Editor wrote in his introduction, "and has the finest collection of psychic, spiritualistic and dramatic works of any man in America." Awhile back, I speculated that Otis Adelbert Kline had found The Terrific Register in a public or private library in Chicago and drew from it his non-fiction fillers in the anniversary number of May/June/July 1924 (probably earlier, too). Maybe his source copy actually came to him on loan from the great library of the Great Houdini.
Told in the first person, "The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt" is supposed to be a nonfictional account of one of Houdini's adventures, in this case in Transylvania and from before the Great War. Within the story--and it's clearly a a work of fiction--is nested a first-person account told by the Countess D---, daughter of a depraved (and deceased) inhabitant of Castle D---, located on the banks of the Maros River. Approached by the Countess D--- and once in her service at Castle D---, Houdini is, in pretty short order, bound by the henchmen of the fake medium Popkens and thrown into an oubliette. (1)
In part two, published in April 1924, Houdini escapes the oubliette and Castle D---. (2) He returns to the castle to rescue the Countess D--- and Rosicka from the spirit fakers. Part of his scheme is to take Popkens' place at a séance. In the dark, Houdini renders Popkens unconscious and begins imitating Popkens' voice. Houdini's ghostwriter--and we can be certain that "The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt" was written by a ghost--mentions in his narrative Houdini's own clearly recognizable "American accent." That made me wonder if there are any recordings of Houdini's voice, and there are. You can hear one for yourself on a megacorporate video website. You know the one. Just go there and have a listen.
Houdini is discovered and held at gunpoint by the henchmen. He and the two sisters are saved by the intervention of "a dozen peasants [. . .] armed with clubs, pitchforks, and axes." These are probably the same peasants, the same stock actors, who appear in every Dracula and Frankenstein movie. They are also in "The Thing of Thousand Shapes" by Otis Adelbert Kline, the first serial in Weird Tales, published exactly a year before in March and April 1923. I'll have more on Kline and his work in a minute, but first I should let you know that one of the spirit fakers, Houdini learns, is a Russian named Ileanadorff. "I have reason to believe," wrote the narrator, "that Ileanadorff was in reality the false monk Ileador, known as Rasputin, who became the most sinister figure in Russian history." In writing that, the narrator accidentally conflated Rasputin with his onetime associate, then enemy, Sergei Michailovich Trufanov, aka Hieromonk Iliodor or Hieromonk Heliodorus (1880-1952). Like Houdini, Iliodor was an author and actor. Unlike Houdini, he was an anti-Semite, at least at first. Strangely, Iliodor lived out his later years in New York City, working as a janitor.
Two more things. First, I'm pretty sure that we're supposed to associate the Countess D---'s depraved father with Count Dracula and the Castle D--- with Dracula's castle. The setting isn't quite right, though. In Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula's castle is in the Carpathian Mountains. In Houdini's story, Castle D--- is along the river Maros, a real river, also called Mureș and by other names, too. Second, Hermannstadt is the German name for the Romanian-Transylvanian city of Sibiu. So, the story is set in real places and there is an attempt at verisimilitude instead of the typical weird-fictional settings and sequences of events. In fact, you might call "The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt" a thriller or a crime or detective story rather than a work of weird fiction. It also has elements of the Ruritanian romance.
I don't think there can be any doubt that "The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt" was ghostwritten. The question is, who was the ghostwriter? (3) I would like to nominate Otis Adelbert Kline for that title. Whoever wrote the story was well versed (or mostly well versed) in the history, language, and geography of fantasy, adventure, historical, and weird fiction. Kline fit the bill in that way. Kline was also a manuscript reader, workhorse writer, sometime editor, and partway agent for Weird Tales. He seems to have been a real go-to guy for Henneberger and Baird. In early 1924, the two men at the head of Weird Tales would have needed ghostwriters for Houdini's coming stories. Kline would have been an obvious choice for the first. Lovecraft of course came last. That leaves the middle story, a topic for a future entry in this series. Next, though, I would like to write about the séance at Castle D---.
Notes
(1) Oubliette is the actual word used in the story. Another is gyves, an archaic word for shackles or manacles. Whoever wrote Houdini's story knew the lingo.
(2) More than once in these two parts of his story, the narrator mentions escapes made by Houdini, both real and fictional, the latter made, specifically, in his motion picture Terror Island. (See Weird Tales, Apr. 1924, p. 53.)
(3) A ghost rider had appeared on the cover of Weird Tales in January 1924. Maybe that was a bit of foreshadowing that we would soon have ghostwriters in the pages of "The Unique Magazine."
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| Weird Tales, March 1924. Cover story: "The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt" by Houdini. Cover art by R.M. Mally. This was the first Houdini issue and the first cover of Weird Tales to depict an author. The scene here is from near the end of part one of a two-part serial, in which Houdini is thrown, bound and naked, into an oubliette. |
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