Every once in a while a principle makes its appearance and allows of being used in many varied ways. Over a year ago Dr Daley, in Jinx pages, introduced a method of using four pieces of plain silicate (four flaps) to obtain a spirit message. The following effect combines that with another idea which has found favor, and thus a magician's dream easily becomes a reality. In an impromptu manner and at any time or place, you can produce a phantom answer THAT IS A DIRECT REPLY to any question written by the spectator! Carry with you merely four silicate…
An assistant from the audience distributes nine numbered slips of paper, the performer asking each person to write a question or bit of personal data. The written slips are collected in an unprepared envelope by the distributor and sealed. In full view at all times, the envelope is placed before the audience by the performer and another assistant recruited to watch it. The medium is now introduced and seated with her back to the audience, well blindfolded. During this, the envelope and slips are burned by the spectator. A large slate is shown to contain a square divided into nine…
Enabling the performer to get into a climax with but very little preliminary preparation, this item forms an effective opening for a mental act. The effect is based on an idea from Secrets of Magic by Blackstone. However, it will be seen that a new principle and method of handling is brought into play which will confuse those who may know the older secret. The performer shows a packet of cards, say from 50 to 100. Each card is blank on one side; the reverse side carries a six figure number. The packet of cards is shuffled and several members…
You begin this one by having your wife leave the room (or does she do that anyway when you begin doing tricks ?). Have her hidden as far away and with as many closed and locked doors intervening as possible. Play this fact up. Then shuffle the deck and have a spectator cut. With the deck face down before him, the spectator now cuts off any number of cards up to half the deck. Without looking at it, he places the bottom card of his cut off portion in his pocket, keeping the rest of the packet himself. The performer,…
Radio sets of the short-wave type have been tinkered and experimented with by magical acts and dealers for the past six years at least. And, with all the effort so far expended, there are very, very few such sets in operation today. It can be attributed both to the cost and to the complexities of the electronics which go into the making of such apparatus. For all the experimenting has been done in a "shooting at the moon" vein, the idea being to transmit, by ultra short-wave, the human voice of the performer to the assistant, or the actual voice…
Did Joseph Banks Rhine innocently receive a "rooking" in some of his Duke University experiments in Extra-Sensory Perception? Is it possible that two of his "best" subjects, close enough in companionship to later marry, conceived of a simple method by which they might outwit conditions imposed by the professor? The tests followed by Professor Rhine over a period of seven years resulted in world wide publicity and comment from learned mathematicians and psychologists. Students of the University were drawn upon to take part. Can it be that college prankishness and the lure of acclaim led them, at times, to "put…
Any time you are within shouting distance of a calendar, it will be possible to present an offhand feat to upset good mathematicians. The assistant takes a monthly sheet; you turn your back. He is told to mark off one day in each week. You now ask "How many Sundays are checked ?" "How many Mondays ?" "How many Tuesdays ?" etc. Immediately after this you name a number. The calendar man adds up the dates he has crossed and finds that you have correctly called the total ! Our secret is well hidden. A calendar page is illustrated. Try…
Cards, counters, and other foreign appliances have no part in this really new conception. The spectators select any page and any line in a Reader's Digest, or similar magazine. They remember the first word of the line, and on a blank card write the page number and line number. The writing is sealed in an envelope. The flap is either initialed to prevent opening, or wax may be used with a ring impression to build it. The envelope is slipped under the door of a room wherein the performer has been concentrating (?) during the entire process. A minute later…
Jinx #10 contained the first mention in periodicals for magi of extra sensory perception, that much discussed emotion of present day delvers into the realm of mental gymnastics. However, insofar as I have been able to discover, magicians taking advantage of the Rhine publicity by using the symbol cards in their presentations becloud the issue by using the cards like an ordinary bridge deck, and complicate things with sleights and intricate patterns of effect for which the original designs were never intended. Over two years ago I made up a set for my own amazement, and used them only at…
An original method for securing a question or message makes use of a common hat pin. Holding the hat pin in my right hand, I request a spectator to write on a piece of paper, fold it into a small bundle, and stick the paper on the end of the pin. The first illustration is followed here. There has already been stuck onto pin another duplicate paper roll, which isn't visible because I am holding the needle between my thumb and first finger in a manner so as to conceal the duplicate. Now, with the left thumb and forefinger I…