I understand the OP to mean stage "magicians".
Harry Houdini was both a stage "magician" and a famous debunker of spiritualists. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a famous writer, (Sherlock Holmes, Professor Challenger etc.) and an ardent spiritualist. They were for some time, friends, although Doyle seems to have become upset about Houdini's refusal to believe after being provided with what Doyle considered proof of spiritualism. After Houdini's death Doyle wrote a book in 1930, "The Edge of the Unknown" in which he claimed to expose the fact that Houdini's escapology and magic tricks were proof that Houdini himself was using psychic powers.
The Edge of the Unknown (1930), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle