Marie Blood, who died November 2 at age 86, was a niece of Houdini who reveled in recounting her memories of performing on stage with the famous magician.

Always in demand by societies of professional magicians, Blood also oversaw annual Halloween seances to contact Houdini, wrote books and articles about him, and helped unveil the Houdini commemorative stamp in 2002. In addition, she sold “Houdiniana” – photos, postcards, ephemera, souvenir tricks, and even Houdini’s favorite recipes – over the Internet. The Hungarian-born master of magic and escape was partial to Chicken Paprika.

As a small child at Glen Cove, N.Y., Blood would often visit her “Uncle Harry” in his home on 113th Street.” To me he was just an uncle I had a grand time with and who also took me to the beach,” she recalled in Reminisce magazine in 2000.

Houdini (born Erich Weiss) had married Marie’s aunt, Bess Hinson, when both were in acts at Coney Island. Bess became Houdini’s assistant, and Houdini was close to his in-laws, especially after they began producing nephews and nieces. The Houdinis were childless.

Marie Blood’s father, John, was a carpenter. He helped construct several of Houdini’s famous apparatuses, including the “Metamorphosis Box,” in which Houdini, bound and locked, mysteriously switched places with Bess on stage. Blood’s mother, Mary, altered Houdini’s store-bought shirts to accommodate his athletic physique.

Blood recalled Houdini as an affectionate uncle who delighted in introducing her to audiences onstage during intermissions at shows at the old New York Hippodrome. At one point when she was about 5, Marie improvised a version of the shimmy – a popular dance craze of the 1920s – that so delighted the audience that Houdini invited her to Chicago to repeat the performance.

Houdini died when Blood was 8, in 1926 – he succumbed to septicemia from a burst appendix after taking a punch to the gut from an overzealous fan in Montreal. Bess bought a new house near Inwood Hill Park at the northern tip of Manhattan, where she lived with Marie and her family. After high school, Marie took a job demonstrating cosmetics at Gimbels, then married Forrest Blood and had three sons. The family moved to the Rochester area in 1952, where Forrest worked for the General Railway Signal Company.

Blood’s famous uncle became a curious piece of lore, his legacy confined to family scrapbooks. “I don’t think we even had a picture of him on the wall growing up,” said Marie’s son, Jeff, who said that interest in Houdini faded in the culture as well, before picking up again in the late 1960s.

It was only after the Bloods retired to North Carolina in the late 1970s that Blood reconnected with her famous uncle. After a reporter wrote a short feature about her for a local newspaper, Blood began getting calls from magicians’ organizations asking her to address them about her memories. The magician David Copperfield became a friend, and Blood helped him to identify the individuals in his collection of old photos of Houdini.

Perhaps the most famous personal fact about Houdini – generally known for unmasking psychic frauds – is his promise to try to contact his wife from the spirit world. On Halloween of 1986, Blood attended a seance on the 60th anniversary of Houdini’s death, and the psychic medium who ran the ritual claimed to have contacted Houdini’s spirit. Blood demurred. “I was disappointed that he didn’t know his favorite dessert,” Blood told the United Press International. “It was bread pudding custard … with bing cherries on top.”

The recipe is available at Blood’s Web site, for 60 cents plus postage.

Blood continued to spread the word until earlier this year, distributing her business card to whomever she met. It bore a drawing of Houdini in chains, anchored by a cannonball. Below it was the legend, “He loved me/I lived with him/Marie Blood (Houdini’s niece).”

Marie Hinson Blood

Born Mary Sophie Hinsonhofen in Brooklyn on December 28, 1917; died November 2 at a hospice in Rochester of pneumonia and respiratory failure; survived by her sons, Forrest, John, and Jeff, five grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren.