Now here’s the trick—while your friends are trying to balance the egg (and not looking at you), take a little pinch of salt in one hand. Wave your other hand above the table and say some magic mumbo jumbo like “abracadabra” or “hocus-pocus.” While they’re watching that hand, use your other to put the pinch of salt on the table.
This is called “misdirection,” and it’s the key to many magic tricks. Magicians get you to watch one thing so you don’t notice something else they’re doing at the same time.
Anyway, build a tiny mound of salt on the table with your fingers. Just a few grains will be enough to form a little base that will hold up the egg, the same way a tee holds up a football for a kickoff. Position the egg on top of the salt until the egg stands up. Then quietly blow away any extra grains of salt.
Presto! You’ve done it, as if by magic. For the fun of it, tell your friends some more mumbo jumbo about how the position of the sun and the moon on that particular date make it possible to make an egg stand up on one end. That’s garbage, of course, but it sounds like it makes sense.
It’s pretty cool to see the look on your friends’ faces when the egg stands up by itself. Maybe I’ll be a magician when I grow up. My best friend, Zeke Austin, already calls me “The Great Mancini.”
Houdini was a really mysterious guy, so naturally there are rumors that my house is haunted. In fact, the lady who owned the house after Houdini died was convinced there was buried treasure in the basement. She spent a year digging around down there, but she never found anything.
People make up crazy stuff like that all the time. Like at my school, kids are always saying the boys’ bathroom on the second floor is haunted. They probably say the same thing about the bathroom in your school. Kids always say weird stuff to try to freak people out.
The thing is, when Houdini was alive, a lot of people believed that he had supernatural powers. He did such amazing things that people couldn’t believe he was just doing tricks.
For instance, he would be handcuffed, shackled, and locked in a big wooden trunk that would then be thrown into a river. It looked like he was sure to drown and die a horrible death. Then, a few minutes later, he would pop up to the surface with no handcuffs or shackles on him. The trunk was still locked and sealed. Nobody knew how Houdini got out. The only explanation seemed to be that he could make the atoms of his body dematerialize and then rematerialize outside the box. People thought that he must have had superpowers. That nothing could kill him.
Well, they thought that until Houdini actually did die for real, on Halloween night in 1926. But even after his death, people were convinced that he would somehow find a way to come back from the dead. To this day, every Halloween, mediums all over the world hold séances to try to communicate with the spirit of Houdini.
When he was alive, Houdini never claimed to have supernatural powers. He insisted that he was just doing tricks. But he also said something else. He told his wife Bess that after he died, if there was any way for him to come back from the dead and communicate with her, he would do it. If anybody could come back from the dead, it would be Harry Houdini.
I never thought too much about any of that creepy stuff. A house is just a house, right? It doesn’t matter who lived in it a hundred years ago. There’s no such thing as ghosts, and the living can’t communicate with the dead.
But then one day something happened that changed my mind. And my life. I’ll tell you the whole story.
THE FREEDOM TUNNEL
Riverside Park is a long, thin strip next to the Hudson River. It’s just five blocks from my house. Hidden underneath the park is a tunnel that’s nearly three miles long. It’s called the Freedom Tunnel. Back in the 1980s the train line that went through the tunnel was shut down for a while, and a bunch of homeless people and graffiti artists set up a tent city down there. They were called the Mole People.
Hardly anybody knows about the Freedom Tunnel. Well, I know about it. My best friend Zeke knows about it. And now you know about it. But pretty much nobody else does. Iron gates cover the archways now to prevent people from going onto the tracks and getting run over by trains.
Zeke and I hang out in Riverside Park all the time after school. (His full name is Ezekiel but everybody calls him Zeke.) Zeke is African American and I’m white. I don’t know why I’m bothering to tell you that, but just in case you’re interested, that’s who we are.
Anyway, Zeke and I were hanging out near the Freedom Tunnel one day after school and complaining about our parents, which is what we usually complain about. Zeke was saying that his parents wouldn’t let him play some video game because they think it’s too violent.
“I told ’em that playing violent video games is a great way to blow off steam,” Zeke explained. “That way, kids don’t become violent in real life. But they weren’t buying it.”
I only have my mom. My dad died a long time ago. I was complaining that my mom won’t let me have my own cell phone. Everybody else in fifth grade has a cell phone except me. My mom says that if I had a phone I’d spend my whole day
