Nevertheless, I still think we've found it. Not something you'd expect a newspaper to ignore! So it appears Houdini did not do the escape at the event itself. I was also able to find several accounts of the Air Memorial Day event itself, including a detailed schedule, and there is no mention of Houdini, let alone a near death experience. In Houdini's telling it was a private test done on a bet with the magician trying the escape at graduating levels. So this is where things have stood on the Buried Alive story for decades.īut last Wednesday while doing some unrelated research, I stumbled on the following from the Los Angeles Times and nearly fell out of my chair!īut there are some problems. Very dangerous the weight of the earth is killing." "I tried out 'Buried Alive' in Hollywood, and nearly did it. The only thing that has kept me from dismissing this story as Houdini-generated mythology is a handwritten annotation Houdini made on some Buried Alive notes which appears (undated) in Walter B. But in Collier’s Houdini wrote that it occurred "six years ago," which would make it 1919. Most biographies, while never explicitly dating it, place it in their chapters covering the years 1915-16. Houdini first said it happened "in Hollywood." But it later became "Santa Ana", which is a good 30 miles from Los Angeles. Exactly where the stunt took place has never been clear. There's no evidence that it actually happened. It's a great story, but there has always been a problem with it. Houdini called it "the narrowest squeak in my life." By sheer will he was able to claw his way to the surface and collapsed as his assistants hauled him from what had almost been his real grave. But he could not be heard under the soil. But when it came to six feet, he found the weight of the earth too much and for the first and only time in his career he panicked and shouted for help. As told by Houdini in a 1925 Collier's article ("When Magic Didn't Work") he was trying the escape at different depths. The story of Houdini nearly dying during a buried alive stunt in California is one that appears in most biographies.
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