While his mother’s death pushed Houdini to search for genuine contact with the dead more fervently, he had been passionate about disproving fake mediums for years before. This was at the height of the Spiritualism trend both in America and abroad, and Houdini took note that these fraudulent mediums preyed upon the vulnerability of those in mourning – often using the same vaudevillian sleight-of-hand tricks that he and Bess mastered in their early traveling magic acts. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but this image gives me the creeps.Īfter Cecilia’s death, Harry became fixated on trying to contact his mother through séances. Bess gazes lovingly at her husband, who appears suspended someplace between – and this could be the result of my own sick mind – pleasure and self-satisfaction. – Houdini.” Harry Houdini with his mother and wife 1907Īt the time this photograph was taken, Bess and Harry would have been married for 13 years. A note scrawled in the top left corner reads, “My two Sweethearts. His mother looks directly at the camera lens, cold and unamused. I was struck by a 1907 photograph of Houdini, his arms draped over his wife, a young Beatrice (Bess) Rahner Houdini, on his left, and a stern-faced Cecilia Weiss on his right. It’s a statement that would not have seemed out of character for Norman Bates in Psycho.
On June 17, 1913, after learning of Cecilia Weiss’s death from a stroke, her son, the famed magician Harry Houdini, said, “If God in his greatness ever sent an angel on Earth in human form, it was my mother.” After he died, his wife held annual séances to try to contact him. The Harry Houdini Séances: The world-famous magician was fixated on trying to contact his dead mother.
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