Episode 181 Professor Houdini in Saint Joseph

Family Plot

In this episode we discuss Echo as well as the Legend of Vox Machina before we discuss a few things in Krysta's Corner and then we settle down to discuss a documented conflict between a young Houdini in 1897, long before he became famous for it, 'Professor' Houdini went up against a spiritualist in Saint Joseph, Missouri. We discuss the spiritualism movement, Harry's dislike of it, some of his more famous encounters with others over spiritualism, but mostly we focus on this one night where he did a show in St. JOseph, showing how spiritualists defrauded people and ruining the local reputation of one Hatfield Pettibone, a spiritualist who gained fame far and wide for his automatic writing. We discuss how Houdini faced both the public and a crowd of people who paid to disrupt the show and how Houdini was still able to prove most methods of Spiritualism could be easily faked. So join us in this scholarly, historical, confrontational episode of the Family Plot Podcast!
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