Conference hydra::dejavu

221.0. "...But will they answer...?" by PBSVAX::COOPER (Topher Cooper) Tue Oct 14 1986 18:11

Associated Press Tue 14-OCT-1986 01:22                         Houdini Seance

   Seance Planned On 60th Anniversary Of Magician's Death
                            By JAMES REINDL
                        Associated Press Writer
   MILWAUKEE (AP) - The invitations to a private Halloween party
have been printed, but guest of honor Harry Houdini will get a
personal call when a seance convenes on the 60th anniversary of the
magician's death.
   A group of Houdini followers, led by a Massachusetts carpet store
owner and Houdini expert, has planned a Halloween seance in another
attempt to contact the man who spent part of his career debunking
mediums.
   Invitations have been sent to a list of 150 selected guests,
including actor Tony Curtis, who portrayed Houdini in a movie, and a
person who witnessed the blow to Houdini's stomach that led to his
death.
   Other planned participants in the seance include magic
historians, magic store owners, the producer of a Public
Broadcasting Service special on Houdini, and Marie H. Blood, a
Houdini niece.
   The seance location, somewhere in Appleton, Houdini's boyhood
home, is being kept secret until just days before the event.
   ``If he comes back, we'd like to be there,'' said Sidney H.
Radner, the Holyoke, Mass. man behind the seance. ``And second, if
he doesn't come back, Houdini in his own diabolical way is doing
more to hurt fake mediums than anyone alive.''
   Houdini died of peritonitis in Detroit on Oct. 31, 1926. He had
suffered an appendicitis after a student punched him in the stomach
before Houdini tightened his muscles to absorb the blow.
   For 10 years after his death, Houdini's widow, Beatrice, held
seances on the anniversary of his death in attempts to contact him.
But in 1936 she announced there would be no more.
   Houdini himself spent part of his career trying to expose fake
mediums.
   ``Houdini ... after his mother died, made attempts to reach her
and did go to various mediums to bring messages,'' Radner said in a
telephone interview. ``As he continued to go to them he began to
realize ... that these people weren't real.
   ``So he took personal vendetta. Exposing mediums became part of
his act.''
   Radner, 66, who studied with Houdini's brother Hardeen, said he
owns the largest collection of Houdini memorabilia in the world.
Some of it, including a pair of locked handcuffs Houdini said he
would open if he ever returned from the dead, will be at the
Halloween seance.
   Radner said he attened his first Houdini seance in 1946 and has
seen nearly 30 in places such as a Houdini museum in Niagra,
Ontario; Houdini's New York house, and the stage of a Toronto,
Ontario, theater where Houdini performed.
   One person who's certain it's possible to contact the dead, if
not Houdini, is 82-year-old Eleanor Royse of Chicago. She will be
the ``battery,'' or energy source, for medium William Monroe at the
seance.
   ``I want to see Houdini come through so his loved ones can have
the priviledge of knowing he's still alive,'' said Ms. Royse, a
self-described minister, counselor and teacher who says she
regularly communicates with her two dead husbands. Ms. Royse, who
saw Houdini perform, said she believes in the spirit world, because
she has died twice and been revived.

    
      How were the invitations sent out?  By US mail, or by less conventional
    channels?