Houdini makes spirit hands, Antique Print

Drawn from the Library of Congress archive, this print depicts Houdini makes spirit hands. The Library holds one of the most comprehensive collections of American and international historical prints in the world.

Library of Congress record: Created ca 1923 In this sequence of photographs Houdini demonstrated how spirit hands that appeared at seances were made by less ethereal beings. In A magician among the spirits" Houdini described the mediumistic fraud known as "finger-printing a spirit." A mold of a dead person's hand would be carefully prepared and fingerprints of the deceased would appear on a lampblacked trumpet. In his book Houdini stated the following: "There are two cases on record where fortunes were at stake because of this sort of fraud. In one case five hundred thousand dollars changed hands upon the recognition of the finger prints of a man who had died two years before."".

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