CULT OF SPIRITUALISM.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3334, 16 August 1926, Page 8

CULT OF SPIRITUALISM.

Uncle Sam has been probing Spiritual ism, the medium being a committee investigating the exorbitant changes for tune telling, etc., (states the San Francisco correspondent of the “Wellington Post”). Literature purporting to advance Hie cause of Spiritualism lias stated that Lincoln, the great emancipator was a Spiritualist, and that the wife of the late Warren G. Harding, President of the United States, and many people “under the shadow of the White House’’ subscribed to Euiritist doctrines.

Much of the committee’s time was spent in watching with amused interest a battle of wits between leaders, mostly women, of the Spiritualist cult, and a professional magician, well known formerly in Australia and New Zealand —“Houdini’, the handcuff king.” Houdini claimed that lie was getting no publicity or advertisement out of bis activities, that it was costing him forty thousand dollars to expose Spiritualist methods, and that he had a standing reward for the Spiritualist that could escape being exposed by him. The ladies called Houdini a prince x»f black magic and other uncomplimentary terms, while they tabled voluminous evidence in favour of their cult, or rather against the allegation that the practice of it was injurious to the community. Ail the prestige that testimony by a lady paced in high official society in Washington could give them the mediums got when Mrs Duncan Fletcher, wife of the senior senator from Florida, took the witness stand. Besides being a noted Washington hostess, Mrs Duncan lias been a medium for over thirty years. She said her mother was a marvellous medium. She testified that she had never come in confact with a dishonst medium. This stale men! was to counter the, allegation of Houdini, that their success was due to the practice of arts in which he himself was proficient.

Madame .Marcia, a leading Spiritualist. of the capita], described in Press reports as “dripping with jewellery,” and “rcvelalor-in-ordinary to White House,” and Jane Coates, were central figures of bedlam scenes on the third day of the hearing, when Houdini produced some evidence against their craft and belief. Me produced the son of the late Abraham Lincoln, to swear that his father had never been a Spiritualist. Houdini, with an armed detective at Ids elbow, flung - ten thousand dollars in chaste, new hundred dollar bills, at the committee table, and said,, “I will deliver (hat money now to any medium, who. now and here, will make a demonstration that 'I cannot, prove to be hj fraud.”

The brief but solemn silence was broken by the shrill lories of Madame Marcia’s voice crying : “The money belongs to me. 1 predicted the election and death of Harding.” Hut. she did not get the money. Houdini’s eagle-eyed treasurer whisked it back into his brief case, nobody Inning offered to demonstrate anything. After Jane Coates had given her lengthy evidence, she asked audibly of her comrades: “Did he catch me on anything?”

“Dear.” said Madame Marcia, “you were wonderful!”

Ibnulini gave a dcinonstrgtion with the trumpet need by Spiritualists. No one heard any voice, but the president detailed a conversation with some invisible person had with him regarding his political aspirations. Everyone was mystified until Houdini said the conversation came from him. A newspaper man said ho had never taken his eyes from Houdini’s Adam’s apple, and that the skin there was twitching throughout, indicating that it was not Spiritualism but professional magic, when he charged Spiritualists with doing, with fraudulent results.

Uncle >Siim heard \them all, but did not, gel very far with his investigation. More may be heard when Congress eoraes to discuss the Bill prepared by Representative Bloom, of New York, on the subject.