When it comes to unexpected friendships, few rival the brief yet fascinating bond between Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, and Harry Houdini, the master illusionist. Both men were towering figures of their time, united by a shared interest in the paranormal yet divided by starkly opposing views. Their friendship—and eventual public feud—offers a captivating glimpse into an era when science, mysticism, and grief intertwined.
The Rise of Spiritualism
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, spiritualism swept through Europe and America. Mediums, seances, and spirit photography offered solace to millions grieving the unprecedented losses of the American Civil War, World War I, and the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. Figures like Mary Todd Lincoln and Alfred Wallace sought to communicate with departed loved ones, while skeptics dismissed the movement as trickery.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle initially approached spiritualism with skepticism, joining the Society for Psychical Research in 1893. However, personal tragedy deepened his belief. The loss of his son Kingsley in 1918, along with 10 other family members in the Great War and subsequent flu epidemic, transformed Doyle into a fervent spiritualist. By the 1920s, he had become a leading advocate, publicly defending mediums and even falling for the Cottingley Fairies hoax.
Houdini’s relationship with spiritualism was equally personal but far more adversarial. Born Erik Weisz in Hungary, Houdini’s early encounters with mediums left him disillusioned. His initial hope of contacting deceased loved ones turned to skepticism after he exposed fraudulent practices. As his career in illusion flourished, Houdini dedicated himself to debunking spiritualist claims, presenting his escapology feats as feats of human ingenuity rather than mystical powers.
An Unlikely Friendship
In 1920, Doyle and Houdini met during the magician’s European tour. Despite their differing views, the two bonded over a shared fascination with the occult. Doyle admired Houdini’s apparent supernatural abilities, while Houdini respected Doyle’s intellect and literary fame. Their friendship was marked by spirited debates, with each attempting to sway the other’s beliefs.
Doyle invited Houdini to a medium’s seance that purportedly connected him with his late son. Houdini, ever the skeptic, was unimpressed, noting the generic language and clichéd techniques employed. The illusionist, in turn, demonstrated his escapes and illusions to Doyle, who refused to believe they were purely mechanical, convinced Houdini possessed true psychic powers.
The Breaking Point
The friendship reached its breaking point in 1922 when Doyle’s wife, Lady Jean Doyle, offered Houdini a seance to contact his recently deceased mother. Using automatic writing, Lady Doyle produced a 15-page letter filled with blessings and assurances from beyond. Houdini, while polite in the moment, later publicly denounced the seance as fraudulent. His mother, a devout Jew, spoke no English, yet the letter was written in perfect literary English and included Christian iconography.
Doyle took Houdini’s rejection personally, interpreting it as an attack on his wife’s sincerity. The two engaged in a very public feud, with Doyle championing spiritualism as a new religion and Houdini campaigning against its practitioners, often exposing them in his performances and writings. Their rivalry symbolized the broader cultural clash between faith and reason in the early 20th century.
Legacy of the Feud
Doyle spent his later years promoting spiritualism, hoping to institutionalize it as Britain’s official religion. Houdini, conversely, waged a crusade to outlaw fraudulent spiritualist practices, publishing exposés and attending seances undercover. Some even speculated that his mysterious death in 1926—from a ruptured appendix—was orchestrated by vengeful spiritualists, though this remains unproven.
Their story highlights the profound human desire to connect with the unknown and the tension between belief and evidence. Doyle and Houdini, each in their way, were seekers of truth. Their friendship—and the feud that followed—left a lasting imprint on the history of skepticism and spirituality, demonstrating how even the most brilliant minds can diverge when it comes to matters of the heart and the hereafter.
