Harry Houdini

Houdini was born Erik Weisz on 24 March 1874 in Budapest and died 31 October 1926 in Detroit. J. C. Henneberger commissioned a tale of an experience Houdini was said to have had in Egypt, in order to associate the performer with Weird Tales. Wikipedia’s page on the story states that Lovecraft ghostwrote it in February 1924 and that the magazine printed it, credited to Houdini, in the combined May/June/July 1924 issue. The H. P. Lovecraft Archive lists that first publication as vol. 4, no. 2, as “Imprisoned with the Pharaohs.” The FictionMags Index on philsp lists the same issue and marks the story ghostwritten by Lovecraft. Wikipedia states that Lovecraft was not credited on the byline until a 1939 reprint.

The same combined number was the last issue to list Edwin Baird as editor. Houdini’s name had already appeared in the magazine: the FictionMags contents list credits “The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt” (March and April 1924), “The Hoax of the Spirit Lover” (April 1924), and an “Ask Houdini” department.

FictionMags marks the March and April 1924 Houdini items as ghostwritten by other hands, with a question mark on those attributions. This page does not name those ghostwriters. Draft titles (“Under the Pyramids,” “Entombed with the Pharaohs”) are from Wikipedia and the H. P. Lovecraft Archive, not from the 1924 contents list. This page does not host the story.