Marvelous TLS, signed “Houdini,” one page, 8.5 x 11, personal letterhead, August 3, 1923. Letter to friend and spiritualist Remigius Weiss, in full: “This morning, having time, I called upon my spirits and did something that Salde [sic] could not do. I opened the slates which were locked and found written on them the following:—
‘Your slate is too small for our use—we will do more some day soon.’ (Signed) W.W.
It is written in slate pencil and you would think it had been written today. Does that message mean anything to you or would it have meant anything at the time he wrote it. I am anxious to know the significance of the writing. Did he write this at your home 148 Fairmount Ave., or at the Gerard Hotel—and if I remember rightly he failed to open the slates at every seance and the writing that is on it now, he wrote when they were unlocked by you. Kindest regards and best wishes to your good wife and yourself.” In fine to very good to fine condition.
The letter’s recipient, Remigius Weiss, an ex-medium also known by the stage name Remigius Albus, befriended Harry Houdini when the latter was in Philadelphia investigating Dr. Henry Slade, a famously fraudulent spiritualist who specialized in slate-writing trickery, a ruse often employed to make ‘contact’ with deceased loved ones. The mention of “148 Fairmount Ave.” and “the Gerard Hotel” are significant locations relative to Slade’s inevitable downfall. The former address, the Weiss home, served as the very site of Slade’s original debunking; after convincing Slade to perform a seance at his house, Weiss prepped the venue by boring 'observation-holes in the corners of the panels in the parlor doors, the floor, ceiling and other places where my concealed witnesses observed.’
The second address refers to Slade’s temporary Philadelphia residency where Weiss was given a second, albeit different, seance several days later. For this event, Weiss brought with him a book and a double-slate, both of which he had locked beforehand, for Slade to use. After much struggle, Slade, incapable of opening either to perform the trick, exclaimed: ‘The Spirits seem to be angry at your skepticism, it’s no use to lose more time by trying. My guides don’t want to have anything more to do with you.’ Weiss then unlocked the slate and, using the notes from his observers, proceeded to successfully replicate Slade’s own deception from the earlier seance. After much pushback, Slade, faced with imprisonment for fraud, admitted to his chicanery and signed the prepared confession.
On August 18th, roughly two weeks after Houdini sent this letter, Weiss responded in kind, offering a detailed expose of how he managed to outcon the con-man, a letter that was later published in Houdini’s 1924 book, Houdini: A Magician Among the Spirits, which likewise contains the text of the Slade-signed admission. In editorial notes found in the April 1924 issue of the M.U.M. (Magic-Unity-Might) newsletter, Houdini makes mention of both Slade and Weiss: ‘Now that my book, 'A Magician Among the Spirits,' is in the hands of the public, I am not further bound to keep secret the fact that I am in possession of the unknown, written confession of the notorious Dr. Henry Slade, who baffled the scientists for years, and although Sir Ray Lancaster and Sir Horatio Donkin detected him in his slate writing trick, it remained for Remigius Weiss, known as Albus, to thoroughly unmask the great Spirit slate worker. Known as an alchemist and the dread of all Spiritualistic mediums, Mr. Albus exposed them mercilessly, showing up their hypocrisy, duplicating their effects, and to him belongs the credit of the actual expose of the method used by Dr. Slade.'
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