The escapologists who risked death when they buried themselves alive: Harry Houdini, Alan Alan and Anthony Britton nearly died in dangerous stunt but David Blaine lasted seven days in see-through coffin – as magician Dynamo looks to attempt feat on live TV

When Dynamo buries himself alive in front of millions of viewers later this week, he will be following in some rather unfortunate footsteps.

The magician, whose real name is Steven Frayne, is about to accomplish a feat that some of the biggest names in magic tried and failed to pull off.

In 1915, the great American escapologist Harry Houdini started the trend when he was buried without a coffin under two meters of earth.

But he panicked as he tried to dig his way out, and by the time his hand hit the surface he had fallen unconscious and had to be pulled free by his assistants.

British magician Alan Alan attempted the stunt again in 1949, but he too had to be rescued and was moments away from death when he finally emerged, shocked but alive.

And his compatriot Antony Britton had an attempt in 2015 but also had to be rescued by rescuers, with photographers capturing the moment his hand burst through the ground.

Illusionist David Blaine had more success with a variation on the 1999 stunt, which involved spending a week underground in a transparent box.

Harry Houdini

Houdini performed at least three separate live burial stunts.

After surviving his first attempt, he wrote in his diary that it was “very dangerous” and that “the weight of the earth kills.”

However, in his first variation on the stunt in 1926, he chose to immerse himself in water in a coffin.

At the Hotel Shelton in New York, he spent more than an hour at the foot of a swimming pool and claimed to have used no trickery.

Instead, he would have taken very short breaths to avoid using up all the oxygen in the coffin.

He repeated this feat the following month and would perform a fourth variant in 1927, but died before he could perform it.

A promotional poster produced for the hyped event inspired Blaine to perform his own feat in 1999.

Houdini died in 1926 of a ruptured appendix, just days after being repeatedly hit in the abdomen by a woman who asked if it was true that he could withstand blows to the chest.

Alan Alan

The British magician, who died in 2014 at the age of 87, was known as the 'British Houdini' during his career.

His specialty was escaping from a straitjacket while hanging from a burning rope high above the ground.

But he first made headlines with his attempt to repeat Houdini in 1949.

In a stunt branded 'Houdini II buried alive' and filmed by Britain's Pathe, Alan went to Cobham, Surrey.

After lying down in a freshly dug grave, he had a piece of cardboard placed over him before the earth was shoveled back into the hole on top of him.

But when no trace of him was visible after a few minutes, his assistants frantically dug him out again.

They soon realized that they had pressed the earth too tightly.

Footage showed him grimacing in pain as he was pulled from the ground.

David Blaine

In what was his first public endurance feat, Blaine spent an entire week in a Perspex box under three tons of water outside the Trump Building in Manhattan in 1999.

When he was only 25, he gained a lot of public attention with the stunt. Thousands of people came to see him lying one and a half meters underground.

When the tank above him was lifted after a week, Blaine told the audience, “I saw something very prophetic… a vision where every race, every religion, every age group united and that made it all worth it. '

The escapologist ate no food and lived on only two to three tablespoons of water a day.

Blaine spoke in 2022 about what inspired him to perform the stunt, telling Joe Rogan's podcast: 'There's a poster of Houdini where he was buried alive, but he never performed the stunt.

'He died before he could do it. But he would be buried alive in a coffin.

“So I stared…I loved that poster since I was a kid, it's like seeing that poster in the magic books.”

A year later, he followed this feat with a stunt in which he lived for three days, buried in a block of ice in New York's Times Square.

Blaine's other escapades include standing on a 100-foot pillar for 35 hours in 2002 – again in Manhattan – and living in a Plexiglas box above the River Thames for 44 days in 2003.

Anthony Britton

In what was the second attempt to recreate Houdini's original stunt, British escapologist Antony Britton buried himself alive in 2015.

Britton went one step further than Houdini and Alan by opting for handcuffs.

Despite insisting he could free himself, rescuers at the West Yorkshire site were forced into action after nine minutes had passed with no signs of life.

He said afterwards: 'I almost died. I was just seconds away from death. It was scary. The pressure of the ground around me crushed me.

“Even when I found an air pocket, the ground around me crushed me even more as I exhaled.

'I felt like I was losing consciousness, but I couldn't do anything. I almost died.'

That stunt came a year after Britton almost died when a stunt involving hanging upside down in a straitjacket from a burning rope went wrong.

The rope burned faster than expected and he was forced to dislocate his shoulders to free himself before falling to the ground.

Dynamo

After almost four years off TV due to serious health problems, Dynamo is making a comeback with a new one-off show, titled Dynamo Is Dead.

'Right now I'm happy to be alive. Although… I will ultimately be happier when I emerge from that grave. Touch wood,” he told the Sunday Times.

The magician is also about to abandon his old stage name, hence the title of the new program.

The live show will be broadcast live on Sky Max at 9pm.