Zanzic, Charlatan Supreme!
By Harry Houdini
A photograph thought to be of Zanzic from Mahatma
Ziska, the well-known magician, informs me that during the World's Fair, the original Zancig spent some $5,000.00 in fitting up a house on Michigan Avenue in Chicago with trap doors, slides, panels, secret telephones, and numerous other devices, and with their aid, built up the strongest Spiritualistic studio I have ever heard of.
He used three well-known professional magicians, as his aides, Ziska being one of the three—engaged a German physician and a lawyer and gave legal and medical advice to all his clients, who were, of course, totally ignorant of the source. He even went so far as to employ a well-known forger, and with the aid of this man was able to forge names on messages from the departed, when occasion so demanded.
He advertised himself as Slater, which name he borrowed without permission, for the original Slater was at that time the well-known charlatan medium.
Zancig's real name, I believe, was Brenner, who originally came from New Orleans. He was a rather extraordinary man, full of grit and so-called courage. While doing a pistol trick in Denver in the upstairs Theatre, he accidentally kept his finger on the barrel of the pistol with the result that his finger was shot off. At another time, the wire of an illusion which he was performing pulled out from the ceiling and entered his eye. The same day that he was taken to the hospital and his eye removed, he appeared before the audience, giving an entire evening's performance, one and a half hours duration, suffering untold agony and carrying a glass eye.
This Zancig is not the Jules Zancig of mind-reading fame.
In his Spiritualistic Studio, there was a trap cut in the floor under the table, which led into a room in the cellar, where two efficient mechanical magicians were concealed, with all kinds of tools, seals, soldering-irons, duplicate slates, paper, etc., so that no matter how the messages were brought and how the slates were sealed, Zancig was able, through his accomplices, to give the client a satisfactory reply to any secret message written or asked.
These mechanical magicians would remove seals with heated steel knives or take impressions with plaster of Paris so that they could replace the seals without apparently having tampered with them. They even received messages between two plates of glass in frames, and had the system down so fine, that one of the accomplices, Robinson, would take the slates apart, so as not to interfere with the locking, sealing or regluing of same.
The house was "covered" day and night by private detectives, who would follow a prospective client until the proper name and sufficient information could be obtained, frequently phoning long distance to the dupe's home town.
One of the methods they used to receive messages was to have pigeons with messages tied onto their legs or neck, and when the lights would be turned up, these pigeons would circle around the room and alight on the sitters, and eight times out of ten, the messages written on the paper carried by the pigeons would satisfactorily answer the question thought of by the person on whom the pigeon alighted.
The materialization room was double-curtained all over with black velvet, and each form of materialization would require two velvet clothed assistants. One of them would have a black velvet bag, which he pushed out in the middle of the room with the aid of a detachable fishing pole, and the second secreted assistant would lift up the cover and elongate a phospohous-colored cloth, while the other would use his voice to pretend that the materialized form was speaking.
Zancig used solid rubber hands which were placed for six hours at a time on ice. Attached into the wrists of these hands was a fishing rod, and in this way the hand could touch anyone in the circle.
The House of Mystery was exposed through one of those rare coincidences.
An old German, who suffered from bad eyes, came to be cured. Zancig sold him a small candy pail filled with common gutter mud, tell the man that there was a magic charm in same, and charged him $25.00 for the treatment, adding that if he were cured, he was to send a check for $500.00. In less than two weeks, along came a check for $1,000.00. The man had been cured and wished to show his gratitude by sending a check for double the amount. He came to visit Zancig who told him that the Spirits had been the means of this cure, and that this man's good wife had helped him.
The German was very anxious to know whether he could have a seance in which his wife would be materialized and was informed that this could be done.
Zancig took a beautiful demi-monde and from the photographs and description which he obtained, camouflaged this woman to look like the German's departed wife, and at the seance she was materialized.
As the German's wife's "astral body" appeared, he sobbingly embraced her, and finally had to be torn away and she slowly disappeared, which was accomplished by one veil after another being placed in front of her by the unseen black robed assistant.
The German was anxious to spend an hour alone with his materialized wife and in lieu of a huge fee this was arranged to take place the following week. A large room was fitted up like a bridal chamber. A wedding repast was indulged in before the materialization took place, and he was warned that he could not spend more than an hour with his spirit wife, as the flesh materials, etc., would dematerialize and that he should not be near her when the dematerialization took place.
All went well—The German was led to the bridal chamber. They closed the door and left him alone. Then all of a sudden, while the parties who assisted in this were grinning all over themselves, they heard a terrible shriek.
They rushed in—the comedy had turned into a tragedy. The man became so pent up with excitement at the sight of his wife as she lay there before him that he fell over dead. They dressed him and laid him outside of the street door as if he were a total stranger, but the man's servant, who had taken him to the studio, saw them bring the body out and he notified the police. This was the cause of the overthrow of Zancig's "Spiritual Temple". He managed to evade imprisonment in some manner and the thing was hushed up.
Originally published in the M-U-M in Vol. XIII, No. 1-2-3, (Whole No. 124, 125, 126) in New York, July, August, September 1923.
