Michael Mayer - Time Trippers The Nights of the Round Table

I sat with Harry Houdini’s ‘magic wand’ in my hand and my two grandchildren at my side in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. We were about to embark on the most amazing journey ever. The outcome of the Second World War and the undying fame of one of the greatest baseball players of all time were briefly in our hands, but we didn’t know it yet…

“Where are we?” Jonathan asked sleepily.

“The question is not where,” I answered as I got my bearings, “but when?!”

Fragments of the Diary of Hans Georg Prohmann, one of Houdini’s workshop assistants translated into English. I discovered these curious entries after our trip. Coincidence?

The Workshop, 278 West 113th Street NY, NY Aug. 7, 1926:

Wondrous event! Houdini has apparently conquered Time itself!

He had been working on actual dematerialization to escape from the bronze coffin he used in the underwater challenge recently. I myself, his most trusted assistant, witnessed this escape!

He entered the coffin at 11:56 am. As usual he began to practice self-hypnosis, waving his new magic wand slowly. As I started closing the lid at 11:58 exactly, his voice came from behind me: “Hans, do not look behind you – continue please.” Astonished and fearful, I continued closing the lid as he lay inside in a trance and finished locking the coffin as the noon bells began to chime. He knocked on the coffin lid from inside as planned at noon.

“You may turn around now.” There he was standing behind me, no doubt watching himself as he lay in the coffin! He had traveled 2 minutes into the past!

“You see Hans, that I have instantly transported myself in space and time – and in two places at once!”

I asked what was the trick – had he hypnotized me somehow? He said that he didn’t thoroughly understand it himself, but it was no trick. At last he had found a way to dematerialize completely, and, as a result, travel in time, however briefly! He was overjoyed!

Showing me the wand, he told me that it contained a piece of an ancient African amulet given to him by an old black man a few years back who claimed it had magic powers. He also said it was a combination of self-hypnosis, and using the wand to focus one’s thoughts. He said he would study this marvelous effect secretly, so that he would understand what had happened. As usual I was sworn to secrecy.

He told me that the surface has only been scratched in realizing the human mind’s capabilities. He said that he believes the mind contains almost limitless power - to move objects, to travel in space and time, shape and communicate with other’s thoughts, but that we are distracted by daily concerns, desires, lack of concentration. He said that we may be using only 10 percent of the mind’s power.

All his life he said that he had been a mere trickster, unmatched by any other magician but only in performing tricks. He has spent the last decade or so seeking to find real magic, if it exists. He is obsessed with the truth. He believes that at last he has found it!

If time travel is possible, my mind wanders to all the things that could be accomplished. I know he wants to travel backwards and visit his mother somehow. Imagine if I could travel also? Would it not be possible to undo events of the past that led to my dear Fatherland’s humiliation in the Great War? Could I, a mere soldier at that time, influence His Majesty, Kaiser Wilhelm in some way?

German civilization is superior to all others, it was our destiny to lead the world in technology, science, medicine, the arts, was it not? There must be a way to accomplish this!

The Workshop, 278 West 113th Street NY, NY Oct 31, 1926:

Dreadful news! Telegram. The great man is dead this morning at Grace Hospital in Detroit! We are in shock that the great Houdini succumbed to peritonitis infection resulting from a ruptured appendix. Few men were more physically fit! This is sad news indeed!

The Workshop, 278 West 113th Street NY, NY Nov 20, 1926:

Houdini’s brother, Dash, (Hardeen) has of course inherited all Houdini’s magic apparatus including the secret time travel wand, of which he knows nothing. I am the only one living who knows about it. Houdini had hidden it and I have been unable to find it searching high and low. I explained to Dash that the great man promised me a particular wand without revealing its significance. He said he would see what he could do but it is almost impossible to tell one from another and it remains lost. Houdini’s will stipulates that all his apparatus be destroyed upon Dash’s death. I must find that wand before it is too late!

302 E 96th St. NY, NY Dec 29, 1926:

Now I have been laid off from the Workshop! Even though Dash continues to carry on the Houdini tradition as Hardeen, they are closing the Workshop and will move soon! Dash and Bess, Houdini’s blessed wife, have found me work as a machinist in New Jersey for which I am grateful. I secured an apartment on 96th St. to remain in the area as well as live within the German community.

302 E 96th St. NY, NY Feb 12, 1927:

I learned to my horror that much of Houdini’s apparatus and props, including many of his wands has been sold privately, without my knowledge! Since Dash has no idea of the wand’s significance it could be in some collector’s hands now. I will never rest until the wand is found.

302 E 96th St. NY, NY Oct 2, 1927:

The Wand has apparently been found! At long last I found a man who claimed to have a wand from Houdini, but he was reluctant to show it to me. It was not for sale. It probably is the one.

(water damage has obscured a paragraph) ―since he has business in New York he must return and I will endeavor to meet him once again. I must have that wand!

The wand in the wrong hands is a weapon of incalculable power and only I believe I possess the ability to use it wisely. It may be possible to alter history saving millions of lives by perhaps preventing the Great War and if not, undo the wrongs done to the Fatherland!

“You may turn around now.”

From an editorial in ‘Judge’ magazine from April 9, 1927:

“If in the imagination we place ourselves at the year 2000, and ask what was the outstanding feature of human events in the first quarter of the 20th century we shall see that it was not the World War (World War I) nor the Russian Revolution, but the change in the status of women. History has seldom known so startling a transformation in so short a time. Now they smoke and swear and drink and think.”