The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 62: I'd Like To Buy a Vowel

Episode Date: June 27, 2017

But only if the spirit moves you.

This is the way I heard it. Eric read the headline in the New York Times and shook his head. Marjorie passes all psychic tests. Scientists find no trickery in Boston medium. Eric couldn't decide what to grieve first, journalism or science. Cheer up, Eric. Marjorie is our link to the other side. This is great news.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was holding a photograph of Marjorie, taken in the midst of a seance and pointing excitedly to the ectoplasm, oozing from her mouth and nose. What more evidence do you need, Eric? Marjorie is the proof we've been looking for. The afterlife is real. Eric looked at his old friend and sighed. The creator of Sherlock Holmes,

a man of immense, intelligence, and great imagination, had fallen for the phony claims of a crystal-gazing clairvoyant. But Arthur wasn't alone. Millions of people believed Marjorie could conjure up the spirit of her dead brother whenever she pleased, a disagreeable chap called Walter. From what Eric had just read in the Times, Walter could not only speak through Marjorie from beyond the grave, he could throw random objects around the parlor, a talent that convinced the editors of Scientific American that Marjorie had in fact demonstrated a, quote, verifiable

psychic manifestation. Now, these men of science, hints had come to Boston to award the fraudulent fortune teller a $2,500 prize, and Eric had come to stop it. At his insistence, Scientific American arranged for another seance, and this time Eric would be there himself, not as the famous aviator, or the best-selling author, or the famous movie star, but in the role he cherished most as a skeptic. It was warm that evening, and it got even hotter when Marjorie opened the door to her Lyme Street parlor,

wearing nothing but a sheer nightgown that billowed around her. The editors thought this was a fine way to prove she had nothing to hide. Eric thought it was a fine way to distract the observers. The men took their assigned positions in Marjorie's seance circle. Marjorie lit some candles and brought the room to a hushed stillness. after some summoning and some waiting, followed by some more summoning and some more waiting, the spirit of Walter finally appeared and began to share his thoughts through Marjorie's clenched jaws. Walter was not happy that Eric had joined their little group.

He cursed him. He mocked him. He then predicted that Eric would suffer a painful death within the year. In between the aspersions and the prognostications, Walter flipped over a table, made a trumpet blow all by itself, rang a bell inside a locked box, and caused a megaphone to somehow hover in midair before sending it flying in Eric's general direction. Everybody was stunned. Surely they were in the presence of a genuine medium and an authentic, albeit cranky spirit. When the seance concluded, Eric thanked,

Marjorie for her hospitality and returned to his hotel. There, he wrote a thorough account of all he had seen and exposed Marjorie to be a complete and total fraud. The newspapers published his account the next day, complete with diagrams, illustrations, and detailed explanations of how she executed every phony manifestation. Additionally, Eric demonstrated her techniques on stage for those who still doubted. Ultimately, the Scientific American rescinded the award, and Marjorie was publicly discredited. But many still refused to believe that Marjorie was a fraud,

including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In fact, Eric's unmasking of Marjorie ended their friendship, which was a shame, really, because Eric was not a disbeliever in the supernatural. Far from it. It was the trickery, he deplored, the deceit, a burning contempt for fraud

that informed his entire career. Indeed, long before his name would appear on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Eric attacked one of the greatest frauds of all time in a now famous book called The Unmasking of Robert Hudan. As a young man, Eric had read Udán's memoir and found a deep and profound inspiration.

So when the time came to adopt his stage name, Eric looked to the name synonymous with integrity and bought a vowel. You see, in France, if you add an eye to the end of someone's name, it means like that person. and Eric wanted nothing more than to be like Robert Udan. But imagine his horror when Eric realized years later the memoir that inspired his entire career was in reality a work of total fiction. It's hard to sum up so much irony in just a few sentences, but allow me to try. The truth behind Marjorie the medium was ultimately revealed not, by the journalists at the New York Times, or by the luminaries at the Scientific American,

or the creator of Sherlock Holmes, but rather a man who despised fraud above all things, a devoted skeptic who accidentally named himself after another man who was not the person he claimed to be. Then again, maybe the real irony belongs to Walter. The disagreeable spirit, who may have gotten the last year. laugh, after all, a year after Walter's dire prediction, Eric did in fact die an excruciating death on Halloween, no less, when his appendix ruptured after being punched in the stomach by a college student who thought the famous magician invited him to test the strength of his legendary abs. Doesn't get much weirder than that. After a lifetime of exposing fraud,

Harry Houdini left himself exposed at precisely the wrong time. Anyway, that's the way I heard it.