Gardens of Stone --- A Cemetery Blog by Alexandra Kathryn Mosca

I’ve posted about Harry Houdini (aka Ehrich Weiss) before, but with a new development –-and new photographs--here’s another tribute to the famed magician on the 85th anniversary of his death. On October 31, 1926, Harry Houdini died in a Detroit hospital from peritonitis, following two surgeries for a burst appendix. He was 52 years old. Houdini’s body was placed in a bronze casket the magician had had specially constructed  for one of his acts and –-it was said --for his eventual burial. Curiously, after Houdini’s last show in Detroit close, his equipment was all shipped back East except for the casket. On November 3rd, Mrs. Beatrice Houdini and three of the magician’s siblings accompanied his body on the train to NYC. There it was met at Grand Central Station by a large group of friends and relatives before being taken to the West End Funeral Chapel. At 10:30 AM, the next morning, Houdini’s religious service took place at the Elks Club in Manhattan. Two Rabbi’s officiated and ...

Harry Houdini (born Ehrich Weiss) died on Halloween in 1926 at the age of 52. His funeral took place several days later at Machpelah Cemetery in Queens, NY. It was Houdini’s wish that he be buried at the right side of his mother and that her letters to him be placed in his casket. On the first anniversary of his death, his widow, Beth Rahner, held a séance as per a pact the couple had made that Houdini would try to make contact from the afterlife. After ten years with no contact, Rahner held her last séance and was said to quip, “Ten years is long enough to wait for any man.”   Despite a footstone that bears her name at the Weiss family plot in Machpelah, Rahner is buried in Gate of Heaven cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.