Medium of Attleboro, Mass., Asserts He Said “Tussle with Death Was Agony”

A message purported to have been received by a medium from the late Harry Houdini, the magician and exposer of mediums, was made public yesterday by The Scientific American, which has conducted spiritualistic tests for several years. The message was said to be from a medium at Attleboro, Mass., who did not want her name to be used.

The Associated Press reported last night that the Massachusetts State Association of Spiritualists announced that there was no recognized medium in Attleboro. Mediums had to pass a severe examination, it was said, before they got a certificate from the association.

The message was a hodge-podge of words, in which a few phrases such as “Tussle with death was agony,” “See some of my friends and tell them Houdini still lives,” were decipherable.

Mrs. Houdini said that she had received alleged messages from her husband, sent by mediums all over the country, dozens of them, but that all of them were “too silly to deserve attention.” Before Houdini died he promised to communicate with persons on earth if possible, for although he was skeptical of all phenomena he encountered and denounced most of it as fraud, he always hoped that it might be possible to communicate with those who had died.

“After all, Houdini was an unusually intelligent and brilliant man,” said Mrs. Houdini, “and all these messages without exception have been silly. If he could communicate with this world would he not say something worth while, something we would want to know, something about death and the life beyond death? I have paid no attention to these messages and do not intend to.

“Houdini made three compacts before he died: one with me, one with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and one with a man in Philadelphia. I alone have the key to any messages which might be received, a quotation which Houdini used in his work, and which would enable me to recognize anything which really came through. I had a letter from Sir Arthur a few days ago, but there were no messages in it.”

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