![]() The most serious damage for Houdini fans was no doubt what happened to the bust atop his grave: in 1975 it was smashed to bits with a sledge-hammer. “The type of individual who goes out to cemeteries this time of year generally doesn’t have good intentions,” the owner told a New York Times‘ reporter in 1995. In 1994, the owner of the cemetery, weary of the annual vandalism, decided to shut its gates on Halloween. Graves were toppled and stone benches smashed. For 68 years, both magicians and the non-magical journeyed to his grave at New York City’s Machpelah Cemetery for a ceremony whose climax involved breaking a wooden wand and chanting: “The curtain has at last been rung down.” Halloween Houdini events have been held in other places. Dietrich brought the tradition to the Houdini museum. Gibson asked Dorothy Dietrich, a famous escapist and the first woman ever to catch a bullet in her teeth, to take over the séances after he died. Gibson held the séance at the Magic Towne House, a well-known New York City magic spot. Gibson, creator of the fictional character, “The Shadow”, which he had written more than 300 books about, to carry on the séance tradition. Afterward it was revealed that she had told the secret code to a reporter years earlier: Rosabelle-answer-tell-pray, answer-look-tell-answer, answer-tell.īess asked Walter B. “Ten years is long enough to wait for any man,” she later said. Most importantly, the agreed upon code was never whispered in Bess’s ear. ![]() Could it be the great Houdini, some surely thought.īut the handcuffs left for Houdini to unlock remained locked, the trumpet there for him to blow was never blown and a bell set up for him to ring was never rung. The celebrity guests rose to leave when all the sudden a crack of thunder split the air and a torrent of rain fell from the heavens. A decade after his death the séance was held on the roof of Hollywood’s Knickerbocker Hotel. Bess spent nine Halloweens waiting for Houdini, a ritual that grew increasingly flamboyant. Before Houdini died the couple had agreed upon a code he would whisper in her ear should he ever return to her after death. The séance tradition was begun by Houdini’s widow, Bess. I am certain, however, of at least four very hard and severe body blows, because at the end of the second or third blow I verbally protested against this sudden onslaught.” “I do not remember exactly how many blows were struck. “These blows fell on that part of the stomach to the right of the navel,” said another student who had witnessed the event. But when a McGill University student named Joselyn Gordon Whitehead punched him in the gut while supine on a couch posing for a sketch, Houdini doubled up in pain and died several days later, on October 31, 1926. The Hungarian-American magician slipped out of straitjackets while suspended upside down 30 stories above the street, made elephants disappear and was buried alive, twice once in a pit in Santa Ana, California, in 1917 and nine years later in a sealed coffin at the bottom of the swimming pool at New York’s Hotel Shelton. ![]() No kooks please, this is a serious Halloween test and tribute.” ![]() “Email us with any results and lack of results. “We are asking everyone to attempt to contact Harry Houdini sometime during Halloween for the 24 hours of October 31st,” reads a banner on the website of the Harry Houdini Museum, which is located in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Both magicians and the non-magical have patiently awaited Harry Houdini to return from the grave every Halloween since his death on October 31, 1926. ![]()
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