During the research for my film ELECTRIC SEANCE, I discovered a very odd dvd compilation. This particular footage had a very powerful effect on me, but rather than detail my own unnerving experiences I will instead include below the description from the accompanying hand-written booklet. (The DVD was aquired from a private collector and is not commercially available. The material appears to be duplicated from an NTSC video source.)

From LOST MASTERS OF MESMERISM: HARRY HOUDEN
"As his name suggests, Houden like many others chose a
professional persona which connected him to the great illusionist Houdini. Yet it seems less likely that he emerged from the theatrical tradition of mesmerists and hypnotists (themselves continuing from the pseudo-scientific/curative practices of Franz Mesmer and Jules Volsin et al) than from his studies of Yogic techniques, following early experiences in the far East. It's apparent that Houden was highly derogatory regarding his stage-bound contemporaries, declaring their work entirely without interest.
Any detailed information regarding Houden's life is now regrettably lost (if, in fact, there ever was any) but what we are left with are some quite detailed (and unnerving) first hand accounts of his abilities, and the effects that they had upon observers. A self-proclaimed manipulator of both "human animal form" and "time and space", Houden made his first appearance in Paris and later, towards the end of the 1920s, in London. Inviting a select group of exclusively well-heeled participants, never more than seven in number, he would begin by taking them through an obscure set of rituals that may have lasted many hours. Possibly in a state of post-mesmeric suggestion, accounts go on to describe a "performance": Houden would plunge into a hypnogogic trance state, emerging violently into spasmic physical contortions which many claimed seemed to convey to them strange, coded messages. This would go on for some time, Houden drifting in and out of wakefulness, until each performance concluded in a similar fashion - with the mesmerist seeming to manipulate his physical being into impossible forms, and on occassion even appearing to alter the very architecture of the room that they occupied.
This brief and tantalizing footage, all that now remains on film of Houden, appears to be from a special performance given for a solitary observer - the anonymous cameraman. It gives us a haunting and bizarre glimpse into Houden's world, one where the existing laws of physics appear to be subjugated by an extraordinary force of will." (less info)