Schwartz also called her son, saying, "Mr. Eager to recover the treasure, he told her his conclusion: That Houdini had entrusted the crystal box to the Eddys during his final tour, and it had been in their family since.įay Dyer was in her 90s and declined to meet with him. Once Schwartz knew to look up Dyer instead of Eddy, he phoned her. "The coincidences speak for themselves," Schwartz said last week during a visit to Lovecraft's and Hall's grave markers in Swan Point Cemetery. With a backpack full of Eddy's books, he was at the corner of Clifford and Eddy streets in Providence when he suddenly realized that the woman had transposed her name, and she was Fay (Eddy) Dyer. Schwartz said it took him several years to discover the works of Clifford M. In his account, she then said, "Remember my name, Fay Dyer Eddy." She also said: "I knew Houdini, my father worked for Houdini." He said to her: "I've been looking for tombstones so much lately, I think I may be Houdini." "Why did you say that to me!" he remembers her saying. As part of his interest in the Superman Building's airship-reproduction interiors, he was hoping to find the grave of the building's local architect, George Frederic Hall.Īt the gathering, he bumped into an elderly woman. Schwartz had not planned to attend the annual Lovecraft gathering in Swan Point Cemetery in 2000, but a friend urged him to come along. Schwartz knew about it because of the ghosts, he said. An elevator in the Superman Building stopped inexplicably on the wrong floor, and the doors opened to a room that exactly matched the promenade deck of an airship that crashed in France in 1930. Strange things have happened to him, he said. Schwartz tends to demand your attention by saying he is the reincarnation of Houdini. If he's pressed, he'll say that he is not really claiming to be Houdini resurrected, but the recipient of "inklings" and feelings, "faint echoes" of Houdini "being transmitted through me." Eddy also worked for Houdini as an investigator and musician, and was a witness to Houdini’s will. Eddy Jr., to help with a book debunking superstition. Houdini hired two Providence men, horror writer Lovecraft and "strange fiction" writer Clifford M. His investigators would give him information to expose them as frauds. Houdini dealt in the supernatural but loathed how psychics preyed on the bereaved, so he invited psychics to prove their powers during his performances. Dyer does have Houdini items, he said, but he won't say whether the storied box is one of them. Schwartz' pursuit led him to Jim Dyer, whose grandparents were employees and friends of Houdini.ĭyer, 58, of Narragansett, manages the manuscripts, papers and other items from his grandparents. She quit, but others keep trying to reach him. Bess held the seance for 10 years, the last one with a national radio audience. Houdini had told his wife the secret phrase he would use when he contacted her from beyond the grave. She wanted to know where he put his treasure box, which held a diamond encrusted question mark with a rare pearl drop and secret papers. The escape artist and illusionist was 52 when his appendix ruptured and he died.Įvery year after Houdini's death, his widow, Bess, held a seance on Halloween. This Rhode Island tale has involved psychics and seances, reincarnation, the Superman Building, airships, spiritualists, uncanny coincidences and the grave of H.P. Noah Schwartz, 58, of Providence, a former model maker for Hasbro, believes Houdini’s spirit led him to solve the puzzle of the great magician's treasure box. Part of it is still unfolding in Rhode Island 90 years later. Harry Houdini died on Halloween in 1926, but his story does not end there.
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