Budapest Day 2: House of Houdini

While researching off-beat things to do in Budapest I came across the tidbit that Harry Houdini's died a hundred years ago on October 31, 1926 -- in other words, during our time in Budapest.

I looked into visiting the House of Houdini and learned they would be closed from October 29-31 to celebrate this milestone. I don't know what was involved with being invited to those festivities, so we had to settle for touring the museum.

Houdini has a larger than life existence for me. After all, many of his death-defying tricks were performed in Coney Island, New York on up to Niagara Falls. He is a minor character in Ragtime. We both grew up with Houdini stories.

Our challenge was to visit when they were open. Tickets were to be purchased online in advance, but they were not timed tickets. We stopped by on our first night, only to be told the last tour for the evening had started a few minutes earlier. Had we figured out mass transit better, we might have made it. Instead we were encouraged to return the next night, and to buy tickets in advance.

While we waited for our tour to start we saw movers taking furniture out of the museum. I started to wonder if once inside we would see anything. The furniture was heading to the event space. Some pieces would be auctioned off to the super fans.

I was swept into the excitement of touring this cramped museum and did not take a lot of notes. There were eight on our tour. With our guide, we nearly exceeded the space limits. We had to shout the number of cards in a deck (52) to the mummified Houdini before he would open the door and let us in. 

A bit theatric, but what else would you expect.

The first room had a timeline of his life written in both English and Hungarian. We learned he was born Erik Weiss. At the age of four he and his family moved to Appleton, Wisconsin, then to the big city of Milwaukee. He seemed to have a strong moral compass. One of the things he did was learn from fake mediums. He wrote a book exposing the ones who used emotions to trick people out of their money. 

His idol was Jean-Eugene Robert Houdin, considered by many to be the father of modern magic. He was also friends with magician Harry Keller.

Houdini was double-jointed, which helped him with some of his feats including escaping from straight jackets. 

The largest Houdini museum had been in Niagara Falls. Just as I was about to ask Don why we have never visited it, I was told it burned down in a fire in 1995.

The museum is crammed with posters from his shows, including Metamorphoses with his wife, Bess. There are also a wide variety of handcuffs and other gadgets designed to constrain people. There are pictures with famous people, including Teddy Roosevelt and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (whose wife was a fake medium).

He died in Detroit on Halloween 1926 at the age of 52. Hence, the reason behind the secret password to enter the museum. A man punched him in the stomach, which led to a ruptured appendix. Did the man do it in response to a feat he performed where he encouraged people to punch him in the stomach to prove his strength, or because he wanted to take revenge for some slight? It didn't matter. He died a few days later.

The visit was capped with a magic show. By this point there were only four of us left. The couples alternated between guessing which card to pick. There were also rope length tricks. I've seen variations of the tricks in the past, but they still impress me. Our guide is a magician. He said it takes a lot more to impress him now that he knows the secrets. He loves magic and seeks it out.

They locked the doors behind us as we left -- a little ahead of their scheduled closing time. They had much to do to prepare for the festivities. A couple of weeks later they would be celebrating the tenth anniversary of when the House of Houdini opened. Busy times!