As you read you will feel as if you are sitting with Dai at the Magic Castle while he shares the stories and experiences of his lifetime. In the works since 1965, this enthralling anecdotal biography follows Dai Vernon from his birth to his coming to Hollywood's world-famous Magic Castle in 1963. There are also movie posters from his film career, photographs from his life, his relics of debunking spiritualists for their frauds, and an x-ray of the bullet lodged in his hand.This fourth volume of The Vernon Chronicles is a complete chagne of pace from the three thap preceded it. (This bust was also later stolen and then recovered.) You can peer into the 1907 escape coffin where Houdini emerged from the lid banged down with six inch nails in 66 minutes, the burial box itself decorated with illustrations of the achievement. There’s even the 1976 replacement bust from his grave in Machpelah Cemetery in Queens on loan from Society of American Magicians, a substitute for one that was stolen.

It’s hard to imagine a more inspiring array of artifacts for aspiring young magicians, with everything from framed handcuffs to remains from the water torture cell that were salvaged from a fire. On my visit to the one-room shop and museum, a child’s birthday party was just wrapping up and there were magic tricks being demonstrated at the store counter. Most is from the private collection of Fantasma’s CEO Roger Dreyer and has rarely been on public view, although you may have seen the metamorphosis chest in the corner at the Houdini: Art and Magicexhibition at the Jewish Museum. The museum, opened in 2012, is within the Fantasma Magic shop and has a couple hundred objects on display, as well as some 1,500 items in its archives. Yet go through the nondescript Midtown lobby and take the elevator to the third floor and you’ll find yourself in the Houdini Museum. Few who walk the busy blocks around Penn Station in New York likely notice the small signs for a magic shop below the scaffolding on Seventh Avenue.

Houdini magic store