Mrs. Beatrice Houdini, widow of Harry Houdini, the magician and exposer of mediums, declared at her home, 67 Payson Avenue, last night that a code message left by her husband, and known only to herself, had been repeated and decoded at her home during the day by a spiritualist medium.

Mrs. Houdini sat propped up with pillows on a lounge at her home as the result of a fall on New Year’s Day that injured her spine. “The code and the key to it are so complicated, and hidden away in a safety deposit box, that they have been my protection against mediums,” she said.

“Since Harry’s death two years ago I have received hundreds and hundreds of messages from mediums, but today for the first time the message was repeated exactly by Arthur Ford, minister of the First Spiritualist Church, while in a trance at my home. They are the exact words left for me by Harry, and I am absolutely convinced that my husband talked to me and that there is life beyond the grave.

“I have been hoping that Harry would speak to me from another world,” Mrs. Houdini continued, “and until today I was never convinced that a medium would be able to communicate with my dead husband. When he arranged the code and it was locked up, he said to me that if I should ever receive a message in the words of the code I should rest assured that it was from him.”

Mrs. Houdini explained that the first she had heard of the message was last Sunday, when she received a letter saying that a medium, without giving any name, under the control of “Fletcher” in the spirit world, wanted to give her the ten-word code which Houdini had agreed to send “if it were possible for him to communicate.”

She admitted to the bearer, she said, that the words of the code were true, but that she wished the message decoded. This was done to her satisfaction yesterday, she said, by Mr. Ford while in a trance. The cue was her widding [sic] ring, and at the mention of the name Rosabelle she was to tell what it meant. She said she then repeated in French, “I draw the curtain so,” and then the medium said: “Rosabelle, believe,” which was the translation arranged between Houdini and herself.

Mrs. Houdini said John W. Stafford of The Scientific American and Mrs. Stafford, Francis R. Fast, who is in the brokerage business, and her friend for many years, and Mrs. Minnie Chester were at the séance. The latter also received a message, she said, as follows: “Minnie, always look after Bess.”

Mrs. Houdini said that her illness had been quite severe and that at times she had been delirious. Living with her are her mother, Mrs. Balbinoa Rahner; her sister, Mrs. Marie Hinson; Mrs. Chester and Miss Julia Karchere, her lifelong companion. She said her family and companions were very skeptical about spiritualism.

This article is reproduced here only for educational purposes. Please do not copy the text or accompanying images for commercial use.