The Real Lives of Early 20th-Century Celebrities, as Depicted in ‘Ragtime’.Another Doug Henning Anniversary, This time #23.Houdini Lives Again (again) at Morley's Magic Theater.New York Public Library Digital Collections.Blogcast #8: Harry Houdini’s Stamford Home.Blogcast #9: Harry Haudyni, German Houdini Imitator.When Harry Met Larry: Was this man Houdini’s assistant?.*Source: Schenectady Gazette, February 5, 1943 To listen to the 1936 seance, please visit my Houdini YouTube channel or play the embedded video below. No one has been able to prove there is a hereafter.” * She died exactly one week later.

“I would like very much to believe that I was again to see Harry and my mother,” she said. On February 4, 1943, she told the Associated Press she was doubtful about any form of life after death. She restated this belief many times in the years that followed. “It is now my personal and positive belief that spirit communication, in any form, is impossible.” “I do not believe that Houdini can come back to me or to anyone,” said Bess in her closing statements after the seance. So for 10 years following the iconic escapologist’s death, Bess held annual seances, the final of which took place on the rooftop of the Knickerbocker Hotel in Los Angeles, October 31, 1936, 8:30 p.m. If contact wasn’t made within 10 years, the pact would be broken. Long before Harry Houdini died on Halloween (89 years ago this Saturday), he and his wife, Bess, purportedly made a pact that the first to die would try to contact the survivor from “the great beyond,” as some people put it.

Knickerbocker Hotel, Los Angeles, 1938 (Photo: Mushet Photography, Security Pacific National Bank Collection/ Los Angeles Public Library)

Houdini bess