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A Magician Among the Spirits  By  cover art

A Magician Among the Spirits

By: Harry Houdini
Narrated by: Russell Stamets
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Publisher's summary

I have spent a goodly part of my life in study and research. During the last 30 years, I have read every single piece of literature on the subject of spiritualism that I could. I have accumulated one of the largest libraries in the world on psychic phenomena, spiritualism, magic, witchcraft, demonology, evil spirits, etc - some of the material going back as far as 1489. And I doubt if any one in the world has so complete a library on modern spiritualism, but nothing I ever read concerning the so-called spiritualistic phenomena has impressed me as being genuine.

It is true that some of the things I read seemed mystifying, but I question if they would be were they to be reproduced under different circumstances, under test conditions, and before expert mystifiers and open-minded committees. Mine has not been an investigation of a few days or weeks or months, but one that has extended over 30 years and in that time, I have not found one incident that savored of the genuine.

If there had been any real unalloyed demonstration to work on - one that did not reek of fraud, one that could not be reproduced by earthly powers - then there would be something for a foundation, but up to the present time, everything that I have investigated has been the result of deluded brains or those which were too actively and intensely willing to believe. Houdini.

Public Domain (P)2020 Russell Stamets

What listeners say about A Magician Among the Spirits

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Great read, awful reader

I’m so glad this book is available as an audiobook. It’s a fascinating historical document by a magnetic cultural icon. I wish they had hired a proper voice actor to narrate.

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I read this book in the 70s

one of my regrets was letting this book go by i 1970. I was excited to find it again. I do miss the illustrations .

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Fascinating book, awful narration

I am very interested in this book but I had to return it after 30 minutes of listening because I couldn’t handle the narrator. It sounds like it’s read by AI and was so distracting I was having trouble understanding what was being said. Looks like I’ll have to read it myself.

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Houdini eviscerateds the spiritualists

This is a superior and epic life project of research. And his writing is sharp and funny.

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I can't handle the way it is narrated.

Dull uneven narration that made me turn it off in the first twenty minutes. wasted credit

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