This is a book about spiritualism written by a self-professed sceptic. In the opening sentence of his preface, Houdini says," Gladly would I embrace Spiritualism if it could prove its claims, but I am not willing to be deluded by .....so-called psychics" He discusses the origins of spiritualism, and describes some of its earliest protagonists. The last chapter is called Magicians as Detectors of Fraud and lays the final groundwork for his conclusion.

Harry Houdini (1874-1926) published this exposé of the practices of fraudulent mediums and psychics in 1924.

Harry Houdini's expose of the fraudulent spiritualist, spirit photography, spirit slate writing, ectoplasm, clairvoyance, and other quakery and cons perpetrated on desperate believers. Specific spiritualists covered in the book include Dr. Slade, the Davenport Brothers, Anne O'Delia Diss Debar, the Fox Sisters, Daniel Dunglas Home, Eusapia Palladino, and other con artists of their ilk. The whole nation was excited by Houdini's campaign against fakers. He traveled across the country, offering money for spirit activities he would be unable to duplicate by his use of skilled illusions. It was a heyday not only for Houdini, but for the spiritualists themselves -- and there was an equally famous protagonist who thought the spirits could indeed be contacted, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A photo at the start of the book records a meeting between Houdini and Doyle, who is given his own chapter in the book. There's also a full section on Daniel Dunglas Home, the English engineer of spectacular paranormal effects. Houdini saves his sharpest arguments for spiritualists who were giving their (usually paying) clients a vision of the hereafter, 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 words: "Up to the present time everything that I have investigated has been the result of deluded brains," though Houdini attests to his own open mind on the topic of the afterlife and recounts his personal attempts to communicate with the dead.

“Noyes makes history accessible and irresistible . . . Excellent.”* A century ago, the curious idea that spirits not only survive death but can be contacted on the “other side” was widespread. Psychic mediums led countless séances, claiming to connect the grieving with their lost relations through everything from frenzied trance writing to sticky expulsions of ectoplasm. The craze caught Harry Houdini’s attention. Well-known by then as most renowned magician and escape artist, he began to investigate these spiritual phenomena. Are ghosts real? Can we communicate with them? Catch them in photographs? Or are all mediums “flim-flammers,” employing tricks and illusions like Houdini himself? Peopled with odd and fascinating characters, Houdini’s gripping quest will excite readers’ universal wonderment with life, death, and the possibility of the Beyond. *School Library Journal, starred review of Ten Days a Madwoman