A Marvelous Coincidence
By Harry Houdini
Occasionally, coincidences occur in the performance of magical feats that are so startling as to cause even the artist surprise, and such as might easily be mistaken for actual manifestations of something occult by those who are believers in such things.
In Gilbert K. Chesterton's play, "Magic," the performer astonishes himself by actually producing magical effects that he had not supposed possible and which he himself realized that he actually had no hand in, materially speaking.
Something very like this occurred at a banquet given in my honor by the Los Angeles Society of Magicians at the City Club, the night of April 12th. All the members presented brief experiments and among them a druggist of Glendale, Cal., named Robinson, essayed the feat of changing a rolled cigarette paper into a live moth. Unfortunately the moth when produced was dead. But just as the metamorphosis was to occur, a living moth appeared from somewhere and circled about his head! It vanished as it came, and a believer might well have decided that it was the astral body of the dead insect which appeared, or that in some way the powers of darkness had conspired to assist the magician.
Of course it was a coincidence but a miraculous one. I was myself startled and so was everyone else, the performer possibly most of all. I have never seen anything like it in my experience with the art of conjuring.
Originally published in the M-U-M in Vol. XII, No. 11, (Whole No. 122) in New York, May 1923.
