Weird Tales: The Houdini Issues-Part Seven

"Ask Houdini"

There were three Houdini issues of Weird Tales magazine and three Houdini stories. Each was a cover story and each the lead story in the issue in which it appeared. Two of the covers have depictions of the great escapist himself. The third shows the Great Sphinx of Egypt, illustrating "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs," which was ghost-written by H.P. Lovecraft. Pictures of Houdini are also inside each of the three issues. The cover illustrations were by R.M. Mally, the interiors by William F. Heitman.

There is also nonfictional content about Houdini in each issue. In the March 1924 issue, there is an introductory essay to the story "The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt." Eighty pages later, there are two more introductions. One is an announcement of a new letters column to be called "Ask Houdini." The other is a general introduction to the Houdini issues. Both are under the heading for the regular letters column, "The Eyrie."

"Ask Houdini" took the place of "The Eyrie" in the issue of April 1924. Again, there are two introductions, the first telling readers about how to write to Houdini. The second is a forward, ostensibly written by Houdini. Then the letters begin. There are seven in all. The seven (or six) correspondents were identified only by their initials. (There are two with the initials H.W. I can suggest that one or both were Harold Ward.) The seven letters in the April 1924 issue of Weird Tales were by:

• H.L. of Terre Haute, Indiana. I doubt that this was Howard (Phillips) Lovecraft. He wouldn't have been caught dead in Terre Haute. H.L. asked Houdini about Samri S. Baldwin, known as "the White Mahatma." Born in Cincinnati in 1848, Samuel Spencer Baldwin had died only a month before this letter was published, on March 13, 1924, in San Francisco. Like Houdini, Baldwin was a magician and escape artist. He was also a profound skeptic of spiritualism, séances, and mediums. Although Houdini wrote that Baldwin could be reached by mail, it was too late by then. Only a séance could have worked, if only the darned things would work.

• J.H. of Detroit, Michigan, asking about dowsing.

• H.W. of Peoria, Illinois, with a question about séances.

• H.W. of Springfield, Illinois, with a more confrontational letter, one that mentions a man named Jacoby.

• H.M. of Louisville, Kentucky, again, concerning séances.

• K.H. of Buffalo, New York. The subject: again, séances.

• S.T. of Evanston, Illinois, a long and prolix letter pontificating on science and philosophy and challenging Houdini as not the right person to investigate spiritualism. (I would say that he was the perfect person to do so in that he was a skeptic and an expert in deception, misdirection, and sleight of hand.) The letter mentions Arthur Conan Doyle and Sir Oliver Lodge.

The first anniversary number of May/June/July 1924 contained the second and last installment of "Ask Houdini." There is an announcement at the top of the page and fifteen letters in all:

• K.L. of Cumberland, Maryland, asking about clairvoyance.

• C.A. of Madison, Wisconsin, asking about the possible comfort of a belief in spiritualism for those reaching the end.

• A correspondent without initials, writing a very long letter from Shelbyville, Indiana.

• C.D. of New York City, writing about the stage play Outward Bound (by Sutton Vane), which played in New York from January to May 1924. (It was adapted twice to the silver screen, first as Outward Bound in 1930, then as Between Two Worlds in 1944. I have seen the second version: a very interesting movie) C.D. wrote as an apologist for spiritualism. Houdini responded with a lengthy answer, more or less putting him in his place, as he did for every dupe, fanatic, defender, supporter, and apologist of spiritualism. Not that they knew it. Not that they stayed there.

• H.J. of Columbia, Missouri.

• D.W.N. of Erie, Pennsylvania, asking about John Slater of California.

• V.L. Deb. of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, mentioning "The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt."

• McN. of Montreal, Canada. Another very long letter, again defending spiritualism. Houdini wrote a long reply.

• A correspondent without initials, writing from San Francisco, California.

• R.G.R. of Brooklyn, New York, writing about Éliphas Lévi and the "Black Mass."

• N.S.J. of Daytona Beach, Florida, writing a more even letter and  a more scholarly inquiry.

• J.P. of Lewistown, Montana, writing what I think is the most interesting letter to date, a weird tale of seeing the spectre of a hanged man and his dog with a tongue of flame.

• J.V. ( a woman) of Grand Rapids, Michigan, writing another letter from another defender of and believer in the fraud that was and is spiritualism.

• E.H. of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who had attended Houdini's lecture at Carnegie Hall on February 21, 1924. I like the immediacy and concreteness of letters like this one and the one by C.D. above.

• H.H.C. of Erie, Pennsylvania, who attended Houdini's lecture in Erie the next day, February 22, 1924.

• L.O. of Pasadena, California, who wrote a long letter full of sources, like the grimoires of a Lovecraftian story. In response to L.O.'s letter, Houdini wrote his last words to appear in Weird Tales: "The whole subject of occultism is frail."

It seems to me that at least a couple of letters in the first installment of "Ask Houdini" were essentially plants: the editor and publisher needed content and may very well have asked at least one of their regular contributors, namely Harold Ward, to provide a question or two for Houdini's consideration. (If Harold Ward was the ghostwriter behind "The Hoax of the Spirit Lover" as well as a letter or letters to "Ask Houdini," then the April 1924 was not only a Houdini issue but also a Ward issue.) By the time the second installment came around, though, letters--many of them quite long--had begun arriving from readers.

There must have been more letters--possibly far more--that went unpublished. After the May/June/July issue of 1924, Weird Tales went on hiatus, returning in November 1924 in more or less the format we recognize now. There was no more Houdini and no more "Ask Houdini." We might be able to figure out who some of the letter writers were in the spring and summer of 1924, one hundred years ago now. But that's a job for another day.

Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley