Dunninger's Spirit Trumpet

 

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 Museum of Magic. In the photo directly above 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.

Directly above, you will see me holding the actual trumpet. This was during an afternoon when Wayne and I were going through the briefcase. We even found a unique item that, at the time, we had no idea what it was. It was a strange metal device, it had two flat pieces of metal sticking out and it appeared that you could wind it up. I later discovered what this strange wind-up mechanism was. It was a secret device to replicate knocking sounds on a door or wall or window. 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 what it does. I did not, take a photo of it however, you can see the picture from the book.