In the 1920s, America’s fascination with the supernatural collided head-on with a rising faith in scientific proof. Few clashes captured that tension as vividly as the feud between Margery Crandon, a celebrated Boston medium, and Harry Houdini, the world-famous magician turned debunker. Their battle was never just personal. It exposed something enduring about us: how badly we want certainty—especially when facing the unknown.
Crandon, known to believers as Margery, rose to prominence by producing dramatic séances. Bells rang, tables moved, and a mysterious substance called ectoplasm appeared in darkened rooms. For supporters, these phenomena were evidence of life after death—comforting proof that loved ones were not truly gone. Skeptics saw them as clever tricks performed under conditions designed to suspend disbelief.
Enter Houdini. Having mastered illusion himself, he felt a moral obligation to expose mediums who claimed paranormal powers. His crusade intensified after the death of his mother, a loss that sharpened his resolve rather than softening it. Houdini wanted answers, too—but answers that could withstand light, scrutiny, and repeatable testing.
Their conflict peaked when Margery’s abilities were examined by the Scientific American journal. The tests were contentious, the observers divided, and the conclusions inconclusive. Believers accused skeptics of bad faith; skeptics accused believers of wishful thinking. Each side claimed reason, evidence, and integrity. What no one could agree on was what proof should look like.
This stalemate reveals a deeper truth. When the stakes are emotional, as in grief, hope, and fear of death, certainty becomes a psychological need, not just an intellectual goal. For Margery’s followers, certainty came from experience: I felt it, I saw it, therefore it’s real. For Houdini, certainty came from method: If it can be controlled, replicated, and explained, then it’s real. These are not merely different standards; they are different ways of coping with uncertainty itself.
The feud also shows how certainty can harden into identity. To doubt Margery was, for some, to threaten the comfort of belief. To accept her claims was, for Houdini, to betray reason and enable exploitation. Once certainty becomes moralized, dialogue collapses. The argument stops being about truth and starts being about loyalty—who you stand with, not what you can show.
A century later, the Crandon–Houdini feud still feels familiar. We see the same dynamics in debates over science, politics, and technology. We crave firm ground in a shifting world, and we often choose the kind of certainty that best soothes our anxieties.
The lesson is not that skepticism or belief is superior, but that our hunger for certainty shapes how we interpret evidence. Recognizing that impulse—our own as much as others’—may be the first step toward a more honest engagement with the unknown.
My novel Margery and Me explores all this terrain, and I invite readers to consider their own views on belief and certainty as they dip into the story.
Maryka Biaggio is the author of Eden Waits, The Point of Vanishing, and The Model Spy. Her novel with Regal House, Margery and Me, releases in the summer of 2026. Maryka’s fiction has won several accolades, including the Willamette Writers Award, an Oregon Writers Colony Award, the Historical Novel Society Review Editors’ Choice, La Belle Lettre Award, the U.P. (Upper Peninsula of Michigan) Notable Books Award, and a Regional Arts and Culture Council grant. She served on the Board of the Historical Novel Society North America Conference since 2015, and she lives in Portland, Oregon.
