WINNIPEG - Halloween weekend will be a quiet one for Winnipeg escape artist Dean Gunnarson, mostly because he'll spend it buried six feet underground.
Up at surface level, however, there was a lot of noise as a chained and bound Gunnarson was placed into a steel coffin Friday night to begin an escape attempt designed to culminate on Halloween night.
Complicating the stunt will be the fact Gunnarson won't have any food or water for the two days.
He says the challenge will be to survive "without panicking or going insane."
Gunnarson hopes to emerge from the grave on Sunday at about 1:26 P.M, which marks the exact time of day on Halloween that his idol, Harry Houdini, died in 1926.
His last coffin stunt didn't go so well -- in 1983, Gunnarson was lowered into the Red River in a coffin but he couldn't get out of his shackles and had to be revived by paramedics when he was pulled out four minutes later.
"I know that from a physical and mental standpoint this will be my most challenging escape ever," Gunnarson has said.
"The last time I was locked in a coffin I died. I never wanted to be in another one and I never have. I will have to conquer all my personnel fears and demons to make this escape on Halloween."
Even if it doesn't work out, there's an upside: Gunnarson says in his press material on the escape that his childhood wish was to die the same day that Houdini did.
Gunnarson has performed around the world. Recently in China, where he was filming a TV special, he says he was hit by a roller coaster going more than 100 kilometres an hour while leaping from the tracks after being chained to them.
He suffered a broken foot and some internal bleeding but says: "It all goes along with the job."
A camera will be inside Gunnarson's coffin prison so Winnipeggers can come and watch him on two big screens.
The ghoulish event also advertises "family fun with a petting zoo, paintball, archery, pizza, face painting, and many more fun things to do."
