Harry Houdini Could Have Had Rasputin’s Job
This might be his greatest escape of all time
“Just think, Joe,” he [Houdini] once said to me, in a reminiscent mood, “the nobles were actually willing to knuckle down to me — a Jew. They said they were more willing to take their chances with me if I could control the Empress than with a crazy charlatan like Rasputin, even if it gave me control of Russia. But I couldn’t imagine myself in the part of a psychic faker. I promised to consider the proposition, got out of Russia as quickly as I could, and never returned.”
— “Sixty years of psychical research: Houdini and I among the spiritualists”, Joseph Francis Rinn
Harry Houdini has an incredible list of things he’s been able to get out of such as prisons, handcuffs, straitjackets, and even a giant milk can. However, one of the greatest little-known stories involving Houdini may be a possible job he escaped from. Strangely enough, this odd job might have changed history in unthinkable ways.
While on a world tour, Houdini traveled through Russia and was offered a job as spiritual advisor to the Czar and his wife. This was the job Grigori Rasputin occupied a few years later. In fact, Houdini was offered this job repeatedly, and later, according to some sources, offered the chance to debunk the powers of Rasputin by…
