“Rosabelle Believe” was Houdini’s code phrase with Bess for communicating from beyond body’s death. It referred to their favorite song, apparently.
There were at least five instances when Houdini failed to debunk Spiritualists or Spirit photographs. He was honest about this, admitting he could neither confirm nor deny evidence he’d gathered.
The main case he failed to debunk was that of Mary Fairfield McVickers, an associate pastor at the First Spiritualist Temple, who told her congregation and family, on her 73rd birthday, that she’d had a premonition of herself on display in a coffin, and demanded that, should she die within the coming year, which she did, a photograph be taken of her lying in state at five in the afternoon of the day of her funeral. She would appear in spirit form beside her remains.
Houdini got wind of this and attended, on 11 April 1923, and set up careful precautions for the photographs he took, including the use of a black velvet backdrop to prevent projections but also to show any manifestations, should there be any, to better effect, it being light and this being outside the church.
He had a random person obtain the photographic plates, hired a disinterested professional photographer from a newspaper to use a Speed-Graphic, and had ten pictures taken, one even including him, beside the open casket.
One of the observers Houdini had brought along pointed out faces he could see in the wall of the funeral home. Houdini even had a picture of himself under one of these faces, for later analysis.
He developed the film immediately and found on the second an ethereal light form that vaguely resembled the form of a woman. It was definitively proven the negative was flawless and not messed with.
He issued this statement to the press: “I cannot say that this is a spirit photograph of Mrs. McVickers, nor can I deny it.”
Houdini was adamant about clearing away the frauds not because he believed spirits impossible but because he fervently hoped they were in rare cases real.
He died in 1926 and Bess held annual Hallowe’en seances with psychic Arthur Ford, who was proven a fraud. Bess did his for a decade, then snuffed out the final seance candle in 1936 and said, “Ten years is long enough to wait for any man.” This underlying bitterness has led some to suspect she poisoned him. They point out that although he did have a ruptured appendix, he was also on the mend in hospital before taking a sudden dive for the worst and succumbing. It’s feasible she or someone did him in.
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