When the news came out today that Houdini's family wants to exhume his body and do tests to see if he was poisoned, I was intriqued. There have been rumors for years that he was murdered, that it wasn't really the peritonitis that led to his death.
But what I always wondered about more than how he died, was whether he communicated to his wife from the dead. Most people know the story about the Houdini spirit message which centered around those two words-- ROSABELLE BELIEVE. It can be found here. In short, it was a code that only he and his wife, Bess, would know.... should he contact her from the afterlife.
She reportedly made this following statement to the Brooklyn Eagle, March 27, 1927.
"He was afraid that if he died before me, crooked mediums would come and take advantage of my grief, deceive me with their tricks and make me say things that would discredit Harry's work exposing fraud and superstition. So he made a plan that whoever died first would try to reach the other in a code, a system we both knew so well by heart that even death would not make us forget. The medium who brings ten words from Harry will win ten thousand dollars as reward."
I first heard of Houdini's pact with his wife through the enchanting Kate Bush Song, Houdini, on her album The Dreaming. Here are the lyrics , from LyricsFreak. It's such a romantic, enduring love-- kind -of -story.... not proven, of course. Also not proven is whether he got his "escape key"
passed to him through a kiss!
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