The Greatest Escape Artist – Harry Houdini

It’s October, kiddies and we all know what that means: Halloween! Ghost, Goblins and spooky stories are the theme for the month of October. One of the most famous Halloween stories is the tale of Harry Houdini and the yearly séance on October 31st to call his spirit over from the Other Side. Not exactly sure who Harry Houdini was and what his claim to fame was? Gather ‘round and let me tell you a story of magic and mystery.

Harry Houdini was born on March 12, 1874 in Budpest, Hungary, with the name of Ehrich Weisz. He was one of six children and the son of Rabbi Mayer Weisz and his second wife, Cecilia Steiner. In 1876, Ehrich’s father immigrated to the United States. He changed his last name to Weiss and found work as a rabbi. Soon after, the rest of his family, including Ehrich, followed him to the United States.  The family moved to Milwaukee when Ehrich was eight years old.

At age 13, Ehrich and his brother Theo began to pursue an interest in magic. As a stage name, Ehrich Weiss became Harry Houdini by adding an ‘I’ to the last name of his idol, French magician Robert Houdin. At 17, Ehrich, now known as Harry Houdini, left his family to pursue his magic career. By the age of twenty, Harry had been performing small acts throughout New York. He soon married Wilhelmina Beatrice Rahner in 1894.

After marrying Bess, Harry joined a circus where he began to develop and perfect his escape tricks. Bess and Harry worked as The Houdinis for several years before Houdini hit it big as The Handcuff King. But he and Bess continued to occasionally perform their signature trick, Metamorphosis, throughout his career. In this trick, Houdini’s hands would be fastened behind his back as he was placed inside a large bag which was knotted closed. He was then placed inside a large box, which was locked and strapped closed. The box is then placed inside a cabinet. Mrs. Houdini would then draw the curtain closed and clap three times. At the third clap, Houdini himself would draw open the curtain and Mrs. Houdini would be gone. When the box is opened, Mrs. Houdini is found inside the bag with the knots and seals unbroken and her hands secured in exactly the same way as her husband’s. No – the secret of the trick will NOT be given up here! Bess also saw after their menagerie of pets, collected dolls, and made the costumes for Houdini's full evening roadshow. The Houdinis remained childless throughout their marriage. Bess's niece, Marie Blood, said Bess suffered from a medical condition that prevented her from having children.

Through the years, Houdini gained fame after repeatedly escaping from police handcuffs and jails. Harry was even given certificates from various wardens for escaping from their prisons. By 1896 Harry had mastered the straightjacket escape. Soon he was performing his escape while hanging upside down from cranes or high buildings in big cities. After making his name in America, Harry toured Europe, where he expanded his repertoire by escaping from coffins. Eventually, Harry was able to accomplish his dream of having a full show dedicated to his magic.

In the 1920s, Harry became interested in the occult, specifically in debunking mediums and psychics. His training in magic helped him expose frauds that scientists and academics could not. He chronicled his time investigating the occult in his book, A Magician Among the Spirits.

On the afternoon of October 22, 1926, two McGill University students, in Montreal, Canada, visited Houdini’s dressing room. According to reports, Houdini was looking through his mail, when one of the students, J. Gordon Whitehead, asked Harry if he could indeed withstand any blow to the abdomen, as the magician had previously proclaimed. Harry responded that he could, if given time to brace himself, at which point Whitehead hit Houdini four times in the abdomen, under the impression that Houdini had indeed braced himself for the blows. Throughout the evening, Houdini performed in great pain. He was unable to sleep and remained in constant pain for the next two days, though he did not seek medical help. When he finally saw a doctor, Harry was found to have a fever of 102 degrees and acute appendicitis. He was advised to go to the hospital for immediate surgery. However, Harry decided to complete his show as planned that night. By the time Harry arrived on stage, his fever had risen to 104 degrees. He was tired and in pain and his assistants often had to step in and offer help. Audience members reported that Harry missed his cues and seemed in a hurry. By the middle of the third act, Houdini asked his assistant to lower the curtain as he could not go on. When the curtain closed, Harry collapsed where he was standing and had to be carried back to his dressing room. He continued to refuse medical care until the next morning when Bess insisted he go to the hospital. Harry relented and had his appendix removed, however it had already ruptured and doctors did not have much hope for his survival. On October 31, 1926 surrounded by his wife and brother, Harry Houdini died.  

If anyone could return from The Other Side, it certainly would have been Houdini. Houdini desperately wanted to believe that Spiritualism exists, that people can communicate with the spirits. The loss of his mother was devastating to him, and he sought comfort in the advice of the spirit mediums of the day. Unfortunately, many of those mediums were pure frauds, using magic tricks to fool the public into thinking the spirits were speaking through them. Houdini recognized tricks when he saw them, and devoted half of his stage act to duplicating the methods used by the mediums, exposing the frauds to the public. This pitted the famous magician against the popular mediums of the day, including Margery Condon. The exposure of Margery's methods became a large part of Houdini's show, right up until the end of his life.

But just because Houdini was skeptical did not mean that he was a complete disbeliever. Despite his skepticism, Houdini and Bess promised each other that whoever died first would try to contact the other "from the other side". After Houdini died, Bess began the tradition of holding a séance on the death anniversary to see whether Houdini could really escape from death.

Harry and Bess had devised a secret message, a code phrase that would be used. The phrase was one they had used years before in their vaudeville mindreading act. In early 1929, a very ill Bess was approached by "Rev." Arthur Ford, a young and eager medium. Within weeks, Ford triumphantly announced that he had successfully delivered the correct message to Houdini's widow. It did not take long for the press to discover that Ford's claim was a hoax; and that Bess had inadvertently revealed the message to several reporters a full year before. The message was, "Rosabelle- answer- tell-pray, answer- look- tell- answer, answer- tell". Bess' wedding band bore the inscription "Rosabelle", the name of the song she sang in her act when they first met. The other words correspond to a secret spelling code used to pass information between a magician and his assistant during a mindreading act. Each word or word pair equals a letter. The word "answer" stood for the letter "B", for example."Answer, answer" stood for the letter "V". Thus, the Houdinis' secret phrase spelled out the word "BELIEVE".

In 1937, the Final Séance was held on the roof of the Knickerbocker Hotel in Los Angeles. Ten years was enough, and Bess admitted that she had never received the message from Houdini. But that was not the actual final séance. The magic fraternity quickly took on the task of conducting the annual séances, with numerous notable magicians heading the table, including Walter Gibson, Houdini's ghostwriter. Despite all of the effort, attention and interest, Houdini has apparently not spoken to anyone since he breathed his last earthly words to his brother on the night he died 1926.

So now October 31st is rapidly approaching, once again. And once again, just like every year after his death, Harry Houdini’s greatest escape is being discussed. Who will be the one to hear from Harry from the Other Side? Dare to give it a try?