In the early 20th century, getting in touch with spirits was a huge fad. Mothers wanted to contact their sons who died in World War I. Husbands wanted to get in touch with their deceased wives. Children wanted to contact their parents or long lost siblings. People wanted comfort, forgiveness, and occasionally they wanted to find hidden money.
There just had to be a way to contact the dead, and mediums filled that void.
In 1922, Houdini, after having spent thirty years meeting, witnessing, and studying numerous mediums, denounced mediums altogether. Claiming to have attended over a thousand seances, he believed that there was nothing happening that he could not reproduce himself through mechanical means.
Of course, he did continue to believe in the possibility of an afterlife, but he was certain that we had not figured out how to pierce the veil.
As part of an experiment to make contact with the dead, he and several other men made a pact that when they died, they would try and give each other a signal from beyond. They each claimed that the signal would be unique so that it could not be mistaken for fraud.
Unfortunately, none of them were ever able to get a clear signal to the other side. [1]
