“What was the Unspeakable Secret of the SEA OF LOST SHIPS?”
--Poster for Creature from the Haunted Sea
It’s common knowledge that Houdini planned to reach out after death and contact this world of the living again. But did Bogart plan the same escape? And did he succeed, channeled into the part of a way-below B-movie actor in a film entitled Creature from the Haunted Sea?
“If it’s possible for anyone to get through after death, that person will be me.” This was the vow of showman/magician/ultraman Harry Houdini. Time after time, across the country, around the world, he defeated death by out-smarting it. Whether locking himself underwater in a safe, enduring The Water Torture Cell, or throwing himself bound in chains into an icy river, he came out alive again. Water was his favorite element to challenge, though he was known to hang tied upside-down in the air, or while staging another feat in California, he confessed, “I tried out ‘Buried Alive’ in Hollywood, and nearly did it. Very dangerous; the weight of the earth is killing.” 1
Then in 1919, he ventured into the early life of motion pictures, which he saw as realizing “the American ideal of speed and
activity.” 2 His movie A Man from Beyond promised, “A man Entombed in a Massive Casket of Ice 100 Years Comes Back to Life. The Weirdest and Most Sensational Love Story Ever Screened” and featured his famous dethawing act from vaudeville. His experience conquering water even allowed him to share his Promethean knowledge, patenting a new and improved deep sea diving suit “arranged to permit the diver, in case of danger for any cause whatever, to quickly divest himself of the suit while being submerged and to safely escape and reach the surface of the water.” 3
But when he died in Detroit on the Halloween of 1926, contact was lost. “The ordinary people of Europe and America mourned the death of Houdini, but they knew of his promise to come back. It was said that in the manner of his return he would demonstrate immortality so vividly that no one would ever be able to disbelieve again and all the world would be converted.” 4 For ten years his wife Bess worked the air in séances (the very thing Houdini crusaded against, the spotlight of fraud mediums and phony spiritualists), reaching for the ten word code she would know him by, finding nothing before she finally let him go. Where are you? What more could she do? This mystery of human existence seemed to baffle her. Winds blew, curtains fell, magic stopped, things were laid to rest.
Next page: “Here lies one whose name was writ in water”
