By Dennis Phillips
October 2013
“When Houdini was a teenager, he had a slogan: “You can lock me in any jail cell but you can’t keep my face from breaking out!”
Comedy line from -Paul Harris-
Machpelah Cemetery- Place of Houdini’s Grave
We are coming up on the Anniversary of Houdini’s death on Halloween in 1926.
I thought that you might want to know this….
Houdini’s
Gravesite had fallen into neglect and disrepair and overgrown with
weeds. His bust had been stolen and replaced several times.
George
Schindler, the dean of the Society of American Magicians, said his
group had stopped contributing money toward the maintenance of the site
in recent years. "David Jacobson” sends us a bill for upkeep every year but we never pay it" The
Society of American Magicians never paid the cemetery for any
restoration of the Houdini family plot in my tenure since 1988, Mr. Jacobson said. The money came from the dwindling funds of the Machpelah Cemetery, he said. The Houdini grave site is no longer cared for by the Society of American Magicians, but by The Houdini Museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Reportedly
, SAM and the caretaker of the Cemetery have a long running feud over
how fund were being used for the grave upkeep, leading SAM to no longer
contribute funds.
On September 27, 2011 a group Dorothy Dietrich formed,
that came to be known in the media as The Houdini Commandos, secretly
replaced the statuary bust at Houdini's grave site that has been missing
due to vandalism for 36 years. They also did some gravesite fix-ups.
This was reported in a half-page story worldwide in the New York Times
on October 24, 2011. http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/24/houdini-returns-of-course/?_r=0
Her world famous attraction Scranton's Houdini Museum that she runs with mystery entertainer Dick Brooks,
has been asked by both the family of Houdini and the management of the
cemetery to take over the upkeep of the grave that has been in disarray
for many years due to neglect.
Brooks and Dietrich with the replacement Houdini bust
What creeps me out more than anything is that decrepit old Cemetery office!
Burial records littered the floor of the abandoned Machpelah cemetery Office
Any
semblance of grandeur breaks down on the inside. The striking arched
windows visible in the facade are installed in rectangular frames, and
their diamond panes are all artifice. The skeleton of a drop ceiling
hangs askew, with most panels collapsed and reduced to a yellow paste
that covers the ground. The office has apparently fallen victim to
vandals over the years, furniture and safe deposit boxes have been
ransacked, old burial records lie scattered in the grime. Anything of
value has been removed, but a coin bank souvenir from the 1939 New York
World’s Fair remains, its most recent deposits dating back to 1988.
“Stuffy”
doesn’t begin to describe its suffocating ether. Reception rooms are
boxed in with cheap wood paneling, which combines with the dizzying funk
of mildew to evoke the interior of a coffin. Secluded in a cockeyed
armoire, Nosferatu could feel right at home here. Well, no more. UPDATE: The office was just demolished on August 21st, 2013.
Today,
Queens’ five million “permanent residents” almost triple its living
population, but their numbers are at a standstill. Most of these
cemeteries reached capacity long ago, leaving many cemeteries without a
source of income from the sale of new sites. As a result, some have
fallen into disrepair, with officials failing to provide the “perpetual
care” their patrons are rightfully owed.
Every
Halloween, hundreds of devotees make the yearly pilgrimage to Houdini’s
final resting place to pay their respects, party, and make an
offering—around the anniversary of his death, pumpkins, broomsticks, and
playing cards mount like a cairn on his headstone. His cemetery ,long
abandoned, Houdini’s gravesite continues on as long as his memory and
devoted fans remain. At Machpelah Cemetery, the gate is always open, and every day is Halloween.
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