Starting next year, the entertainment will be accelerated, Bill Radner said. We did them out in California at the Magic Castle. "It was a cool venue, a haunted fort on top of a hill overlooking Halifax," Boldt said. In recent years, tickets have been sold and entertainment added courtesy of magicians and escape artists.Ī year ago the séance was held in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The séance is used to generate conversation about Houdini. We hire them to use their skills to see if they can make any kind of connection.īoldt, who now coordinates the séance along with Radner's son, Bill, said locations are chosen that have historical connection to Houdini, perhaps a location where he performed. We don't hire him or her to put on an act. "Some people make fun of all this stuff, and we really don't think that's proper," Boldt said. The séance continues because it's part history lesson, part reverence for Houdini and part, well, anticipation. He said, 'No, no, this will be great.' So we had a séance here in '86, and I've been involved since." "But if you ever met Sid, you know he was a pretty enthusiastic guy. "I said, 'Absolutely not, there is no way I'm going to be involved with something like that,'" Boldt said of an initial plea from Radner to hold the séance in Appleton. The late Sid Radner, a longtime Houdini enthusiast and Boldt's friend, became involved in the séance in the 1940s and eventually sought a copyright for the event happens in a different location each year.īoldt got involved when the séance came to Appleton in 1986, shortly after the city had dedicated Houdini Plaza in the heart of the downtown in honor of the childhood years Houdini spent here. The annual Halloween séance rolled on.Ĭompeting séances popped up and continue to this day. Good night, Harry."īess stopped, but Houdini's friends and fans did not. Before the famed illusionist died on Halloween in 1926, he made a pact with his wife, Bess, that she would attempt to contact him from the great beyond once a year for 10 years.Īs the 1936 séance concluded, Bess declared, "Turn out the light. The séance, copyrighted as the Official Houdini Séance, has been a thing for far longer than Boldt has been a part of it. Houdini was born Erik Weisz in Budapest, but when his family came to the United States in 1878, they settled in Appleton. "We want to keep the Houdini name out there and the Houdini story out there for people to learn about and hopefully be inspired by," Boldt said. construction-services firm here, has spent every Halloween since jump-starting a fascination with all things Houdini in 1986. It's how Boldt, whose day job is chief executive of the 125-year-old Boldt Co. Harry Houdini, if you're out there, Tom Boldt wants to talk to you.īoldt will be one of a dozen or so people gathered around a table Halloween night at a séance in a dimly lit Danvers, Mass., estate - best known as ground zero of the Salem witch trials of 1692 - trying to contact the long-dead illusionist extraordinaire.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |