If Harry Houdini were around today, though, he'd be loving this because it was how he got his kicks when he wasn't being tied up in a sack and throw off a bridge for money. Houdini's main gripe wasn't politicians or dodgy journalists, it was fake mediums (read: all mediums). One was Mina Crandon, aka the "Blonde Witch of Lime Street," who alleged that channeling the spirit of her dead brother allowed him to rap out messages, play musical instruments, throw objects across rooms, and, in what we imagine made for a bizarre encore performance, cause white ectoplasm to, um, leak from her vagina. Is that incest, or doesn't it count if one of the parties is dead? Let us know on social media with the hashtag #poltergeyser.
In July 1924, the experts at Scientific American had tested Crandon and were about to lend credence to her claims -- which would've basically made her a legit medium in the eyes of science. An outraged Houdini, along with several of these "experts," decided to attend a session with Crandon so that he could put her scam to bed once and for all.
After an entertaining evening where her brother yelled at, touched up, and threw a microphone at him, Houdini left Crandon's saying, "I've got her. All fraud. Every bit of it." After attending another session, to confirm his suspicions of how her grift worked, Houdini published a pamphlet that November titled Houdini Exposes the Tricks Used by the Boston Medium. It was, as the title suggests, a thorough debunking of how Mina was able to pull over her repertoire of tricks -- which, yes, included the vagina thing. It turned that before a session, Crandon would, um, insert the ectoplasm into herself and let gravity do the rest.
Just to make sure that her ownage was complete, Houdini adapted the pamphlet into a touring stage show, where every night to raucous applause, he recreated Crandon's 'miracles' -- effectively destroying her career.