Perhaps I have taken some liberty with the title of this number but few will remember that part anyway. Several years before Houdini died, he attempted an exposure of Boston’s top medium, Ms Leroy Crandon, better known around the psychic globe as Margery. One of his articles dealt with a device she used and for want of a better name it was termed as a “bell box”.
Inside a rectangular box was a bell, a battery, and the combination was connected to a slightly sprung lid, pressure upon which caused the bell to ring. In the dark, and while the medium was secured, her control “Walter” would exert his spiritually encased force upon the lid and ding dong the bell for the edification of the investigators. Houdini sought to prove that the psychic was the “force” and by various bits of chicanery pushed the lid down at will.
I made some notes at the time and later fixed up a box to duplicate the test, but from a different angle. Shortly after, someone in England, I think Harry Price, revealed a method for faking a box, and several years after that Frank Lane marketed a box designed for the same purpose. For the first time I am giving out my original secret as I built it, and I still think it to be the most practical and foolproof.
The dimensions of the box are as follows : I made mine from three-quarter inch pine which gave it a massive appearance. The bottom is 6 by 12 inches. The sides are 5 ¾ by 12 inches. The ends are 6 ½ by 7 ½ inches. The top is 7 ½ by 12 inches.
In assembling, the sides are nailed against the side edges of the bottom. Then the ends are nailed on, and lastly the cover is hinged on. These measurements are exact for ¾ inch stock. The whole makes a compact and solid appearing container. My cover is different for the reason that I never thought it necessary to have the sprung lid. The main idea is to have a bell ring while encased.
In the box is clamped a single dry cell and an ordinary house bell, together with a standard push button. The strong feature is that all of these pieces may be removed from the box and put back into place by anyone. However, there is a bit of chicanery present. Take an ordinary push button and examine the back.
There are two screw holes for the fastening of the bell. There are also connections for the two wires. As all of the different makes of push buttons are slightly different it would be difficult to make this part clear by drawing, but there is no push button which can’t be “shorted” from the wire connections to the screw holes. On some bells the screw holes are the wire connections.
Now, when the sides are nailed against the bottom of the box, nails with not too prominent heads are used and placed about 5/8th of an inch apart. However, at the point opposite the spot where the push button is located, as per the sketch, two nails are only about an eighth of an inch apart at the heads but they are driven in to separate and contact the push button screws. Therefore, the screws may be taken out and replaced with no thought that they are contacting nails inside the wood. Thus, the bell in the box may be rung either by using the push button in the normal way, or closing the circuit between the two nail heads on the outside of the box !
That, in short, is the secret of a bell box that is simple, cheap, easy to make, and which can be pulled to pieces nail by nail and screw by screw. To work, one can do as Margery did, by having the box on the floor between her feet while her hands were held and toes stepped on. In the side of your shoe you have driven a tack. Once you are close to the contact point, the slightest pulsation of the foot rings the bell. If you have it on your hands and a glass of water rests on the lid, a finger ring does the trick.
I always used the trick with the lid open, the lid being there apparently only for carrying the box closed. Somehow or other this gives people the impression (especially in the dark) that you are pushing the bell somehow but they can’t find out how, the misdirection of this point being quite perfect. Used in a series of mediumistic tests with the remark that such a box has been successfully used by the Boston medium, it makes a very nice addition. I have used it just as a single test by having a card selected (from a stacked deck spread on the table) and dropped into the box without anyone knowing it. In the dark and with hands and feet held, I slowly named the values from Ace to King and the bell rang at the right time. Likewise with the four suits. It also could be used for forced numbers or other selections.
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