Thursday, October 31, 2024

The Official Houdini Séance mystery envelope


Here's a clip from the 1987 Official Houdini Séance, which was held live on television that year. Here we see Sidney Radner showing the seance handcuffs, which still play a role in Official Séances and will be on the table tonight in Appleton. But then Sid shows a sealed envelope that he says contains "a very interesting document from the date of February 27, 1897."

Unfortunately, Houdini did not come back to tell us what was inside that envelope, and as far as I know, it never reappeared at another Official Séance.

What was in the envelope? I have an educated guess, but let's give Harry another chance. If he fails to manifest at any of today's seances, I will share my guess tomorrow.

Remembering
HARRY HOUDINI
on the
98th ANNIVERSARY
OF HIS DEATH
October 31, 1926


The reveal:
So I was all ready to share what I believed was inside the mystery envelope. Then, in a spooky Halloween coincidence, at the start of the Houdini Museum's Annual Houdini Seance online, Dorothy Dietrich showed this from their collection.


As it turns out, THIS is exactly what I think was inside the envelope. This is a reproduction of an advert in an early Houdini scrapbook that was owned by Sidney Radner. It advertises a spiritualist entertainment that Harry and Bess gave at the A.O.U.W. Lodge in St. Joseph, Missouri, on February 27 (the date "1897" is written on the ad, likely by Houdini himself). Dorothy wasn't aware of my post. It was pure coincidence that she decided to show this at the start of their seance.

Should we consider this a message from Houdini? I said that we would give him one more chance. Did he step in and reveal the contents of the mystery envelope via Dorothy? Believe.

However, there is a trick in this treat. The date on this is wrong. Houdini and Bess gave this show on February 27, but the year was actually 1898. Sid Radner didn't know this at the time. It's no wonder it took Houdini 37 years to figure this out!

Hope everyone had a Happy Halloween.

11 comments:

  1. Now just a minute here! I could swear I read 1:26 pm today.

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  2. Harry "kinda" keeps coming back every Halloween in some other way. I think that 1898 advert is in Gibson's Scrapbook. Maybe also in Christopher's Pictorial. I really want to believe...

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    Replies
    1. I'm not sure what book this was in, but I know it was in a book. I do know the original is in the early HH scrapbook that Sid gave to Appleton.

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    2. Found it!!! It's on page 42 of the Henning book.

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    3. Great. Thanks. That was the first book I checked, but somehow missed it.

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    4. The first book I checked was Christopher's Pictorial. The Henning book was the second.

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  3. Would the pretty golden hour sunset casting on the autumn trees on the way to my parents house last night be a sign?

    I believed so.

    Believe! 😊❤️

    ReplyDelete

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