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Houdini's Final Show Haunts Detroit 100 Years Later

2:09 AM ETConfirmed

Entertainment Desk

In Short: On October 31, 1926, Harry Houdini died in Detroit, and his spirit is still said to haunt the city.

Despite being advised by his doctor to cancel his shows and rest in Montreal, Houdini traveled to Detroit to fulfill his contract, performing his '3 Shows In One' revue at the Garrick Theatre on October 24, 1926.

Houdini performed in Detroit 19 times between 1894 and 1926, reflecting the arc of his career from a relatively unknown performer to a superstar of the vaudeville era.

In a 2004 interview with NPR, Bess Houdini's assistant, Mrs. Young, revealed that Bess always stood in the wings during Houdini's shows, ready to help if he couldn't get out.

Houdini's final performance in Detroit was marked by a series of increasingly dangerous stunts, including a jump from the Belle Isle Bridge in 1906, bound with two sets of police handcuffs.

Houdini's death in Detroit has left a lasting legacy, with his spirit still said to haunt certain locations in the city.

Magician Christopher Bogucki, aka The Big Icky, shows his collection of Harry Houdini memorabilia at the Wunderground Magic Shop in Clawson, highlighting the magician's enduring influence.

Houdini's final days were marred by a punch to the stomach from an audience member, which left him with a broken left ankle and ultimately led to his hospitalization.

Houdini died at Grace Hospital in Detroit, just a week after his final performance, with his spirit still said to haunt the Motor City.

John Sherwood, a curator at the American Museum of Magic in Marshall, Mich., has conducted séances using an empty, aged metal can from Houdini's workshop.

Houdini's death has inspired ongoing fascination and speculation, with historians and fans continuing to explore the circumstances surrounding his final days and legacy.

What this adds

Background

What's confirmed

• On Oct. 22, 1926, Harry Houdini, the greatest showman of his era, was resting on a divan in his dressing room at the Princess Theater in Montreal when he was visited by three university students who had attended his lecture earlier in the week.
• On October, 24, Houdini performed his "3 Shows In One" revue at the Garrick Theatre in Detroit, located at 1120 Griswold, right at the intersection of Lafayette and Michigan Avenue.
• It reported he actually was "tied by a lifeline 113 feet long, handcuffed … Houdini … leapt from the draw span of the Belle Isle Bridge at one o’clock this afternoon, freed himself while underwater, then swam to a waiting lifeboat, passed over the unlocked and open cuffs and clambered aboard."
• He changed his name to “Harry Houdini” when he launched his magical career and quickly became the biggest vaudeville star in the country.
• We finally had a couple more Michiganders in recent years: John Sturk—who was born in Detroit, raised in Plymouth, and graduated from Michigan State —served as the SAM president from 2023-24.
• Houdini was 52 years old when he did his final performance, and according to a review in the Detroit News, the show at the Garrick was broken up into three acts.
• Harry Houdini was a fierce proponent of the Society of American Magicians, a fraternal organization that formed in 1902 with the goal of preserving, advancing, and promoting magic as a performing art.
• Houdini served as president of the Society of American Magicians (SAM) from 1917 until his death in 1926.
• Harry Houdini mesmerized audiences for more than 30 years with his spectacular exploits and superhuman stamina.
• 31, 1926—that Houdini died at Grace Hospital in Detroit, just a week after giving his final performance across town at the Garrick Theatre.

What's still developing

• Sometimes the buildings housed a local newspaper, ensuring free publicity for Houdini's upcoming stage shows.
• As his fame grew, and a series of other magicians began copying his escapes, Houdini ramped up the stakes, stacking one increasingly death-defying feat on top of another.
• Dimick said Houdini only made it through one performance.
• "And to think those boys didn't give him a chance to get himself protected."
• "Houdini was laid out here by the Hamilton Funeral Home, in this room here," Hammond said on a tour in 2004.
• "Some say, 'I'm not going back to the kitchen because I might see Houdini,'" she said.
• "One time he showed me that he had a way of doing it," Young said.
• "I always watched because it was very exciting!"
• He earned his reputation by freeing himself from traps that seemed impossible for a mere mortal to survive.But Houdini couldn't escape the ultimate fate waiting for him in Detroit on Oct.
• But at a séance on Halloween a decade after her husband's death, Bess Houdini finally said good night to Harry.
• “I used to work on cruise ships and stage shows, and if you ever said to anybody in the audience, ‘Name a magician,’ nobody said (David) Copperfield, nobody said David Blaine. People yelled out, ‘Harry Houdini,’ because he set the bar for magic,” said magician Eric Bedard, of Windsor.
• “It turned out that all of his shows in Detroit, he performed in Detroit 19 times between 1894 and 1926, kind of reflect in miniature the whole arc of his career from when he was at the bottom of bills and nobody knew who he was, all the way through this kind of superstardom he achieved in the 1920s,” Dimick said.

Sources

• Enjoyerlink
• Fox Newslink
• Fox2Detroitlink
• Hungarianconservativelink
• NPRlink
• News9link
• Peoplelink
• Pjmedialink
• Warpbeatlink
• C & G Newspaperslink
• East Bay Timeslink
• Fox Newslink
• Petaluma Argus-Courierlink
• WarpBeat — background on Harry Houdini's Final Detroit Show Haunts City 100 Years Later link
• Click On Detroit | Local 4 | WDIV — video link