Bess continued to offer $10,000 to anyone who could prove genuine communication with the dead. Efforts from both parties were to continue for ten years after death. Doyle was an ardent believer in spiritualism, who also believed Houdini possessed supernatural powers, whether the magician realized it or not.ĭespite all of his doubts, Houdini held out hope that he himself, being the greatest escape artist of all time, might some day be able to escape the afterlife and make contact with the living.īefore his death, Houdini and Bess made an agreement that whoever died first would try to make contact with whomever remained alive using agreed upon code words. Houdini’s zealous refutation of spiritualism caused a rift with his friend Arthur Conan Doyle. He also offered a $10,000 reward to anyone who could prove genuine contact with the dead. In 1924, Houdini published A Magician Among The Spirits, a detailed debunking of spiritualism. Houdini picture with Bess (right) and his mother (left) whom he continually tried to contact after her death. Over the course of his life, Houdini established code words with fourteen friends so that he would know if they tried to make contact with him from the afterlife. “Even after our numerous disappointments, whenever we visited a new medium, Houdini, with his eyes closed, would join the opening hymn, and then sit with a rapt, hungry look on his face that would make my heart ache,” said his wife Bess. Houdini claims to have attended over a hundred séances during a 1919 trip through Europe, and to his own disappointment, found fault in all of them. When his mother died in 1913, Houdini tried to communicate with her as well. Harry Houdini in 1899 (The Library of Congress).īeing in on the deception did not stamp out Houdini’s hope that there remained genuine mediums who could communicate with the dead. “At the time I appreciated the fact that I surprised my clients, but while aware of the fact that I was deceiving them I did not see or understand the seriousness of trifling with such sacred sentimentality and the baneful result which inevitably followed. Quick to learn and eager to earn money for his family, within five years of his father’s death Houdini himself became a “mystical entertainer” fabricating encounters with the dead for paying customers. Houdini recognized the encounter as a ruse when the medium declared Rabbi Weisz was “very happy,” a statement that didn’t match up with the many debts he knew his father had left his family. When his father died, 18-year-old Houdini sold his watch to pay a medium to make contact. The son of a rabbi, Houdini grew up with deep-seated ideas about the separation of the soul from the physical body. A poster for one of Houdini’s shows (The Library of Congress). However, Houdini’s skepticism also carried with it a deep desire that one day someone would prove him wrong. Houdini, aside from being the most famous magician and escape artist in United States history, also crusaded against false mystics and seers who fleeced mourners desperate to contact dead loved ones. This Halloween, magicians, spiritualists, and fans will attempt to contact Harry Houdini from beyond the grave, a ninety-year-old tradition born out of a widow’s promise to her dead husband at a time when spiritualism enjoyed rampant popularity and even scientific support. Escape from Afterlife: A History of the Harry Houdini Halloween Séance The nonfiction piece, originally published in Dirge in 2016, is below. You can listen to my short story based on this annual seance below. Each year, spiritualists attempt to make contact with the dead escape artist, an annual tradition I’ve written about in both fiction and nonfiction forms. Halloween marks the anniversary of the death of Harry Houdini.
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