Even more interesting is the fact that he and Harry Houdini were friends, but they were split over the life after death question. Houdini was sick of all the charlatans, and made the focus of his life’s work in his final years to prove them wrong. It obviously created a wedge between them.

Houdini by that time was a megastar. He was easily the most famous person in the western world for about a generation. His fame dwarfed that of people like Doyle, Agatha Christie, or Oscar Wilde.