True Life: I Tried to Summon Harry Houdini With the Star of Houdini & Doyle

One reporter's first-hand account after performing a seance with the star of Fox's new summer series

By Billy Nilles May 02, 2016 11:10 PMTags
Houdini & DoyleFox

First rule of attending a seance: Don't be late. Especially when you're keeping the star of Fox's new summer series Houdini & Doyle—and the spirit of Harry Houdini himself—waiting.

But mid-afternoon traffic in Los Angeles has an almost supernatural mind of its own and here I am, ten minutes late to join Michael Weston and a handful of other journalists at the famed Magic Castle in the heart of Hollywood in an attempt to connect with the legendary illusionist. As our spiritual guide for the afternoon, the indomitable Misty Lee (the Magic Castle's only resident female seance medium), guides me to my seat—not that I need much help, as it is the only one left open around the table in the center of the Houdini Seance Room—Weston turns to me and says with a chuckle, "Now the spirits are going to be mad." 

I hang my head in mock shame. Things are off to a great start.

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Magic Castle

As played by Weston on Houdini & Doyle, and as he was in real life, Houdini was a great skeptic when it came to the idea of the otherworldly or the supernatural—something he and I happen to have in common. He was an illusionist, one who could notoriously deduce the how and why of any trick after only having seen it once. As Misty explains to the room, he was always working in the realm of apparent miracle. Everything he did had an explanation—you just had to have the wherewithal to figure it out for yourself. The series focuses on Houdini's unlikely, but authentic, transatlantic friendship with prolific writer, Sherlock Holmes creator and true believer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Episodes star Stephen Mangan) as they team up to solve unexplained and seemingly supernatural crimes in New Scotland Yard.

After our Houdini history lesson, our work begins. Each of us draws a crystal sight unseen from a satchel, meant to deduce those open to the realm of possibility from those who remain skeptical. Mine doesn't reveal my skepticism. Before I can begin to consider whether this crystal knows me better than I know myself, we find ourselves with a problem. One of my colleagues' stones has gone cloudy, which Misty warns means a dark spirit has attached itself to the unlucky soul who drew it from the bag. A spell is performed and the spirit is transferred into egg that, when cracked, is entirely black. I do not know how Misty got the inside of that egg black. I do not want to know. I do know, however, that this is still clearly a magic trick. I remain as steadfast as Houdini.

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Magic Castle

After a bit more obvious trickery (a tea cup full of water and sugar is suddenly empty when overturned), something happens that gives me pause. Things get personal. The girl sitting to the right of Misty is asked to think of someone deceased, someone whom she loved dearly, someone whom she'd love to speak with again. At the same time, the rest of us are instructed to think of someone we love dearly who is still with us, someone who makes us feel safe. We each write our person's name on a slip of paper, fold them identically, hold them in the air and Misty collects them one by one and places them in a box. 

The box is placed in front of another of journalist and she's instructed by Misty to reach in and pull one out. She doesn't open the slip of paper, she just holds it up. Misty tells her to discard it in the wine glass on the table. It's not the spirit we're looking for. One after the other, Misty rules another four slips of paper out. She changes her instruction, telling her unwitting assistant to lower the lid of the wooden box on her hand and to feel around, waiting to draw another slip until she lands on one that truly feels unique. After what feels like a full minute, she tells Misty she's found one that feels different. (I'll later ask her how she decided she'd landed on something unique. "It felt colder," she tells me.)

As this new slip is held up in the air like the ones before it, Misty begins to sense a connection. As she describes a larger-than-life man, I watch as the young woman and her mother seated beside her react. The mother's eye get teary. After every other adjective, she says "Wow." However she's doing it, Misty has zeroed in on something. Are they leading her with their reaction? Probably. Is it any less affecting? Not really. I look over at Weston. He seems as stunned as the rest of us. Misty begins to sense the man's name. Strong letters, crossed. A pair of "n"s. "Bennett," she says. The mother gasps. That's the young woman's father's name. Misty takes the paper from her assistant across the table, hands it the young woman and asks her to open it and verify that it's hers. It is. We all gasp.

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The remainder of our experience is devoted to recreating the same seance his wife Bess held atop Hollywood's Knickerbocker Hotel every year on the anniversary of his death (Halloween night) for 10 years. Did we make a connection with the man who devoted much of his life to debunking the very thing we were participating in? I'm inclined to say no. Things certainly happened during the spooky ten minutes, with books falling off the wall, the lights going out, and the table itself rising and floating. However, even Houdini would've recognized the Disneyland Haunted Mansion-quality to the big finale. 

That's not to say that Misty didn't put on one hell of a show. Whatever source of trickery she relied on to determine Bennett's name was truly affecting and clearly touched the women seeking connection with their dearly departed. (Were they plants? Maybe. Here's where my being late failed me—I have no knowledge of how they arrived or whether they were journalists as well.) Did I leave a changed man, one more open to the possibility of the otherworldly? No. I can report that my skepticism remains healthy and in tact. And I think Houdini would've liked it that way.

Houdni & Doyle premieres Monday, May 2 at 9 p.m. on Fox.

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