Americana & the U.S. • The Unexplained

In 1971 I traveled to Cincinnati, Ohio, to meet an elderly spinster named Kate Rahner, whom I’d learned was not simply the cousin of Bess (Rahner) Weiss, wife of famous magician/escape artist Ehrich Weiss, aka Houdini, but also in late 1930s Bess had stayed with Kate in Cincinnati. I’d been told Bess had left with cousin a 3 foot high statue of Houdini. I soon found Miss Rahner to be a little senile, and when I’d asked about the statue, she seemed at first confused. Then Kate suddenly sighed, “Bess left the statue with me to keep checking it for a message from beyond from her husband, but I can’t recall what that message was or how statue would reveal it to me? If you want that statue, which always had scared me, it’s wrapped in rug in the rafters above garage.” My heart had jumped! I found it! Kate said she didn’t want to see it and told me to take sooty thing to my car.

As soon as I arrived home with the Houdini statue, covered with 30 years of the car exhaust and dusty grime from being in that old garage, I left it at the house of my brother Walt, who was an expert cleaner and preserver of archeological artifacts. I had gone to the library to do further research on Houdini. I was so excited to see it in cleaned, original condition. My brother, who knew nothing of the Houdini statue’s story, called me excitedly at the library, exclaiming to come back home quickly to see what he had mysteriously discovered while cleaning the statue! When I waked into the house, the cleaned statue was sitting on the table facing me. It was beautiful! Then my brother with a confused smile slowly turned the statue around for a rear view. Walt then carefully slid a cut panel from the Houdini statue’s back right thigh! I gasped, seeing a compartment which had been hollowed out beneath the hidden panel. My brother exclaimed, “Jim, it makes no functional sense.” My mind spun in silence. “There’s no architectural reason for the panel to be cut out of the leg. Jim, do you know what this hidden strange compartment could be for?” When I could finally speak, speak, I’d said “IT’S WAITING FOR A MESSAGE FROM HOUDINI FROM BEYOND THE VEIL OF DEATH!”

After years of displaying, telling the story of the Houdini statue, I was contacted by person representing the contemporay magician David Copperfield (who owns the largest Houdini collection) to attempt to purchase the Houdini statue. I told the Copperfield representative that I appreciated their genuine enthusiasm for the Houdini piece, but there was no price to be placed on this magical gift from Miss Kate Rahner!