Halloween with Houdini

Categories: Did You Know|Published On: October 25, 2002|Views: 4|

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As if Halloween didn’t already have enough of a ghostly, eerie aura about
it, did you know that this Halloween will mark 76 years since the death of the
great Houdini? And 76 years later, Houdini is still a source of fascination for
magicians, fans and collectors alike. In fact, Houdini collectibles come in
practically every imaginable form. Thanks to a new set of stamps issued by the
United States Post Office this past summer (right), for example, even the art of
letter writing has taken on magical proportions.

Born Ehrich Weisz in
Budapest, Hungary, the boy who would grow up to be the world’s most famous
magician moved to America at age four. And it wasn’t long before he was bitten
by the performance bug. Despite working several odd jobs in his youth to help
support his family, he always managed to find time to perform. In fact, his
first appearance in front of an audience took place when he was a mere nine
years old. He was billed as “Ehrich, The Prince of the Air.” At age 14, he
adopted the stage name Harry Houdini – in honor of Jean-Robert Houdin, a French
magician he idolized.

As Houdini grew, so did the outlandish nature of
his tricks. Whether he was performing elaborate jailbreaks in the English
vaudeville circuit, plunging headlong into the San Francisco Bay with handcuffs
on his wrists and a 75-pound ball and chain on his ankles, folding himself into
a water-filled metal milk can or swallowing needles only to pull them back out
of his mouth completely threaded, by the early 1900s, Houdini had made quite a
name for himself.

He went on to walk through brick walls, make elephants
disappear, and escape from what was perhaps the most famous of all his
contraptions: a self-made Chinese Water Torture Cell.

Of course, many
(even logical, scientific types like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) truly believed that
Houdini’s feats could be accomplished only with the help of the supernatural.
Houdini, however, wanted no part of that. In the latter half of his life, he
made a point out of debunking the claims fortune tellers and other spiritualists
made that they could communicate with the dead – he even made the fateful
proclamation that if the living could really see and speak with the dead, then
he would be sure to make contact once he himself had died. Thus, for ten years
after his death, Houdini’s wife Bess conducted a séance every Halloween.
After ten years with no contact from her late husband, she declared that if
Houdini couldn’t escape from the other side, no one would be able to. Thus, his
crusade for discrediting supernaturalists and psychics had clearly been valid.

Today, however, these séances are still held every Halloween.
Though they are held by fans all over the world, the most famous is organized by
Houdini expert Sidney Radner – and takes place in a different, but relevant,
spot every year.


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