The facts are that Kellar had a sitting with Eglinton in Calcutta to
see if he could reproduce his effects by natural means. His mind was
unbiased, and failing to detect Eglinton’s method he remarked, “If
my senses are to be relied on the writing is in no way the result of
trickery or sleight-of-hand.” But note the qualification in his remark:
“If my senses are to be relied upon.” Evidently he had his misgivings
then and he must have worked out the problem soon after for two
years later, as Professor Lewis told, he was producing the effect in
America, and not long after performed both the Slade and Eglinton slate
tricks before the Seybert Commission in Philadelphia to its complete
amazement.
It was not strange that Kellar did not detect Eglinton’s method
instantly nor is it strange that he acknowledged that he was baffled.
No magician is immune from being deceived and it is no way beneath a
magician’s dignity or demeaning to professional reputation to openly
admit that he cannot always account for what he thinks he sees.
Ernst Basch, of the famous Basch family, who made the major apparatus
for the magicians of the world, told me that he made hundreds of
wireless tables before wireless was so well known under the name of
“The Bewitched Table.” He was a great illusion inventor and builder
with a wonderful knowledge but in all his experience and contact with
mediums he had never seen anything which would make him believe in
Spiritualism. Neither has Francis J. Martinka, who traveled around the
world with Haselmeyer, the magician, and who has sold magical apparatus
in New York City for over forty years. I have the following letter from
him in regard to Spirit-communication.
“146 East 54th Street,
New York City,
March 23rd, 1921.
“Dear Mr. Houdini:
“In answer to your question if I believe in Spiritualism,
or the possibility of the return to this earth after death,
how can I believe in such a thing as Spiritualism, when for
more than two score years as the prominent magical dealer and
manufacturer of mysterious effects I have supplied almost
every known and thousands of unknown tricks or apparatus
to the great majority of magicians, and indirectly to
well-known mediums (one instance you may remember owing to the
hullabaloo it raised at the time, when I sold luminous paint
to Hereward Carrington, at the exact time when he was manager
of the celebrated medium, E. Palladino, who had baffled the
scientists of the world), also to all the managers of magician
supply houses in existence.
“No, I must say positively I do not believe in Spiritualism and
it has always amused me to see how easy it is to deceive the
human beings who seek solace for their grief or those who delve
into the mysteries of which they know nothing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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