Spirit Sleuths
How Magicians and Detectives Exposed the Ghost Hoaxes
-
- 12,99 €
Description de l’éditeur
A School Library Journal Best Book
A Chicago Public Library Best of the Best Books 2024
2025 Texas Topaz List
CCBC Choices 2025
2025 Capitol Choices
The latest from acclaimed author Gail Jarrow reveals how magicians—including Harry Houdini and his team of investigators—exposed fake mediums who exploited the vulnerable and gullible in the early twentieth century.
★ Shelf Awareness, starred review
★ School Library Journal, starred review
After millions of people died during World War I and from the 1918 influenza pandemic, the popularity of Spiritualism soared. Desperate to communicate with their dead loved ones, the bereaved fell prey to extortion by fraudulent mediums and fortune-tellers.
But magician Harry Houdini wasn't fooled. He recognized the scammers' methods as no more than conjurer's tricks. Angered by the way people were exploited, Houdini set out to expose the ghost hoaxes. In his stage show, he revealed the fraudsters’ techniques, and he used a team of undercover investigators to collect proof of séance deceptions. His head secret agent was a young New York private detective and disguise expert, Rose Mackenberg—a woman who continued her ghost-busting career for decades, long after Houdini's death in 1926.
Ideal for young readers and adults who are drawn to the worlds of psychics and magicians, this riveting book uncovers a little-known chapter in American history and details the ways people were (and still are) deceived by mediums and fortune-tellers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"It is the early twentieth century and the spiritualism movement is soaring in America," writes Jarrow (American Murderer), setting the scene for this spine-tingling work. In the wake of WWI and the influenza outbreak, people turned to spiritualism, "desperate to communicate with their dead loved ones or to learn the fate of those lost" to these events. They flock to mediums performing seances in dark rooms thick with incense and eerie tapping noises; some even spent their life savings or quit their jobs at the advice of purportedly omniscient fortune tellers. But according to famous magician Harry Houdini (1874–1926), spiritualism "is all hocus-pocus"—and he can prove it. Determined to expose fraudsters, Houdini uncovered the mediums' parlor tricks and demonstrated their methods onstage. While his work did much to expose fraudulent magicians at the turn of the 20th century, Jarrow asserts that spiritualism is still alive and well: "In 2022, people in the United States spent more than $2.2 billion a year on psychic services." A mesmerizing read that not only details the rise of spiritualism, and the role Houdini played in debunking it, but implores readers to rely on critical thinking skills to evade deception. Ages 10–17.
