Harry Houdini: Scaring the Ghosts Lance Carson Born Ehrich Weiss, Harry Houdini was a master of illusion. Houdini earned an international reputation as an escape artist who dramatically freed himself from ropes, shackles, and handcuffs. He was married to Wilhelmina Rahner, who, as Beatrice Houdini, was his stage assistant. He performed on vaudeville and was also in many motion pictures. Houdini built his career on creating tricks and illusions--freeing himself from chains and making an elephant disappear. He was also interested in exposing fraud and showing how people could be tricked into believing something was real when it wasn't. He was especially critical of the production of "spirit photographs" in which the ghost of a well-known figure appeared to be present with someone. To demonstrate his point, Houdini had himself photographed with the ghost of Abraham Lincoln. Of course it wasn't really Lincoln--it was trick photography. What other kinds of things do you think he tried to expose? The next kind of fraud that Houdini worked to expose was a little more complicated. At that time, people held séances (spiritual meetings to communicate with the dead) where spiritual hands of dead people would appear and leave fingerprints. This kind of fraud was known as "fingerprinting a spirit." What happened was the person committing the fraud would make a mold of a dead person's hand. Then, during a séance with the dead person's relatives, fingerprints from the hand would mysteriously appear. Why do you think it was important to Houdini to expose this kind of behavior? Houdini was very close to his mother and when she died, he was devastated. One reason he wanted to expose this kind of deception was because he wanted to prevent people from taking advantage of grieving relatives. Another reason was because there was big money involved in this kind of deception. In one case, Houdini said that $500,000 "changed hands upon the recognition of the fingerprints of a man who had died two years before." Because Houdini challe