A freely selected card, inserted face up into the face down deck while all is held behind a spectator's back, is further protected by his wrapping the cards in a handkerchief. The performer shows two slates, puts them together, and the deck in its covering placed on top. After an incantation the pack of cards is unwrapped and spread. The card below the faced one is shown. The performer slides slates apart to show its name written on one surface. Then the card above the reversed one is revealed. And the performer shows written across the surface of the other…
From out of the past I have taken a slate writing principle, long off the market, and utilized it in this problem. Bruce Hurling's method for getting rid of a "flap" while standing before an audience in view of all may be used for countless effects. It should not be forgotten. To his watchers the performer shows a slate blank on both sides and identifies these sides by writing initials on each - initials as called out to him. The slate is stood in full view of everyone for the time being. Next are shown three current newspapers having blatant…
"There are people", begins the performer, "who just don't believe in anything, even when they see it before their very eyes. They are the skeptics of the world who hold back and retard progress in almost every line of creative endeavor. My experiment now is to duplicate the accomplishment of many spiritualistic mediums -- that of receiving a written message from "the happy summer land", that part of the veiled universe where departed souls live, and strive to make their thoughts and wishes made known to us still among the living." The performer shows a single slate to be clean…
There are too many tricks which seem to have no reason or excuse for what occurs. As one person remarked to us, when a late amateur of high renown and exalted position made an alarm clock vanish from one side of his cluttered-up stage only to reappear, ringing raucously upon the other, "Why?" The effect which follows is not too much better, but the several who have been asked about it have said that some sort of an idea was there. So, we've tried to give the thing a theme and let it go at that. Undoubtedly you and you…
In the almost innumerable versions of the slate effect, the conjurer has to force the choice of the particular figure, word, phrase, etc., he desires to magically produce. The trick I am about to describe enables the performer after having offered a perfectly FREE SELECTION of any card from a pack, to produce an enlargement of it on a previously marked slate. Of the two in use, one slate is previously provided with a large figure 1 drawn from one corner to the other through a chalk sketch of a pip card, say, the 8 of spades, as large as…
ATTENTION, all possible readers!! Please do not let this layout of "tables" make you grimace. We didn't like it, either, until after the second reading, when it suddenly became clear and dawned on us that the thing made sense and was a miracle to the onlookers while being an utterly awful bit of "stealing" to a performer. But don't let that stop you from trying it. Ed. Effect: The visible apparatus consists of three dice, an apparently meaningless list of letters, two slates, and a piece of chalk. The list is that figured #1 on this page. You write something…
The effect is that the performer shows two black-boards, about 6x9 in. in size and rubber bands onto one a plainly shown blank piece of paper. The remaining board is placed on top of the first, paper between, and heavy rubber bands secure the two together. In a "magically-like" manner, trusting that it all occurs naturally, a name, number, or object is chosen by the audience. The large bands are removed and the boards separated. Still attached to one, by the little bands, is the piece of paper. That paper NOW bears either a picture of he who was named,…
While there is little spectacularly new in the manner of working this effect, the progress towards the finale is logical, interest holding, and the finish of the test a surprise. Saying that he wishes to demonstrate an example of the ultimate in coincidence the performer shows a glass bowl full of one-inch square cardboards, each bearing a letter of the alphabet. These may be shown freely as there is nothing wrong with them in any way. A spectator is asked to reach into the bowl and take therefrom a small handful (say, 7 or 8) of the letters. These he…
This very effective experiment, although built around the evergreen trick of a slate with a loose flap, offers sundry points of novelty in the details. Two slates, after being marked on both their sides with identifying numbers, are tied together with a piece of tape and entrusted to someone in the audience to hold. The titles of well-known periodicals are called out by various spectators and written down in succession by the performer on plain postcards, EACH NAME BEING VERIFIED AS IT IS WRITTEN by a gentleman who stands at performer's side. About half-a-dozen having been suggested, the cards are…
If someone were to dig out the 20 best Jinx effects during the past 82 numbers, including Extras, Before Your Eyes, by Norman Ashworth (Jinx #32), would have to be included. That number is out of print now, and this great improvement must needs explain the effect fully for those who can't refer to their file. On a slate the magician chalks the words seen in the first illustration. He lays the slate down and has a card selected. The spirit of a departed friend, he says, will reveal the name of the chosen card upon the slate. When again…