Laszlo, Laszlo (1898-1936)

One of the most famous fake mediums of Hungary during the 1920s. He was born in Budapest September 23, 1898, the son of a locksmith. At the age of 13 he was apprenticed to an electrician, by whom he was harshly treated. Laszlo ran away on several occasions but was returned by the police. After three and a half years apprenticeship, he beat up his master before finally leaving him.

Laszlo earned a living as an electrician until 1915, when he joined a Polish Legion of the Austro-German campaign against Russia. He fought at the front for nearly a year but deserted after being wounded. He was court-martialed, then escaped, later serving in a Hungarian unit on the Italian front in 1916. He deserted again when his girlfriend became a prostitute, and, since ordinary employment was barred to him, Laszlo joined a gang of burglars. He supported his girlfriend to keep her off the streets, but when he found that she was still living as a prostitute and even keeping pimps, he began to drink heavily and attempted suicide. He was arrested and imprisoned until October 1918, when the revolution in Hungary decreed a general amnesty.

After that, he continued his criminal activities, taking refuge from the police in southeast Hungary, where he became involved with an anti-Communist plot. Arrested and sentenced to be shot, Laszlo was freed by anti-Communists. He fought against Romanians until captured and taken to the death camp of Jassy, where he was beaten and starved for three months before he escaped.

Laszlo returned to Budapest, hoping that his criminal record had been lost in archives' burnings. According to his own account, he took a succession of jobs as actor, film extra, variety artist, playwright, painter, and electrical technician. The performance of a music hall hypnotist led him to become interested in Spiritualism and occultism.

With his background and emotional instability, it was a fatal mixture. Influenced by Laszlo's séances, several young men committed suicide in order to journey to the "Great Beyond." In 1920 Laszlo fell off a tram, and during two weeks in a hospital met a girl with whom he fell deeply in love. After recovery, he telephoned her, demanding that they become engaged, and when she refused him, he shot himself in the telephone booth. Back in the hospital, he fell in love with another girl, with whom he later formed a suicide pact. In a somewhat confused scene with a gun, the girl died, while Laszlo was only wounded. He was arrested for homicide.

The police astonishingly agreed to hold a Spiritualist séance at their headquarters with Laszlo as medium, during the course of which Laszlo claimed that he was the victim of an evil entity from the thirteenth century who desired to use psychic force to destroy victims. Laszlo was released, but he later claimed the séance to be a fake.

He then became a journalist on a Budapest newspaper, publishing articles about occultism and Spiritualism. Through them Laszlo was introduced to William Torday, president of the Hungarian Metapsychical Society. Torday and his colleagues believed that Laszlo had brilliant occult talents and persuaded him to sign an exclusive contract with them for séances. Laszlo duly produced fake spirit heads and hands and built up a reputation as a great medium.

After reading a classic work on materialization by famed psychic researcher Baron Schrenck-Notzing, Laszlo deliberately contrived to fake such effects in order to deceive the baron. The materials used by Laszlo for fake ectoplasm were gauze and cottonwool soaked in goose fat. These props were hidden in the furniture in the séance room, and when this became impossible through strict controls, Laszlo was impudently adroit in slipping his props into the pockets of his investigators when he was searched, then picking their pockets during the séance! It is not known whether Schrenck-Notzing was actually deceived, but many prominent psychic researchers were.

Laszlo was exposed in his fraud by Eugene Schenck, a music-hall hypnotist and stage clairvoyant. Anticipating publicity for his tricks, Laszlo himself admitted fraud at a public lecture and even reveled in them. In the aftermath of the scandal, Torday was discredited as a psychic researcher, and 67 of the 70 members of the Hungarian Metapsychical Society resigned. According to Laszlo, he was then visited by two young men who were members of a Spiritualist circle. They said they had received a spirit message that Laszlo should retract his confession of fraud or be killed. Laszlo accordingly drew up a public statement that his materialization phenomena were genuine, and he undertook not to combat Spiritualism in any way. This melodramatic episode may also be of Laszlo's invention. The story of Laszlo can be compared with that of the famous British fake medium William Roy, who was equally shameless.

Laszlo resumed his everyday work as an electrician, and in due course became a criminal again. Ten years later he was arrested for burglary and housebreaking. Before the hearing could be completed, he died of a lung hemorrhage in 1936.

Sources:

Tabori, Cornelius. My Occult Diary. London, 1951.

Tabori, Paul. Companions of the Unseen. London, 1968.