- The Houdini Séance
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- Every Halloween since 1927, a séance has been
held to see if legendary magician Harry Houdini would try to contact the
living from the world beyond death. This year, you can participate - via
the Internet!
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- It was the night of October 31, 1936. Halloween night.
The men and women sat at the round table with joined hands. They awaited
the message - the message they had hoped for every Halloween night for
the past 10 years. But the message did not come.
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- Finally, one woman rose from the table and announced
to the others - and to a listening radio audience - "Houdini did not
come through," she said. "My last hope is gone. I do not believe
that Houdini can come back to me, or to anyone...The Houdini Shrine has
burned for ten years. I now, reverently... turn out the light. It is finished.
Good night, Harry!"
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- The woman was Bess Houdini, wife of the famed magician
and escape artist. And this was the last séance she would participate
in to try to contact her dead husband. But the séances themselves
did not stop. Every October 31, from 1927 up to the present day, a séance
has been conducted with hopes of contacting the spirit of Harry Houdini.
So far, the great Houdini has not made his presence known.
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- The Houdini séance has been a Halloween tradition
since the first anniversary of his death. The magician died at the age
of 52 on October 31, 1926 from peritonitis - an internal infection - as
the result of a ruptured appendix.
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- Shortly before his death, Houdini made a pact with Bess
that if he could, he would return and make contact with her from the other
side. They devised a coded message that only he and Bess knew; this would
prove that it really was Houdini breaking through from the afterlife. But
after 10 séances in 10 years, Bess had not received her beloved
husband's personal message.
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- Oddly enough, Harry Houdini did not necessarily believe
that spirits of the dead could be contacted. Aside from his fame as a stage
magician and astonishing escape artist, Houdini was just as well known
- especially in the later part of his career - as a debunker of spirit
mediums and phony séances. He felt, however, that if it were possible
for anyone to come back, he would find a way to do it.
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- In the 1920s, spiritualism was at a new height in the
US and Britain. There was a strong, popular belief in the notion that it
was possible to communicate with the dead through séances and channeling
psychics knows as mediums. The movement had begun in the mid-1800s, grew
in popularity over 20 years, then slowly fizzled out toward the turn of
the century as more and more mediums were exposed as frauds. But after
World War I, there was a resurgence in the spiritualist movement as many
families longed to contact those who had perished in battle.
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- And the mediums were right there to fill the need for
a public so willing to believe. The best mediums were masterful tricksters
and showpeople, and their séances were thrilling multimedia performances
of spirit channeling, levitating tables, floating instruments that played
themselves, written messages from the dead and spontaneous manifestations
of ectoplasm. The performances were ingenious and succeeded in fooling
many otherwise intelligent people. Houdini, being a magician and a rather
ingenious fellow himself, knew that these séances were just clever
hoaxes.
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- Houdini vs. The Mediums
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- Early in his career, however, Houdini wasn't above staging
some phony séances of his own. According to Houdini: A Magician
Among the Spirits, "Houdini hosted special Sunday night performances
for the California Concert Company, a Midwestern medicine show, in 1898.
During séances, Houdini floated tables and played musical instruments
while tied to a chair. After the company disbanded, he and his wife Bess
continued to give séances for local union halls and dime museums
until they signed with the Welsh Brothers Circus later that same year.
In 1899, Houdini's career skyrocketed and he left the medium business behind."
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- In the 1920s, Houdini became an active crusader against
the spirit mediums he felt were exploiting gullible people who grieved
for lost loved ones. As he traveled the country performing his act, he
would seek out the local mediums and expose their deceptions. Because he
was so well known, Houdini often attended these séances in disguise.
In 1922, Scientific American magazine asked him to join a "psychic
committee" to help investigate the claims of mediums. The magazine
offered a cash prize of $2,500 to any medium who could produce a supernatural
manifestation to the satisfaction of the committee. No one ever won the
prize.
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- Houdini's Ghost
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- Does Houdini haunt Hollywood? Some visitors to the spot
where Harry Houdini's home once stood say the area might be haunted by
the famed magician. Even though his mansion on Laurel Canyon was destroyed
by fire in 1959, some people claim to have seen Houdini's apparition in
a grotto or on the charred remains of the staircase.
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- One of the most famous mediums to take on the challenge
was a beautiful young woman named Mina Crandon, who gained renown as "Margery,
the Boston Medium." But she too failed under the sharp eye of Houdini,
who caught her levitating the table with her head and ringing a bell with
her foot. Houdini later offered Crandon $5,000 if she could demonstrate
any supernatural phenomena on stage in her home town of Boston. She declined
the invitation.
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- Naturally, Houdini was not popular among mediums around
the country, as he was a threat to their livelihood. His crusading also
made him an adversary of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, esteemed author of the
Sherlock Holmes novels, who was a staunch believer and advocate of spiritualism,
and a defender of Mina Crandon. After Houdini and the Scientific American
committee denounced Crandon, Doyle wrote an article for the Boston Herald
criticizing the committee. Houdini, in turn, threatened to sue Doyle for
his "harsh remarks."
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- Annual Séance
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- Since the Halloween night when Bess Houdini turned off
the light at her husband's portrait, the séances to contact the
dead magician have continued in many parts of the country, both officially
and unofficially. It may be impossible to tell whether or not Houdini is
really being channeled at any of these annual séances because the
secret coded message Houdini devised with his wife has since been revealed
- by Bess herself.
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- "The message was based on both sentimentality and
an old vaudeville mind-reading routine," according to Houdini - magictricks.com.
"The message was, 'Rosabelle- answer- tell- pray, answer- look- tell-
answer, answer- tell.' Bess's 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 mentalism 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'."
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- In 1929, a young medium named Arthur Ford claimed he
had successfully received the secret message from Harry Houdini. Upon investigation,
however, it was discovered that Ford's claim was a hoax. Bess, it seems,
had inadvertently revealed the message to reporters more than a year earlier.
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- Even though Bess gave up the séances herself,
she asked magician Walter B. Gibson to carry on the October 31 tradition.
For many years, Gibson, along with several other magicians, held the séances
at the Magic Towne House in New York City. Countless other "unofficial"
Houdini séances have been held by local psychics across the country
throughout the years - all in good fun, but with no definitive proof of
so much as a "hello" from Harry Houdini.
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- Today, the official Houdini Séance is held at
The Houdini Museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania. And true to the times, it
is also being conducted on the Internet. Here's how it will work, according
to the museum:
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- The séances will be held on the Internet for 24
hours on Halloween on the anniversary of [Houdini's] death. Scranton's
Houdini Museum is asking everyone on the web to attempt to contact Houdini
sometime during those 24 hours. They are requesting e-mail with any results
and lack of results. Replies will be followed up and verified. This is
to be a serious test and tribute, and no pranks, jokesters, etc., should
participate, the e-mail address being; magicusa@microserve.net
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- The museum is asking participants to contribute just
$1 to the museum. As a token of appreciation, those who donate the dollar
will receive an Official Houdini Séance souvenir.
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http://www.rense.com
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