Can You Crack the Crandon Case?
An Archival "Choose Your Own Adventure" by Emily Crispino
From 1924 to 1925, a Scientific American committee was engaged in a serious investigation of a woman who claimed she could summon the dead. This in itself was not unusual. The journal had offered a $2,500 prize to any medium who could indisputably prove his or her supernatural abilities, and the committee had investigated other claimants without issue. However, after months of attending the séances of Mina “Margery” Crandon, several of the committee members were beginning to swear that she was genuine. Harry Houdini, the celebrated magician and debunker of supernatural frauds, was not one of them.
The ensuing conflict is dramatized in The Crandon Case, an interactive online narrative based upon digitized archival sources. The project was inspired by the popular Choose Your Own Adventure books, which allow readers to experience different plotlines and endings depending on their answers to certain prompts. The Crandon Case transposes historical events into a similar narrative format, integrating participants as “characters” who experience the immediacy of those events as they move through the story. This project is primarily geared towards young people, as many students view research as an oppressive burden rather than an opportunity to discover the past. The supernatural subject matter is especially suited to catch one’s attention, highlighting a fascinating aspect of history that is less likely to be taught in elementary and high school classes. By integrating full, readable scans of primary source materials into the narrative, The Crandon Case encourages students to enjoy historical research divorced from academic obligations.
The project also introduces students to historical bias, a concept familiar to historians and archivists but rarely treated in elementary and high school classes. Two main perspectives emerge in The Crandon Case: that of Harry Houdini, who held that Crandon was a fraud, and that of J. Malcom Bird and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who were equally sure of her legitimacy. Whether or not Crandon could contact the dead is, of course, outside the scope of this project. Instead, the focus is on the conflicting arguments of Houdini, Bird, and Doyle regarding the committee, the investigation, and, most importantly, the integrity of one another. All accounts are persuasive and cast doubt on those that contradict them, revealing just how difficult it is to establish historical truth with fundamentally subjective primary sources. As participants move through the case, their choices will lead them to get to know some historical actors better than the rest, granting them access to certain primary sources but denying them access to others. Upon reaching the end, they will learn the historical outcome of the case and have the opportunity to read the sources they missed. The Crandon Case thus demonstrates how our knowledge of the past depends entirely upon what information has survived, been archived, or been created in the first place.
Images Used in The Crandon Case Screenshots:
Detroit Publishing Co. (Publisher). (Between 1890-1901). The Charlesgate, Boston. [Photograph]. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2016801524/
Doyle, A. C. (1925, January 26). Margery genuine, says Conan Doyle; he scores [sic] Houdini. The Boston Herald. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2018682508/
Houdini in the "Margie Box." (1924). [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/96520631/
Detroit Publishing Co. (Publisher). (Between 1890-1901). The Charlesgate, Boston. [Photograph]. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2016801524/
Doyle, A. C. (1925, January 26). Margery genuine, says Conan Doyle; he scores [sic] Houdini. The Boston Herald. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2018682508/
Houdini in the "Margie Box." (1924). [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/96520631/