From the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal:
For a few years, magician Harry Houdini and British writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the Sherlock Holmes stories, were friends. One was an arch-skeptic (Houdini), while the other was a true believer in Spiritualism (Doyle).
Possibly hoping to show Doyle how easy it is to be fooled by mediums, Houdini once gave his friend an extraordinary demonstration, in his own home, in the presence of Bernard M.L. Ernst, Houdini’s friend and lawyer. Ernst’s memoirs reveal what happened that night.
Houdini’s remarks to Sir Arthur after the trick were to fall on deaf ears but is the very essence of skepticism. Unfortunately this only entrenched Sir Arthur’s position that it was done by supernatural means which goes to prove that people will believe what they want to believe.
Houdini turned to Doyle and said: “Sir Arthur, I have devoted a lot of time and thought to this illusion; I have been working at it, on and off, all winter. I won’t tell you how it was done, but I can assure you it was pure trickery. I did it by perfectly normal means. I devised it to show you what can be done along these lines. Now, I beg of you, Sir Arthur, do not jump to the conclusion that certain things you see are necessarily ‘supernatural,’ or the work of ‘spirits,’ just because you cannot explain them. This is as marvelous a demonstration as you have ever witnessed, given you under test conditions, and I can assure you that it was accomplished by trickery and by nothing else. Do, therefore, be careful in future, in endorsing phenomena just because you cannot explain them. I have given you this test to impress upon you the necessity of caution, and I sincerely hope that you will profit by it.”
