Seance at The Mystic Museum
Derren Brown - Seance
Houdini Seance
Friday, April 24, 2020
Wednesday, April 15, 2020
Notes: Spirit Theater (Eugene Burger)
Ch. 4
Spirit theater is the production and presentation of apparent spirit phenomena accomplished through the use of theatrical devices, techniques, and strategies. pg 20
Henri Robin's Living Phantasmagoria 1847
Pepper's Ghost 1860's
Blue Room 1870's
Seances of Florence Cook
Spook Shows 1940's
Frances Willard (Houdini Seance
Ch. 5
Eugene tells a story of performing a seance as a teenager when a door unexpectedly slams shut from the wind. He learns from this experience:
-The power of personal contact. People were looking for a personal experience of fright, their own thrill. Almost like the thrill one seeks when riding a roller coaster
Two of Eugene's favorite seance strategies. the secret assistant and the hidden assistant.
1) Secret assistant (confederate, stooge) is a member of the audience who secretly acts on the performers behalf.
2) Hidden assistant is actually hidden, no one else is aware of his or her presence.
Eugene describes his 1st seance he did in college. He emphasizes that less is more. The only effects were a string tied to a candle stick and a string tied to a coke bottle.
Speak slowly, clearly and with power.
He starts with the poem "The Ballad of the Harp Weaver". After the poem, silence. Then, in the middle of this silence, the candle moved-or did it? Then onto the rhythmic breathing. Some simple and ambiguous suggestions: "I sense a light cold." More quiet.
After about 15 minutes of the above, I began getting "strange vibrations." I became a bit agitated and asked everyone to join hands and "think positive thoughts." This "something strange is happening here" theme was built up for a bit - all the time I was becoming more alarmed. This is unnerving for people.
Suddenly the Coke bottle fell and broke on one side of the room. The hidden assistant counted to ten and, keeping himself hidden, pushed over a stack of five large trunks. The seance is over. For the group, this was to say the least, a punch ending. EVeryone gasped. My head dropped forward, I didn't move for about a minute. People weren't sure. Slowly I looked up and said, "The seance is concluded."
During the second seance, Eugene experimented with personal contact and use of total darkness.
Ch. 6
The rise and development of the belief in spirits in the last half of the nineteenth century was influenced by the earlier work of an eighteenth century doctor, Franz Anton Mesmer. Mesmer's work provided the spiritualists with three most essential contributions.
1. It provided a ready-made audience as mesmerism (putting someone into a trance) was already an amusing diversion or pass time.
2. It prepared the minds of nineteenth-century men and women for the idea of weird powers.
3. Mesmerism provided spiritualism with mediums in that many for profit mesmerist became mediums overnight.
Eugene provides a summary of mesmerism and it's influence on spiritualism.
Ch. 7
This chapter discusses the contributions of Andrew Jackson Davis (1826-1910) to the the spiritualist movement. Known as the Poughkeepsie Seer, Davis became one of the chief writers to whom the spiritualist turned for philosophical or metaphysical support.
At the age of 18, Davis is said to have wandered off in a state of semi-trance and, forty miles from home, was visited by the spirits of the ancient Greek physician Galen and the Swedish mystical philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg, both of whom told Davis that the had a great mission to perform.
In 1847 he published The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations, and a Voice to Mankind which he had dictated while in a trance to his scribe, William Fishbough. The book was popular with those who liked scientific sounding metaphysical teachings as well as those who favored evolutionary and/or socialistic ideas. Davis did not claim that these revelations were given by the spirits of the dead (as did many late spiritualists). The were, he said, the products of a general inspiration.
He called his system "The Great Harmonia." He pictured the universe as one great harmonious whole in which the soul is constantly progressing and learning-the life which we know here on earth being little more than a station along the way to something far more spectacular which he called the "Summer Land."
One last point about Davis and his famous book. In it, he wrote: "It is a truth that spirits commune with one another while one is in the body and the other is in the higher spheres...and this truth will ere long present itself in the form of a living demonstration. And the world will hail with delight the ushering in of that era when the interiors of men will be opened, and the spiritual communion will be established such as in now being enjoyed by the inhabitants of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn." This was written one year before the official birth of spiritualism and as such, was seen as a clear prediction of the movement.
Ch. 8. "One of the Great Points of Psychic Evolution
Eugene discusses the official beginning of spiritualism in 1848 when two young sisters, Kate and Margaret Fox, began to communicate with a spirit which had been making mysterious rapping noises in their home for some time. He begins by describing the world during this time period and why it was fertile ground for the growth of spiritualism.
Though the Fox sister. did not invent the idea of mediumism, they popularized the idea during this time period. Their parents, John and Margaret Fox, moved to Hydesville New York in 1847. Two of the four Fox children lived at home: Kate who was 6 and Margaret who was 8 (Other accounts have them age 11 and 14 respectively). For some time knocking noises were heard in the house causing Mrs. Fox to fear her family might be in the midst of a demonic visitation. Then, on March 31, 1848, Kate, the youngest daughter, began playing with the noises. Yelling out "Here, Mr. Splitfoot, do as I do!" she snapped her fingers three times. Almost immediately an identical number of knocks responded. Kate continued to play with the unknown entity leaving her mother a bit shocked.
Neighbors where called to witness the amazing events. Soon no less than seventy or eight persons had visited the Fox cottage and heard the rappings which the spirit used as a means to communicate various things. Men were told their ages. Women were told the number of their children. A code was worked out with which the spirit told its story. The "presence" in the Fox home was the ghost of a dead man, a peddler named Charles B. Rosma who had been murdered some years earlier and buried in the cellar.
Word traveled quickly and people soon flocked to Hydesville to witness the spirit manifestations for themselves. The everyday life of the Fox family became hopelessly changed, so it was decided Kate would live with her brother David and Margaret with her older sister Leah. But spirits seemed to follow the girls.
Kate remained with her brother until 1850 where she gave many "sittings" as they were called. Margaret held similar sittings while living in Rochester with Leah. These demonstrations caused a great deal of excitement with the audience roughly divided between those who believed and those who didn't. A number of committees where formed to investigate but none could find evidence of trickery.
A short time later, Leah Fox made the profitable discovery that she to possessed mediumistic powers. So now the Fox family had three mediums rather than two.
In 1850 yet another committee was organized to examine the girls, this time composed of professors of medicine. They discovered that the spirits would not manifest themselves while they held Margaret Fox's legs. They concluded, not unreasonably, that the raps were most likely produced by the cracking of the knee joints. The growing number of spiritualist, however, reacted to this conclusion with righteous scorn and anger.
The sisters fame spread as they undertook a tour of major American cities. Many famous and near famous persons were converted and this, of course, made news. At one of Kate's sessions, Mary Todd Lincoln, the widow of the Late President, came seeking spirit contact with him.
(add more)
After the Civil War things changed dramatically. Perhaps the number of dead and the agony of their families led to new interest in spirit communication after 1865. Another element in spiritualism's rise during this period was the introduction of spirit photography. When William Mumbler began exhibiting spirit photographs in 1863, he found that he was creating a sensation. Soon other spirit photographers sprang up, though all proceeded the same way. Sitters would come to the photographer to have their picture taken and, when the plate was developed, there along with the subject was a spirit form. People frequently recognized these forms as departed loved ones. Though Mumler was himself exposed several times spirit photography as a fad caught on for a while.
Spiritualism in England in the 1860's includes personalities such as Mrs. Everitt (the first native medium) and the American medium Foster, who visited England in 1861, with his specialty of reading messages sealed in envelopes.
(add more)
Ch. 9 Manifestations from Beyond the Grave
Initially a codes were devised by the Fox sisters to communicate with spirits such as one rap for "no"; two raps meant the question could not be answered; three raps signaled "yes"; five wraps a call for the alphabet. The introduction of automatic writing made the process of communication much tidier and less boring. Margaret Fox discovered she could hold a pencil in her hand and the spirits would take possession of her body and write their answers directly to the sitter using Margaret as their "instrument."
Another early manifestation of the spiritualists was really a dip into the "grab-bag" of mesmerists: table tipping. For mesmerists, table tipping indicated the presence of magnetism. For the spiritualists, it was a way of contacting the dead who were credited as being the real "movers" of the tables. Best of all, the same sort of communication could be accomplished with table tipping as with rappings.
Spirit theater is the production and presentation of apparent spirit phenomena accomplished through the use of theatrical devices, techniques, and strategies. pg 20
Henri Robin's Living Phantasmagoria 1847
Pepper's Ghost 1860's
Blue Room 1870's
Seances of Florence Cook
Spook Shows 1940's
Frances Willard (Houdini Seance
Ch. 5
Eugene tells a story of performing a seance as a teenager when a door unexpectedly slams shut from the wind. He learns from this experience:
-The power of personal contact. People were looking for a personal experience of fright, their own thrill. Almost like the thrill one seeks when riding a roller coaster
Two of Eugene's favorite seance strategies. the secret assistant and the hidden assistant.
1) Secret assistant (confederate, stooge) is a member of the audience who secretly acts on the performers behalf.
2) Hidden assistant is actually hidden, no one else is aware of his or her presence.
Eugene describes his 1st seance he did in college. He emphasizes that less is more. The only effects were a string tied to a candle stick and a string tied to a coke bottle.
Speak slowly, clearly and with power.
He starts with the poem "The Ballad of the Harp Weaver". After the poem, silence. Then, in the middle of this silence, the candle moved-or did it? Then onto the rhythmic breathing. Some simple and ambiguous suggestions: "I sense a light cold." More quiet.
After about 15 minutes of the above, I began getting "strange vibrations." I became a bit agitated and asked everyone to join hands and "think positive thoughts." This "something strange is happening here" theme was built up for a bit - all the time I was becoming more alarmed. This is unnerving for people.
Suddenly the Coke bottle fell and broke on one side of the room. The hidden assistant counted to ten and, keeping himself hidden, pushed over a stack of five large trunks. The seance is over. For the group, this was to say the least, a punch ending. EVeryone gasped. My head dropped forward, I didn't move for about a minute. People weren't sure. Slowly I looked up and said, "The seance is concluded."
During the second seance, Eugene experimented with personal contact and use of total darkness.
Ch. 6
The rise and development of the belief in spirits in the last half of the nineteenth century was influenced by the earlier work of an eighteenth century doctor, Franz Anton Mesmer. Mesmer's work provided the spiritualists with three most essential contributions.
1. It provided a ready-made audience as mesmerism (putting someone into a trance) was already an amusing diversion or pass time.
2. It prepared the minds of nineteenth-century men and women for the idea of weird powers.
3. Mesmerism provided spiritualism with mediums in that many for profit mesmerist became mediums overnight.
Eugene provides a summary of mesmerism and it's influence on spiritualism.
Ch. 7
This chapter discusses the contributions of Andrew Jackson Davis (1826-1910) to the the spiritualist movement. Known as the Poughkeepsie Seer, Davis became one of the chief writers to whom the spiritualist turned for philosophical or metaphysical support.
At the age of 18, Davis is said to have wandered off in a state of semi-trance and, forty miles from home, was visited by the spirits of the ancient Greek physician Galen and the Swedish mystical philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg, both of whom told Davis that the had a great mission to perform.
In 1847 he published The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations, and a Voice to Mankind which he had dictated while in a trance to his scribe, William Fishbough. The book was popular with those who liked scientific sounding metaphysical teachings as well as those who favored evolutionary and/or socialistic ideas. Davis did not claim that these revelations were given by the spirits of the dead (as did many late spiritualists). The were, he said, the products of a general inspiration.
He called his system "The Great Harmonia." He pictured the universe as one great harmonious whole in which the soul is constantly progressing and learning-the life which we know here on earth being little more than a station along the way to something far more spectacular which he called the "Summer Land."
One last point about Davis and his famous book. In it, he wrote: "It is a truth that spirits commune with one another while one is in the body and the other is in the higher spheres...and this truth will ere long present itself in the form of a living demonstration. And the world will hail with delight the ushering in of that era when the interiors of men will be opened, and the spiritual communion will be established such as in now being enjoyed by the inhabitants of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn." This was written one year before the official birth of spiritualism and as such, was seen as a clear prediction of the movement.
Ch. 8. "One of the Great Points of Psychic Evolution
Eugene discusses the official beginning of spiritualism in 1848 when two young sisters, Kate and Margaret Fox, began to communicate with a spirit which had been making mysterious rapping noises in their home for some time. He begins by describing the world during this time period and why it was fertile ground for the growth of spiritualism.
Though the Fox sister. did not invent the idea of mediumism, they popularized the idea during this time period. Their parents, John and Margaret Fox, moved to Hydesville New York in 1847. Two of the four Fox children lived at home: Kate who was 6 and Margaret who was 8 (Other accounts have them age 11 and 14 respectively). For some time knocking noises were heard in the house causing Mrs. Fox to fear her family might be in the midst of a demonic visitation. Then, on March 31, 1848, Kate, the youngest daughter, began playing with the noises. Yelling out "Here, Mr. Splitfoot, do as I do!" she snapped her fingers three times. Almost immediately an identical number of knocks responded. Kate continued to play with the unknown entity leaving her mother a bit shocked.
Neighbors where called to witness the amazing events. Soon no less than seventy or eight persons had visited the Fox cottage and heard the rappings which the spirit used as a means to communicate various things. Men were told their ages. Women were told the number of their children. A code was worked out with which the spirit told its story. The "presence" in the Fox home was the ghost of a dead man, a peddler named Charles B. Rosma who had been murdered some years earlier and buried in the cellar.
Word traveled quickly and people soon flocked to Hydesville to witness the spirit manifestations for themselves. The everyday life of the Fox family became hopelessly changed, so it was decided Kate would live with her brother David and Margaret with her older sister Leah. But spirits seemed to follow the girls.
Kate remained with her brother until 1850 where she gave many "sittings" as they were called. Margaret held similar sittings while living in Rochester with Leah. These demonstrations caused a great deal of excitement with the audience roughly divided between those who believed and those who didn't. A number of committees where formed to investigate but none could find evidence of trickery.
A short time later, Leah Fox made the profitable discovery that she to possessed mediumistic powers. So now the Fox family had three mediums rather than two.
In 1850 yet another committee was organized to examine the girls, this time composed of professors of medicine. They discovered that the spirits would not manifest themselves while they held Margaret Fox's legs. They concluded, not unreasonably, that the raps were most likely produced by the cracking of the knee joints. The growing number of spiritualist, however, reacted to this conclusion with righteous scorn and anger.
The sisters fame spread as they undertook a tour of major American cities. Many famous and near famous persons were converted and this, of course, made news. At one of Kate's sessions, Mary Todd Lincoln, the widow of the Late President, came seeking spirit contact with him.
(add more)
After the Civil War things changed dramatically. Perhaps the number of dead and the agony of their families led to new interest in spirit communication after 1865. Another element in spiritualism's rise during this period was the introduction of spirit photography. When William Mumbler began exhibiting spirit photographs in 1863, he found that he was creating a sensation. Soon other spirit photographers sprang up, though all proceeded the same way. Sitters would come to the photographer to have their picture taken and, when the plate was developed, there along with the subject was a spirit form. People frequently recognized these forms as departed loved ones. Though Mumler was himself exposed several times spirit photography as a fad caught on for a while.
Spiritualism in England in the 1860's includes personalities such as Mrs. Everitt (the first native medium) and the American medium Foster, who visited England in 1861, with his specialty of reading messages sealed in envelopes.
(add more)
Ch. 9 Manifestations from Beyond the Grave
Initially a codes were devised by the Fox sisters to communicate with spirits such as one rap for "no"; two raps meant the question could not be answered; three raps signaled "yes"; five wraps a call for the alphabet. The introduction of automatic writing made the process of communication much tidier and less boring. Margaret Fox discovered she could hold a pencil in her hand and the spirits would take possession of her body and write their answers directly to the sitter using Margaret as their "instrument."
Another early manifestation of the spiritualists was really a dip into the "grab-bag" of mesmerists: table tipping. For mesmerists, table tipping indicated the presence of magnetism. For the spiritualists, it was a way of contacting the dead who were credited as being the real "movers" of the tables. Best of all, the same sort of communication could be accomplished with table tipping as with rappings.
Friday, April 3, 2020
Shake Change to Selected Card
Method 1
Have spectator select a card. Use the tilt move to seemingly return it to the middle of the deck. Turn over the top card to show the spectator it is not their card. During this you make a break under the card on top of the deck. Place the card you have shown to the spectator face up on top of the deck. Pick up both cards and perform the shake move.
Method 2
-Perform a triple turnover showing bottom card for the spectator to remember.
-Turn the three cards (as one) back over. Take the top card (which spectator thinks is their card) and place it in the middle of the deck.
-Take the next top card and show the spectator and during this you make a break under the card on top of the deck. Place the card you have shown to the spectator on top of the deck.
-Pick up both cards as one using your thumb and middle finger. Perform the shake move.
Have spectator select a card. Use the tilt move to seemingly return it to the middle of the deck. Turn over the top card to show the spectator it is not their card. During this you make a break under the card on top of the deck. Place the card you have shown to the spectator face up on top of the deck. Pick up both cards and perform the shake move.
Method 2
-Perform a triple turnover showing bottom card for the spectator to remember.
-Turn the three cards (as one) back over. Take the top card (which spectator thinks is their card) and place it in the middle of the deck.
-Take the next top card and show the spectator and during this you make a break under the card on top of the deck. Place the card you have shown to the spectator on top of the deck.
-Pick up both cards as one using your thumb and middle finger. Perform the shake move.
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