After Houdini passed, Joe Dunninger took up the mantle of exposing Spirit Mediums and effects. He had the benefit of film and TV. And because of this, we still have some of Joe's presentations that we can watch on video. One item he always used in his Exposure demonstrations was a spirit trumpet. In fact, he even brought it out when he attended Houdini Seances.
You can clearly see the trumpet in the photo at the top of the page. That trumpet, along with the other props used in Dunninger's Exposure Lecture remained in a briefcase after he died. That briefcase stayed in the family until it was purchased by magician and historian Wayne Alan. It now resides in his National Magic Museum. In the photo directly below you can see the briefcase and trumpet along with some spirit slates in a glass cabinet. That same photo was in my last blog post about the 1953 Houdini movie table.
At the very bottom of the page, you will see me holding the trumpet. This was during an afternoon when Wayne and I were going through the collection. We even found a unique item that we had no idea what it was. Turned out, it was a strange wind-up mechanism to recreate knockings on a door. The discovery came from the book, Inside The Medium's Cabinet by Joe Dunninger. I found a picture of the very same device in there along with a description of that it does. I did not, take a photo of it however.
