Season 1, Episode 4
The Heartbreak of Harry Houdini
Spiritualism, seances, and the backlash against mediums.
November 14th, 2023
Perhaps the most famous magician of all time, Harry Houdini, had a complicated lifelong relationship with Spiritualist mediums. Spiritualism was as well-known in the United States as the great illusionist, himself, but schemers used seances to swindle grieving families, attracting legal crackdowns and the scorn of Harry Houdini. Houdini publicly debunked many mediums as frauds. Many Spiritualist mediums were torn between public practices with communities of adherents and avoiding public scrutiny. Yet the religious practice of Spiritualism was the home of some of America’s most important civil libertarians and remains a deeply meaningful practice for many to this day.
FEATURING
Associate Researcher, National Circus School of Montreal
Dr. Joe Culpepper is a magician, educator, consultant, and co-Editor-in-chief of the academic journal Circus: Arts, Life and Sciences. He presents, teaches, and performs internationally. Visit joeculpepper.com or his social media accounts to learn more about his work.
Professor of Religious Studies, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Prof. Sean McCloud teaches, researches, and writes about American religions and religion and culture. He is the author of Making the American Religious Fringe: Exotics, Subversives, and Journalists, 1955- 93 (2004), Divine Hierarchies: Class in American Religion and Religious Studies (2007), American Possessions: Fighting Demons in the Contemporary United States (2015), and co-editor of Religion and Class in America: Culture, History, and Politics (2009) He is primarily interested in examining how religion in different contexts creates, maintains, or tears down boundaries and identities; how religion both enables and constrains our conceptions of the world; and how religion itself is defined—by academics, journalists, and practitioners—and how such definitions work in social and cultural arenas to “mark” the status of different individuals and groups.
Independent artist / researcher
Shannon Taggart (b. 1975, USA) is an artist and author based in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA. Her photographs have appeared in printed publications, including TIME, Newsweek, New York Times Magazine, Discover, Wall Street Journal, and Reader’s Digest. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Stephen Cohen Gallery in Los Angeles, the Photographic Resource Center in Boston, the Robert Mann Gallery in New York, and the Gallery of Everything in London. Her first monograph, Séance (Fulgur Press 2019, Atelier Éditions 2022), was named one of TIME Magazine’s ‘Best Photobooks of 2019.’ Photographs from Séance are currently traveling as a solo exhibition originated by the Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery, UMBC, Baltimore, Maryland and the Pensacola Museum of Art, Pensacola, Florida.
Spiritualist, Psychic Medium, and Intuition Coach
Dr. Lauren Thibodeau is the author of Natural Born Intuition and Natural Born Soulmates. From her days as a communications professional and journalist before embracing mediumship as her true calling, she holds an MBA, later earning a M.Ed. and a Ph.D. in psychological counseling. Her dissertation was about near-death experiences (NDEs), more information here. Dr. Lauren has been a licensed professional counselor since 1996 – the same year she became a Registered Medium at Lily Dale, New York – the world’s largest Spiritualist medium community.
Distinguished Service Professor of English, Binghamton University
Elizabeth Tucker specializes in children’s and adolescents’ folklore, folklore of the supernatural, and legends. Her books include Campus Legends: A Handbook (2005), Haunted Halls: Ghostlore of American College Campuses (2007), Children’s Folklore: A Handbook (2008), Haunted Southern Tier (2011), and New York State Folklife Reader: Diverse Voices, co-edited with Ellen McHale (2013). With Lynne S. McNeill, she is co-author of Legend Trips: A Contemporary Legend Handbook (2018). She has edited Children’s Folklore Review and served as president of the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research and the Children’s Folklore Section of the American Folklore Society; she is also a Fellow of the American Folklore Society. For several years she has written a column on play for the International Journal of Play. She loves to travel and go on legend trips.
Credits
Host: Heather Freeman; Producer: Amber Walker; Editor: Lucy Perkins; Associate Producer: Noor Gill; Sound Design: Jennie Cataldo; Fact Checker: Dania Suleman; Executive Producer for PRX Productions: Jocelyn Gonzales; Music: APM Music and Epidemic Sound; The Project Managers: Edwin Ochoa and Morgan Church; Advisors: Helen Berger, Sean McLeod, and Meg Whalen; Guests: Joe Culpepper, Sean McCloud, Shannon Taggart, Lauren Thibodeau, and Libby Tucker; Funding and Support: The National Endowment for the Humanities and The University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
TRANSCRIPT
LEARN MORE
Early Popular Visual Culture - The Golden Age of Stage Conjuring, 1880-1930. Volume 16, Issue 2 (2018) https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/repv20/16/2
Albanese, C. L. (2007). A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion. Yale University Press.
Braude, A. (2001). Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women's Rights in Nineteenth-Century America. Indiana University Press.
Lily Dale Assembly (website)