DISGRACELAND - Harry Houdini: A Ghost Story

Episode Date: October 24, 2024

Harry Houdini was the world's greatest escape artist and at the height of his powers was one of the world's most famous people. His unearthly ability to escape any prison and to break free of any bondage was matched only by his aggressive self-promotion. Anyone who tried to get in his way, rewrite his story, steal his thunder or question his abilities would find themselves in his crosshairs. When the burgeoning Spiritualist movement tried to make a fool of Houdini, he began a crusade that would last the rest of his life. And when his life was over, the question Houdini left the world was: could he make the greatest escape in history? This episode was originally published on October 24, 2024. For a full list of contributors, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠disgracelandpod.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ To listen to Disgraceland ad free and hear an exclusive mini-episode about Slipknot's encounters with the supernatural at Houdini's mansion, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (formerly Twitter)  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that.

David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things, Tana Monsu, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Movies can make you feel, make you dream. Sometimes they even make you appreciate architecture. Is there anybody who's been hotter in a doorway than Elizabeth Taylor? That's the kind of analysis you'll find every week on Dear Movies I Love You, the new podcast from the Exactly Right Network. Every Tuesday, we break down the films we're crushing on, from blockbusters to deep cuts. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis. This is the story about a ghost. A ghost story. A ghost who was full of shit. A ghost who, many say, represented the greatest illusionist of all time, escape artist Harry Houdini. But it's also a story about the occult, about magic, about fame and grief, and about a mansion where great music was made. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music.

That was a preset loop from my Melotron called, Laurels Blues MK 2. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to I adore me a more by Color Me Bad. And why would I play you that specific slice of heart-shaped creola cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on September 24th, 1991.

And that was the day the red hot chili peppers released the album Blood Sugar Sex Magic. further stoking the myth of Harry Houdini's ghost. On this episode, the occult, fame, grief, the chili peppers, and the ghost of Harry Houdini. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgraceland. John Fruciante, guitarist for the red hot chili peppers, felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He was staring at a missing panel on the ceiling, watching the darkness. inside stare back at him.

He heard the sounds again, strange noises, voices, and then a disembodied scream, somewhere between pleasure. John thought about what his friend and bandmate Chili Pepper's bass player, Flea, had told him the other day that he saw a lady dressed in black

walking around this place. But not just any lady. She was there and, Also, she wasn't there. She was translucent. John Fruchante wasn't sure what he expected from this rehab mansion in the Laurel Canyon neighborhood of Los Angeles, but it wasn't this. For decades, Laurel Canyon, nestled up in the hills between Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley, have been a creative sanctuary for artists and musicians.

In the 1960s, it was ground zero for the counterculture movement, home to Mama. Macass, Frank Zappa, The Birds, and Buffalo Springfield. It's where Graham Nash and Joni Mitchell fell in love, and then dropped out of love. It's where John Lennon dropped acid for the first time, while the actor Peter Fonda told him what it was like to be dead. Okay, that last one technically happened in Benedict Canyon, I think, but it's like right next door, so, you know, close enough. And now, in 1991, roughly a quarter century after the,

the Summer of Love, John Fruciante and the Red Hot Chili Peppers found themselves carrying on that rich tradition, living in a four-bedroom house in Laurel Canyon, specifically on Laurel Canyon Boulevard, which was referred to aptly and quite simply as The Mansion. Along with their producer, Rick Ruvin, an engineer, Brendan O'Brien, the band had installed a makeshift studio inside the mansion so that they could record their fifth studio album there. That album, that album, Blood, sugar, sex, magic would transform the group from freaky, styly L.A. scenesters into one of the biggest rock bands on the planet. But more on that in a minute. The idea was that the chili peppers would live and work in the same space for the duration of the album's recording,

thus isolating themselves from the influence of the outside world, while also tapping into their deep musical brotherhood. Or, as the band's lead singer Anthony Keats so poetically put it, By not recording in a traditional studio, they avoided the, quote, anal retentive vibrations of the sterlicity involved with that sort of recording environment, unquote. But drummer Chad Smith, the odd man out in the chili peppers in more ways than one, didn't want to spend every night in the mansion with the other guys. He'd just met the girl that he was pretty sure he was going to marry one day. At after hours hanging with these dudes,

the last thing he wanted to do was hang out with them. or more, go put socks on their dicks or whatever was they were doing. And not when he had a lady waiting for him back home. Plus, the mansion was creepy as fuck. Weird shit happened there, all the time. But, this being the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the same band that was currently laying down new tunes with titles like, Suck My Kiss and Sir Psycho-Sexe,

the supernatural vibe of the place quickly took a turn from creepy to horny. John was the first one to hear it, the sounds of a woman getting laid in one of the other rooms. It sounded so real, but just like the trapped door and the ceiling, John couldn't see anything. It didn't matter. The moaning, the panting, the shrieking climaxes. They couldn't be ignored. Up to that point, John had focused solely on the music he was making with the band. They had a tight deadline, a deadline that Warner Brothers were. records was holding firm. But he just couldn't hold out any longer. He spent the next night in that

room, turned on by all that weird ghost sex, a room in which, as he later told Interview Magazine, he furiously masturbated. Still, John and the others were curious as to who or what these spirits were. So they called in a team of paranormal experts to investigate. Or should I say so-called paranormal experts? because after a few visits in which the investigators seemed to become possessed by whatever was in the house, it became apparent that they were simply trying to scare the band in order to make a quick buck. Cut to a few months later, and the red hot chili peppers were the ones making the bucks. Big bucks. Released in September of 1991 and led by the tremendous success of the ballad under the bridge,

blood sugar sex magic made the band Megastars. And while that out, album was making its way up the charts, and John, Anthony Flea, and Chad all returned to their respective homes in the greater Los Angeles area. Back on Laurel Canyon Boulevard, ghosts continued to haunt the living. And just because a team of paranormal investigators tried to take the chili peppers for a ride, it didn't mean that the spirits inside the place weren't real. Years later, after Rick Rubin purchased the mansion at 2451 Laurel Canyon Boulevard and continued to use it as an unorthodox studio, the band Slipknot had their own creepy encounter

with an apparition while recording there. This time, the ghost of a man in a tuxedo. The legend of Rick Rubin's haunted mansion grew, partly because it was commonly being referred to as the Houdini Mansion, named for the iconic illusionist and escape artist Harry Houdini, who died back in 1926. But calling Rick's place the Houdini mansion is something of a misnomer because there's no evidence that Houdini ever lived at 2451 Laurel Canyon Boulevard. Now, just down the road apiece, there's another mansion, this one at 2400 Laurel Canyon Boulevard,

as well as its smaller guesthouse across the street, number 2435. And there is some evidence that Harry Houdini Houdini's. Houdini and his wife, Bess, may in fact have resided at one or both of these addresses when Houdini was in town to shoot a couple of movies near the end of the silent film era. And it was in this exact area, the 2,400 block of Laurel Canyon, that a small but devoted group of people gathered every year on Halloween night, October 31st, the anniversary of Harry Houdini's death. They gathered to perform an annual ritual,

and they performed this ritual in 1936 and 1956, even as late as 1991, at the moment that Blood Sugar Sex Magic was being blasted from car windows cruising down nearby Hollywood Boulevard. This ritual was conducted under the belief that Harry Houdini, the greatest escape artist of all time, had saved his best trick for last,

that he was going to find a way to escape from the great beyond, to tear the fabric between this world and the next, and furthermore, that this group of true believers would be his guide as he made his unprecedented exit from the sweet hereafter. Those carrying out the ritual did so hidden amongst Laurel Canyon's flora and fauna, lit only by candlelight, emboldened not by blood or sugar or sex, but by magic, black magic, reaching into the dust of the past, Peering through the veils of time, reality and reason, to do the impossible.

To wake up a dead man and bring him back to life. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield and in this new season of the Girlfriends

Oh my God, this is the same man A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist I felt like I got hit by a truck I thought how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care so they take matters into their own hands I said oh hell no

I vowed I will be his last target He's gonna get what he deserves Listen to the Girlfriends Trust me babe On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever.

My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up, and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance, like he's about to attack me, like, making karate noises. And his entire, the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going,

and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. And I immediately know that I've been a sleepwalk. David O'Yello. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead.

Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things. Tana Monsu. Camilla Morone at Carrie Kenny Silver. And more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place and there were always those two employees behind the counter arguing about movies? Well, that's us. I'm Millie de Cherico. And I'm Casey O'Brien. And now we're arguing about movies on our podcast, Dear Movies I Love You from the Exactly Right Network. Can I say something about the criterion closet? Go ahead, dude. They're letting too many people in there.

Okay, that's another film grape I got two. Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore. It's probably a store that sells running shoes. Or an ice cream shop with an extra pee and an E at the end. So consider us your slacker movie clerks in podcast form. I would like to establish a timeline of the moment you figured out who Channing Tatum was. Every Tuesday, we dig into the movies we can't stop obsessing over, from hidden gems to big screen favorites. New episodes drop every week on the exactly right network.

Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. What is magic? The Miriam Webster Dictionary describes it as, quote, the use of means such as charms or spells believed to have supernatural power over natural forces. That's the quote. Jimmy Page and David Bowie's favorite occultist, Alistair Crowley, defined magic as the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will. While the yacht rock band America once insisted in the top 10 cents,

single that you can do magic, many of you out there probably think that in reality, magic is a bunch of bullshit. And you know what? You're not wrong. Stage magic, magic for entertainment, all that pick a card, any card, grab it out of a hat stuff. Yeah, that's total bullshit. Bullshit by design. It's not magic. I'm putting air quotes around that word, by the way. So much as it is sleight of hand. Smoke and mirrors. Misdirection. You know this, though. But seeing, as you also know, is believing. And getting you to believe in something unbelievable is the whole game when it comes to being a magician.

Harry Houdini, for one, understood this better than most. This is why he took to breaking out of handcuffs. Not only with his mouth taped shut, but completely naked, so that he theoretically had nowhere to hide a key. And if you were alive way back at the turn of the 20th century and saw Houdini do the impossible and only his birthday. suit. He did so knowing the old story about how when he was barely old enough to walk, he was already picking the locks of his mother's treat box where she kept her homemade apple cake.

My point, you went into the experience already believing that there was something special about the guy. The Harry Houdini we all think of now in 2024, the illusionist who slipped out of straitjackets, who cheated death while submerged upside down in what he called the water torture chamber. That was a persona created in large. part by Houdini's very real limitations. Ask any magician then and now, and they'll tell you Harry Houdini was a shitty magic man. What he was good at was escaping from situations that John Q. Public could never manage to escape from. That's how Houdini's legend was made. He was the world's first escape artist. And not only was he the first, more importantly, he was the best.

At least that's how he promoted himself. Houdini was aggressive when it came to self-promotion, and he took no prisoners. You get in his way, you steal his thunder, you attempt to rewrite his story, you should prepare to be destroyed. Even the great magician from whom Houdini took his stage name, Jean-Jugin Robert Houdin, eventually found himself in his disciples' crosshairs. At 5'5, in all muscle, the man formerly known as Eric Weiss, a native of Budapest, even though he'd have you believe he was born.

in Appleton, Wisconsin, Harry Houdini, like the greatest of showmen and the toughest of bullies, dared anyone who listened to prove him wrong. Bring him a set of cuffs, and he'd break free. Lock him in a prison cell, and he'd bust out. But Houdini was no Superman. He wasn't an alien from another planet.

He was only human. The means and methods of his particular brand of illusion were real, and thus, the one thing that really got Houdini's goat was when someone tried to undermine all his hard work, his real work, by giving credit to magic. Spiritualists were having their moment at this time in history, the early 1900s. Now, think of a spiritualist like a medium, someone who claims they can communicate with the dead. In Houdini's eyes, spiritualists were like those guys hired to investigate the ghosts who convinced John Fruciante to rub one out in a haunted mansion. And they were a cheap parlor trick, a hoax.

Houdini had more respect for the common criminal, the person who was openly cheating you. We know this because he wrote and published a book called The Right Way to Do Wrong, which, besides being a great title, was all about how to commit crimes and actually get away with them. But again, Harry Houdini was only human, and even he could be convinced to give the whole spiritualism thing a try. Especially when his beloved mother, Cecilia, died of a stroke at 1913 at the age of 70, Cecilia was Houdini's rock. Some even said she was the motivation behind his career, that the reason he worked as hard as he did was because he once promised his father that he, Houdini, would take care of his mother till her dying day. And now that day it arrived,

and Houdini, pained and grieving, would do anything to speak with her again. So years later, when his good friend, the writer, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, along with Doyle's wife, lady, invited Houdini and his wife best to a seance, Houdini took the bait. The Doyle's, like many at the time, bought early stock in spiritualism. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle hoped that by performing this seance, by contacting Houdini's dead mother, he could bring some solace to his friend in a time of great need. Let's set the scene. The room is dark. The blinds are drawn. The faint sound of ocean waves, gently lapping a nearby beach,

her carried on the wind through an open window. Candle flames flicker on a table in the center of the room, and they toss shadows on the wall. At one end of the table, the Houdini's. At the other end, the Doyle's. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle hung his head, and Harry Houdini followed his friend's lead and did the same. The Lady Doyle began to speak.

Cecilia, Cecilia Weiss, are you here? This was the same question Houdini himself had been asking for years now. Mama, Mama, are you here? He sought out his dead mother in dreams. He often startled awake in a cold sweat, reaching out for her. But she was never there when he called. She was always just out of reach. Tonight, however, when Lady Doyle asked that question,

Cecilia, are you here? Tonight, the question was answer. answered by three loud knocks on the table. Every muscle in Houdini's body tensed up. His throat clenched. The flames of the candles on the table flapped wildly as if something had just passed through them. Was his mother really here, in this room with him, right now?

Harry Houdini, the world's greatest skeptic, could feel the impossible happening. He was starting to believe. Suddenly, Lady Doyle picked up a pen from the table in front of her and began writing on sheets of paper. She wrote fast and it seemed that she wasn't even looking at what she was writing. Auto writing, they called it. Psychography, allowing a spirit to manipulate your hand and write for you.

Houdini knew this to be one of the buzzwords around spiritualism, and now he was watching it happen in the flesh. And by the time Lady Doyle had finished, she had written on 15 pieces of paper, all of it, a long, loving message to Houdini from his deceased mother. Or so, the Doyle said. The papers were handed over to Houdini and he began to read, but not before he noticed what Lady Doyle had drawn at the top of the first page.

A cross. Odd, he thought, seeing as his family was not Christian, but Jewish. And then, as he began to read in earnest, he was struck by how the words were written in English, not in German, which was the only language as mother spoke. That was all the proof he needed. He didn't even need to know that the three knocks on the table at the start of the seance had actually been made by Lady Doyle herself, not by a spirit.

Harry Houdini had been hoodwinked, by a friend no less. He'd been made to look like a dupe, and Houdini would not be made to look like a dupe. The seance ruined Houdini and Doyle's friendship forever. It also sent Houdini on a crusade against spiritualism. He publicly took on bogus mediums who were conning people out of their money. He testified before Congress in hopes that he could single-handedly outlaw seances altogether. They were bad for Houdini's image. They were bad for business.

And around this time, the 1910s, the 1920s, business, was very good for the world's preeminent escape artist. Harry Houdini was one of the most famous people on the planet, as big as Babe Ruth or Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin was a master of the moving picture, movies dazzled American audiences. And they were their own kind of magic. For Harry Houdini, cinema was another illusion, another conduit from which to saturate the market with his brand.

Which is why in 1919, Harry Houdini and his wife Bess pulled up stakes from their home in New York City and went out west to Los Angeles so that the world's greatest escape artist could become a big movie star. Instead, he became something else. Immortal. We'll be right back after this world, word, word. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either.

We always say that, trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends... Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a... truck. I thought how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh hell no. I vowed I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or

wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me, I don't want to be an actor or whatever. And my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do. Rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb.

And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance. Like he's about to attack me. Like making karate noises. And the entire the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going. And the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. I immediately know that I've been at sleepwalk. David O'Yellow. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts.

Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kimman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Moderato from Stranger Things. Tena Monsu. Camilla Marone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more.

Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place and there were always those two employees behind the counter arguing about movies? Well, that's us. I'm Millie de Cherico. And I'm Casey O'Brien. And now we're arguing about movies on our podcast. Dear Movies I Love You from the Exactly Right Network. Can I say something about the Criterion Clause? Go ahead, dude. They're letting too many people in there.

Okay, that's another film, Gripe I got two. Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore. It's probably a store that sells running shoes. Or an ice cream shop with an extra P and an E at the end. So consider us your slacker movie clerks in podcast form. I would like to establish a timeline of the moment you figured out who Channing Taitan was. Every Tuesday, we dig into the movies we can't stop obsessing over, from hidden gems to big screen favorites. New episodes drop every week on the exactly right network. Listen to Dear Movies

I Love You on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Contrary to popular belief, Harry and Best Houdini never owned the mansion at 2400 Laurel Canyon Boulevard, the one just down the road from Rick Rubin's mansion, nor did they own the guest house across the street. Those were the property of Ralph M. Walker, a department store executive who happened to be friends with the couple. Hard evidence is scarce, but let's just say it is very likely that Ralph Walker let the Houdini's crash in his guest house while they were in town for Harry to shoot two movies, the Grim Game and Terror Island. Rumor had it that the guest house had an elevator that dropped you underground, where you can make your way through a dark tunnel passing beneath Laurel Canyon Boulevard, and find yourself surfacing over at the big house,

a three-story, 11-bedroom, nine-bathroom, Mediterranean-style villa with a ballet room and a big stage for musicians. The whole underground tunnel business fits perfectly with Houdini's image, a master escape artist who could secretly escape from his own home. And you never saw exactly how he did it, how he got out of a coffin six feet underground, or how he pulled off the metamorphosis act,

the one where he was bound with rope and locked inside a trunk, only for the trunk to be opened and reveal that he was no longer there. And instead, his wife, Bess, was in his place, bound in the very same way. Maybe fake rivets, fake screws, or fake welds in the construction of the apparatuses. Maybe real handcuffs were swapped out for trick handcuffs. He kept audiences guessing, as the point, and he also made sure they had some skin in the game by welcoming their challenges. There was no problem he couldn't solve,

and no outside force he couldn't beat. You could even punch him in the stomach if you wanted. He would easily absorb the blow with what appeared to be prodigious strength. Houdini couldn't remember if he had actually issued that last challenge publicly to be punched in the stomach. But in 1926, a student at McGill University in Montreal was telling him that, yes, indeed,

he had, and furthermore, the student wanted Houdini to prove it. Now, Houdini was tired. His career as a movie star never took off like he expected it would, and one of the two movies he made, the grim game, didn't even get released. He was 52 years old, and these days increasingly worn out by the physical demands at his job as an illusionist required. His fight against the spiritualist movement was a losing battle,

not as great of a loss as that of his mother whose death 13 years earlier still weighed heavily on his mind. This is all to say. He wasn't operating at 100%. And I haven't even mentioned the incredible pain happening in his stomach. Pain that he'd been experiencing for weeks, but had not told anyone about. Not even bests. But here in Montreal, at McGill, he was still a god,

still revered by an adoring public that was humbled to have the world's greatest escape artist in their presence. Or so thought the two students currently interviewing Houdini for the school paper. That interview was on hold for a moment. however, as a third student entered the room and brazenly asked if he could test one of Houdini's standing challenges. He wanted to punch Houdini as hard as he could. Houdini paused for a moment. Again, he couldn't remember actually making that challenge to the public, but it didn't matter. He was motivated, not only by a promise he once made to his father, but by his own iconic status, by his dominance as the most incredible entertainer of the day. He would defend that status,

and that dominance by any means necessary, even if the crowd was small like it was today. So Houdini accepted the student's challenge. He began to stand from where he was seated. But before he could straighten his back, tense up the right muscles, and get his athletic body in the proper stance for such an attack, the kid came in hot with a clenched fist, three punches in quick succession to Houdini's ribs and stomach. Houdini doubled over.

Jesus Christ, that hurt. and he could hardly get his bearings before the kids swung again. He landed another punch as Houdini was going down, and another, and another, about seven in total. Houdini's insides were in turmoil. He thought his stomach hurt before, but now it was on fire. Still, he couldn't actually show that he was in pain, so he simply offered a tense smile to the three kids in the room and politely said, that'll do. He wanted to put the whole ordeal behind him.

The pain, the humiliation. Later that night, while performing on stage in Montreal, Houdini began to sweat. His heart was pounding in his ears, and the pain in his stomach was getting unbearable. After the show, he collapsed. He was hot and then cold. His temperature spiked to 102. He took a train to Detroit for his next show, and there a doctor made the diagnosis. The Houdini was suffering from appendicitis.

He was instructed to go to a hospital for immediate surgery. surgery. Houdini declined treatment. The show must go on and all that. So he took the stage in Detroit with a 104 degree fever. He collapsed twice. His eyes burned. His lips quivered. He slipped in and out of consciousness. His dreams began to mix with reality. He saw faces. Not only the faces of those standing by his bed like Bess, but faces from his past. Traveling medicine shows, Side show freaks, a Japanese acrobat who once taught him how to swallow a ball and cough it back up. The barker who gave him a crash course and how to slip free from ropes. The ghosts of his own mind, haunting him or welcoming him, he wasn't quite sure.

He just wanted it all to stop. So he finally relented and agreed to allow the doctors in Detroit to remove his appendix. In the end, it didn't matter. The damage was already done. Whether the punch from that McGill student caused the appendicitis or just made it worse or whether it even had nothing to do with the appendicitis at all, six days after that punch and five days after surgery, Harry Houdini died on Halloween, October 31st, 1926. But not before he'd spoken to the attending surgeon from his hospital bed. The surgeon, Dr. Charles Kennedy, was glad that Houdini was recovering.

Houdini's fever had gone down, and he was once again thinking clearly, and that clarity led to some reflection. He told the surgeon that he'd always wanted to be a doctor, and that he regretted not doing so. The surgeon couldn't believe what he was hearing. Houdini was the greatest illusionist on the planet. He was rich, he was famous, and he brought people great joy. Houdini responded, not like he was speaking to a surgeon, but like he was speaking to a priest. The difference Between you and me, Houdini said, is that you actually do things for people. I, in almost every respect, am a fake. ...disembodied spirits.

Those of you that have grown old in the mysterious laws of spirit land, we greet deep. We have gathered here at the appointed time. We have complied with all the requirements to enable all of you to make your presence known. All is in readiness. It is the spirit of Houdini we wish to contact. Houdini, are you here? Are you here, Houdini? Harry, we are all seekers after truth.

Please manifest yourself in any way possible. Levitate the table, move it. Lift the table, move it, wrap on it. Spell out a code, Harry. Please, please, Houdini, we are away. What you've just heard is a recording of a seance that was conducted on the roof of the Knickerbocker Hotel in Hollywood almost 90 years ago on Halloween night, October 31st, 1936. The goal of the seance was to make contact with Harry Houdini on the 10th anniversary of his death. It was the brainchild of Houdini's widow, Bess, and a man named

Edward Saint, the guy you just heard in that recording. Edward Saint was a former carnival barker. who became professionally and romantically involved with Bess a few years after Houdini died when she was depressed, drinking and smoking way too much, and throwing parties and seances back at what came to be known as the Houdini Mansion. Not Rick Rubin's mansion on Laurel Canyon Boulevard, but Ralph Walker's three-story Mediterranean-style villa just down the road, the one with the guest house connected by an underground tunnel. Like those parties, Bess Houdini's rooftop seance was strictly invitation only. only. Three hundred people total, the C&B scene of Hollywood, captains of industry, the true heads of

spiritualism. All of them craning their necks to get a glimpse of the dimly lit table where Bess and Edward St. went through the motions. Bess claimed that she and her late husband had made a pact that the first one to die would attempt to contact the other from the afterlife. She further claimed that they had developed an intricate code, a string of words that her dead husband would communicate to her in order to prove that it was really him. And in addition to the code, Harry Houdini's ghost would then unlock the pair of handcuffs resting on a table. In so many words,

Bess Houdini claimed that she was attempting the greatest magic trick ever, bringing back the dead. Of course, it was total bullshit. As much bullshit as a card trick. Her dead husband could have told you that. It was nothing more than spiritualist Hocum. Entertainment. You can even call it insurance to make sure that

Harry Houdini's name and legend stayed relevant in the annals of time, even as time marched on. It was also the last time Best led a public seance. But it wasn't the last time the living tried to make contact with the ghost of Harry Houdini. A few miles northwest of the Knickerbocker, on Laurel Canyon Boulevard, among the willow trees, sycamore, and cottonwood, year after year on Halloween night, they gathered, those who believed in those who wanted to believe. They gathered when Ralph Walker's mansion and guesthouse were still standing, and they gathered when both properties burned to the ground in the Great Fire of 1959. They gathered as Ivy began to consume the ruins,

and they drew pentagrams on crumbling pillars and burned candles on the remains of staircases. They planted a wooden cross in the yard and draped it with ceremonial beads. They sang out archaic incantations, hymns to the underworld, designed to summon forth the greatest escape artist who ever lived. And then, there, in the moonlight. Someone saw it. A figure, a man. He was walking the grounds, dressed in a suit and a bow tie.

He was there, and he wasn't. As translucent as a sliver of thinly sliced garlic. They followed closely behind, and the man made no sound. It was like he was walking on air. Seconds later, he disappeared into the mist. He reappeared, months later, in Chicago, walking right into someone's bedroom. Then, in Long Beach, took possession of a medium and spoke through her mouth.

Soon after that, he was seen in Kansas City, in Detroit, in Montreal. And the people who saw Houdini's ghost all over the country swore that what they saw was real, that he really had come back from the dead. Was his sleight of hand, misdirection, old-fashioned bullshit? As they say, a magician never reveals his tricks. To do that will be a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland.

Disgraceland was created by yours truly, and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. Subscribe, follow, like, rate, and review the disgrace land podcast wherever you get your podcast because the disgrace land podcast is now available everywhere. If you love disgrace land, tell someone, tell everyone. Shout us out on social, spread the word, and follow us to find out how you can cop some free

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He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you. you get your podcast. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark.

When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things,

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I talk with the writers who dig deep into the cases that changed history, including Marsha Clark, who went from prosecuting one of the most famous murder cases to writing crime fiction. It doesn't matter that you didn't take part in the murder. If you were at the scene at all, you're guilty of murder. Every week, the real story is revealed. Join us every Monday for new episodes of Wicked Words. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.