The following podcast may not be for all listeners.
Listener discretion is advised. In the shadows between reality
and illusion, where truth bends like a card in a magician's
hand, some stories defy explanation.
In this episode we venture into the dark theatres and smoke
filled parlors where magicians once commanded the thin line
between our world and something far more mysterious.
From the seance rooms of London to death defying escapes, Harry
Houdini's magic has always been more than just a sleight of hand
and clever misdirection. They say Houdini could escape
any prison, any chain, any lock ever forged by man.
His name alone conjures images of impossible escapes.
But I'm not here to simply retell the tales of his escapes.
No, we're diving deeper into the dark waters of Houdini's crusade
against fraudulent mediums and the Eering prophecy that some
say sealed his fate. On Halloween night 1926, the
world's greatest escape artist faced the one trap he couldn't
break free from death itself. Join me as I explore one of the
most persistent mysteries in the world of magic, the death of
Harry Houdini. In the shadows of the Gilded Age
in America lurked a man who made death his playmate, Harry
Houdini. Born Eric Weiss in Budapest on
March 24th, 1874, the son of a rabbi, he watched his family
immigrate from Hungary to the bitter winters of Appleton, WI.
At a young age, she started performing with circuses,
specifically as a trapeze artist.
By the time he reached in New York in 1882, the innocent
trapeze artist who once soared through circus tents had begun
performing in vaudeville shows. In 1894, he married Wilhelmina
Rauner, who later changed her name to Beatrice Houdini and
became his stage assistant. When he performed as a magician,
Houdini's reputation didn't just soar, it haunted the American
imagination like a beautiful nightmare.
On dimly lit stages across the country, he transformed
confinement into theater. Shackles snapped open at his
touch, chains slithered from his body like metal serpents, and
ropes fell away as if burned by his very skin.
But it was the confined spaces that truly revealed his
darkness. Whether locked inside a water
filled can or nailed into a wooden coffin, Houdini turned
claustrophobic terror into a form of art.
Prison cells, the ultimate symbol of human containment,
became his playground. Death seemed to beckon Houdini
with ever more seductive challenges.
In what could have been his watery tomb, he allowed himself
to be sealed inside a wooden box, a coffin for the living.
It was bound with rope that bit into the wood.
Weights were added that promised to drag him to the water's
depths, and he was lowered into the black waters of the East
River in New York, and spectators held their breath.
The river swallowed him whole, its currents whispering promises
of finality. Minutes ticked by like hours
until, like some dark phoenix rising from the depths, Houdini
burst through the surface, gasping in triumphant.
But perhaps even more chilling was his dance with madness
itself, suspended high above city streets from a building
that housed a newspaper, his body contorted in a canvas
straitjacket, the same device used to constrain society's most
troubled souls. Blood rushed to his head as he
hung upside down, the crowd below appearing as a sea of
upturned faces. In this inverted world, he would
writhe and twist, fighting against the jacket's embrace
like a man possessed, until finally, with one last violent
contortion, he would break free from the straitjacket and emerge
victorious. Each performance was a mockery
of death itself, a taunt thrown in the face of mortality.
The year 1913 shattered Houdini's world.
His mother's death from a sudden heart attack left him drowning
in grief, a chains and locks trap he couldn't escape.
Cecilia had been more than just his mother, she was his anchor.
When he achieved financial success, he bought his mother a
home in the German section of Harlem.
The news of her passing came to him during a press conference in
Denmark. He had just performed for a
large audience that included members of the Danish royal
family. Once he read the cable that was
given to him, he fainted. In the prime of his fame, when
he finally could give her everything she deserved, she was
gone. The great escape artist found
himself haunted by the one act he couldn't perform, bringing
her back in the shadows of grief.
Houdini first ventured into the realm of spirits and seances
alongside his friend Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Doyle was a British writer, physician, and the creator of
the character Sherlock Holmes. He was a man whose brilliant
mind had surrendered to supernatural beliefs.
The two prowled darkened parlors of mediums, Houdini desperate to
hear his mother's voice one final time.
The two were drawn to the friendship based on their shared
interest in spiritualism. Though Doyle believed Houdini
had magic powers, Houdini would argue it was all an illusion.
Conan Doyle became a heavy believer in the afterlife after
losing his son to the blood soaked fields of World War One.
He often donated large amounts of money to organizations that
were trying to prove that spirits were all around us,
pouring his fortune into chasing whispers from beyond the veil.
Houdini, on the other hand, had a desperate yearning to hear his
mother's voice just once more, but was skeptical.
After all, he was the master of illusions.
Houdini's intimate knowledge of deception made him see demons.
Where his friend Doyle saw angels, Houdini kept his growing
skepticism of spiritualist quiet, feigning his actual
belief that they were all frauds.
One day, Doyle's wife, Jean claimed she was a medium and
possessed to the skill of automatic writing.
Automatic writing, also known as psychography, is a technique
where human hands become mere vessels for something else.
These writers claim their consciousness slips away as
unseen forces guide their pens across paper, their fingers
dancing to an otherworldly puppet master's strings.
During this session, Gene scribbled A5 page message to
Houdini from his mother. At the top of each page, a cross
was drawn. This confirmed his belief that
it was all fraud. His mother was Jewish and would
have never drawn a cross or mentioned one in a message to
him. Their friendship ripped apart,
the ending as sharp as a knife's edge.
Each man's beliefs tore apart what their shared obsession had
built. Like a vengeful ghost himself,
Houdini haunted down mediums and spiritualists, exposing them
publicly, calling them human leeches and believing them to be
vultures. Circling the bereaved, they
found themselves stripped bare by his merciless exposes.
In 1926, Houdini took his crusade against the darkness
straight to Congress, his voice echoing through the marble halls
that had seen their share of American battles.
But this fight was very different.
He wasn't just after laws against fortune telling.
He wanted to tear down every charlatan who dare promise to
bridge the gap between the living and the dead.
The man who made his name escaping chains now sought to
shackle those who chained the grieving to false hope.
Mina Crandon, also known as Marjorie the Medium, became 1 of
Houdini's targets. Marjorie Crandon's descent into
spiritualism began like a gothic fairy tale, a Boston wife who
found herself immersed in the world of psychic phenomena after
marrying a surgeon. The transformation from
homemaker to medium wasn't sparked by any whispers from the
other sided childhood. It took a psychic's carefully
crafted suggestion about a spectral young man, her dead
brother, to ignite her supposed gift.
Visiting a psychic, she was told that a young man was trying to
contact her. The psychic also told her she
had psychic abilities. By 1923, she'd drawn the
attention of academia's elite. Harvard's Halls of Learning
became her testing ground, with professors and graduate students
gathering like modern day ghost hunters to probe her claim.
Under the guidance of American psychologists Gardner Murphy and
William McDougall, their verdict cut through her supernatural
facade. No genuine psychic power lurked
behind her performances, but Marjorie wasn't finished.
Like a moth drawn to fame's dangerous flame, she entered a
magazine's contest that would seal her fate.
The judges were a who's who of America's paranormal
investigators, from Walter Franklin Prince to Hera Ward
Carrington, Technicolor pioneer Daniel Comstock to Harvard's own
William McDougal. But among these judges was her
future nemesis, Harry Houdini, the escape artist who made a
second career of trapping fraudulent mediums in their
deceptions. The associate editor of
Scientific American magazine, J Malcolm Byrd, offered a $2500
reward to contestants who could show actual psychic ability.
Although with Houdini's skepticism, friction arose and
Byrd felt Houdini should be removed from the panel.
The panel continued on without him.
Unfortunately, they reached a deadlock.
They had thought they had witnessed some psychic ability
for Mercury, but Houdini wanted to witness a seance.
While witnessing the seance, he claimed to have seen Marjorie
making noises with her feet and lifting objects that she claimed
moved on their own. In his relentless crusade
against the fraudulent mediums of the 1920s, Houdini crafted a
wooden box he called the Margie Box.
This cruel contraption was designed for one purpose, to
trap the infamous medium Marjorie.
Like a specimen. Under the glass, her head would
protrude from 1 hole, her arms forced through the others,
leaving her body immobilized to prevent her from physically
moving objects. She claimed her dead brother
Walter's spirit was present during seances, but Houdini
didn't believe this. He'd seen too many charlatans
prey on grief, and he was determined to expose her
theatrics for what they were, a macabre puppet show orchestrated
by the living, not the dead. What happened next defied
explanation, or so it seemed. During the seance, the boxes top
tore away as if an invisible forest had ripped it off.
Marjorie, her facing mask of otherworldly serenity, credited
her phantom brother Walter with the violent display.
The following night the skeptics regrouped.
Their determination hardened once again.
Marjorie submitted to her wooden box, hands thrust through the
holes like a prisoner at the stocks as she slipped into her
trance. The challenge was set.
Ring a bell placed within the box using her psychic ability,
her hands, visible to all, couldn't possibly reach it.
This would be her proof, her vindication.
But the bell remained silent. Walter's voice, speaking through
Marjorie's lips in a grotesque ventriloquist act, accused
Zutini of sabotage. When the bell was finally
examined, the truth emerged like a whispered confession.
A small piece of rubber wedged against the Clapper had
prevented it from moving. In the war between the living
and the dead, Houdini had drawn first blood.
The tables turned. With brutal irony, the great
debunker had become deceiver. Houdini's planted ruler in the
Margie box revealed his slate of hand.
It was determined that Houdini had an assistant place a ruler
in the box as well, to prove Marjorie a fraud.
His credibility bled away like a magician's field trick, though
he refused to admit defeat. Instead, he lashed out, penning
a book titled Houdini Exposes the Tricks Used by the Boston
medium Marjorie J Malcolm. Byrd's defense of Marjorie
swayed the masses like a pendulum, drawing them back to
her mysterious realm. But Houdini wasn't finished.
In perhaps his boldest performance, he strode into the
halls of Congress, where marble columns loomed like ancient
judges, and before a packed subcommittee chamber, he
brandished A sealed telegram like a weapon.
The air crackled with tension as psychics, mediums and
spiritualists gathered to fight this proposed bill.
Titled the House Resolution 8989, it would outlaw fortune
telling. His challenge rang through the
chamber. Read the contents of this sealed
message. Or prove yourself frauds and go
to jail. In that moment, Houdini
transformed the marble halls of government into a supernatural
battleground where the fate of an entire industry hung by a
thread. The great escape artist had
constructed his most elaborate trap yet, not with chains or
water tanks, but with law and logic.
Houdini's defeating Congress festered like an open wound.
His accusations of psychic corruption echoed through
Washington's halls. He claimed these self-proclaimed
seers had wrapped their spectral fingers around the throat of
democracy itself. Perhaps he wasn't entirely
wrong. In the shadows of power lurked
Madame Marsha, whose whispered prophecies guided the hands of
those in the White House, her influence seeping into the
nation's highest office like dark water under a door.
But Marshall wasn't content merely to thwart Houdini's
legislative crusade. She turned her prophetic gaze
upon the magician himself, and what she saw or claimed to see
would prove horrifyingly precise.
She proclaimed that Death would claim Harry Houdini before
November 1926. The words hung in the air like a
curse, a prediction that would transform from mere theatrical
spite into something far more sinister.
The great escape artist who had defied death in chains and water
tanks would soon face his final challenger, and this time there
would be no curtain call. Perhaps his war with the
spiritualist led to his death, though the threads of Houdini's
fate may have been more tingled than anyone suspected.
Behind the spectacle of his war with spiritualists lurked a
darker game of international intrigue, one that began in the
dust in the dazzle of Chicago's World Fair in 1893.
There, amid the mechanical wonders and electric lights of
America's gilded ambitions, a young Hungarian immigrant named
Eric Weiss, not yet famous as Harry Houdini, crossed paths
with Theodore Roosevelt. Their second meeting in 1896,
during Roosevelt's presidential campaign, wasn't a mere
coincidence. As Houdini rose in the world of
illusion, whispers began to circulate about espionage.
When Russia's theft of the 1100 page book Cipher of the
Department of State threatened America's diplomatic secrets,
Roosevelt needed someone who understood both deception and
escape, someone who could move invincibly through the world of
entertainment and espionage. The diplomatic cipher books,
those sacred texts of government secrecy, were designed to
transform sensitive messages into unintelligible code, their
meanings locked away from prying eyes.
But in the wrong hands, they became skeletankies to America's
most guarded conversations. It was suspected that a man
named Ivan F Manosevic had found a way to work as a copyist at
the US Embassy and steal the book.
In the sweltering summer of 1903, Houdini received an
invitation to perform for the Czar of Russia and his quart.
But beneath the golden veneer of imperial splendor lay a more
shadowy purpose. While handcuffs and chains would
bind his limbs for the entertainment of Russian
royalty, his eyes and ears would remain dangerously free.
Was it mere coincidence that Roosevelt's old acquaintance
found himself in the heart of the Russian Empire mere months
after the theft of the Americans diplomatic ciphers?
Some believed that as Houdini moved through the opulent halls
of Russian power, his performer's smile masked a
different kind of performance. Could Roosevelt have asked him
to overhear each conversation in candlelit corridors and every
whispered word caught? This didn't make him a spy in
the traditional sense. His role was more elegant, more
deniable. After all, who would suspect
that the man creating distractions for a living was
himself a distraction, his spectacular escapes providing
cover for a different kind of liberation?
A theft of secrets from the very heart of the Russian court.
You'll never know if this is true, but if it is, could this
have led to his very mysterious death?
Among the tapestry of Houdini's secrets lies another thread,
more delicate but no less dangerous, his rumored affair
with Charmaine London, wife of the celebrated author Jack
London. Like so many aspects of
Houdini's life, this possible affair played out in the
shadows, in the spaces between what was seen and what was
hidden. Charmaine was no demure
housewife, but a fierce intellect, an adventurous in her
own right, a woman who could match Houdini's intensity with
her own. The affair is rumored to have
begun in 1918 after Jack London's death, and it was
thought to be the only time Houdini strayed from his marital
vows. The great escape artist who
built his fame on slipping free from physical bonds, found
himself perhaps entangled in emotional chains far more
complex than any stage restraint.
The possibility of their affair adds yet another layer to
Houdini's strange death. It was known that Houdini
suffered from stomach pains in his final months, but refused to
visit a doctor. Those final stomach pains, sharp
daggers twisting in his gut, might have been more than mere
illness. Yet Houdini, master of
endurance, treated pain like just another lock to pick,
another chain to slip. But unlike his staged escapes,
this one trap he couldn't charm his way out of, His stubborn
refusal to seek medical help now seems less like bravado and more
like a man perhaps protecting his secrets.
Each stomach spasm carried its mystery.
Was it a natural illness or something more sinister?
Be Ritualist had promised his doom, his political enemies
wished him silence, and matters of the heart had destroyed
greater men than he. As autumn crept toward that
prophesied November of 1926, in Canada's Montreal Princess
Theatre, on October 22nd, 1926, a group of college students
visit Houdini's dressing room. Among them was J Gordon
Whitehead, a man whose name would forever be entwined with
Houdini's demise. What happened next has been
debated for nearly a century. Whitehead allegedly asked
Houdini if it was true that he could withstand any blow to the
abdomen. Before Houdini could properly
brace himself, Whitehead struck him multiple times.
Sharp, vicious punches. After the attack, Houdini was in
extreme pain but continued on to his performance.
This attack would reportedly rupture the magician's appendix.
But here's where our tale takes a darker turn.
Some researchers have pointed to suspicious inconsistencies in
this narrative. Why was Whitehead, the man who
delivered those fatal blows, never prosecuted?
Why did he seemingly vanish into thin air afterward?
And most intriguing, why were there whispers among
spiritualist circles celebrating Houdini's death before he even
passed? You see, dear listeners, Houdini
made powerful enemies. His crusade against fraudulent
mediums had exposed countless people, destroying their
lucrative business and their reputations.
The spiritualist movement, which had amassed significant
influence in the 1920s, saw Houdini as a threat that needed
to be eliminated. Some theorists suggest that
Whitehead wasn't just an overeager student, but a hired
hand, an assassin employed by a consortium of vengeful
spiritualists. The punch wasn't random, a
calculated strike meant to cause maximum internal damage.
In the days following the incident, Houdini's condition
seemed to improve, only to suddenly deteriorate.
Some suggest he may have been poisoned during his hospital
stay, ensuring that the great escape artist would never
escape. On October 31st, 1926, Harry
Houdini spoke his final words. I'm tired of fighting.
The official cause of death was listed as perianthitis and
appendicitis. But was this merely the final
act in a grand conspiracy? A perfect murder disguised as a
tragic accident? The Great Escape artist's final
container wasn't a water tank or a sealed milk can.
It was a bronze coffin he had built to make a point.
It was his wish to be buried in the bronze coffin to prove
anyone could survive without error for an hour if only they
mastered their fear. Now he lies in that same coffin
for over testing his own theory. They are a tight seal he
designed to keep air out now keeps him in exactly as he
wished. His last trick turned out to be
his most permanent. Before his death, he made a pact
with his wife, Bess. He told her if he could
communicate beyond death, he would send her a message.
He left her with a code. The words Roosevelt believe Bess
Houdini performed to seance in darkened rooms for 10 years on
Halloween night, waiting for her dead husband to whisper.
The words were supposed to be his key to unlock the door
between life and death. Their secret code, Their final
trick together. Each year she lit candles.
Each year she called into the darkness.
Each year, silence answered. The greatest escape artist of
all time couldn't break free from death's chains.
And after a decade of empty seances, she finally blew out
her candle. We may never know the whole
truth of what happened in the Montreal dressing room or the
hospital during those final days.
Could that punch to his abdomen have furthered a case of pre
appendicitis? Or could he have secretly been
poisoned slowly over time, perhaps by a spiritualist or a
scorned wife or a lover? One thing is certain, the death
of Harry Houdini remains 1 of magic's most enduring mysteries,
a puzzle that even the master escape artist himself couldn't
solve. I guess this is another story
left to the unexplained realms. Houdini once said anyone who
believes in magic is a fool. This coming from a man who was
shackled and placed in the belly of a Dead Sea creature sewn
inside and swore he would escape.
He broke free of course, but not without consequence.
He felt I'll after as he underestimated the amount of
arsenic solution used by the taxidermist to preserve the
creature. I guess the circumstances of
Houdini's death remain elusive as his most dazzling escapes
were. Some of it say the punch
ruptured his appendix, some whisper poison.
But like all great mysteries, Houdini's and leaves us with
more questions than answers. The truth is just lying buried
beneath layers of time. Thanks for joining me, until
next time I'll leave you with this.
In a world where illusion and reality dance and shadow, true
magic lies in what remains in the unexplained realms.