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    The Witch of Lime Street: Séance, Seduction, and Houdini in the Spirit World
    Unavailable
    The Witch of Lime Street: Séance, Seduction, and Houdini in the Spirit World
    Unavailable
    The Witch of Lime Street: Séance, Seduction, and Houdini in the Spirit World
    Audiobook14 hours

    The Witch of Lime Street: Séance, Seduction, and Houdini in the Spirit World

    Written by David Jaher

    Narrated by Simon Vance

    4.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    History comes alive in this textured account of the rivalry between Harry Houdini and the so-called Witch of Lime Street, whose iconic lives intersected at a time when science was on the verge of embracing the paranormal.

    The 1920s are famous as the golden age of jazz and glamour, but it was also an era of fevered yearning for communion with the spirit world, after the loss of tens of millions in the First World War and the Spanish-flu epidemic. A desperate search for reunion with dead loved ones precipitated a tidal wave of self-proclaimed psychics-and, as reputable media sought stories on occult phenomena, mediums became celebrities.

    Against this backdrop, in 1924, the pretty wife of a distinguished Boston surgeon came to embody the raging national debate over Spiritualism, a movement devoted to communication with the dead. Reporters dubbed her the blonde Witch of Lime Street, but she was known to her followers simply as Margery. Her most vocal advocate was none other than Sherlock Holmes' creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who believed so thoroughly in Margery's powers that he urged her to enter a controversial contest, sponsored by Scientific American and offering a large cash prize to the first medium declared authentic by its impressive five-man investigative committee.  Admired for both her exceptional charm and her dazzling effects, Margery was the best hope for the psychic practice to be empirically verified.  Her supernatural gifts beguiled four of the judges. There was only one left to convince...the acclaimed escape artist, Harry Houdini.

    David Jaher's extraordinary debut culminates in the showdown between Houdini, a relentless unmasker of charlatans, and Margery, the nation's most credible spirit medium. The Witch of Lime Street, the first book to capture their electric public rivalry and the competition that brought them into each other's orbit, returns us to an oft-mythologized era to deepen our understanding of its history, all while igniting our imagination and engaging with the timeless question: Is there life after death?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateOct 6, 2015
    ISBN9781101924310
    Unavailable
    The Witch of Lime Street: Séance, Seduction, and Houdini in the Spirit World

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    Reviews for The Witch of Lime Street

    4.5/5

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    • 4/5
      A humorous, often bizarre tale that doesn't fit neatly into any category. Hucksters, science, paranormal claims, Harry Houdini, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, what's not to like? At times, the author's scrupulous scholarship brings a level of detail that would have been better left to footnotes in several places, so I held back the last star. Nevertheless, the author deserves credit for recognizing there was a gem of a story to be told, and for vividly resurrecting a colorful cast of characters and their many squabbles, intrigues, and pompous jabs and ripostes.