“Tell me Sir, was this real… or was it humbug?”
Houdini was shocked at the power of his own show. He couldn’t believe that the man standing across from him — respected, intelligent, worldly — could be asking him such a question.
“No Colonel,” Houdini said with a shake of his head. “It was hocus pocus.”
The year was 1914. The place was the Imperator, a ship on the Hamburg-New York line, sailing west across the Atlantic. Houdini was traveling on the ship as a passenger, but he agreed to perform a seance act for the large and rich ship’s company.
Houdini walked around the audience, giving out pieces of paper and envelopes, telling people to write down a question, seal it in the envelope, and then put it in a hat that Houdini passed around.
But one of the audience members was particularly distinguished and highly reputable — Colonel Teddy Roosevelt, former President of the United States, traveling back from the UK. Roosevelt had just finished promotion of his new book about an adventure trip he had taken to Brazil the year previous.
“I am sure there will be no objection if we use the Colonel’s question,” Houdini said during the seance, tentatively walking towards Roosevelt. The audience murmured assent.
Then Houdini took out two little slate tablets, which were blank. After appropriate buildup and mystery, he asked Roosevelt to place his envelope, with the question inside, between the two tablets.
“Can you please tell the audience what your question was?” Houdini asked.
“Where was I last Christmas?” Roosevelt said.
Houdini opened up the slate tablets. They were no longer blank. Instead, they now showed a colored chalk map of Brazil, with the River of Doubt highlighted, where Roosevelt had spent the Christmas prior.
The effect of this on the crowd, and on Teddy Roosevelt himself, was immense. Roosevelt jumped up, and started laughing so hard and slapping his legs until tears ran down his face.
And then, the very next day, Roosevelt buttonholed Houdini on the deck of the ship. Roosevelt asked, in a hushed voice, whether Houdini truly had connections to the spirit world.
Houdini did not. It was hocus pocus, and he was ready to admit it.
So what lay behind his spectacular performance?
I won’t tell you the exact details. Like all tricks, it’s underwhelming when you find out the truth. But I will tell you the powerful underlying principle, in a single word:
Preparation.
An immense amount of quiet background work… research… setup… as well as thinking up and making plans for all possible contingencies.
Like I wrote a few weeks ago, I’ve decided to put together a new book. Working title — and maybe final title — is “10 Commandments of Hypnotists, Pick Up Artists, Comedians, Copywriters, Con Men, Door-To-Door Salesmen, Professional Negotiators, Storytellers, Spirit Mediums, and Stage Magicians.”
Some of the commandments I have in mind are clever techniques. Others… well, they’re stuff like this. Research. Preparation.
Few wanna do it. Few take it seriously. But the ones who do are eventually seen as having supernatural powers, while everybody else — ah, it’s not too bad, but I could do the same.
I already have a lot of this book ready, thanks to emails like this that I’ve already written. But it’s still gonna take me a while to pull everything together and get the book published.
Meanwhile, if you want a similar book, with a similar mix of stories and often unsexy but extremely powerful ideas, take a look at my other 10 Commandments book: