“I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw a hand coming up through the grass at his grave,” said Magdaline Mallas, an astounded student from New York State College, who had been walking by the cemetery with a group of her friends when it happened. “But then a couple of the guys I was with ran up and started digging and soon helped him out of the hole.”

Toby Bayside, one of the young men who helped in digging Houdini out, said he just stood in one spot for several minutes after Houdini had emerged.

“I thought it was one of those Halloween hands that people use for decorations,” he said. “But after I grabbed it, it was very obvious that there was someone attached to that hand.”

Questions buzzed through the air as hundreds of onlookers saw Houdini standing before them, a little pale and weak, but very much alive.

“It went according to plan,” chuckled Houdini as he dusted himself off and took several deep breaths.

Houdini said that he planned this mind-blowing escape for years before his supposed death on October 31, 1926.

“Now, I don’t want to give away all the details,” Houdini said with a smile when asked about how he had planned this escape. He did say that he had a bronze casket made for a new death-defying act that he was going to perform sometime in 1927.

Houdini was going to be placed in a strait jacket, sealed in the casket and then buried in a tank full of sand. But he said that he was unable to perform this act because, in 1967, Houdini supposedly died of peritonitis, a result of a ruptured appendix.

This death-defying escape act was very similar to his first “buried alive” stunt, noted Longfellow Hana, a Houdini expert from New York City.

In Santa Ana, Calif., in 1917, Houdini was buried six feet underground, without a casket, and nearly died from the effort of digging himself out, Hana said.

But, Houdini said that it was his second “buried alive” stunt that helped him the most.

On August 5, 1926, Houdini was placed in a sealed casket under water in a swimming pool for an hour and a half. Just by controlling his breathing he was able to endure and complete that feat.

“It has everything to do with controlled breathing,” Houdini explained. Refusing to discuss anymore details about how he pulled off this feat, the magician smiled, “This is what I’ve been looking forward to all these years: the expressions on people’s faces when I rise again out of my grave,” he said.

 (Pictures from YellowMagpie.com)

—April Fools 🙂