The Palace Theatre has been the stage for all sorts of performers. Magician Harry Blackstone Jr. was just another performer at first, but when he came to the theatre for pre-show publicity in the mid-1970s, he received an unexpected result from a séance.
Blackstone Jr. was trying to contact magician Howard Thurston, who was the arch rival of his father, Blackstone Sr., said Carroll Baker, a professional magician in Columbus.
“There was a medium present for the séance that transpired in the theatre lobby. [Blackstone Jr.] was a little taken back apparently, because they didn’t get who they thought they were going to get,” Baker said.
It is unclear whom the medium actually contacted, but one version of the story says it is a spirit of a person murdered at the theatre.
Baker said he was not at the séance, but he did see the main show as a child when he went with his parents. George Kirkendall, Baker’s now-deceased mentor, was at the séance and he is one of the many magicians who told Baker about this event.
But why would Blackstone try to contact Thurston? What made Thurston a good candidate for contact beyond the grave?
Thurston, born in Columbus, was a famous magician in the 1920s and early ‘30s, said Robin Smith, author of “Columbus Ghosts: Historical Haunts of Ohio’s Capital,” and “Columbus Ghosts II: More Central Ohio Haunts.”
Smith said Thurston was friends with Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. All of them had an interest in spiritualism and the possibility of contacting people after death. Houdini would become famous for debunking mediums after he decided there was no truth in spiritualism.
Thurston made pacts with his friends and family to have them try to contact him after his death, she said. Houdini and Doyle died before Thurston, so one year after Thurston’s death on April 13, 1936, his friend Claude Noble and his brother William tried to contact him, with no success.
“The way they would try to contact him was with a wand Thurston had used,” Smith said. “They would hold the wand out in front of the crypt and ask Thurston’s spirit to vibrate the wand if it was present.”
Noble honored the pact, and for 25 years he returned to Thurston’s grave on the anniversary of Thurston’s death, Smith said.
Thurston’s crypt can be found in Columbus at the Green Lawn Abbey mausoleum.
“By the time Thurston died, he had lost all of his fortune,” said Janice Loebbaka, the vice president of the Green Lawn Abbey Preservation Association. “He kept trying to do magic, but he couldn’t compete with movies and vaudeville. So he ended up being buried there at the Abbey.”
The mausoleum has been broken into repeatedly, Loebbaka said. People think that Thurston will communicate with them if they get a chance to visit the crypt. A new security system has been installed since the latest act of vandalism on Oct. 15.
“[Thurston] was the biggest magician of all time,” Loebbaka said. “We always think of Houdini, but he wasn’t really a magician. He was an escape artist. We all remember Houdini,” she said, “but not Howard Thurston.”
