Whenever I am hosting first-time visitors at The Magic Castle, the room I enjoy sharing with them the most is the Houdini Séance Room. Having said that, let me now also utter this blasphemy and get it out of the way: I am not a fan of Houdini.
There, I said it!
While I recognize the debt that we, as performing magicians, owe to his name and therefore the recognition of our art that the name brings to the minds of laypeople, everything I have read about the man—written by respected scholars in our field—leads me to believe that Houdini was a great escapologist, but a mediocre magician at best. The thing that Houdini excelled at was marketing, and that, my friends, is why his name still has the allure it does almost 100 years since his death. That allure and recognition are also why I enjoy taking my guests into the Séance Room.