Harry Houdini war ein ungarisch-amerikanischer Magier und Meister der Entfesselungskunst, der die Welt der Illusionen für immer veränderte. Er wurde berühmt für seine unglaublichen Entfesselungstricks und wurde zu einer Ikone seines Fachs. Neben seiner Zauberkunst war er auch als Skeptiker und Ermittler von Spiritisten bekannt. Sein Erbe lebt weiter und inspiriert Generationen von Künstlern und Zuschauern.
Celebrated for its groundbreaking contributions to horror, sci-fi, and fantasy, Weird Tales magazine emerged in 1923 as a pivotal platform for emerging literary talent. It played a crucial role in discovering and showcasing the finest writers of its era, influencing the genre and captivating readers with its unique blend of imaginative storytelling.
Harry Houdini and his exposure of the fraud spiritualist, spirit photography, spirit slate writing, ectoplasm, clairvoyance, and other quakery and cons perpetrated on the gullible, by the likes of the Boston Medium Margery, the Davenport Brothers, Annie Eva Fay, the Fox Sisters, Daniel Dunglas Home, Eusapia Pallandino, and other con artists of their ilk. The whole country got excited by Houdini's campaign against faking spiritualists. He careened through the country, offering money for spirit contacts he couldn't duplicate by admitted magical chicanery. It was a heyday not only for Houdini but for the spirit-callers and there was an equally famous protagonist who thought the spirits could indeed be contacted, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A photo at the front records a meeting between Houdini and Doyle and Houdini gives Doyle his own chapter. There's an earlier chapter on Daniel Dunglas Home, the English engineer of spectacular paranormal effects. Houdini raises hell with spiritualists who were giving their (usually paying) clients a vision of heavens to come, and shares the methods used to practice "fake" and sensational spiritualism. Houdini was nothing if not unrelenting. As a taste of things to come, he ends his introduction with the "Up to the present time everything that I have investigated has been the result of deluded brains."
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"«Mi vida profesional ha sido una cadena constante de desilusiones, y muchas de las cosas que causan asombro a la mayoría de los hombres no son más que el pan nuestro de cada día en mi negocio. En este libro he plasmado historias de algunas de las extrañas personas y atípicos artistas que he ido reuniendo a lo largo de muchos años de investigación.» Houdini sentía el mayor respeto por los magos e ilusionistas que hacían trucos para entretener y confundir a las multitudes. Revelándonos sus métodos y denunciando a los impostores, pretende «conmemorar ciertas formas de entretenimiento a las que el olvido amenaza con sumir en la oscuridad bajo la envergadura de sus grandes alas». Iban Barrenetxea nos lleva a un teatro de principios del siglo xx para asistir a una mágica velada con el gran Houdini." -- Cubierta