Magic and getting out of things is how Aron Houdini makes a living, but recently he’s been getting into things, television shows and movies to be precise.

First it was the documentaries one on escape artists and another called “Surviving the Scariest Place in the World,” and now he is in the movie “The Possessed” which is to air on the Sci-Fi channel the first part of December.

This performance was the most intense.

“I spent 15 hours in a straight jacket,” Aron said.

Escaping only takes a minute or so he said, but in order to get the different shots and different angles Aron said he had to be filmed from several angles with the camera sometimes just inches from his face.

“They shot me from the front doing the escape,” he said. “Then they had me in the straight jacket again and they shot my shadow while I was wiggling around.”

He said in the end he was on the cold concrete in the apparatus with makeup in his eyes along with the sweat that his girlfriend was applying to his forehead.

Aron said he is also committed to a project coming up soon which will film in Alcatraz. That is to be a documentary for the Sci-Fi channel.

He is paid to escape, but he is working to escape something else.

“I was diagnosed back at the end of July with stomach cancer,” he said. “I’m about to do the third round of Chemotherapy.”

He said the radiation treatments will start soon. A “spot” had been detected on his kidney and the next day surgeons removed a portion of that organ.

“It caught me off guard when they first told me,” Aron said. But he said it isn’t in his nature to focus on the negative.

He is in good spirits, even if he is not all that positive about the other kinds of spirits.

“Harry Houdini spent the later years of his life trying to contact spirits from beyond, but in his journal he wrote he never did believe it,” Aron said. “I guess I’m like him. I’m a skeptic.”

He said he wonders sometimes why people bring him in on television shows and documentaries on the occult since he makes no secrete of his skepticism.

And through it all he is working his brand of magic and even performed during the Russell County Hospital Health Fair Oct. 18th.

Houdini says his work is especially sought after this time of year, and he will be doing shows in Louisville and other places as well.

The time may come when he has to slow down a bit more soon.

“I’ll be starting radiation treatment,” Aron said.  “They say with that I’ll be wanting to sleep a lot.”

In the meantime if you didn’t see him at the health fair at least one of the videos he is in can be purchased through scifi.com and check back here for more news on when the next show will air.