The date is not spooky theming. National Magic Day lands on October 31 because that is the day Harry Houdini died, in a Detroit hospital, at 52. This year marks 100 years since.
He was the most famous performer alive. Born Erik Weisz in Budapest, he built his name escaping handcuffs, chains, locked crates, and a milk can filled with water, and he made a habit of daring the police in each city he visited to restrain him in their own jails. He once escaped a straitjacket while hanging upside down from a building.
The last chapter of his career was stranger. Houdini spent his final years hunting down fraudulent mediums. Spiritualism was at its height, and grieving families were paying strangers to contact their dead. Houdini, who knew every method in the trade because he had used them, began attending seances in disguise, waiting for the moment he caught the trick, then standing up to announce who he was.
In 1924 he joined a Scientific American panel offering $2,500 to any medium who could demonstrate genuine powers under controlled conditions. He observed more than a hundred. The money was never claimed. The campaign cost him his friendship with Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes and a devoted believer, and the two ended as public antagonists.
Houdini died of peritonitis after his appendix ruptured. A student had struck him in the abdomen days earlier, and the story has been told ever since as the cause, though medical historians have never settled it. Within a year, magicians had claimed the date. His widow blessed the idea, and it began as Houdini Day. It is now a full week, and magicians spend it performing for free in hospitals and schools.
Rick Good spent ten years in the newspaper business, including with The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) and The Greenville News (Greenville, SC). He co-wrote, with Melinda Coleman, Rutledge to Riley: Governors of South Carolina, 1776–Present (Published by The Greenville News), and is the author of Mind Games Trivia #1 (Amazon). He has recently spent 15 years creating original trivia content through Sounds Good Mobile Entertainment and continues that with his new company, SGME Software. He edits The Smart Reader’s money, real estate, and business coverage.