I just spent two and a half hours on a post and Word Press destroyed it.  I am pissed.

I’ll maybe post again later, once I’ve calmed down.

I almost never post except on Thursdays — but I couldn’t let today’s news that Harry Houdini’s body will be exhumed go unremarked.

After all, last week I posted about the exhumation of the Big Bopper, and yesterday I wrote a few words about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  Both are relevant to the news about Houdini because 1) like the Bopper, Houdini will be exhumed so his relatives can try to determine whether he was murdered; and 2) Conan Doyle is a potential suspect (or perhaps instigator) in said murder.

You see, Houdini, in addition to being the quintessential magician and escape artist, was a fierce anti-Spiritualist — exposing mediums, seances, and other “paranormal phenomena” for the tricks and nonsense they were. 

But Conan Doyle, desperately wishing to believe in “scientific proof” of life-after-death, became an ardent Spiritualist in his later years — and a bitter enemy of Houdini, writing in 1924 that Houdini would “get his just desserts very exactly meted out … I think there is a general payday coming soon.”

Yikes.

Which only goes to show that no matter how brilliant or creative some human beings may be, they’ll still buy into any imaginary crap that makes them feel better about their place in the Universe.  And they’ll hate anyone who points out that it is crap.

So while we’re digging up Houdini, maybe we should dig up Conan Doyle, too.  My guess is that, despite his belief in Spiritualism, we’ll find that (like Generalissimo Francisco Franco) he’s Still Dead.

Not that it takes a Sherlock Holmes to deduce that.