On Brad Meltzer’s Decoded, Patrick Culliton was interviewed and asked the following question:

Why do you think Houdini started to engage in anti-spiritual diatribe or became part of anti-spiritualism movement?

His chief assistant, a guy named James Collins said he first turned on spiritualists when he was a teenager.

His father died when he was 19 and there was some important insurance papers that they couldn’t find and Houdini pawned the watch his father had left him and paid a spiritualist to give him a reading and tell him where these papers were.  And the papers weren’t there and the money was just gone and the watch was gone and that was sort of a pivotal event in Houdini’s life and kind of soured him on it.

H A P P Y  F A T H E R ‘ S DAY ! ! !