Arthur Ford was born in Titusville, Florida and grew up in Fort Pierce, Florida. As a youth he followed a religious pilgrimage that took him to Transylvania College, a Disciples of Christ school in Lexington, Kentucky. Ordained as a

Following her husband's death in 1926, Bess Houdini began attending seances conducted by Ford. Author Andrew Lycett suggests that Arthur Conan Doyle encouraged a "vulnerable"

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After the war he researched purported psychic phenomena and became a Spiritualist around 1921. Around 1921, Ford was a traveling Spiritualist trance medium who professed to be controlled by a spirit guide he referred to as "Fletcher." He eventually settled in New

After Ford's death in 1971, biographer Allen Spraggett and associate Rev. William V. Rauscher found what they believed to be evidence that the Houdini séance had been faked. They also found Ford's files: a collection of obituaries, newspaper clippings and other