CHAPTER XV
MAGICIANS AS DETECTORS OF FRAUD
The alacrity with which Spiritualists seize upon letters or other statements of magicians that they believe the so-called spirit manifestations which they have witnessed were not accomplished by means of legerdemain but were attributable to supernatural or occult powers has astonished me and while I intend to refute them I want to call attention at the same time to the incompetence of the opinion of the ordinary magician with a knowledge of two or three experiments in Spiritualism who stands up and claims that he can duplicate the experiments of any medium who ever lived.
My personal opinion is that notwithstanding the fact that innumerable exposures have been successfully made, such fact is no proof that any investigator, legerdemain artist or otherwise, is fully capable of fathoming each and every effect produced.
Some magicians with a knowledge of pseudo-Spiritualistic effects imagine that they have all they need to qualify them as investigators, and should anything transpire at a seance which they cannot explain they are mystified into temporary belief and write letters or make statements which they are quite likely to regret as the years roll on.[125]
A good card “shark” or “brace game”[126] gambler can cheat and fleece the slickest sleight-of-hand performer that ever lived, unless the performer has made a specialty of gambling tricks. It seems strange, but it is true, that card magicians are poor gamblers, and mediums, like the gamblers, resort to deception and take advantage of the sitters at all angles.
It is manifestly impossible to detect and duplicate all the feats attributed to fraudulent mediums who do not scruple at outraging propriety and even decency to gain their ends. A slick medium will even resort to drawing on the sitters[127] for desired information by recourse to what may be palmed off for a mere lark, and if the bait is swallowed by the sitter the circumstance is turned to good account for the perpetration of deliberate fraud to his consternation and bewilderment.
Again many of the effects produced by mediums are impulsive, spasmodic, done on the spur of the moment, inspired or promoted by the attending circumstances, and could not be duplicated by themselves. Because the circumstances of their origin and performance are so peculiar detection and duplication of Spiritualistic phenomena is sometimes a most complex task. Not only are mediums alert to embrace every advantage offered by auto-suggestion but they also take advantage of every accidental occurrence. For instance, my greatest feat of mystery was performed in 1922 at Seacliffe, L. I., on the Fourth of July, at the home of Mr. B. M. L. Ernest. The children were waiting to set off their display of fireworks when it started to rain. The heavens fairly tore loose. Little Richard in his dismay turned to me and said:
“Can’t you make the rain stop?”
“Why certainly,” I replied and raising my hands said appealingly, “Rain and Storm, I command you to stop.”
This I repeated three times and, as if by miracle, within the next two minutes the rain stopped and the skies became clear. Toward the end of the display of fireworks the little fellow turned to me and with a peculiar gleam in his eyes said: