Interview with a Poltergeist

I came across the video below that is a British documentary on the supposed supernatural occurences in Britain in the late 1970's. Apparently a single mother and her two daughters began experiencing raps, knocking, and furniture being moved about. At the height of the phenomena was the sound of a dog barking and voices coming from "behind" one of the little girls. The investigators were divided into two camps. The first believed it to be a genuine phenomena. The second camp held that the girls were playing pranks.

Magicians both in the IBM and SAM have long had a hand in investigating phenomena like this. Notably the investigators did not utilize them. The documentary is long, about 45 minutes. But only watching it once I found some interesting anomalies that seemed to have escaped the notice of those involved.

1. "Little 11 year old girls cannot do this sort of thing." Nonsense- Kate and Margaret Fox turned a simple rapping game in their Hydesville, NY farmhouse into a world class phenomena.
2. "I saw things flying about in the room." Listen to the one photographer who claimed to be hit by one of the flying leggo's. NO ONE saw where they were coming from. So if they didn't see where it came from then how can they assuredly say it didn't come from one of the little girls? Mike Gallo, coin magician, has a move that is similar to the familiar Han Pien Chen move but the coin flies in the OPPOSITE direction in which you would expect it. It is plausible that the small objects such as marbles, leggo blocks, etc., can be tossed about with no problem.
3. "Little 11 year old girls can't speak in this weird voice." At about 8 minutes from the end of the documentary, or 38 minutes into the tape, they discuss the voice that was clearly being manifested. One investigator "analyzes" where in the vocal box this sound comes from and declares it impossible. Nonsense.

Here's how you can catch the little girl making the sounds. Firstly, the ear is notoriously bad at detecting the source of sounds. I know, I'm a ventriloquist. Secondly the "inertia" of sound must come from a source. And it is not the vocal chords- it is the diaphragm. The diaphragm contracts and pushes the sound up and into the vocal chords. So at 38 minutes, look at the little girl in the red sweater. DO NOT watch her mouth. Watch her white turtle neck, on the right side, just above the clavicle (collar bone). You will see her throat move as the air is pushed up from the diaphragm. She is creating the voice.

On the tape the investigator says that he taped her mouth (and we see it being done) after she takes a swallow of water to "prove" it isn't her making the noise. This is so absurd that it is just silly. Read any basic text on ventriloquism and you will discover that vents can "swallow" water and talk at the same time. The water is pooled under the tongue. I think a better test is to tape her nostrils shut, put a motion sensor over her mouth and attach it to her throat and diaphram. You would discover that she pushes air out to produce the sounds.

4. "A little girl wouldn't know about a deceased man named Bill who died in the house." Again, this is absurd. The narrator clearly states that the man was buried in a cemetary NEAR THEIR HOUSE. Why is it so difficult to discern that a bored little girl can get that kind of information.

All in all it is a wonderful lesson in deception by two clever girls. And notice at the beginning of the tape that it was the mother who contacted the Daily Mirror. As the tape progresses you discover that the Mom was divorced, they were having a hard time making ends meet. So who wouldn't want to sell a story to the papers. They did get a free week at the beach to "give them a break" from the ghost. I would strongly submit that most of this would have been solved had a magician/ventriloquist who is trained in detecting deception were a significant part of the team.

Code Act

Nice code-act by the Bliss Brothers from America's Got Talent.

Magic or a Puzzle

Bev Bergeron recently wrote an article in the Linking Ring, the magazine of the International Brotherhood of Magicians, concerning magic and "puzzles." It is always refreshing to read Bev's articles because it makes you think. His basic thesis was to question whether or not the magic we are doing is presented as an illusion or a puzzle. He writes concerning the old "Princess without the Middle" routine: a girl goes into a box. Her middle vanishes and you can still see her head and legs. The audience, in the story, was less than enthusiastic with the effect. A few changes here and there and the same illusion was presented ending with the magician receiving a standing ovation.

I've long held that if the audience can come up with a solution to the effect, whether or not it is a plausible explanation, for them... that is the solution. For example, if you deal five hands of poker and the fifth hand is to you, the magician, and it has a royal flush in spades, they credit you with great skill. It really isn't magical. Or again, I recently saw an effect that backwards-engineers Max Maven's B'wave effect where instead of ending with 3 blank cards and the mental selection, one has 3 cards and one blank. In other words, it becomes a puzzle rather than a magical effect.

In the video example below the magician executes his magic very professionally and won an invitation to return to "America's Got Talent." But look at the video and then note the following:



Firstly, the fire eating is good. But audiences know people can eat fire (I do in my own act). Not much magic here.

The "Sword Basket" is an old illusion and really a classic. But is it, as presented, a puzzle? From the audience's point of view, she must be in the basket. You don't know how (at least for the audience) but heck... she's in there somehow. The second gal appears and the audience then says to itself, they must have both been in there: again... a puzzle. Now if you made a change or two, it would turn it into a first class illusion.

Andre Kole used to close his show with a pyramid motif instead of a basket. He goes inside the pyramid, he "vanishes" as seen by Tim Kole standing in the basket. Nope... no one there. Then Kole appears... and then a female assistant appears, as the sides of the pyramid fall down. There's no way, it appears, that two people can be inside of that little pyramid! The construction of the illusion is such that the pyramid appears to be separated from the table, resting on little round "feet." Those two changes alone make this a magical illusion and no longer a puzzle. It short circuits the "explaination" that the audience comes up with.

This type of thinking is what is required in order to present a magic effect. Here's another example. The age-old coin in nested boxes is a favorite trick of mine. Usually it is presented like this: Magician has a coin marked and the coin goes into his pocket. Immediately, out comes a set of nested round boxes. The spectator opens each one to find the coin in the last of four boxes. That, my friend, is a puzzle. But how about if you have the coin marked and then place it on the table in full view. The set of boxes is removed and placed next to the coin. Next, the coin is vanished and the boxes are opened to find the marked coin. Now THAT is impossible! With the first presentation the audience knows that somehow you slid that coin into the boxes. With the second presentation, the box is on the table and there is no way a coin can go into a set of boxes in full view.

Make those subtle changes and you will strengthen your magic.

Maurice Fogel Book- A mini review

The new book on Maurice Fogel is out by Hermetic Press. Here's the bottom line up front: buy it...NOW!! before it is out of print. It is a large, 440 page book that gets behind the mind of one of the greatest mentalists magic has ever had. I will be honest with you: I've not finished reading it yet. But I've read enough to know that this is a different kind of magic book. Personal recollections by Fogel are mixed with reviews, challenges and thoughts by others. But what I found absolutely fascinating is the making of Fogel and the development of his act.

Fogel did well in school, having come from a very poor but loving family. He was slowly introduced to magic and did basic magic standards until he entered the British Army as an artillery man. There he found a way to be assigned to an entertainment unit and began mixing mentalism with magic. His profound personality exuded confidence past the floodlights and eventually went to doing just mentalism. THere doesn't seem to be a challenge that he wouldn't take.

From a "methods" perspective the book is valuable in that the reader will find a tremendous amount of mileage out of how Fogel managed his billet work. What I found absolutely fascinating was the impression of the billet work from the perspective of "laypeople." The billets seemed to melt away from the conciousness of the audience and what remained is that Fogel merely plucked thoughts out of the air. Whether good billet work today will work or not will be left up to the reader. It seems that magicians would focus on the technique while Fogel used his personality to bring the effect(s) to fruition. The billets were the means to a greater end.

All in all I would surmise that this book will go out of print soon and for that reason alone I hope it does. I hope so because this way it will become the collectors item that it should become, taking a place on the list of hard-to-find items effectively hiding the material from the curious. But for now, if you want a copy you can email me at magicetc@comcast.com. The book retails for 72.00. BUT...if you order it from me and mention magic21 you can have it for 10.00 off that price, plus 8.00 postage and shipping.

Here are the particulars from the Hermetic Press ad:

When magicians caught a bullet in their teeth...
He caught six!
When magicians did spook shows...
His ghosts were nude!
When magicians did rope tricks...
He put a noose around his neck and jumped!
When magicians predicted a chosen number...
He predicted which of six rifles should be aimed at his forehead!

He was Maurice Fogel, the twentieth century's most audacious mentalist and one of its greatest showmen. His feats of mind reading captured headlines around the world—when he wasn't predicting them. He dared death, he read minds and he became a legend in his own time.

Here is a taste of a typical Fogel performance:
Six volunteer marksmen were invited on stage to operate six legitimate, loaded and fully functioning rifles. One man chose a rifle at random and fired at a saucer, shattering it to smithereens. The discharged rifle was set with the five still-loaded ones in a rotating rack and the rack spun until no one could know which was the empty weapon. Each marksman was assigned a random number and took a random rifle from the rack. Fogel next revealed a predicted number that had been in full view and isolated from the start. The marksmen were all told to aim at saucers over Fogel's head—but the man assigned the predicted number was to aim directly at Fogel's forehead. Then, on his command they all fired!

To some he was a mental wonder; to others, an enigma. For years he strode the stages of the world, reading minds and using his strange powers to defy death. Maurice Fogel: In Search of the Sensational is the chronicle of the life of a master mentalist whose like has never been seen. He baffled the world and his peers. He defied death for years on a near nightly basis. He created an extraordinary body of professional mentalism that has remained among the most coveted material in the field.

This book contains that material, along with the advice, experience and stories of a lifetime of professional performance by one of the world's most acclaimed mentalists.

Maurice Fogel: In Search of the Sensational is the story of an amazing life and the mental secrets of an amazing man—
The Amazing Fogel
Written and collected by Chris Woodward, an award-winning magician and Fogel's son-in-law, in collaboration with mentalist and Fogel confidant Richard Mark, here at last is the definitive work on Maurice Fogel, the man and his secrets.

440 pages in elegant hardcover with book ribbon.