This Halloween marks the 100th anniversary of Harry Houdini's death, and the annual séance ritual held by his admirers to unlock one final mystery continues. The tradition, which began with his widow Bess, has persisted for a century, with this year's observance carrying particular weight given the centenary.
The Final Days of the Escape Artist
On the snowy Sunday afternoon of October 31, 1926, a small, dark-haired man lay dying of blood poisoning in Room 401 of the redbrick Grace Hospital in Detroit, Michigan. The stricken patient had been born 52 years earlier, in Budapest, where he had grown up with the name Erik Weisz. But the world knew him better as the legendary escape artist Harry Houdini.
Ten days earlier, Houdini had given a performance in Montreal, where he was already complaining of stomach pain. Just before the show, a young man named Jocelyn Whitehead, a local theology student and keen amateur boxer, had come backstage to pay his respects. After enquiring if it was really true that Houdini could withstand any blow to his body, Whitehead had suddenly struck him around the midriff four or five times, rupturing his appendix in the process. His host had winced at the assault, but still politely signed an autograph for his visitor before showing him to the door with a friendly handshake.
After performing for two more nights in Montreal, Houdini and his entourage then took the train to Detroit, where he was booked for a week's engagement. He began to feel unwell during the 600-mile journey, but insisted on performing as scheduled at the town's Garrick Theatre, where the local paper thought him "a little hoarse and more than a little tired".
A Promise to Contact the Afterlife
Houdini was eventually taken to Grace Hospital early on the Monday morning of October 25. He lingered for six more days, rousing himself to fire off a series of encouraging cables to friends and admirers around the world, including one that admitted "I am not feeling at my best just now", but insisting, "I will get over this waviness in no time".
As Houdini's condition worsened, however, he summoned his family to his bedside. Although best known for his escapes from physical restraints, in recent years he had grown increasingly interested in the paranormal. Could a departed spirit reappear to communicate with the living? Just before the end came, Houdini gave his wife Bess detailed instructions on how to attempt to contact him in the afterlife. His final words, mumbled just before 1pm that Halloween afternoon, were: "I guess I'm all through fighting."
Bess duly held a series of public séances to reach her late husband, but finally abandoned the effort after yet another fruitless sitting on October 31, 1936. "Ten years is long enough to wait for any man," she remarked.
From Handcuff King to Spiritualist Skeptic
Houdini may not have escaped the grave, but over the years he did so just about everywhere else. Legend insists that he opened his first lock at the age of six, while in pursuit of a piece of pie locked in his mother's pantry in the home where the Weisz family settled in Appleton, Wisconsin.
As a teenager, Houdini went on to give a series of impromptu performances around town in which he demonstrated his ability to bend over backwards and pick up a pin from the floor with his teeth. Another of his youthful party tricks was to jump onto a narrow, chest-high mantlepiece from a standing start, all the while balancing a heavy book on his head for good measure.
One morning in March 1897, Houdini presented himself at a police station in suburban Boston and challenged the amused desk-sergeant to slip his best pair of handcuffs on him. The reports of what happened next vary, but all parties agree that Houdini retired to a corner and returned between one and five minutes later, a free man. Having had the foresight to invite the press, he could not have asked for better coverage than the headline in the following morning's Boston Advertiser, "The King of Handcuffs", it called him.
London Adventures and the Séance Legacy
Houdini made frequent appearances in the UK over the years, and based himself in London during an extended European tour from 1900-1904. At one stage, he sold out the city's 800-seat Alhambra Theatre for five straight weeks. Customers passed under a gaslit marquee which included the testimonial of a Sergeant Bush, Chief Gaoler of Bow Street, who called it: "A very Smart Show, and certainly requires a Bit of Doing."
By that stage, Houdini was able to command a fee of £800 a week for a British theatre residency, roughly the equivalent of £75,000 in today's money, and was widely regarded as the most famous entertainer in the world. In the years around 1918-26, Houdini increasingly turned his attention to the burgeoning Spiritualist movement. The terrible toll of the First World War led bereaved families on both sides of the Atlantic to seek to contact their lost loved ones with the help of a paid medium.
In time, Houdini was to clash with Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories, and a convert to the Spiritualist cause. It was a strange role reversal that the creator of the world's most famously rational detective was himself a believer in fairies and psychic phenomena, while Houdini, the professional magician, perhaps knew too much about the art of illusion to take it seriously.
In the end Bess may have given up the struggle, but the annual Halloween-night Houdini séance ritual still continues today. It may be that the man himself is spinning in his grave at being exploited in this way. Or, just possibly, the eternal showman in him is only too pleased to be remembered fully 100 years after he left the mortal stage.
