The Witch of Lime Street

by David Jaher

  During Walter’s manifestations, the investigators noticed spirit lights, unexplained luminosities that gathered around the medium’s legs. Professor Shapley, who observed this and the rest of Margery’s repertoire, affirmed that “there was no evidence of trickery” or “suspicious actions on the part of anyone in the circle.” Whether one believed her feats were psychic or clever spookery, Margery had lived up to her billing. “The whole thing,” wrote Hoagland, “was extremely baffling.” Thus, at the seventh test séance, on June 29, “the nervous tension of the sitters was at a high pitch” in Hoagland’s apartment at 18 Traill Street.

  “Some of the group believe that the true story of the final nights will never authoritatively be told in full,” Griscom later wrote. What is known is that the medium subjected herself to the customary nude search. Afterward the circle formed and Walter arrived with abundant energy. Using his teleplasmic arm, the ghost rang the bell box repeatedly, then lifted a luminous spool with weights attached to it—once levitating a six-pound bundle five feet from the ground. Minutes later, Grant Code saw shining on the floor the control bracelet that belonged on Margery’s ankle. Yet when he announced into the Dictaphone that her leg was effectively free of control, Walter denied it. “No it isn’t,” said the ghost as the band suddenly disappeared. “I can hide it any time I want to.”

  If Margery were indeed cheating, she recovered wonderfully. The band was now clearly back on her foot, though slightly elongated. Hoagland saw this as proof of how effortlessly she could manipulate it. But she hadn’t actually been caught faking phenomena. Perhaps it was only that the bracelets were too large, as she later claimed, for her slender ankles.*3 In any case, her performance went on as if nothing suspicious had happened. Then, at a little before eleven p.m., Hoagland sensed the case for Walter’s existence unraveling.

  The spirit hand took on at least three different amorphous forms, but it had stubby “finger-like processes” and felt suspiciously like a heel to one outside observer present that evening—a Dr. Wolcott, who was grazed by it. This visiting scientist from Minnesota, who told Walter from the beginning that he didn’t believe in him, had been engaged all that evening in a battle of wits with the goblin. Believing that any spirit should have the “gift of tongues,” Wolcott tried to address Walter in Japanese. When the voice answered with a cuckooing noise, the room erupted in laughter. Wolcott lost these contests, yet there was one crude ghost-busting tactic he dared not attempt. As Time magazine would report, “none of those present employed the obvious investigatory stratagem of seizing the ghostly arm and calling for lights.” It was understood that only with Walter’s permission could a sitter touch the teleplasm. And so Wolcott did not exactly break the cardinal rule when Walter’s spirit hand waved the doughnut tantalizingly in front of his face. Instead, he blew hard on it.

  Enraged when the doughnut fell onto the table, Walter reclaimed the object and passed it repeatedly by Wolcott, daring him to blow it out of his terminal again. The professor tried to and failed—but if the phenomena were really fake, then Margery, supposedly unconscious in her trance, had just made a careless misstep. Waving the doughnut over the incandescent coordinate board, she gave Hoagland the sustained glimpse of the spectral hand that he had been waiting for since the tests started.

  What held the doughnut, he discerned by its silhouette, was a human foot.*4

  Without mentioning what he had observed, Hoagland received Walter’s permission to make a Plasticine impression of his teleplasm. “What’s this damn stuff—glue?” the ghost asked while dipping his immaterial hand into the compound that formed a cast of it. When the lights were turned up, Margery’s leg bracelets looked to be in place, even though they had slipped from her ankles to her heels. A heavy rain began. The séance was over. But the Crandons had no idea how much activity began as they motored away from Traill Street.

  Upon examining the impression of Walter’s “hand,” the scientists saw that it had the whorls and skin marks consistent with a hominal foot. Grant Code said this explained everything. The proof was in the magic. Although shabbily attired in his typically mismatched coat and trousers that hung low over canvas sneakers, he was an adept conjurer and something of an acrobat. While Hoagland and Foster Damon held his hands, he showed how he could use his toes to obscure or displace the leg bands, or even create the illusion that the bracelet on the floor was still on his leg. With his freed right foot he rang the bell boxes, raised the glowing doughnut, levitated the basket with the weights, pulled hair, undid shoes, and produced with his clothes and feet various silhouetted shapes—which resembled Walter’s terminals and shapeless forms—against the coordinate board. All the while he imitated Margery’s deep moans and quavering. The researcher who adored Mrs. Crandon was destroying her case at Harvard.

  As if that weren’t enough, Margery had evidently made another blunder. While leaving the house she had dropped one of her séance slippers in Hoagland’s yard. The next morning the psychologist found it soaked and mauled by his dog. Under a microscope he deduced that the lint from the slipper matched perfectly the samples taken from the cast of Walter’s teleplasmic hand. By now Hoagland believed he had all he needed—the concrete evidence Houdini had never produced—to support his determination that Margery’s manifestations were most certainly of this world.

  The Harvard team decided to allow the medium one more chance—only, not the same chance as before. Having determined that Walter was powerless with his sister’s legs subdued, the committee decided to secure them with surgeons’ plaster during her final sitting at Emerson Hall. To their surprise, Margery found the severe restraint agreeable. Chiding the scientists for their inadequate control the night before, she was in good humor while they plastered her. Patiently she waited as the electric circuit was sent through the circle. Dr. Crandon was moved to the opposite side of the table; only the investigators were allowed to touch her arms and legs. Code, who had revealed her methods, was on her right this time. All awaited the expected blank séance.

  Minutes later Walter came through, unashamedly admitting that the ankle band was off the previous night. He had not wanted to reveal this gaffe to Wolcott, he said, since it wasn’t his sister’s fault. To everyone’s shock he then announced that he was there when Code performed his post-séance exhibition and that they were all wrong in their judgments. Before Hoagland had absorbed this revelation—how could Walter know about what had happened after the Crandons left his house?—the spirit wrought his marvels.

  That night all the phenomena reoccurred—the bell box rang, the objects floated by, the clammy terminals caressed the observers—only this time the spirit hand materialized with “long cordlike structures” clearly incongruous with a human foot. When the tentacle grasped Professor Shapley’s wrist, Walter asked if it still struck him as a human heel. The professor replied that the slimy teleplasm felt more like “the heel of an eel.”

  Hoagland had no explanation. “Teleplasmic Arms Puzzle Scientists,” the Times would report when the press gag was lifted. The Harvard group formally admitted that what they witnessed on June 30 could not have been caused by Margery’s feet. “Through the scintillating skill of his attack,” Walter had reversed all of Hoagland’s and his colleagues’ expectations. The chief investigator was put in the embarrassing position of having to admit on record that his team’s suspicions of legerdemain were unfounded. He still believed that Margery’s phenomena had a natural cause, but with the inquiry over, he had failed to determine it.

  It was then that Grant Code dropped his bombshell. Two days after the last Harvard séance he told the committee that he could explain how the effects on June 30 were possible. Their expert conjurer, who had been given control of Margery’s right arm for that final demonstration, admitted that he had deliberately released the medium. He did so, he said, because something “dangerous” would have happened if he hadn’t.

  Like so much that had occurred in the Margery case, his story seemed both absurd and plausible.
Code confessed that a few hours before the final séance, he had visited Lime Street with the intention of preventing a disaster. If there was one truth of which he was “thoroughly convinced,” he told Margery, it was that she and Dr. Crandon were sincere in their belief in Walter. However, she was about to be exposed, he said, as her methods had been found out and Code himself had duplicated them. He knew she wasn’t consciously cheating. Rather, he offered, Roy was hypnotizing her and then impelling her to perform through autosuggestion. In Code’s view, Roy was just as oblivious to what was actually happening: he genuinely, and perhaps desperately, believed in Margery’s supernormal power. If she gave a blank séance, or was caught in trickery, Roy would think she had “deceived him and made a public fool of him.” Code felt there was “every chance of a dangerous mental and domestic crisis,” should this happen.

  So he offered to help her.

  According to Code, Margery was frightened and confused by his accusations. “I’ll give you my word of honor that I have never done these things,” she said in reaction to his explanation of the foot-induced phenomena. She denied as emphatically the theory of automatism, as it meant, she felt, that there was something wrong with her. Code persisted that the music, the dialogue of Dr. Crandon, indeed every aspect of the séance ritual had been instrumental in lulling her into the hypnotic state that caused her to fake phenomena. “Her reaction,” as he reported it, “was increasing conviction and fear.” She said she was willing to do whatever he advised. Oddly enough, Code, who claimed to no longer believe in the ghost, replied that “it would be dangerous to do anything without consulting Walter.” Hence, he and the medium retired to Roy’s den for a private séance.

  While darkening the room, Code told her that Walter had never failed to come through in an emergency and surely, at this desperate time, he would materialize and advise her on the best course of action. He then sat beside her and held her hands. Trying to relax her, he lowered his voice and gossiped about the men she was to perform for that evening. Suddenly, Margery had a convulsion and freed one of her hands. Code did not attempt to restrain her. Moments later she slipped into trance and Walter’s voice, through her lips, was heard as if thrown against the cabinet then reflected so that “the exact position of the sound was very deceptive to the ear.”

  “What’s the matter, Code?” asked Walter. There was a lot the matter, Code answered; the committee was fairly certain “that the whole business is trickery, and if there is a blank to-night they will be sure. I’m afraid there will be some sort of a blow up that will have a bad effect on everybody. I’m very fond of you and Roy and the Psychic and I don’t want anything to happen that will hurt them.”

  “I never tricked you, Code.”

  “I know. But I thought it was best to tell you about things in advance and let you see how serious the situation is.”

  “Whew!…What do you want me to do, Code?”

  The investigator demanded that Walter come through strong that night, and with teleplasm. A blank séance or any change in the phenomena would give the Harvard team all it needed to announce a negative finding. Code offered to assist in any way possible: he would manifest himself if Walter wanted.

  “No, don’t you do anything,” the ghost whispered.

  By Code’s account, Walter asked him only to relax control of the medium at the séance that evening, “and let her hand move a little.”

  “All right, Walter. I’ve got that. Anything else?”

  “Don’t let it be a blank, Code.”

  “You can count on me, Walter.”

  After Code received Walter’s assurances that Dr. Crandon would not be informed of their predicament and plan, the spirit returned for a few hours to his indigenous dimension, leaving his sister in the hands of the English student who seemed torn between wanting to expose and save her. Still vexed by Code’s visit, Margery emerged from trance complaining of a pain in the neck. At which point her guest begged her to lie down for a while.

  Code’s admission was enough for Hoagland, who accepted that his disturbed colleague had helped Margery circumvent both the physical and electric control during her last display for the investigators. These last pieces to the Margery puzzle fit perfectly with the observations of the sitters at the final Harvard gathering, who noticed that Margery’s right arm appeared to move slightly every time Walter’s hand performed a task. Having had her foot techniques discovered, she pulled another trick, they deduced, from her bag of wonders. The last Plasticine cast of Walter’s hand was imprinted with long tentacles, as well as small chainlike structures that the investigators believed were responsible for its mechanics. But how had Margery gotten the fake teleplasm into the secured laboratory? Again Code had the answer. He told the committee that at the final sitting he saw her remove three artificial objects, one of which looked like a baby’s amputated hand, from between her legs.

  With this, the most shocking of Code’s statements, the Harvard group closed its case on Margery, thereupon ending the university’s two-year association with the clairvoyant. As a way of delivering what he considered the definitive verdict on Margery, Hoagland agreed to write up his findings for the Atlantic Monthly. He took his time, though, and for three months the Crandons heard nothing from across the Charles. They were mortified when Stewart Griscom finally informed them that Grant Code, of all researchers, had provided evidence against them. After an intense conversation, the reporter persuaded Dr. Crandon to show him the Harvard séance reports. “My purpose in this was twofold,” Griscom wrote Houdini: “first to get a scoop for the Herald, which we certainly did; and second to create such a stink that all the scientists on the committee would be forced to talk in self defense.”

  Griscom’s plot worked to perfection. As much as Roy had detested the Scientific American carnival, the once secretive Harvard investigation ultimately played out as sensationally and before the same national audience. Scooping the Atlantic, Griscom reported that while the Harvard team believed the Crandons acted in “good faith,” Margery’s effects were natural in origin. Delicately, and to Griscom’s mind unsatisfactorily, the committee tried to resolve the paradox of calling the medium both sincere and fake by theorizing that she operated under hypnosis, or was in a state of unconscious automatism during her séances. As a result, “there was immediately hell to pay at Harvard,” Griscom told Houdini, for the senior scientists now felt their names were attached to a misleading report that, because Hoagland did not want to shame the Crandons, made no mention of conscious trickery. Was the medium in the hypnotic state, they privately scoffed, when she packed artificial hands into her vagina?

  As Halloween approached, the professors and most of the official Harvard group told Griscom that the effects were unquestionably legerdemain. With the exception of Code, all of them believed she knew what she was doing. In truth, Dr. Crandon was the one who they felt had a double personality—“He believes in the phenomena at the same time that he is helping to use trickery, they say. Of Margery the case is different, and not one of them, except Code, feels that she is sincere,” Griscom informed Houdini.

  Margery did still have a sympathetic newsman, though, in John T. Flynn, who would soon publish the glowing portrait of her for Collier’s. After interviewing Code, Flynn told the Crandons that the first six sittings had made “a profound impression on the Harvard group and that they were on the verge of bringing in a favorable verdict.” Even after ruling against her, Code was inclined to view some of her phenomena as genuine.

  Code’s was the dilemma of a number of Margery’s admirers. Having become attached to the medium, they couldn’t reconcile their adulation of her with subsequent signs of deception. Code was aghast that the committee used his private deductions to turn what he felt was a gray case into a black-and-white one: the scientists had ignored some inexplicable effects, he protested, “in order to make the case blacker against the Crandons.” He felt he knew Margery’s heart, if not her mind; and writing her, he said that she was “no
fraudulent lady but a fine woman whom I believe to be honest.” He told a fellow investigator that “the tricks are far from being the whole of the mediumship.”

  Grant Code had always struck Margery as nervous, dramatic, and forlorn, and she was sympathetic to his emotional plight—his failures as a writer of fiction, his wife running off. It was true that he fought to prevent the Harvard group from charging her with fraud, yet he had debunked her. And if he were indeed a free-lover, as Margery confided to Griscom, then he did not understand that her love, or at least affection, came at a cost, since his reputation was also vulnerable.

  Margery revealed to Griscom how Code came to her house and cried bitterly. She showed him Code’s letters to her, which the reporter told Houdini were “affectionate, wild, hysterical and almost insane.” More damagingly, Roy portrayed him to his colleagues as a degenerate. Code understood that Margery’s effects had stirred “a profound religious faith” in Dr. Crandon, so he shouldn’t have been surprised when he was accused of violating the medium. It was not just that she had spurned Code’s advances, Dr. Crandon also charged that the young investigator tried to rape her.*5 After all that, Roy threatened, as he had other investigators, to sue Code for libel. Upon hearing this, Code’s colleague Foster Damon laughed and told his fellow researcher that “the faces of an Irish jury in Boston would be quite a sight when it slowly dawned on them where she keeps her apparatus.”

  The dispute pitted the Harvard group against the ASPR when Malcolm Bird came with his sharp pen to the medium’s defense. In the ASPR journal that he edited, Bird called the Harvard investigators “a group of excessively young men,” who were comically ignorant, he implied, of the physiology of their female subject—and the true proportions of any woman’s vagina. Their theory of anatomic concealment was “stretched far past the breaking point,” he contended. Was it any wonder they were poets, medievalists, and aspiring psychologists rather than medical students? “Mr. Hoagland and his collaborators from the Department of English, are under an obvious and severe misunderstanding as to the size, shape, and other dominant characteristics of the anatomical storehouse which it is customary to mention under the gentle euphemism ‘within the medium’s body.’ ”