World-renowned escape artist Harry Houdini was also famous for his hobby- unmasking fraudulent spiritualists and mediums. During a stay in Montana in 1920, he was approached about a local medium suspected of chicanery. Houdini attended a seance with the medium under an assumed name, and observed the methods that could be used to fake a spiritual presence. He found how a collaborator could enter the room under cover of darkness through a window. But that wasn't what made this seance so exciting.
When he returned to the seance, he found a scene of complete chaos. He learned that in his absence, the grocer had taken out a flashlight he had hidden in his pocket and shined it on the humanlike “phosphorescent glow.” Someone immediately knocked the flashlight from his hand, but it was too late. The “manifestation” had been recognized. A young woman threw her arms around the ghost, kissing him frantically and screaming “Marion, Marion! It’s you!” The panicked medium began hitting the girl with a blackjack while the “ghost” endeavored to break the girl’s hold, pleading, “Frances, let go of me; you’re smothering me, Frances.”
The show was definitely over.
“Frances” had attended the seance in a sincere effort to contact the departed. When the guests were asked to concentrate on a deceased loved one, she thought of her fiance, who had died less than a year before. The glowing figure emerged from the cabinet. When the grocer illuminated the “ghost,” Frances recognized it. It was her fiance, the man who was dead and gone, presumably forever. It was hard to say what gave the poor girl the bigger shock: when she thought she was seeing her beloved’s ghost, or when she realized he was quite alive, if not exactly well.
The explanation for Frances' lover's "return" was rather complicated, and hinged on some extraordinary coincidences. The defrauding of the Montana medium had little -actually nothing- to do with Houdini's presence, but because of Houdini's attendance, we now have the entire story to read at Strange Company.