At archive.org you can download free books and articles by and about Harry Houdini. Many include details about how the spiritualists of the time pulled off their cons.
https://archive.org/details/1924HoudiniAMagicianAmongTheSpirits
Most people are probably aware that Houdini spent many years exposing spiritualists as con artists, but many might not know that before that he actually performed a spiritualist act. He and his team would go canvas a town when they arrive to learn secrets that they would "magically" reveal during the performance. Apparently, people like to gossip even to strangers.
In one of those books by Houdini you can find the story I have related more than once on this forum. Here is my version of it on a much earlier thread:
"Are you aware of the magician Harry Kellar? He was one of the premier magicians at roughly the time of Houdini. He was on a tour overseas when he gave a reading to a man he had never met before. Kellar told the young man that he (the young man) was traveling under an assumed name, and he told him his real name. He told him where he was from in the United States and the name of his parents. He also told him that he was about to receive a letter from his mother.
All of what Kellar told the young man turned out to be true. The man was flabbergasted; there was no one around who knew that his traveling name was false, let alone what his real name was. There was no one who knew where he was from or his parents' names. Most impressively, he had not communicated with his parents in a very long time, and there was no way Kellar could have predicted that a letter was coming from his mother.
All of which is at least as impressive as what you are relating. I would say that the prediction of the letter is more impressive. And Kellar did it without psychic abilities."
And here is my response when the believer with whom I was engaging insisted I tell him where to find the documentation and how it was done:
"It is findable, which is one reason I gave few specifics. More importantly, most people who find out how he did it will be immensely disappointed. Most importantly, in my experience the believers who find out the specific methods for such things invalidly use it to defend their interpretations of their own experience. They will usually say something along the lines of "That obviously isn't what happened in my case, therefore I am justified in claiming real psychic ability for the person I visited."
It profoundly misses the point. Even setting aside faulty memory (which we really cannot do here), there is not just one method for giving the appearance of psychic ability; some of those methods are planned, and some simply take advantage of of elements of the situation that the sitter is unaware of. And they are not static. The methods used today may not be the methods used next week, even with the same sitter."
