44: Signs, Seances, and the Stars: Dark History of Psychics and Astrology
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This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yep, while you're listening to me talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you're not in some kind of moving vehicle, there's something else you could be doing right now. Getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance.

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What are your self-care non-negotiables? The things you know make you feel better, even when it's impossible to make time for them. Like that workout you try to squeeze in between kids' activities, work, and everything else you have going on, and before you know it, it gets pushed to tomorrow.

Sound familiar? But it's the moments when you feel like you have no time for yourself when those non-negotiables are more important than ever. Those are the things that keep you strong, healthy, motivated, and prepared to take on everything life demands of you. So why not make therapy one of them?

BetterHelp Online Therapy makes it easy to get started with affordable phone, video, or live chat sessions you can do from anywhere, and the option to message your therapist between sessions if anything comes up. Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash darkhistory today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash darkhistory.

Hi friends, I hope you're having a wonderful day today. My name is Bailey Sarian and I'd like to welcome you to the... Oh dear, my rope fell down. Oh my goodness. Ugh.

And I'd like to welcome you to the library of dark history. That was sexy for a minute, huh? Hi, so if you don't know or you're new, this is a safe space for all the curious cats out there who think, hey, is history really as boring as it seemed in high school? I mean, or just school in general.

Oh, it happened again. Oh, nay nay. This is where we can learn together about all the dark, mysterious, dramatic stories our teachers never taught us in school or told us about, or I don't know, put in history books or something. Okay, so what's your sign? Have you ever been asked that question? Have you ever asked someone that yourself? I know you have, okay? You guys are always trying to analyze everybody with your little signs.

More than 90% of the adult population, they know their zodiac sign. But if you ask them if they believe in astrology, they probably won't answer with the resounding yes. So what's that all about? Hmm? I started thinking about this and wondered, how did astrology get its start?

What was its influence? Who took it seriously? Did anyone use it to their advantage? Is it a legit science or just a bunch of flim flam, to use Houdini's word? And where do psychics fit into all of this, if they even do in the first place? In my mind, the two are linked together, you know? So I wanted to find out if they were. Well, I did a little digging and I found out that in order to answer these questions, we need to start at the beginning. And I mean the very beginning.

Okay, let's go. It's said that astrology got its start around 2000 BCE, which also was the year math was invented. Prehistoric humans mapped stars, the seven visible planets, and even used marking bones to mark the lunar phases.

By 1200 BCE, the people of Sumer, which today we know as Iraq and Syria, began to make note of the movement of the planets and stars. The Sumerians can be credited with all kinds of advances in agriculture, math, and astronomy that we still use to this day. Next came the Babylonians, and they picked up where the Sumerians left off.

Over the course of thousands of years, they came up with the very first version of astrology. This system theorized that the position of the planets, sun, and moon within the stars at the time of the person's birth helped determine their personality and influence the course of their whole life. To help analyze this info, they created a chart that they called a horoscope.

Now this chart is what astrologers use to help people understand their lives and like help them make decisions. And the oldest known horoscope chart dates all the way back to 410 BCE. And the next time someone blames their crazy behavior on the fact that they're a Gemini...

We can thank the Babylonians for that too, because they also created the zodiac wheel, the one that we know today. Yeah, they created that around 700 BCE. What were they on to? Were they on drugs?

what were they doing, you know? The presence of astrology can be seen throughout ancient cultures. I'm talking Chinese, the Mayans, and the Polynesians to name a few. It's also thought that Stonehenge in England was a stone circle used to follow the sun and the moon. And astrology wasn't just some like frivolous pastime. It was used to create calendars as a form of navigation to predict seasons and the weather. The info

The information gathered helped with everything from planting and harvesting crops to migration and travel. In other words, astrology was sometimes the very key to survival. That's wild!

Mm-hmm. Well, in 331 BCE, Alexander the Great conquered the Babylonians and the Greeks took over the development of astrology. They're credited with naming the planets and the 12 zodiac signs. In fact, the word "zodiac" itself comes from Greek. And no conversation about the Greeks and astrology would be complete without mentioning the Oracle of Delphi.

Now, this is a slight detour from our conversation about astrology, but an important one because it's where we see the line between astrologers and psychics start to blur.

Oracles were seers, or what we know as psychics. Okay, they weren't necessarily astrologers, but both oracles and astrologers predict things. So they got that in common. People came from everywhere to ask the oracle for advice. Everything from like, "Hey, when should I plant my crops?"

Even down to like, "Hey, when should I declare war?" Because it's like, you know, they go hand in hand. And some say the Oracle of Delphi was just like the telephone psychics we have today. Or at least used to have. Are telephone psychics still a thing? Let me know down below. People gave the Oracle a little gold to ask a question. And the more gold they gave, the more info they got.

So the oracle was a huge deal. But as Christianity spread and became more influential, the oracle's popularity decreased. So let's fast forward to the 1500s. By this time, astrology has become pretty mainstream. Universities have astrology chairs, royal courts keep astrologers on staff, and even Protestant leaders and the Pope are getting their charts read.

Astrology was so popular at this time that Paris had about 30,000 astrologers. That's just in one city.

Perhaps the most famous astrologer and seer of the time was Michel du Nostradame, better known as Nostradamus. Nostradamus was born in France in December of 1503. In addition to being an astrologer and a seer, Nostradamus, your name's going to be a little problem for me, isn't it?

Well, he was a doctor. Back then, in order to get your medical degree, you needed to study astronomy slash astrology. I say astronomy slash astrology because we think of astronomy as the study of things beyond the Earth's atmosphere and astrology as interpreting how the stars and the planets impact us.

us. But back then they were considered to be pretty much the same thing. Nody, like almost all astrologers at the time, was a doctor. And since astrologists believe that planets influence whether people were healthy or not, so medicine like should too, right? Anyways, Nostradamus, or Nody,

was a pretty well-respected dude. And astrology was a very important part of his medical practice. Nody also wrote a very successful almanac for the year 1550, and that got him a lot of play with the wealthy people about town. So his patients went to him for his advice and insights and not just medical issues. I mean, there were people who questioned his abilities, but for the most part, he was seen as like an accomplished doctor and astrologer.

He was such a big deal that even the Queen of France consulted him and had him do charts for her kids. The Queen was so impressed with him that she gave Nody a fancy title. I don't mean any disrespect. I just really can't say Nostradamus, you guys, okay? Thank you. Now, it turns out all of his predictions were wrong.

but luckily for Nody, the queen, she didn't really know that, okay? He was like, and no one's gonna tell her, all right? Nody may be best known for his book, Les Prophétés, which contains 942 poems that predict the future using astrology.

The book is so popular that it's been in print almost consistently since his death in 1566. A lot of people credit Nody with predicting everything from the death of Henry II to the French Revolution to the rise of Hitler and even the 9/11 attacks. But a lot of academics and researchers say those claims are based on incorrect interpretations or just flat-out

inaccuracies. Now, around the same time that Nody was born, there was another astrologer making a name for himself. Girl, bless my soul. His name is Nicholas Kopernikas.

Sounds about right. Copernicus played a major role in advancing modern science. I'm laughing because these names, you guys, these names. He's known as the father of modern astronomy. Copernicus was born on February 19th, 1473, in what we now know as Poland. He was the fourth and final kid of a family. Nicholas, senior, and Barbara. Barbara. Barbara.

The most basic name ever. Barbara. Oh my God, that's funny. That's comedy right there, you guys. Her name's Barbara. Everyone else has these fucking... What names? But Barbara... Okay, look. They were wealthy copper merchants, but dad died when...

Copernicus was like very young and he was raised by his uncle on his mom's side. So Copernicus was trained in law and medicine, but he was more interested in like math and the stars. His claim to fame was reimagining the solar system with the sun in the center and his work led to advances by Galileo and Johannes Kepler.

One might think that like all this reimagining of the Sun and the Earth and the Moon plus the refiguring of the movement of the planets might change people's view of astrology, but it really didn't. Astrologists just incorporated these changes into the world view and just kept it going. Plus astrologers and astronomers were still considered to be one in the same. And Johannes Kepler, the person responsible for the three laws of planetary motion, would have agreed.

Lord bless my soul. This is gonna be a long episode with these names. Everyone needs a nickname. Oh, we gotta take an ad break. Hold on.

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yep, while you're listening to me talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you're not in some kind of moving vehicle, there's something else you could be doing right now. Getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance.

It's easy and you can save money by doing it from your phone. Drivers who save by switching to Progressive save nearly $750 on average. And auto customers qualify for an average of seven discounts. Discounts for having multiple vehicles on your policy, being a homeowner, and more. So just like your favorite podcast, Progressive will be with you 24, 7, 365 days a year so you're protected no matter what.

This is an ad by BetterHelp. What?

What are your self-care non-negotiables? The things you know make you feel better, even when it's impossible to make time for them. Like that workout you try to squeeze in between kids' activities, work, and everything else you have going on, and before you know it, it gets pushed to tomorrow.

Sound familiar? But it's the moments when you feel like you have no time for yourself when those non-negotiables are more important than ever. Those are the things that keep you strong, healthy, motivated, and prepared to take on everything life demands of you. So why not make therapy one of them?

BetterHelp Online Therapy makes it easy to get started with affordable phone, video, or live chat sessions you can do from anywhere, and the option to message your therapist between sessions if anything comes up. Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash darkhistory today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash darkhistory.

Johannes Kepler was born on December 27th, 1571 in what we now call Germany. His dad was a mercenary and his mother, Katharina Kepler, was the daughter of an innkeeper and a supposed witch, as we all are, but more on that later. So Johannes grew up, I guess, poor, but he was smart and got himself a scholarship to study theology. That's when he started learning about the theories of Copernicus.

He was so enthralled by Copernicus' idea that he gave up theology for math and astronomy. Like I said earlier, Johannes went on to help popularize and evolve Copernicus' view on the solar system as well as other astronomical advances. Johannes was also an avid astrologer. In fact, he was the last major astronomer/scientist

astrologer. He wrote multiple books to support his view that what happened in the heavens had a direct impact on what happened on Earth. He was also a practicing astrologer and seer. Over 1,000 horoscopes he wrote still exist today. As a seer, Johannes made numerous predictions. And if you're wondering, yes, many of them were actually like super spot on. He predicted an awful cold spell,

a peasant uprising, and even the Turkish invasion. This brought him lots of notoriety, but not everyone with his abilities of psychics and astrologers were treated equally. Johann's own mother was put in jail for doing more or less the same exact things that earned him praise.

Because in case you forgot, Johann's mother was considered to be a witch. Boo. Anything we do, man, we're a witch, we're a slut, we're a whore. We just can't win. Well, let me tell you about Johann's mom. Her name was Katharina. Yeah, she was born in Germany in 1546.

She was raised by an aunt instead of her parents. It's believed that this aunt may have been where Katharina learned witchcraft, since the aunt herself was burned at the stake for also being a witch. Katharina married Johann's dad and had four children. By all accounts, it was a pretty unhappy union, and things were just not good for the Kepler clan.

Katharina made a living as what was then called a wise woman. In other words, she made herbal potions, spells, and charms. One might say the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Except that Johannes had the prestige of a renowned university behind him, and Katharina had, I don't know, just a bad reputation. You see, during this time, thousands of people were rounded up and accused of being witches.

The accused were typically poor, outsiders, mentally ill, survivors of assault, or in some other way, just an easy target. And majority of them? Women, of course, especially single women or widows. Katharina was around 70 years old and her husband had been out of the picture for quite some time. And by all accounts, she was just a rather feisty character.

So it was no surprise that, you know, she was swept up in this witch hunt craze that was going on. Katharina's case ended up going on for six years, which is unbelievable. Johannes worked tirelessly to defend his mother, which took a huge toll on him and his career, but he must have done a good job because she was released from prison. The downside? Eh, she was kicked out of town. Katharina died six months later, and then she was pretty much forgotten. Bummer.

Johannes on the other hand, he died a few years after that in 1630, but even today they're still naming shit after him like telescopes and telescopes. Things began to shift in the 17th and 18th centuries. This period was known as the Age of Enlightenment. And I guess astrology was seen as not so enlightened. Anyway, science and logic were in.

Superstition was out and astrology was thought to fall into the superstition camp.

And this is where astrology and astronomy part ways. They break up, they divorce. They were no longer considered the same thing. And whether deserved or not, astrology started getting a bum rap. The ideas of the Enlightenment were all the rage for a pretty long time, but by the 1800s, the focus started to shift from science back to superstition, you know? They're like, we missed that a little bit. Which really ends up setting the stage for what comes next:

spiritualism. But we gotta pause for an ad break. Hold on. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yep, while you're listening to me talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you're not in some kind of moving vehicle, there's something else you could be doing right now. Getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance.

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Your cash back really adds up. Okay, so let's jump forward in time to the 19th century. March 31st, 1848 to be exact. The birth of spiritualism. What's that, you ask? Well, spiritualism was a movement or religion that believed in talking to the dead.

This was largely done through mediums who are essentially experts at talking to the dead. Now if some of you are thinking this is like a little, you know, woo-woo out there, let me tell you that by the end of the 1800s, it's estimated that four to seven million people in the United States were spiritualists. That's a lot of chit-chatting with the spirits.

Spiritualism and astrology may seem unrelated, but go with me here for a second because the two of them, they tie together. So the ideas behind spiritualism are believed to have evolved from two 18th century Europeans. So they weren't specifically psychics or astrologers, but their ideas led to a huge advancement in their popularity.

So, let me introduce you to them. Come on out, you guys. The first guy was an Austrian doctor named Franz Anton Mesmer. Franz put patients into a hypnotic state called mesmerized. As in mesmerizing? Yeah, that's right. The word mesmerizing comes from his name. Then he would rebalance their magnetic fluid.

Oh yeah. You see, Franz theorized that there was this invisible fluid that connected everything in the universe. And if it becomes imbalanced in the body, someone could get sick. This idea was originally known as animal gravitation. It later evolved to animal magnetism. So Franz is responsible for that term too. Meanwhile in Sweden, Immanuel

Daniel Swedenborg, a philosopher and mystic, was developing his theory about an afterlife with multiple levels: three heavens, three hells, and an interim level. You see, he thought we needed three heavens and three hells because all the souls in the universe needed to be accounted for, and there just wasn't enough room in just one, okay?

We gotta have three. As for the interim level, the world of the spirits was where people went when they died and it was pretty much like Earth. So it's like limbo. Great. So what do Emmanuel's and Fran's idea have to do with psychics or astrology, right?

Well, a 19th century American seer named Andrew Jackson Davis, gotcha, Andrew Jackson Davis, combined their ideas and created a little something called spiritualism. Andrew claimed that Emmanuel spoke to him from beyond while he was mesmerized, and he wrote these conversations down and published them in 1847. Later, he claimed, quote, spirits commune with one another while one is in the body and the other is in the higher spheres.

And on March 31st, 1848, the day Andrew said his theory was proven, spiritualism burst onto the scene. So let me introduce you to two sisters who best embody early spiritualism. 14-year-old Margaretha and 11-year-old Catherine Fox. Now, Margaretha was known as Maggie and Catherine was known as Kate. Great names that are easy. We love that.

And the pair became known as the Fox sisters. Even better, easier to pronounce. Maggie and Kate were the daughters of John D. Fox and Margaret Fox. John was a blacksmith and Margaret was a superstitious housewife. And I guess like John and Margaret decided to relocate from Rochester to Hydesville, New York. And this new house had a very unique quality. You see, there was like nightly knocking on the walls and furniture.

Some say these sounds were the spirit of a murdered peddler who'd been buried in the cellar. Others say it was the precocious fox sister playing tricks on their gullible mother. I guess Maggie and Kate had successfully convinced their mom that the sounds were actually otherworldly. People found out about this alleged haunting and started to swarm the house to see it for themselves. For the girls' safety, the family left.

Maggie and Kate were sent back to Rochester where their older sister Leah lived. This decision would change the course of history because it was in Rochester that Maggie and Kate's alleged ability to communicate with the dead went big time. So a story started floating around Rochester that Maggie and Kate were in touch with a man who'd been

murdered five years earlier, and they wanted a demo of their own. The people of Rochester, I mean, they wanted proof. So there were prominent community members whose daughter had recently died and everybody thought like, oh, this is a perfect opportunity for the Fox sisters to show off their medium powers, right?

So this couple rented the biggest hall in Rochester, invited 400 guests, and like let the sisters do their thing. Now everyone in the hall that night agreed that they heard sounds they believed to be from the other side. But I mean, they were still skeptical.

After the performance, as we're going to call it, the sisters were stripped and searched to prove they weren't using any tricks to convince people that they were communicating with the dead. They didn't find anything. I don't know what they're looking for. What are they going to find?

Exactly. They didn't find anything. And enough people, I guess, were convinced. Regardless of what you believe, the history books show that the sisters became quite the phenomenon. The Fox sisters, including Leah, who had picked up the family gift, I guess, hit the road. They were performing seances and spreading the gospel of spiritualism. They became very famous very quickly.

and one of their most famous supporters was Mary Todd Lincoln, who had recently lost a son to typhoid fever. When she heard about the Fox sisters, she immediately began holding seances at the White House. Ooh, spooky.

The sisters were totally pop culture, sort of the seers of their day. With their names splashed all over the headlines, people were coming from far and wide just to get close to these freaking incredible ass sisters. They want to see this shit. But of course there's always going to be naysayers, right? One of the sisters' biggest skeptics was

was a man, of course it was a man, named Alicia Kent Kane, who ironically was also one of Maggie's biggest admirers. What a weirdo. In 1856, Alicia convinced Maggie to give up her spiritualist ways and he was like, "Hey, you should become a Catholic so we can get married." Unfortunately, Alicia died not long after the marriage. Rough.

I guess she hadn't gotten around to his request to become a Catholic before he died, but she went through with it after he passed, which is honestly very sweet of her. But kind of weird because Alicia himself was a Presbyterian.

Yeah, plot twist. Anyway, even though her husband was gone now, Maggie still kept her distance from spiritualism. And instead she turned to the bottle and started drinking. A lot. Kate, on the other hand, married a spiritualist and really started to fine tune her skills.

You could even say that in the world of spiritualism, Kate was a trailblazer. It's said she could transcribe messages backwards and talk to one spirit while writing down a message from another. She could also hold up a blank card and have words from a spirit miraculously appear.

What? Yeah. One of these card spirits was supposedly Ben Franklin. Yeah, he popped in. The popularity of spiritualism continued to soar with the help of the Civil War. I mean, so many people had lost their loved ones, and spiritualism offered the possibility of contacting them. By this point, okay, so originally to talk to the ghosts, they would kind of like tap and make noises and stuff. Well,

Well Kate, she graduated from that shit. She was like, "Okay, that's lame." Now she was like, I don't know, conjuring fully formed ghosts right on stage. In other words, she upped her performance. I shouldn't say performance because what if it is real? I don't know. Spiritualism became so popular it spread all the way to the UK. And no real surprise here, Kate and Leah took the UK by storm.

But the pressure got to Kate, right? And like her sister, she turned to the little booski. Alcohol. Bottle.

Meanwhile, Leah, she was thriving. She worked the money and opportunity to her advantage and she landed herself a place in high society. She also landed herself a husband, a Wall Street banker. She made out, good for her. By this time, spiritualism was so widely popular that no one in those high society circles were phased.

Honestly, it seemed like Leah was unstoppable. But things did come to a head on October 21st, 1888, when New York World, a popular newspaper, published a very scandalous interview with her sister, Maggie.

Apparently Maggie was pissed at Leah and other big time spiritualists because I don't know, they had like publicly accused Kate of being an unfit mother and called her out on her drinking. So to get revenge, Maggie accused Leah of having exploited her younger sisters. But she really crossed the line when she called spiritualism a fraud and revealed the tactics she and Kate had employed to fool everyone. God damn it, girl. You rat.

Maggie recanted a year later, but her and Kate's reputations were already ruined. As was her relationship with her sister Leah. Leah died two years later in 1890 and Kate succumbed to alcoholism on July 1st, 1892. And then Maggie, she died eight months later. Dang, boom, boom, boom. But spiritualism didn't die with the Fox sisters. It continued to thrive.

In fact, prominent figures like the Nobel Prize winning author William Butler Yeats and visionary psychologist Carl Jung used aspects of it in their work. Part of the legacy of spiritualism may be that horoscopes began to appear in newspapers regularly and fortune tellers became more prominent.

But the age of spiritualism may also be why astrology and psychics have become synonymous with frauds. Because of the Fox sisters and others like them, many people were hell-bent on disproving them. And for one man, it became an obsession. But first, we're going to pause for an ad break.

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yep, while you're listening to me talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you're not in some kind of moving vehicle, there's something else you could be doing right now. Getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance.

It's easy and you can save money by doing it from your phone. Drivers who save by switching to Progressive save nearly $750 on average. And auto customers qualify for an average of seven discounts. Discounts for having multiple vehicles on your policy, being a homeowner and more.

So just like your favorite podcast, Progressive will be with you 24-7, 365 days a year, so you're protected no matter what. Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $744 by new customer surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations. This is an ad by BetterHelp. What are your self-care non-negotiables? The things you know make you feel better even when it's impossible to make time for them.

Like that workout you try to squeeze in between kids' activities, work, and everything else you have going on, and before you know it, it gets pushed to tomorrow. Sound familiar? But it's the moments when you feel like you have no time for yourself when those non-negotiables are more important than ever. Those are the things that keep you strong, healthy, motivated, and prepared to take on everything life demands of you. So why not make therapy one of them?

BetterHelp Online Therapy makes it easy to get started with affordable phone, video, or live chat sessions you can do from anywhere, and the option to message your therapist between sessions if anything comes up. Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash darkhistory today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash darkhistory.

And we're back. Now there was one man so determined to prove spiritualism was fake that many believed it played a part in his own demise. So enter to the scene Eric Weiss. But the world knows him better as Harry Houdini. Maybe you heard of him? The world famous magician? Hello? Yeah. Harry was born on March 24th, 1874 in Budapest, Hungary.

He and his family moved to Appleton, Wisconsin when Harry was four. Harry's father was a rabbi who dabbled in soap making, but his mom is much more important for the purpose of this story. You see, like Johannes Kepler, Harry was a bit of a mama's boy, and when his mommy died of a stroke on July 17th, 1913,

It sent the poor guy into just a tailspin. Rumor has it he even consulted mediums and partook in seances in order to try to communicate with her but uh I guess they all failed. So this may have been what ignited his crusade to not just debunk psychics and mediums but to actually criminalize them. We're not really 100% sure why Houdini was so hell-bent on destroying spiritualism

But what we do know for sure is that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote the Sherlock Holmes series, had a very public disagreement with Houdini on the subject of communicating with the dead. Arthur and Houdini, I guess they were buds, despite the fact that Arthur was a spiritualist. But their friendship hit the skids when Arthur's wife claimed to have communicated with Houdini's mom.

Now, Houdini accused Arthur's wife of lying because the message she relied was in English. Houdini's mom spoke five languages, but none of them were English. So Arthur countered that mediums receive messages in the languages that they understand. And Houdini was like, "Nope, that's not true. Nope."

So I guess like things got ugly fast. While Arthur tried to promote spiritualism, Houdini dedicated himself to taking it and Arthur down. I'm sure there's more to the story. I bet you Houdini tried to get with the wife and the wife was like, I don't want you. And then he's probably like, yeah, fuck you then. And he tried to destroy her. I'd bet money.

Yeah. Anyways. And things got especially dirty in 1924. Arthur got the well-respected magazine Scientific American to sponsor a contest offering a cash prize to anyone who could prove they were communicating with the spirit world under strict conditions. Scientific American was known for revealing hoaxes, which is probably why Arthur picked them.

Well, there was one medium by the name of Marjorie Crandon who like really impressed the room. People said if she was faking it then she was a magician on the order of Houdini himself. Now, Houdini was actually a member of the jury for this contest, but he was still worried his influence wouldn't be enough to prove she was a fraud.

In fact, he was so worried Scientific American would award her the prize, he wrote a 40-page treatise entitled "Houdini Exposes the Tricks Used by Boston Medium Marjorie to Dissuade Them." Could you imagine if he put this much effort into something productive? That'd be cool. So Houdini got his way, and Marjorie didn't get the prize. It's funny because, like, geez.

What are we doing, you know? But that wasn't enough for him. He wanted more. For the next few years, Houdini added a bit to his act devoted to disproving Marjorie and even made a pamphlet he gave to audiences revealing how she did all of her tricks. Total dick move. But Marjorie wasn't the only one Houdini went after. The man was on a mission to discredit freaking everybody. Houdini though was like also all about tricks.

It just doesn't make sense, Houdini. Houdini went after hundreds of spiritualists over the course of 35 years, and he even testified before a congressional subcommittee in 1926 about the evils of psychics, astrologers, and mediums, employing members to pass legislation criminalizing them. Houdini, you are so two-faced, you little bitch. He's over here doing tricks and magic.

And he's calling these people, no, mm-mm, Houdini, no, no.

Thank you. During these hearings, Houdini openly called Arthur one of the greatest dupes. And that's maybe one of the nicer things he said during the four days of testimony. Always the performer, Houdini began his testimony by presenting a sealed telegram. Now he asked one of the hundreds of psychics and astrologers present to tell him what was written in the telegram.

Everyone remained silent, except for Illinois Congressman Frank Reed, who accurately predicted what was inside, even though he was there as a representative and not a psychic. Houdini dismissed Frank's answer as a guess. He's like, "No, no, shh, you, shut up." He told Frank, "I'm not talking to you, bud, okay?" But Frank said, "Dude, I've got the gift."

Okay? And things got even more tense from here. For four days straight, there was fighting and sensational headlines. Houdini, who was always a performer first, even used props in his takedowns, including a 50-foot long scroll. There were breaks in the hearings meant to restore order, but they just led to fights in the hallway.

In the end, most people sided with the psychics and astrologers who thought Houdini was just being freaking overdramatic, okay? One congressman even said, quote, I believe in Santa Claus and I believe in fairies, but Houdini is taking the matter entirely just too seriously, end quote. So yeah, Houdini ended up looking kind of foolish. Even though Houdini failed in his attempt to have fortune-telling banned, the image of spiritualism had been severely tarnished.

Just six months after testifying before Congress, Houdini died. His death was predicted by one of the women he testified against during the congressional hearings. Talk about... Is that ironic? Yeah. Sorry, that's funny. That's actually really funny.

Ironic. Mm-hmm. In fact, there is a rumor that psychics had a hand in Houdini's death, which I don't know if that's true or not, but the timing, you know, it's a little... It's a little suspish. Some believe his hate towards mediums was just about...

Not being able to communicate with his mother, remember? Just a thought, maybe psychics and astrologers didn't stand up to Houdini's testing because the way they work is fundamentally different to his approach and view of the world.

Just because you didn't understand it doesn't mean it's not understandable. Whether or not you agree with Houdini and the others who tried to defame psychics and astrologers, there were still like a lot of believers and can't they just have something nice? President Coolidge, for one, was said to have seances in the White House. In addition to Mary Todd from earlier, First Ladies Edith Wilson and Nancy Reagan consulted psychics too. I heard Nancy Reagan had like a psychic on payroll.

That's pretty cool. Well, it turns out three years after Houdini's suspicious demise, some research did emerge. Studies showed that astrologers may have been right about a person's health being impacted by when they were born. Allegedly, when we're born can determine the likelihood we'll have certain diseases and disorders like schizophrenia, multiple sclerosis, sleep disorders,

Type 1 diabetes, bipolar disorder, and allergies. I mean, you're probably thinking, that doesn't sound real. That's not real. It just sounds like some bad science from, like, the olden days. Well...

Over 200 studies since then have reiterated these findings. Oh shit. Including one from 2003 that included over 86 million births from 27 different parts of the world. Some doctors like to shrug this off as just like, I don't know, seasonal affective disorder. But isn't that like what astrologers have been saying all along? Hurry up, look up November.

What am I gonna die of? Environmental factors, including things beyond our own knowing and understanding, impact our lives. So maybe this is why astrology and psychics didn't go away altogether. It continued to be seen in like really high places. I mean, Hitler loved it. He's like, "Yeah, bring it on." Oh, before we get to that though, we should pause for an ad break. Shit.

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Despite its ups and downs, astrology continued to be seen in some very high places. That's when we were going to bring in the none other than Mr. Adolf Hitler himself. Yep, I guess he consulted. No, I don't guess. We know he consulted the most famous astrologer of the time, Erich Jan Hanusen.

I tried with that one. Numerous times between 1932 and 1933, he was consulting. Perhaps not surprisingly, Eric predicted success for Adolf. Yikes. I mean, you know, if you were a psychic, would you tell Hitler things weren't going to end well for him? Fun fact, Eric was Jewish. Not so fun fact, Adolf had him killed when he found out. That's fucked up. Well, I mean, he was a pretty fucked up guy, but...

Psychics and astrologers continued to have their highs and lows over the years. In the 60s and 70s, the New Age movement brought them back in the spotlight for a bit. President Carter even ordered the CIA to assess psychic abilities. And in the 80s, the Pentagon spent major cash exploring the paranormal. That's cool. Then in the 90s, TV psychics became huge, big. I mean, whoo!

Yep. And perhaps the most infamous one was Yori Del Harris, aka Miss Cleo. Oh, Miss Cleo. Yeah, remember? Mm-hmm. We all, you remember. In the 90s, she had a massive, famous psychic hotline and the Psychic Readers Network.

But honestly she was a cultural phenomenon for a while. Despite the numerous accusations, Yori maintained that she was a voodoo priestess up until her death. Another media darling who fell hard in the 90s was TV psychic Sylvia Brown. Did you ever watch Montel Williams? Remember that show? Well she was like a regular on that show. I loved when she came on.

I guess her predictions were rarely accurate, but I don't care, I still watched. Many people accused her of adding to their suffering. Perhaps most famously, she told a woman whose daughter was missing that her daughter was dead, but I guess the woman's daughter was later rescued. That's a good thing to be wrong about. Well, on the bright side.

So all of this feeds into that stereotype that psychics and astrologers are schemers and frauds. Just because one person got it wrong, we can't discredit everybody.

Okay? Maybe part of the problem is legitimizing psychics in astrology is that the biggest flops seem to be like the most famous ones. Maybe many mediums and psychics, especially like the most gifted ones, would rather stay anonymous. Because if psychics and astrologers are all a bunch of frauds, why are they regularly consulted by law enforcement? Why are they even still around if they're still just frauds? I mean...

They've been around forever. There's gotta be something there, right? Oh, but circling back to that, yeah, the United States Department of Justice itself wrote a report saying psychics have long been and will undoubtedly continue to be involved in unsolved criminal investigations.

In the report, they acknowledged that a New Jersey resident, Dorothy Allison, has helped police in thousands of cases. A CIA study revealed that 8 out of 11 officers interviewed said information from psychics was helpful, and three of those psychics helped officers find missing bodies.

Even two of the officers who said the psychics weren't helpful acknowledged that the information provided by them was accurate. Why are predictions about things like the economy and elections considered science and forecasts by psychics or astrologers considered pseudoscience? Is one better than the other?

Or do both just fill a desire to believe we can know and control the future? If anything, I think it just helps people. It helps alleviate anxiety. The unknown is really scary. We just want someone to tell us it's going to be okay. That's really all we want. I just found out I'm going to die of a disease, so I'm booked.

Don't look up what you're going to die of. It's going to ruin your day. Okay, well, despite all of that, belief in astrology and psychics is once again on the rise. The thing is, non-believers keep holding psychics and astrology up to like the same standard as other sciences. And maybe the reality is that it's much harder to teach and much harder to do. Maybe you're just not special.

and you're mad. I'd be curious to see what we'd learn if we invested the same resources into psychics and astrology as, I don't know, traditional sciences? Maybe psychics and astrology would be more accepted. Shit, maybe we could get stuff done. I don't know. And it seems that all this doubting is a western thing anyway. Indian families consult astrologers before making major life decisions.

Kaoshan practitioners from the Chinese tradition are known to predict the future. Never mind the millions of us who go to psychics, energy workers, and astrologers every day. Followers of astrology believe that the stars and the planets influence people and events on Earth, and we accept that the moon has a very real effect on the tides and that gravity has a very real effect on everything. A psychic's intuition, a fortune teller's predictions, or an astrologer's insights,

They're not much different than a cop's hunch. So why is it so controversial for so many people to accept astrology? Do we believe in it or don't we? Should we be laughing at it or should we be like, hmm, I don't know, maybe there's something there. If anything else, astrology, it seems to be giving people a lot of peace of mind, clarity, I don't know.

The future can be so scary. Just let people have their peace, if you believe it or not. Right? I don't know. What's the harm in that? Shit. Let people live, goddammit! Whew! That was a ride, Joan. Did you see that? I fucking stumbled, tumbled, and rumbled. Fuuuuck.

That was a challenge. Well, everyone, thank you for learning with me today. Remember, don't be afraid to ask questions to get the whole story because you deserve that.

Now I'd love to hear your reactions to today's story. So make sure to use the hashtag Dark History so I can follow along. And join me over on my YouTube where you can watch these episodes on Thursday after the podcast airs. And also catch my Murder, Mystery, and Makeup, which drops on Mondays. I hope you have a great day today. You make good choices. And I'll be talking to you next week. Goodbye. Dark History is an Audioboom original. Woo!

Woo! This podcast is executive produced by Bailey Sarian, Kim Jacobs, Dunya McNeely from 3Arts, Ed Simpson, and Claire Turner from Wheelhouse DNA.

Produced by Lexi Kiven. Research provided by Tisha Dunstan. Writers Jed Bookout, Joey Scavuzzo, and Kim Yagin. Edited by Jim Lucci. Shot by Tefadzwa Nemarundwe. Special thank you to our historical consultants, Alexander Boxer, author of A Scheme of Heaven, The History of Astrology, and The Search for Our Destiny in Data. And I'm your host, Bailey Sarian. Have a good day today!

Goodbye.