Carl Bertoliho, a Boston magic shop owner and a close friend of Bigelow's says the escapist "eats, sleeps and breathes escapes." Bigelow's house in rural Massachusetts is filled with strange paraphernalia such as caskets, chains, manacles and torture chests. He even has a pet tarantula, that he hopes to work into his act someday. Apparently his wife and two children do not mind.

Bigelow's career has not been without accidents. More than once, the Board of Death has perforated him, and various other mishaps have landed him in the hospital several times. But he insists on making his escapes more dangerous, and seems determined to continue in the profession. Bigelow bills himself as the "reincarnation of Houdini," and appears to believe it.

Not everyone is so flamboyant, though. Jim Sommers of Chicago is a decidedly conventional figure, at least in this unconventional art. Sommers is one of the few escape artists who admits that escaping is partly artifice, as well as ability: escapes, he explains, are really just magic tricks, with more danger and uncertainty than usual. In fact, Sommers is really a magician who occasionally does escape work. His most memorable feat to date was a 1961 underwater escape in Lake Geneva, Wis. The escape was supposed to be a typical underwater box feat, of the Ron Fable variety--but Sommers performed the feat in winter, and a sheet of 16-in. thick ice has formed on the lake. Undaunted, Sommers cut a hole in the ice and went ahead anyway. "I just ate Cream of Wheat beforehand, and took some extra precautions," he relates. The feat caught the eyes of several skin diving magazines, who noted that it was the first time anyone has swum under ice without scuba gear. (Historians now dispute the legend that Houdini pulled the same stunt in 1906. Sommers is obviously not eager to repeat the feat.)

Sommers, like Fable, claims that escape artistry is not really that dangerous. Everything is planned in advance, he explains: "Any man who jumps off a bridge handcuffed is crazy to do it with anything left to chance."

Sommers has done other dangerous escapes, but is retiring from the business now at the age of 43. "I'm getting a little too old for that strenuous work now," he says wistfully. But he does not regret all the time he has spent in a strait-jacket: "How else could I get paid for doing something exciting?" he asks.

Sommers believes people like to watch escapes because they empathize with the artist. "They want you to be liberated, and they are with you all the way, he says. "Of course, there are some people who want to see you get hurt," he adds. Sommers classifies such thrill-seekers with the type of people who "go to stock-car races and boxing-matches."

But there is an escape artist who puts Sommers--and most other artists in the field--to shame. While Sommers finds escapes too strenuous at age 43, Harold Denhard of Chicago is a sturdy 81 years old. He still performs escapes--including the strait-jacket--and specializes in getting out of lengths of chain and rope.

"No one knows I'm over 80--they think I'm 55," Denhard says with a touch of pride. He explains that "enjoying people, entertaining them" has kept him young. Denhard is certainly not a typical octagenarian: he can bench press 250 Ibs., for instance. He also maintains there is little danger in escape work for him: "This is easy for me: They tie me up, and in just a few seconds. I wriggle right out."

At the other end of the spectrum there are young escape artists. Sixteen-year-old Mark Nelson performs escapes in the St. Paul area, including the strait jacket and the Houdini water can. Nelson is obviously enthusiastic about adopting a life in the escape business. He should be. He has reportedly dropped out of high school to devote full time to escapes.

Outsiders find the escape artist's life difficult to understand. To some, they may appear a strange bunch, seeking the masochistic pleasure of being tied up with ropes and chains. In that vein, psychologist Bernard C. Meyer, author of Houdini A Mind in Chains, claims Houdini's behavior was the product of a "tortured and neurotic mind," preoccupied with images of its own death. And certainly, there would appear to be some truth to the idea that only a certain type of person will seek, among other pastimes, to have himself tied up and thrown into a river.

But conversely, there are those who argue that human beings have never been able to deal effectively with the reality of death. Man, they say, is just as neurotic in his every-day fear of death as the escape artists who invite it. But the escape artist is more daring, more brazen; he seems to face death nobly, even to embrace it openly. Surely there is something of human dignity in the art. At its most metaphoric level, an escape act is near-death, followed by miraculous salvation--the archetype of damnation and resurrection. Its practitioners agree; for Houdini, Bigelow and the rest, escaping from reality is the only way to live.