‘Piercing the veil’…….
The great magician Harry Houdini was a fascinating magician and
illusionist. He captivated
audiences not only in the U.S. but abroad. His untimely death on
Halloween in 1926 resulted
from an unusual incident days before while performing. For many
years Houdini had been
challenged by his family and close followers to ‘bridge the gap’
after death; to make contact
from the great beyond. For years after his death, yearly
se’ances were held in hopes of
making contact with Harry, and some with positive results were
later debunked as just
fakes. Death was finally the ‘realm’ that Houdini could not
escape. His story is a great one
and is briefed here with information from wikipedia. Many books
have been written about
the man over the decades, and probably more will be forthcoming.
Harry Houdini died of peritonitis, secondary to
a ruptured appendix at
1:26 p.m. on October 31, 1926 in Room 401 at Detroit's Grace Hospital,
aged 52. In his final days, he optimistically held to a strong belief that he
would recover, but his last words before dying were reportedly, "I'm tired
of fighting. Eyewitnesses to an incident at Houdini's dressing room in the
Princess Theatre in Montreal gave rise to speculation
that Houdini's death was caused by a McGill University student,
J. Gordon Whitehead, who delivered a surprise attack of multiple blows to
Houdini's abdomen.
Before Houdini died, he and his wife agreed that if Houdini
found it possible to communicate after death, he would communicate the message
"Rosabelle believe", a secret code which they agreed to use.
Rosabelle was their favorite song. Bess held yearly séances on Halloween for ten years after Houdini's death. She
did claim to have contact through Arthur Ford in 1929
when Ford conveyed the secret code, but Bess later said the incident had been
faked. The code seems to have been such that it could be broken by Ford or his
associates using existing clues. Evidence
to this effect was discovered by Ford's biographer after he died in 1971. In 1936, after a last unsuccessful séance
on the roof of the Knickerbocker
Hotel, she put out the candle that she had kept burning beside a
photograph of Houdini since his death. In 1943, Bess said that "ten years
is long enough to wait for any man."
The tradition of holding a séance for Houdini continues, held by
magicians throughout the world. The Official Houdini Séance was organized in
the 1940s by Sidney Hollis Radner, a Houdini aficionado from
Holyoke, Massachusetts.Yearly Houdini séances are also conducted in Chicago at
the Excalibur nightclub
by "necromancer" Neil
Tobin on
behalf of the Chicago Assembly of the Society of American Magicians; and at
the Houdini Museum in Scranton by magician Dorothy
Dietrich, who previously held them at New York's Magic
Towne House with
such magical notables as Houdini biographers Walter B.
Gibson and Milbourne Christopher.
Gibson was asked by Bess Houdini to carry on the original seance tradition.
After doing them for many years at New York's Magic Towne House, before he
died, Walter passed on the tradition of conducting of the Original Seances to
Dorothy Dietrich.
Houdini's funeral was held on November 4, 1926,
in New York City, with more than 2,000 mourners in attendance. He was interred in the Machpelah Cemetery in Glendale, Queens, with the
crest of the Society of American
Magicians inscribed on his grave site. A statuary bust was added to the exedra in 1927, a rarity, because
graven images are forbidden in Jewish cemeteries. In 1975, the bust was
destroyed by vandals. Temporary busts were placed at the grave until 2011 when
a group who came to be called The Houdini
Commandos from the Houdini Museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania placed a
permanent bust with the permission of Houdini's family and of the cemetery.
And the stones on the grave marker? It’s really
a Jewish custom but is now practiced by
many of all faiths..the simple act has come to
be a great sign of respect for our deceased
loved ones. It is a ‘sign’ to those stopping by
that the grave has recently been visited and that
the deceased has not been forgotten…so next
time you visit… take a small stone or two
with you!
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