October 31 – Day 55: Houdini Escapes from His Own Séance

A few weeks ago, I’d read that the people who run the Original Houdini Séance (not to be confused with the Official Houdini Séance) were going to be holding an event on Hallowe’en, and I knew I had to go.

Houdini died in Detroit on October 31, 1926, and there have been séances every Hallowe’en since, trying to get a sign from him in the Great Beyond. In 1936, Harry’s widow Bess held her last one at the Knickerbocker Hotel in Hollywood. While they didn’t hear from him, at one point—on an otherwise clear night—storm clouds suddenly gathered and there was a brief ten-minute thunderstorm, after which it became clear again.

Pidge and I attended the touring version of this séance in San Francisco a few years ago, and while there were no manifestations, it was still kind of fun. (She still has a spoon that was bent by a magician demonstrating his mental powers.) This one was being held at the Sojourn Restaurant on East 79^th. In 1887, the building had been a boarding house that was the Weiss family’s first home in New York. The event was free and held in the middle of the afternoon, mainly because Houdini died around 1:30 (Eastern Time), and I guess they figured it was the best time to reach him (not to mention that if they’d done it in the evening, the restaurant would have lost business).

I arrived at the restaurant and saw a few people on the sidewalk, which initially led me to believe the restaurant wasn’t open yet, but when I looked inside, I saw a bunch of folks, so I went in. The front part of the place was dark, but the back half was hopping. A number of tables had been pushed together to display memorabilia from both Houdini and Walter Gibson (the author who created The Shadow and also ghosted a lot of Houdini’s books), and a bunch of chairs had been pushed off to the left side. People were already seated, so I found a high chair in the second row and planted myself. It was an eclectic crowd. Some people were nicely dressed and seemed sane, some others seemed just a bit off; but I guess that’s what you expect at a free event like this. (The reader is free to put me in whichever of these groups they wish.)

 All the excitement of talking to a dead guy.

Some of the people were obviously connected with the event (I was going to call it a “show,” but that doesn’t seem quite right). I recognized Dorothy Dietrich and Dick Brookz, who run the Houdini Museum in Scranton, as well as the séance (Brookz shook my hand and welcomed me, apparently mistaking me for someone else), but the others were unknown. There was a lot of mingling and people talking to one another, as well as the guy next to me who was single-mindedly recording everything on his phone. (He reluctantly put it down when they announced that only the professionals would be permitted to tape the actual ceremony.) Finally at about noon, they announced that the food was ready and that we should line up to get it. The choices were a salad (with what looked like Feta cheese, so I passed), a pretty good ziti dish, and ricotta cake for dessert. For a free meal, it wasn’t bad at all. (I did notice the unusually-dressed woman who got a heaping plate, sat in front of me, ate with gusto, and then vanished. Whether that vanishing was a magic trick, I cannot say.) While we ate, Brookz played some video showing Dorothy doing some magic tricks, including the seriously-dangerous bullet catch and a straitjacket escape while she was being dangled 150 feet above Knott’s Berry Farm.

When all these preliminaries were done, the festivities began. The woman who’s the head of the local chapter of the Society of American Magicians read a statement, then performed a card trick with the help of her teddy bear. It was an impressive trick, even if her patter was a little forced. After that, the restaurant’s owner read a statement, which referred to Houdini as a “musician,” rather than a magician, basically stating that he was delighted to have the event at his place and that he hoped Harry would show. Following him, a politician (I was not able to determine if she was a councilperson or a state representative) read yet another statement (and again pronounced “magician” as “musician” before being corrected by nearly everyone) and gave the restaurant a certificate and a plaque that designated the building as an important place because the Weiss family had lived there.

Once the speeches were out of the way, a mentalist did a pretty impressive act, using two of the women from a local play. There’s been a limited comics series called The Girl Who Handcuffed Houdini, which was basically Houdini slash fiction with a lot of gratuitous female nudity. The writer of the comic turned it into an interactive play just down the block that I thought about going to, but my experience in The Speakeasy pretty much turned me off of interactive theatre, the tickets cost between $100 and $200 (and don’t even allow a person to see the whole show; the spectators follow individual characters), and the whole thing seems smutty—and not in the good way. Two women from the play were sat in chairs on either side of the mentalist, and while he didn’t quite hypnotize them, he did put them into a relaxed state. Once he had them under, he touched the woman on the left twice on the shoulder, then asked them both what they had felt. They both indicated they’d been tapped on the shoulder twice. He then touched the same woman on the nose with a feather, and asked them both if they’d felt anything, and they’d both felt a feather. I don’t think either was a plant, and I have no idea how he did it. It was impressive, regardless.

Finally, it was 1:30, and time for the séance proper to begin. Two of the chandeliers were moving, apparently not because of the air conditioning, though there really wasn’t any other explanation that wasn’t supernatural. Once things started, it was obvious why the restaurant hosts it. There were about four camera crews and at least half-a-dozen still photographers, all of whom would be reporting about where the séance had taken place. Unfortunately, they all stationed themselves at the front of the table and blocked the views of the spectators. I just stood and was able to see pretty much everything. Dorothy was the control and kept begging Harry to show up or at least give a sign. The restaurant’s phones rang twice at times that might be considered intelligent responses, but I don’t think that counts. At one point, the actress who plays Houdini’s wife (and who had been the mentalism participant who thought she felt the tapping and the feather) was asked to call for Harry in character, but after 93 years, it seems like he’s just not going to show. Maybe in 2026.

It all wound down after about a half-hour, so I left. If the thing had gone long enough, I had thought about staying uptown until show time, but it wasn’t even 2:00, and I couldn’t see the point of killing more than three hours. I briefly considered taking the subway home, but decided it was a nice enough day (and it was beautiful) that I’d walk the 70-plus blocks. After about 20 blocks, though, I realized that there was a Midtown Comics on 45^th and Lexington, and I wasn’t that far away, so I could go there and do my shopping.

I walked over to Lex, found the shop, which is quite nice (and far less crowded than the location on 40^th), bought my books, hit one of the Starbucks in Grand Central, and took the train back to Astor Place. I came home, wrote a little, and got ready to leave at about 5:00.

While it’s been warm the past couple of days, it’s been fairly chilly in the evenings, or at least chilly enough that I wore a jacket (only one layer, though). It wasn’t dark yet, but a lot of parents were taking their kids trick-or-treating, and I have to say that most of the little kids were really adorable. I saw one kid of about two who was walking his dog on a long leash, and the parents had dressed the kid in an outfit that looked like the dog. As soon as I saw him, though, the kid sat on the sidewalk and was done. The parents tried to get him to go on, but he wasn’t having any of it. He wasn’t fussy or crying. He was just inert. The parents gave up, took the leash from him, and carried him to their next stop.

As I got farther down the street, I kept seeing adults and twentysomethings in their own costumes, and noticed that there’s a progression to these things. Little kids are mostly cute in costume. Older kids, a little less so. Teens, barely. Young adults, not at all. But when you pass a certain threshold of age, it gets more acceptable again. I wouldn’t call most of the outfits cute or adorable, but some are clever enough to pass muster.

The show went well once again. I realize that, in saying it, it’s about as repetitious as when I said earlier in the run that it was just okay and that the audiences were quiet, but it’s true. The show has gotten really good, the audiences are big (we had about 20 seats free tonight, but are virtually sold out for the final three performances) and responsive, and we all seem to be having a lot of fun. I thought I had no one there again, but it turned out that an actor-director friend of mine (who also knows GG) had made a quick trip from SF to see her daughter, and after hearing about the show, figured she needed to see it. She, GG, Eric, and I had a drink at the theatre bar and had a great time. (I had a concoction that was sort of the kitchen sink of cocktails, combining two different kinds of scotch, red wine, sparkling wine, and something else. It was really tasty, but two of them would have put me under the table.) She was very complimentary about the show, so that was a plus. (She was heading back to the Bay Area the next morning, if only because she's doing a show in the North Bay herself, and has performances this weekend.)

I caught the subway to Astor Place again, expecting to be met with throngs of costumed drunks, but much to my surprise, the street was pretty quiet and most of the bars and restaurants I passed were lightly attended. I don’t know if people had been there earlier, were in a different part of town, or at private parties, but it was actually pretty pleasant for a change. I’d decided I wanted pizza, so I walked up Avenue A to Baker’s (where I hadn’t been for a while) and ordered a couple of slices to go. While I was waiting for them to come out of the oven, one of the counter guys asked me if I wanted a beer. I declined, then he said it was on the house, so how could I refuse? He poured me one, and while I thought about knocking it back so I could eat the pizza at home, I soon realized that was a stupid idea, so I sat at a table and ate while finishing the beer.

When I finished, I tried to go to Mikey Likes It to get an ice cream (what is it with me and ice cream?), but they had just closed, so I took that as an omen. I walked home, intending to watch some television, but it turned into too much television, mainly thanks to the live episode of Ghost Adventures that resembled nothing so much as Geraldo opening Al Capone’s vault. They kept promising they would do things or that things would happen, and nothing ever did. About the only event of note was when the white witch (whom I actually know) and the black witch started threatening each other like wrestlers. It was four hours of guys leaping to conclusions and drawing inferences from the least possible evidence. But that’s pretty much every week on that show.

At 4:30, I got an email from Andi, saying she’d just seen me on NY1 on a report about the séance. I wrote back asking why she was up so late; I thought I was the only one crazy enough to be up until the pre-dawn hours. (She was working and cleaning.) Eventually—way, way, way too late—I turned off the lights and called it a night.