Weird Tales: The Houdini Issues-Part Eight

The End of the Line

Three stories appeared in Weird Tales under the byline "Houdini." I have nominated Otis Adelbert Kline as the author of the first, "The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt" (two-part serial, Mar.-Apr. 1924). John Locke has offered Harold Ward as possible author of the second, "The Hoax of the Spirit Lover" (Apr. 1924). The third story, "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" (May/June/July 1924), is known to have been the work of H.P. Lovecraft.

There were also three letters columns with the heading "Ask Houdini." The first, in March 1924, was only an announcement under the larger heading of "The Eyrie," the regular letters column. "Ask Houdini" took the place of "The Eyrie" in the next two issues, April and May/June/July 1924. Houdini wrote all or most of the replies to letters written (ostensibly) by readers of "The Unique Magazine." I think that especially true of all replies written at length and in a skeptical and authoritative voice. Houdini must have been a formidable opponent in any debate, discussion, or investigation about spiritualism, mediums, séances, and related topics. I think it possible that a couple of replies in the first installment (Apr. 1924) were--like the short stories published under his byline--composed by a ghostwriter, but I don't have any evidence of that.

The publication of "The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt" and "The Hoax of the Spirit Lover" coincided with a lecture tour of America that Houdini made in the winter and spring of 1924. Houdini announced his tour in mid-February. Coit-Albee Lyceum made the arrangements. Houdini was supposed to have played twenty-four dates in all. He was in Pittsburgh and Erie, Pennsylvania, and in Cleveland, Ohio, in the last half of February. By early March, he had made his way south, to Birmingham, Alabama; Nashville, Tennessee; and other cities. On March 24, 1924, he celebrated his fiftieth birthday at his home in Harlem. I believe the tour continued afterwards, but maybe not for long. The subjects of Houdini's lectures were the same as those in his first two stories and in many of the letters that he answered in "Ask Houdini," namely, spiritualistic hoaxes, fake mediums, and fraudulent séances. His book A Magician Among the Spirits, written on the same topics, was published in May. The great escapist spent late spring and summer investigating fake psychics and fake mediums. By then Weird Tales was approaching death's door and Houdini's association with the magazine had reached its end.

The association was never a natural one anyway. As the letters in "Ask Houdini" indicate--moreover, as many of the stories published early on in the magazine indicate--readers and writers were inclined towards spiritualism, automatic writing, ectoplasm, mediums, séances, and so forth, while Houdini was a thoroughgoing skeptic and an active debunker of all of those things. He would have been, I think, an unwelcome guest, and like Arthur Conan Doyle, they couldn't have been very happy with his efforts. But then Weird Tales magazine and weird fiction in general were still in their early stages. The small, cramped, and shabby belief system that was and is spiritualism was able to fit easily enough into its very often conventional and unimaginative pages. The cosmic approach and the cosmic view of Lovecraft and others--an approach and view that would push everything outwards and make of Weird Tales what we remember it to have been--was still mostly in the future. Lovecraft was a skeptic, too (even if he mentioned Theosophy in his composition of "The Call of Cthulhu" just two years after the Houdini issues). Maybe he and Houdini would have gotten along just fine.

Books about Houdini mostly skimp on his association with Weird Tales, a little less so on his lecture tour of 1924. I find that odd. It indicates to me a kind of squeamishness when it comes to pulp fiction in general and anything with the word weird attached to it in specific. Houdini was a popular entertainer. Houdini's biographers have written at length about both popular (read low) culture and the unseemly topic of spiritualism. And yet they have shied away from Weird Tales. (At least author William Lindsay Gresham mentioned H.P. Lovecraft in his book. See below for the title.) Or maybe they just didn't see these things as being very important in Houdini's life story. In any case, in this series, I have tried to correct the oversight. I have two or three more entries on Houdini before moving on. Thanks for reading and for staying with me.

Harry Houdini's Stories & Columns in Weird Tales

• "The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt," part one of a two-part serial (Mar. 1924)
• "The Hoax of the Spirit Lover" (Apr. 1924)
• "The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt," part two of a two-part serial (Apr. 1924)
• "Ask Houdini" (letters column; foreword and answers by Houdini to seven letters, Apr. 1924)
• "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" (May/June/July 1924; reprinted in June/July 1939; ghostwritten by H.P. Lovecraft)
• "Ask Houdini" (letters column; answers by Houdini to fifteen letters, May/June/July 1924)

Of & About Houdini in Weird Tales

• Cover art by R.M. Mally illustrating "The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt" (Mar. 1924)
• Interior art by William F. Heitman illustrating "The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt" (Mar. 1924, page 3)
• Untitled introduction to "The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt" by The Editor (Mar. 1924, page 4)
• Announcement for the letters column "Ask Houdini" by an anonymous author under the heading of the regular letters column "The Eyrie" (Mar. 1924, page 83)
• Introduction to the letters column "Ask Houdini" by an anonymous author, presumably the editor (Mar. 1924, page 83)
• Cover art by R.M. Mally illustrating "The Hoax of the Spirit Lover" (Apr. 1924)
• Interior art by William F. Heitman illustrating "The Hoax of the Spirit Lover" (Apr. 1924, page 3)
• Interior art by William F. Heitman illustrating "The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt" (Apr. 1924, page 52)
• Heading for the letters column "Ask Houdini" by The Publishers (Apr. 1924, page 86)
• Cover art by R.M. Mally illustrating "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" (May/June/Jul 1924)
• Interior illustration by William F. Heitman illustrating "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" (May/June/July 1924, page 3)
• Heading for the letters column "Ask Houdini" by The Publishers (May/June/July 1924, page 167)

Further Reading

• Houdini: His Life and Art by The Amazing Randi and Bert Randolph Sugar (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1976).
• The Secrets of Houdini by J.C. Cannell (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1973).
• Robots Robots Robots by Harry M. Geduld and Ronald Gottesman, editors (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1978).
• Houdini's Escapes and Magic by Walter B. Gibson (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1976).
• Secrets of Magic: Ancient and Modern by Walter Gibson (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1967). Illustrated by Kyuzo Tsugami.
• Houdini: The Man Who Walked Through Walls by William Lindsay Gresham (New York: Macfadden Books, 1961; 1967).
• The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America's First Superhero by William Kalush and Larry Sloman (New York: Atria Books, 2006).
• Harry Houdini: Master of Magic by Robert Kraske (New York: Scholastic, Inc., 1973).
• The Thing's Incredible! The Secret Origins of Weird Tales by John Locke (Elkhorn, CA: Off-Trail Publications, 2018).
• The Great Houdini by Beryl Williams and Samuel Epstein (New York: Scholastic Book Services, 1951; 1965). Introduction by Walter B. Gibson. Illustrated by Louis Glanzman.

The front and back covers of The Great Houdini by Beryl Williams and Samuel Epstein (Scholastic T76, 1965). The art is by Louis Glanzman (1922-2013), brother of comic book artists Sam Glanzman (1924-2017) and David C. Glanzman (1928-2013). You'll notice that the back cover here takes the form of a comic book sequence.

Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley