TLS signed “Houdini,” one page, 8.5 x 11, personal letterhead, June 28, 1926. Letter to German writer and intellectual Carl Graf von Klinckowstroem (1884-1969), a historian of science, technology, and culture. He was intrigued by the occult, especially the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, but he also showed a receptiveness to Houdini’s skepticism about false mediums. The letter, in full: “Am gathering all my Slade material for you and will send it as soon as my secretary finds where it is all filed. What do you know about Frau Silbert and Franz Kluski?
As you may know, I am on the Committee for the Scientific American and when Mr. O. D. Munn spoke of Kluski I offered to pay his expenses to come here to America. Mr. Munn told me that that was not necessary as they had an agreement with the New York Times to share the expenses and had invited him to come over. Having lunch with Mr. Munn one day last week he told me that Kluski would not visit America.
Enclosed notice regarding John Slater is very important as he is the best known medium in America. He has made an enormous fortune and is very slick with his letter reading as he resorts to from eight to ten methods for success.
He has a wonderful system and it really requires an expert to detect him. He, having a wonderful memory, relies on same for many of his spirit messages. Mr. Harry Keller who past away several years ago, had a system of memorization — he could tell a man the number of his watch thirty years afterwards. No doubt it is a valuable thing to have a memorizing system without needing any notations.” In fine condition, with a small stain and two file holes to the left edge.
Houdini’s letter, which illustrates the international nature of early 20th-century spiritualism, mentions five important contemporary figures in the field of psychical research and illusionism: Dr. Henry Slade, Maria Silbert, Franek Kluski, John Slater, and Harry Kellar. Of the four mediums mentioned, three are listed in ‘Hartmann’s Who’s Who in Occult, Physic and Spiritual Realms…in the United States and Foreign Countries’ (New York: Occult Press, 1925).
Houdini’s comparison between John Slater and Harry Kellar in our letter is especially interesting as it encompasses the essence of Houdini’s critique of charlatan mediums. While both Slater, a self-proclaimed medium, and Kellar, a magician, used the same memorization-based system of message reading and data recollection, Slater represented it as supernatural, while Kellar did not. This was the all-important difference: the bona fide magician did ingenious tricks without attributing them to any power but himself, while the spurious medium attributed them to the dead, angels, God, and other supernatural sorts.
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