- If there's a way to cheat death, Harry Houdini vowed
he'd send a message from the Great Beyond. This Halloween, loyal followers
of the famed magician will try once again to summon his spirit.
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- Don't be confused by cheap imitators, folks. If the world-famous
Houdini is going to grace us with his ghostly presence, it's going to be
at the Official Houdini Séance. It's even trademarked.
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- "I think the chances to make a connection this time
are excellent. We have friends and family of Houdini who will join the
séance and they will create the necessary spiritual vibrations,"
says Rev. Raymond Fraser, 56, of Canton, Mich.
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- "I have spoken to many spirits. I have a 70 percent
success rate."
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- Training at the Spiritualist Correspondence School
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- Houdini was a famous debunker of table-levitating spiritualists
and often exposed them as flimflam artists who used simple parlor tricks
to exploit the gullible.
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- Fraser, who was ordained through a correspondence course
by the National Association of Spiritual Churches, says Houdini's low opinion
of clairvoyants like himself doesn't matter.
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- "Folks like that are only non-believers when they
are alive," he says. "When they are dead they know that we are
all spirits who can exist outside the body."
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- Through séance, Fraser says he's helped dozens
of people make contact with dead relatives. The communication can occur
in many ways, he says. Sometimes it's a materialization " a milky
white haze of the departed spirit hovers over the room. Sometimes it's
a disembodied voice. Sometimes the spirit will speak through the body of
a séance participant.
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- "In 1978, I was a salesman for IBM," Fraser
says. "I went to a séance, a frail old woman went into a trance,
and the spirit of a man spoke through her body. That's when I knew there
was something here."
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- Yet Fraser admits there are fakes in his field. Beware
those who claim they've spoken to famous people. "You hear all these
claims that someone made contact with the spirit of Abraham Lincoln,"
he says. "Those people are full of crap."
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- Secret Code from the Netherworld
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- Leave it to the great showman Houdini to die on Halloween.
This year marks the 75th anniversary of his passing. Perhaps now "
with psychics preparing a séance in Detroit " the great escape
artist will speak, as he promised his wife he would.
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- Houdini became obsessed with the occult after his mother
died. He consulted with psychics to contact her, a common practice in his
day, and found they were using the same sleight-of-hand and stage magic
that he was using.
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- The magician made headlines going from town to town,
daring psychics to prove their powers onstage. In 1922, Houdini even joined
a panel, sponsored by Scientific American, that offered a $2,500 cash
prize to any medium able to produce a true physical manifestation. Several
mediums came forward, but none could pass the panel's test.
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- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the famous Sherlock
Holmes character, was a great admirer of Houdini. But Doyle was a true
believer in the occult, and the two often clashed on the subject. "My
opinion of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is that he is a menace to mankind,"
Houdini once wrote.
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- But as an escape artist, Houdini couldn't resist the
challenge of coming back from the dead. This is a man who risked being
chained to a wooden crate and dumped in New York's East River to thrill
audiences.
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- In his most famous stunt, the water torture cell, he'd
hang by his ankles, locked in chains, as he was lowered headfirst into
a glass tank. As the clock ticked, the audience could see Houdini's eyes
bulge as he seemed to run out of breath. He was, at the time of his death,
one of the most famous performers in the world.
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- In anticipation of his own death, he and his wife Bess
even worked out a special code so that she wouldn't be fooled by a fraud.
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- 10 Years Is Enough to Wait for Any Man,
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- Bess honored his request. For 10 years, she held séances,
the last one in 1936, broadcast over radio from London. She finally stopped,
she told friends, because "10 years is enough to wait for any man."
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-
- A protégé of Houdini's brother " a
lesser-known escape artist known as "Hardeen" " picked up
the tradition. Sidney Radner, now 82, of Holyoke, Mass., has been holding
the séances since 1940.
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- Many of Houdini's greatest magic props sat in Radner's
garage for more than 40 years. "Hardeen gave me some," Radner
says. "But I'm a fan. I bought some, too."
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- Radner wouldn't describe himself as a believer. "We're
open minded. We're honoring a tradition," he says. "But some
spooky things have happened at these things.
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- At a séance in Niagara Falls in the 1970s, when
a medium called on Houdini to make his presence known, there was suddenly
a crashing sound, Radner recalls.
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- Heads turned to a bookshelf. A flowerpot and a book on
Houdini's life had suddenly fallen to the ground. "It was spooky,"
Radner says. "The book fell open to a page where Houdini asks, 'Do
the dead return?"
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- But was the dead magician sending that long-awaited signal?
Radner says he wasn't convinced.
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- The Ghost Who Couldn,t Spell
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- A sure hoax came at New York séance one Halloween
in the 1980s, conducted in Houdini's Manhattan residence on 113th St.,
when a medium began channeling the spirit of the great escape artist.
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- Unfortunately, the ghost of Houdini, couldn't spell his
own brother's name. "You'd expect a little more from the world's most
famous magician," Radner said.
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- There's a better test, Radner says. This year, he's bringing
turn-of-the-century handcuffs that Houdini used in his act. "If they
suddenly open, we'll know something supernatural is happening," he
says.
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- But the bigger test, Radner says, might be getting the
cuffs to Detroit. "With all the security concerns," he says,
"who knows if they'll let me take them on the airplane. Just getting
them there might require a Houdini act." ___
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- Buck Wolf is entertainment producer at ABCNEWS.com. The
Wolf Files is published Tuesdays and Thursdays. If you want to receive
weekly notice when a new column is published, join the e-mail list.
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