The father hired the best lawyer that money could buy. In an effort to save his son he paid off policemen, prosecutors and finally even the judge himself. In the end it was ruled that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute and the young heir and the family name were saved. Unfortunately due to the large amounts of money spent saving his son the mansion, the business and the property had to be sold. When the family finally vacated the house it was rumored that they were nearly penniless.
This was the first tragedy connected with the gothic mansion. It had been said that the place itself was cursed and that those who occupied the house would be plagued by bad luck and disaster. Other strange things have taken place here over the years and many of those involved the man who purchased this house from the furniture store owner. That man was Harry Houdini and he lived in the mansion during the 1920s. While he lived there the mansion became host to séances, strange experiments and more and there are those who say that this cursed castle may have cost the famous magician his life.
Harry Houdini was born in Budapest, Hungary on March 24, 1874 but grew up as Ehrich Weiss in a small Wisconsin town called Appleton. His father was Rabbi Meyer Samuel Weiss and he moved his family to Milwaukee to take over a Jewish congregation there. At about this time Ehrich became interested in magic and stage performing. He became determined to be a professional magician and later appeared in New York beer halls and theaters under the name of Houdini. The name was based on the name of Robert Houdin, a famous French magician. For several years he played in traveling shows and theaters. While performing at Coney Island in New York he met his wife Bess.
Houdini employed a variety of new and strange stunts in his act and devised amazing escapes that had never been done before. After awhile he became known as the “Handcuff King” because he could escape easily from restraints. As his escapes became more daring he would allow police officers and various officials in the cities where he played to design their own challenges for him as a publicity stunt. Houdini never failed them.
Soon he had become an American and world-wide sensation performing to sold-out crowds. Houdini became an expert in the field of magic and it is unfortunate that today’s magicians and scholars don’t have a chance to learn about his secrets. Houdini’s many journals and notes remained in the possession of his brother after his death and when his brother died, they were destroyed.
It was said that even Houdini himself marveled at the ease with which he could escape from his daring and dangerous traps. At a dinner party around 1924, a Captain Bartlett asked Houdini about one of this escapes. To which Houdini replied “I cannot tell you, for I don’t know myself, and I have always dreaded what might result should I fail.”
Houdini was not only a famous but also a troubled man. He became obsessed with his mother’s death because he was unnaturally close to her during her lifetime. After her death he was observed lying face down on her grave holding long conversations with her. At this time he turned to Spiritualism. It was a movement based on purported communication with the spirits of the dead which began in New York in 1848 and enjoyed a great revival after WW I. The Spiritualists believed that one could communicate with the dead through séances. These were held in darkened rooms where all manner of ghostly phenomena was said to manifest. Through this movement Houdini hoped to communicate with the spirit of his dead mother.
In a short time Houdini came to realize that there were a greater number of fake mediums than those who really had the talent to communicate with the dead and he became a self-appointed crusader against them. During a tour of England in 1920 Houdini met Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes and a spokesperson for Spiritualism. They became good friends even though they had opposing views on the supernatural. Conan Doyle had given up most of his lucrative writing career to lecture about Spiritualism around the world. He discovered that Houdini also had a vast knowledge of the spirit world. Houdini continued to attend séances and hosted many of his own in his new home in Laurel Canyon. Read entire article.