Harry Houdini died on Halloween of 1926, but his story does not end there. Part of it is still unfolding in Rhode Island 90 years later.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Harry Houdini died on Halloween in 1926, but his story does not end there. Part of it is still unfolding in Rhode Island 90 years later.

Noah Schwartz, 58, of Providence, a former model maker for Hasbro, believes Houdini’s spirit led him to solve the puzzle of the great magician's treasure box.

This Rhode Island tale has involved psychics and seances, reincarnation, the Superman Building, airships, spiritualists, uncanny coincidences and the grave of H.P. Lovecraft.

The escape artist and illusionist was 52 when his appendix ruptured and he died.

Every year after Houdini's death, his widow, Bess, held a seance on Halloween. She wanted to know where he put his treasure box, which held a diamond encrusted question mark with a rare pearl drop and secret papers. Houdini had told his wife the secret phrase he would use when he contacted her from beyond the grave. Bess held the seance for 10 years, the last one with a national radio audience. She never once heard from her husband. She quit, but others keep trying to reach him.

Schwartz' pursuit led him to Jim Dyer, whose grandparents were employees and friends of Houdini.

Dyer, 58, of Narragansett, manages the manuscripts, papers and other items from his grandparents. Dyer does have Houdini items, he said, but he won't say whether the storied box is one of them.

Houdini dealt in the supernatural but loathed how psychics preyed on the bereaved, so he invited psychics to prove their powers during his performances. His investigators would give him information to expose them as frauds.

Houdini hired two Providence men, horror writer Lovecraft and "strange fiction" writer Clifford M. Eddy Jr., to help with a book debunking superstition. Eddy also worked for Houdini as an investigator and musician, and was a witness to Houdini’s will.

Schwartz tends to demand your attention by saying he is the reincarnation of Houdini. If he's pressed, he'll say that he is not really claiming to be Houdini resurrected, but the recipient of "inklings" and feelings, "faint echoes" of Houdini "being transmitted through me."

Strange things have happened to him, he said. He was visited by two ghosts. A tree fell on his car. An elevator in the Superman Building stopped inexplicably on the wrong floor, and the doors opened to a room that exactly matched the promenade deck of an airship that crashed in France in 1930. Schwartz knew about it because of the ghosts, he said.

Schwartz had not planned to attend the annual Lovecraft gathering in Swan Point Cemetery in 2000, but a friend urged him to come along. As part of his interest in the Superman Building's airship-reproduction interiors, he was hoping to find the grave of the building's local architect, George Frederic Hall.

At the gathering, he bumped into an elderly woman. He said to her: "I've been looking for tombstones so much lately, I think I may be Houdini." "Why did you say that to me!" he remembers her saying. She also said: "I knew Houdini, my father worked for Houdini."

In his account, she then said, "Remember my name, Fay Dyer Eddy."

Schwartz said it took him several years to discover the works of Clifford M. Eddy Jr. With a backpack full of Eddy's books, he was at the corner of Clifford and Eddy streets in Providence when he suddenly realized that the woman had transposed her name, and she was Fay (Eddy) Dyer.

"The coincidences speak for themselves," Schwartz said last week during a visit to Lovecraft's and Hall's grave markers in Swan Point Cemetery.

Once Schwartz knew to look up Dyer instead of Eddy, he phoned her. Eager to recover the treasure, he told her his conclusion: That Houdini had entrusted the crystal box to the Eddys during his final tour, and it had been in their family since.

Fay Dyer was in her 90s and declined to meet with him. She died at age 96 last April.

Schwartz also called her son, saying, "Mr. Dyer, you have Houdini's secret safe deposit box and you have to give it to me."

Jim Dyer ended the conversation.

Dyer, who is caretaker of the family legacy and publisher for his grandparents through his company, Fenham Publishing, said Schwartz showed up at his mother's house and frightened her by pounding on her door. He left and returned, scaring her again with more banging and yelling.

When asked if he has the treasure box, Dyer said that Houdini trusted his grandfather and that Dyer sees his role as maintaining that trust.

"My family has a lot of Houdini things, letters and assorted Houdini things," Dyer said. "I'm hesitant to tell anybody what the family has."

Aware of the lengths to which Houdini and Lovecraft fans will go, he added: "We have them in a safe spot."

Schwartz said Houdini knew about reincarnation from a 1906 book, "Future Life — In the Light of Ancient Wisdom and Modern Science." The book tells how, as Schwartz said, "If you want to be reincarnated as a specific person, you have to build a huge pyramidal building with a treasure in it."

The Industrial Trust Tower, which opened to tenants in Providence in 1928, was not yet built when Houdini died. He had performed twice nearby, escaping from a straitjacket while dangling, upside down, from the building next door.

Schwartz believes Houdini knew the Industrial Trust executives enough to influence the building's pyramid shape and wanted his treasure box kept in its enormous vault.

Called the “Superman Building” for its resemblance to the Daily Planet building on the “Superman” TV series, it is now 111 Westminster St. It has been vacant since 2013.

If anybody was a superman, Schwartz said, it was Houdini.

Just maybe not supernatural.

—dnaylor@providencejournal.com

(401) 277-7411

On Twitter: @donita22