Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to a world between two minds.
It's my world, and I welcome you to it.
What's it like in my world?
If you allow me the use of your minds for a few moments, I'll try to show you.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to a world between two minds.
It's my world, and I welcome you to it.
What's it like in my world?
If you lend me your minds for a few moments, I'll endeavor to show you.
With those words, I have opened every show that I've done for more years than I care
to remember.
It's a short lead-in and takes you right into the action.
The action being, I should like to buy a dollar bill.
I have four quarters who has a one dollar bill, please.
Anyone who has not too much to ask quickly?
The gentleman over here beat you to it?
Fine, there's your four quarters.
Gentlemen back here, would you stand please?
Would you take that and catch it?
You got it?
Good, wonderful.
Now, would you fold it out this way so you can see the serial number?
Hold it in front of you.
Look at the serial number.
You have it?
Look at the first letter.
Is there a J?
Is there a one?
Is there a five, a five, a five?
Is there a six, four?
Is there an eight, four?
Is there a Q at the end?
Yes!
Yes!
That I credit to two people.
Firstly, to Ned Rutledge.
May his soul rest in peace.
And secondly, to Bob Nelson, also with him.
Two dear friends of mine who are no longer with us.
The first bit is that I went to the fellow over here and I bought the dollar bill.
Ergo, it is mine.
I may do with it as I wish.
Now, I forgot one line.
The gentleman back in the back got it and I usually say to him, they say a penny for
your thoughts.
However, inflation being what it is, would you please keep that for the kind use of your
thoughts for the few moments?
And that is what I can do that Bill does not have to come back to him.
It does not have to come back to me.
It's over, it's done with, we move right on to the next effect.
That's staging.
That's no stage weights.
That's what you need in a mental act so that it doesn't drag to be able to, you know, you
don't need that.
And there's, mentalism is very hard to sell because of that very fact.
She must keep it rolling.
You've got to keep their interest.
Go to the next thing quickly.
The gentleman over here sold it to me.
I gave him four quarters, he's out of the picture.
I then reached up and rumpled the bill up, pointed the gentleman in the back, asked him
if he could, and I tossed it to him.
He then unrolled it and I told him the serial number.
How did I remember the serial number?
Because my memory is about that long.
I wrote it here on my index finger.
Hey, I'm not going to, you know, hey.
And his bill is here in my side pocket.
That's the bill that I know, which I had here in a low finger palm all the time, along with
the quarters.
The quarters gives you an excuse to keep your hand curled.
Pointing at this fellow in the back also keeps the hand curled.
Because my dear friend, Divertance, told me, he said, take, don't put.
Did anybody catch the move or were you watching?
So I can have that back for a moment.
Here we go.
This is wadded up in my hand.
I've got the four quarters.
Can I borrow them back?
So we have the four quarters spread, reason for keeping your hands cupped.
I go over to him to buy the bill.
He comes out with a wallet.
Well he's got his wallet in one hand.
Before he can do anything, I pull the bill out of the wallet and stuff the quarters in
his hand.
Now both his hands are tied up.
He can't look at it.
He'll never see it again anyway.
So it doesn't know whether it's old or new or wrinkled or not wrinkled.
Every time I get done with it, it's going to be wrinkled anyway.
So we now go really up in the air and everybody's eyes go to there.
So now I point back here.
Would you stand please?
And as the hands come down, I do this, which is what Nelson called a gypsy bill switch.
As I turn to toss, everybody's eyes are on that and the other switch bill goes quickly
into the side pocket.
So that's called an opener my way.
Somebody ate the corner off of that one.
Can I take that back?
It's the only one I can remember the serial number on.
What do you think?
I'm a mind reader or something?
Somebody volunteered to think of a word in the English language.
Who was that?
The gentleman here.
Okay, I forgot who I approached.
You thought of a word in the English language.
Did you write it down anywhere?
I told you not to, right?
Did you tell anybody?
No.
Okay.
Therefore you and you alone are the only person in this audience this evening that knows that
word.
Is that true?
With your kind help and your thoughts, I will try to be the second.
Can you spell the word?
Yes.
Fine.
Would you mix up the letters please?
Think of one of the letters.
I get an L. Is that correct?
It is.
Wonderful.
There's an R. There's a P. The L. Is the word repel?
Thank you very much.
The gentleman over here volunteered to think of a symbol.
I think in the, what we call the ESP symbols.
Are you thinking of it now?
Yes, I am.
You're forming it in your mind.
I don't read minds.
I read only thoughts.
It's a circle, isn't it?
Yes, it is.
Yeah.
Now, if you take those three items, the dollar bill, the word, and the symbol, and do them
in fast order, you now have set your credentials as a mind reader.
They now know, hey, this guy's more than a pretty face.
He can read minds.
Well, hey.
Anyway, he can read minds.
At least I think he can.
And therein lies the minute difference between magic and mentalism.
It's both the same.
It's our art form.
But we can try to make our audience believe in what we're doing.
The same as any good actor can make you believe you're seeing Hamlet up there on the stage.
You're seeing some great moment in theater, the Phantom of the Opera, whatever.
You believe it.
You suspend all your disbelief.
In mentalism, you may even walk out of the theater saying, well, it's all tricks, isn't
it?
You know, you've got that doubt.
And that's what we're aiming for.
We're aiming for that lasting opinion that, yes, I had my mind read.
Such things can happen.
And that's where you've earned your money.
Whatever they paid you to be there, you've earned your money.
You've set your credentials.
Now how did I do that?
How did I grasp this word from this gentleman?
Everybody here know what I mean by pre-show?
Boy, nothing there.
No hands went up at all.
The gentleman in the back, God bless you, young sir.
Pre-show is doing something with a member of the audience before the show, which is
what I did in these two cases.
I walked up to him and I said, would you be so kind as to help us this evening?
We're going to have a show here and we're going to be doing some mind reading, some
telepathy, what have you, and I would like to have you aid me.
I will call on you to think of a word in the English language.
Can you think of such a word?
Stop.
You're starting to think of too many words that will clutter your mind.
This always happens.
Don't worry.
I have here in my pocket a dictionary because that always happens.
This is a normal dictionary even offered to the people up here in front can see.
There are no two pages alike.
What is different about this, however, and you will see this if you look, there's only
one defined word here on each side.
One defined word.
Normally in normal dictionaries that you see in most stores, and this is the store bought
dictionary, there are four words here.
This I happen to find only has two, which cuts down your odds and makes things a lot
easier for you.
How am I going to know what page did he turn to?
My first instruction says, as I open up the dictionary, I want you to choose any page
in here.
I want you to push your hand across the page covering up all but those two words.
By the way, sir, are you right handed or left handed?
Right handed.
Then using the right left brain principle, let's look at the word on the left page.
Now I've eliminated the word on the right page.
Now I have to worry about one word.
I don't have to fish.
So now how am I still going to find out what page he turned to?
I have set the dictionary by doing what I just did.
What do I mean by set?
Well on close examination, you will find that there's a tell sewn through the base of this
dictionary.
A tell is something that's going to tell me where he opened the book.
And to do that, I simply hand it to him.
He opens it anywhere that he wants, opens it out flat as I told him to do, looks at
the word as long as he wants to, and because he is pushing down on the dictionary and then
closes it, those of you out front will be able to see this.
There's a gap there.
Can you see that?
A little gap at the bottom.
When I open it, it falls right open because there's a bunch of thread all gathered right
together here.
And that tells me after I walk away from him, let's see here, oh, he looked at repel.
Okay, fine.
And now I have it.
So that's all there is to it.
I open the cover.
That sets all the slack material over to the cover side.
Put my thumb over it.
You can't see it.
Cover the book like so.
You understand what I'm talking about?
Yes, I do, sir.
Hand them to the book.
He does it while my back is turned.
I have a slight glimpse to make sure he's following my instructions.
If he doesn't, if he goes like this, then I say thank you very much.
I may or I may not call on you.
And I go to another person until somebody follows my directions, opens it out, and puts
their hand over it because that puts enough gather here at the bottom.
Are there any questions about this?
Good.
Now, as to how I knew what symbol he would take.
This is an old item that's been used for a long time, but I have it on the best of authorities
that has never been used as method before as pre-show.
And what it is is a piece of paper with lines on it, known in vernacular as a cut-through.
I tell the spectator that inside here is a piece of paper on which are printed the five
ESP symbols.
My wife puts them in from a series of sets that we have made up in different orders.
Even I don't know which one was put in there.
And what I'm going to do as my back is turned, I want you to cut through a symbol on any
one of these black lines which go right through the middle of that symbol.
When you have done so before, you even open it up and look at it, stick them in your pocket
so that I couldn't possibly see where you cut, even if you don't believe that I don't
know which one it is.
I'll take the scissors back.
I'll leave.
When I've left, I want you to open them up, take it out of your pocket, open them up,
see which symbol you cut through, and then I want you to destroy the paper or whatever
you wish to do with it.
It's yours.
When you come tonight, I will ask you to think of that symbol, put it in your mind, and I'll
try to read your mind.
Is all clear?
It is.
Thank you very much.
Don't write it down.
Don't tell anybody.
And he doesn't.
What in reality happens, and I'll use this other paper to illustrate, these papers come
with a half symbol printed on the top and bottom.
They do not line up with those lines as I told him.
It's just, I told him fib.
The black lines, in fact, cut between them, as you can see.
So when he takes this paper out, opens it up, and looks on the inside, he finds that
he cut through a star.
At least he thinks he did.
And so all I have to do is to tell him to think about it and say, hmm, there's five
points to that, and blah, blah, and I have it.
You're probably wondering, what's the idiot got a key hanging around his neck for?
It's a logical question.
That's the key to your mind.
The key that helps me unlock things.
You know, when a runner goes to run or exercise, he always does stretching things to get him
ready, an opera singer will go, hmm, la la la la la la, and all this kind of foolishness
to loosen up the vocal cords.
I have to use my brain, so there has to be some exercise for that, too.
And the key is just that, a key to the mind.
What I'm going to show you tonight, many of you will say, oh, I saw that before, but I
don't think that you have.
Place the key on his hand.
Now, many of you have seen this, correct?
Where it turns over in your hand?
Well, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that maybe I'm tipping my hand
to make it roll over.
Okay.
That was my thought.
Every time I saw somebody do it, and I spent years looking through antique shops to find
these old rotten keys, and then I stumbled onto a source of the keys that were never
designed to open the lock, but only to make them turn over.
Hey, that works for me.
And so I antiqued them, made them look rusty and old, and sell them.
Here we go again.
I place it on the palm of my hand, and for those of you in the back who can't quite
see, please stand up.
The key is laid at a 45 degree, and I make a little pocket out of it.
There's no way I can tip my hand, and I want those up close to verify that my hand does
not move.
But I'm going to use the powers of my mind to exercise and make this key turn over here
in my hand.
I want you, sir, to say stop at any point.
Stop.
And you may again say start when you'd like it to go.
Start.
Stop.
Start.
...
...
They say there is a lock which has no key, a veil through which I cannot see, but possibly,
just possibly, in my hand I hold that key, and yes, I certainly may be able to see through
the veil that cannot be seen with my mind.
These are the kinds of lines you use to make a transition from mentalism into spirit, seance,
work, something along those lines, for entertainment reasons.
This is all that I do, I do everything that I do for entertainment.
You know, last night I did something for the first time, it is to say I presented it the
way I'm presenting it for the first time, and that is the key around the neck.
I've used the key for many years, but I thought of another routine using it, and so I have
it around the neck.
And I say to the audience, as I did last night, you're probably wondering why I have the key
hanging around my neck, well this is a special key, this is the key that unlocks your mind,
this is the key to your thoughts.
Now, many people have used a similar type old latch key for the haunted key, and I've
always disliked the use in a regular show of haunting, if you're going to do a seance,
that's a whole different genera, but in this context, why not something that unlocks the
mind?
After all, when we go out to run, we exercise first, loosen up the muscles and all this
kind of thing, so I'm going to loosen up the muscles of my mind.
So I will take the key and lay it on my hand, and keeping it loose from the table, at least
most of you will have to, I will literally think it to turn over.
Now that's what's going to happen, and also I can do it in somebody else's hand, which
I'll show in a moment, and I thought, well the chain, I can use it to find a card, we'll
say from a Leslie deck, is there anybody out there who doesn't know what a Leslie deck
is?
Well if you don't know what a Leslie deck is, it's a writer back deck, which Mr. Ted
Leslie of Berlin, Germany, has used like an electro set alpha and a numeric value of the
card on the back, printed in 4D for four diamonds.
Very easy to read, invisible to the person looking at it.
So you're able to tell what card they selected, they lay some out here, the first thing you
would want to do is have it do a pendulum thing over the top.
I can take this off for a moment, not messing my hair up too badly, and hang the key from
it like so.
I now make what you'd be tempted to use as a pendulum, but as you go over and find the
card, they say he selected a card and then he took ten other cards and mixed them up
and spread them all over the table, when you find it, you stop over it, now that's wrong,
no not that one, then suddenly the key starts to turn.
And since all focus is here, they're not looking up here and you're simply revolving the chain
on your fingers, that's all you're doing.
Now as far as the turnover on the hand, in my instructions I say, you know, if you lay
it here like most of the people have shown you to do, it doesn't take a rocket scientist
to figure you're simply somehow tilting your hand until it falls over, and I always side
away from that.
But I lay it, can you all see this here, I lay it at almost a 45 degree angle across
the hand, and I cup my hand so that the baby fingers and all these fingers are in on an
angle and so it really looks like it's laying down in the crux of my hand, which it is.
Now I literally think it over, I think it with my mind, it's an ideomotor reflex and
I can slow it down, I can have somebody say stop, and it stops dead, say start.
And it starts moving again.
And that's the beauty of this key, it's a well balanced key, it's never been meant to
open the lock with, it's only been meant to turn over in your hand.
Now I said I would also teach you how to do it in your hand, and the method of doing that
is rather hard to see in what I did last night, but, and there we are turning it over completely.
To do it in a spectator's hand, let me have your left hand, I'm going to lay it here exactly
as it was on my hand, like so.
I don't want you to do anything, but I want you to cup your hand a little bit, relax the
fingers and I'm going to hold these two and I'm going to ask you to think the key over.
Just think it over, think it turning in your hand.
Remember now this is your mind working on this, I'm only holding your hand absolutely
steady as the key starts to turn in your hand.
And it is turning isn't it?
Yes it is.
It's turning over in your hand and I'm holding your hand absolutely steady so that you don't
make it turn by using some muscular force, it's only applying to your mind.
We can go on and let this turn all the way over or just want to prove to you that it
is happening in your hand and that's it.
Now to explain this to the audience, turn the hand sideways.
I have my index finger here and here, in doing so I now can apply pressure either way and
tip these fingers.
I keep saying over and over again that I am steadying the hand and you are using it.
In reality I'm not steadying the hand, I'm tilting the hand so that I can cause it to
happen in his hand immediately.
Because even those of you learning to do it will find that when you first try it this
way you may not be successful.
You'll have to keep, it's like anything that's worth doing, it's worth practicing.
And in this, the longer that you do it, you don't have to have your hand down, you can
have the hand down.
To begin with having the hand down is a help sometimes in steadying the arm because here
it is maybe twitching about from your muscle.
But you'll find that after you've done it for a while you can control that thing right
down to as slow as you want to.
And the proof of the pudding is when it gets to the halfway point, being able to control
it on its downward leg because then it may tend to fall by its own gravity.
But you must remember that this special key, and it is a special key, is the tongue that
opened the lock, supposedly, weigh as much as the bottom half of the handle.
Therefore there is no counterbalance to it.
As this comes up and this goes down, there is no excess weight to carry it down and you
can control it all the way until it falls in the flat of your hand.
And that's the beauty of this particular key.
Until I found this key and a source on them, I was always going through antique shops looking
for that special key that I could handle and they always fell.
This one won't.
Ladies and gentlemen, the mental key.
Now I have a question on this.
When you get these keys, do they look like this?
Oh no.
No, they are beautiful, shiny, and smooth and look like they're brand new out of somebody's
box but I age these with a special chemical that I came across and make it look like it's
old and rusty and they actually do rust.
And then I coat it with a special dull coating that preserves the rust and the antiquing.
And as they get a little too shiny or whatever, this one is starting to get that way, whoever
gets one of these can send it back to me and I'll re-coat it for a nominal price plus
rate.
But that's the mental key.
Very nice.
And you can use it for a haunted key.
Oh absolutely.
As my good friend Mr. Brother's Shadow said, there is a lock which has no key.
There is a veil through which I cannot see but possibly I do have that key and I will
be able to see across that veil.
The next item that I'd like to show you, I want to give a little generic background.
Now I think I want to, I'll wait to say that for later.
I need along this line over here, please, four people who can think of dates in their
life that are significant.
Maybe the day you were born, not the day but the year, the year that you graduated from
school or college or whatever, the day you were married, the happy days in your life
like that or a happy day like when you were divorced.
Some wonderful event that you can think of.
Do I have four volunteers over here that can just, one stand, another one, can you move
to the end of the aisle please?
I need four, four people.
I now have two.
Move to the end of the aisle please.
I'm sure that it happened in 19 whatever.
So let's get rid of a 19 and do I have three?
There's another fellow, did you stand up?
Oh you did wonderful.
So let's get rid of that 19 and think of only like 31, the year of my birth.
Whatever the year it is, do you have it?
So we want to use, you understand what I'm saying?
Wonder oh you're great.
I'm going to ask you to put your ear down there please.
Uh huh, good, good, good, stay standing.
Number two, you may have to move up here closer because I don't think I can get down to you.
Uh huh.
And the last gentleman, number four, wonder bar, wonder bar.
Okay, I need someone on the other side over here who can add up, doesn't need a special
pair of glasses, doesn't have trouble with nines, that sort of thing.
Do I have, in the back, would you step out over here please?
I'll come part way to you but not all the way.
Fine.
Would you add that up please?
You can hear that he's thinking because I can hear the gears grinding.
You don't seem to be very happy about it.
Are you sure about it?
You're absolutely positive.
You mind if I recheck?
Yeah, yeah, that's correct.
Okay you put on, lastly did you not, is that your year?
Yes.
Thank you very much, you may be seated.
Sir, is that your year?
Yes, it is.
Thank you very much.
Is that your year sir?
Yes sir it is.
Wonderful.
Is that your year sir?
Yes.
Please stay standing.
Would you read out loud what the gentleman added up down here on the bottom?
279.
And what, the total that you added up sir?
279.
279.
Back in the back of the gentleman holding a piece of paper, would you stand please and
read that piece of paper out loud?
May 15th, 2002, the total of important dates of four spectators this evening will be 279.
Would you show that to the audience please?
You're not making it up.
It is there, yeah!
In the vernacular known as add a number, add a no, whatever you want to call it.
Ninety percent of those commercially on the market today are mechanical contrivances,
magnetic covers, pull strings, whatever you want that change a piece of paper for you.
These people wrote down their years.
Now understand that you did not know about that prediction back in the back.
I did not walk out with an envelope or something hanging here, no, nothing like that at all.
You knew nothing about it.
I asked for four years.
I did not even say numbers.
You at that point still didn't know what I was going to do with it.
If you were a lay audience you certainly didn't know.
I then had him write him down and watch this carefully.
I then took and popped the cover off.
Did everybody see that?
I'll lay the pen down, watch it closely.
I popped the cover down, took my fingers, went underneath and asked this gentleman over
here, somebody over here could, and it's on the swing.
Now I opened the cover exactly as it was before and there's four numbers that I put down in
a fashion that looked like four different people wrote them.
I asked this gentleman to step up here and to add up the sum.
I kind of watched his face a bit to see if he's having a little trouble with the nine
that's in there.
If he does, when I take it back, you seem to be having a little bit of trouble.
Do you mind if I recheck your addition and now I'm out clean?
I take the pencil, because there's nothing there, and I write down as if I'm checking
this 279.
Now I'm clean, I can show this flashing around to the audience.
I can even flash the back because the cover over is hiding it.
I look back over to these people and one of the downfalls of all the other added numbers
was that the people got together afterwards and they said, well what number did you put
down?
Well I put down so and so, well what did you put down?
I put down, hey that adds up to more than what this guy said the total was.
But having seen them afterwards and verified that these were their years, again no number
of years, and crossing it out, again they say, well can't they see it?
No they can't, psychologically it's impossible.
I said is that your year?
He said yes, because his focus is, yeah that's my year.
Bang I cross it out and walk away.
His attention was there, he can't do this, he can't add, it's impossible.
Now I go to number three, same thing, now he's deprived of number four, and now number
two deprived of two digits, the two before him, and then number one, I keep number one
standing up, I've also instructed that man that when this is added up to take the piece
of paper out of the envelope, which says hold for Carlisle, and be ready to read it out
loud.
He tells the total, what was the total you added?
The same total, what's on the piece of paper you have back in the back?
Bing, bing, bing, yes.
You know for years people have been doing what is called in the industry, in art form,
add a number or add a no as some people like to say it.
I know that my friend Glenn Falkenstein has done one on his tape, which is something he
bought from Hank Vermeiden more years ago that I can't remember either one of us.
But the commercial ones that have always been available left me cold.
And there were two things wrong with add a number.
The first was that you came out with this sealed prediction and said to the person this
is a sealed prediction.
Ah, now we have a clue, has something to do with what's over there.
And now you ask for some people to write down some two digit numbers, ha ha, he's going
to add them up.
So they do and then they say afterwards, well what was your number?
Well my number was so and so.
Well what was yours?
Hey that adds up to more than what came out on that.
Because of one thing, you didn't see the numbers after they were added up.
And 99% of the commercial items that are out there were that way.
So I had to devise this for a method for covering all those what I call defects in the add a
number program.
Number one, only somebody knows of this envelope which is in the audience.
That someone is the one holding it.
And inside there is a big large piece of paper over my logo or picture that says what it
is to be.
And I always went on the fact, incidentally, let me parenthetically put this in, as a performer
in an art form such as ours, you change audiences, not effects.
And so because I don't want to have to remember things, I always use 279.
I know that I'm right.
And if I change that around too many times, of course the other side of that is if I'm
doing a repeat program for the same audience six months a year from now, of course I'm
going to change it.
But I have maybe three numbers that I know off the top of my head without worrying about
them.
But 90% of the time I'll use 279.
So that's held in the audience by a person.
He's the only one or she is the only one who even knows about this envelope.
Point one.
Point two.
And in my youth I was very privileged to meet and know Joe Dunninger.
But Mr. Dunninger, the great Dunninger, was real.
He wasn't one of us magician type people.
He really read bed minds.
It wasn't until later when I had found out some of his stuff that it all started to click
back in the head and say uh-huh, oh, now I see why he did that.
And this is the genus for doing this.
This is a common ordinary spiral pad.
Nothing extraordinary about that.
But what I do first before I ever bring this out is I say I need four volunteers who can
think of years in their life which have a significance.
Something which means something to them.
We'll say it might be the year you were born, the year you graduated from high school or
college, the year that you got married, the year you got divorced, happy time in your
life.
So anyway, and then I say I think this all happened probably in 1900 and so and so.
So let's get rid of 19 and just go 31 or whatever the year might be.
And so then I go up to the four people and I say would you write down your year?
Now keep in mind this is a year.
A year.
They have so far we haven't talked about anything but years.
So four people write down their year.
Now I'm going to show you what happens.
I simply come, I've got to get somebody over here or over here or wherever to add it up.
And then I walk over to that person, open it up, so I'm going to have their years added
up by you.
Let me draw a line here.
And boom boom.
And now I watch him add it up and know that he came up with 279 because while you find
this hard to believe, those are my numbers.
Those are not the years that those people put down.
And I'll show you in just a moment how I did that because there's some very important points.
And in adding up using a nine, which you see in the bottom number here, some people will
hesitate for a moment because nines seem to give people a mental block.
But so as I walk away, you seem to have had a problem with that.
Do you mind if I double check your addition?
You don't mind?
Thank you very much.
And now I go and I'm writing in 279.
Yeah, you're correct.
And now I walk around with the book like so, covered in the back, and walk back up to number
four and say, is that your year?
Yes, it is.
Thank you.
You may sit down.
Is that your year?
Yes.
Cross it out.
Cross it out.
Until I get down to number one.
I say, please, is that your year?
Yes, please stay standing for a moment.
What was the total that this gentleman over here added up?
279.
What was your total you added up?
279, the person in the back holding a piece of paper, what was the number?
279.
Yes, yes, yes.
And that's a zinger.
The first time that people know that there's a prediction is at the very end.
These four people saw their year after the addition, and they can't try to total it because
you're forcing their attention to the number that they wrote, and they see their own handwriting,
and you cross it out.
Now number three, two, and one are deprived of one digit, so they can't know.
Boom, boom, number two, his attention's there anyway, and so on and so forth until you get
to the end.
Now for the moves, you'll notice that the pad is upside down.
That is to say that it is facing around towards the spectator who's going to take a pencil
and write, and I always use a pencil.
Now I want you to see this.
I'm flipping that down.
Can you see that on camera?
I flipped that down.
The fingers come in and push it, so the fingers now are on top.
The thumb is on the bottom.
I'll do this very slowly.
It's not a fast move that has to be done anyway, and now, sir, who can add up who doesn't have
trouble with nines?
The pad covers are reversed and look normal from either side.
It's an old principle.
Several people have used it with the spiral on the top.
I know that one or two other people have used it here, but nobody has ever used it when
they come back again.
Again, the move, fingers push it over, thumb here, so you can see it against the white,
and it's a move here like this on the move, on the motion.
Don't do it on a standstill.
Again here with the fellow who's done the adding, flip it down.
Bring the fingers under, turn it over, and as you go to walk away, come back and say,
may I check?
Now, he still sees the book facing him.
May I check your addition?
Tip up and rotate.
If he catches a glimpse of some numbers, that's okay.
Now you see this is covered on the back.
You turn it around and check the number, and write in your 279 or whatever your number
is.
Now you're clean.
You walk around with the total at the bottom.
The numbers that the people wrote down, their years over here, I always refer to as years.
I never say numbers.
And so when we read this, you will see, because you probably didn't read the whole statement
when I held it up, it says the total of important dates of four spectators this evening will
be 279.
And it's a nice bold print, so even people with eyeglass problems can read it without
stumbling over it, and it's in short sentences.
And that's another reason for doing it.
If you have these wrong, run-on sentences, people lose place where they're reading and
they stumble over it, and this is a time when you don't want stumbling.
And I put the number in a blue highlight there rather than the same color, so it stands apart.
Again, these are small things.
These are the little things, but these are the little things that will make or break
your act.
The next effect I would like to show you, I would say I'm about as proud of as anything
that I have invented.
For this, I will need somebody who can read the pages of a book, and I have here with
me the Hound of the Baskerville.
And I will show you the size of the print.
Does anybody have difficulty, or somebody who does not have difficulty reading this
size newsprint?
Gentlemen over here, you don't need special glasses or anything.
Would you please come and take a seat here?
I hand you this book.
You are free to look through it as much as you wish.
Please have a seat.
Thank you.
While he's so engaged, I have here some colored slips of paper which have written upon them
the numbers of that page in that book.
But you will probably see there aren't even as full as this bag is, enough pages numbered
here in this bag to represent all the pages in that book.
But I think you'll find a representative.
Would you take one out, please?
And would you also take one out, please?
Would you please open them up and look and see what number that you have there?
Oh, you took two.
That's all right.
And what number do you have?
Three.
You have three.
You have 114.
Well, that kind of takes you through the book a bit, right?
Oh, yeah.
All right.
Fold them up and put them back in there.
Okey-dokey.
So, we do have a collection of numbered pages here.
My instruction to you now is, I hand you this.
I will walk over to the side here.
A book to me is like a video tape recorder which has not been played.
You have that tape, the printed words on these pages, as you read them will bring a picture
to your mind.
I am not a mind reader.
I'm a thought reader.
I'm going to try to pick those pictures, those thoughts out of your mind.
I want you to open the bag, reach in, take out one piece of paper.
On that is a page number.
I wish you then to turn to that page.
Let me know when you've done that much.
You may then close the bag and toss it aside.
On the table we have no further need for it.
You have it?
I have the number.
I'm flipping to the page.
Okay, fine.
If there's a photograph there, turn to the next page and use it.
You have words?
Fine.
I want you now to start to yourself, silently, reading at the top of the page until I say
stop.
Start now.
Make pictures.
Yeah, okay, fine.
There are two men.
There is a rock or a prominence.
I see something about the Grimpen Mire.
A friend has fallen or something, I believe.
Stapleton, something about Stapleton.
Stop.
Would you read out loud what you just now read to yourself for the audience to hear?
The moon rose.
We climbed to the top of the rocks over which our poor friend had fallen.
On the summit we gazed out over the shadowy moor, half silver and half gloom, far away
miles off in the direction of Grimpen.
A single steady yellow light was shining.
It could only count from the lonely abode of the Stapletons.
I thank you, sir.
I have never liked book tests.
Why?
Well, here's this book.
Using this method of calculation, would you now come to a point where you will, yes, and
then turn to that.
Look at the very first word at the top of the book.
Why do I need a whole book for one stinking word?
I can have him think about it.
I don't need to have a book for this.
But he made a picture.
He made a whole scene.
Everybody who reads that will picture a different scene in their mind because they will bring
to it their own experience.
But they will make a picture.
Every time you read a book, you make a picture of every word that you read based on your
own experiences.
You know what a rock looks like.
You know what people walking around it look like and so on and so forth.
A whole paragraph, not one little word.
And he took the piece of paper out himself.
I didn't hand it to him.
I didn't hold the bag and say, here.
No.
He opened the bag.
He took the word out, the number for the page.
So how did I force it on him?
Because I assure you I did.
You know last night when I did the show and the explanation, I used the Hound of the Baskerville
because I love Sherlock Holmes stories.
But any book can be used and that's the beauty of this.
When I, for lack of a better word, sell it.
Got that?
I don't give you a book but there are three effects that come with the bag and one of
them, the first one that I'm happiest with is the book test.
Now I think one of the things that we have to first tell the audience is that this is
a different bag than you will have ever seen before I think.
And somebody asked me how is it that you hold the bag?
Well if I can show the camera I have my ring finger pointing here, my thumb over on this
side and two fingers in the middle pulling back, which pooches this part out and allows
people to get their hand in there.
Now there's a reason to take out one or two.
Got them?
And open them up.
That one says sixteen and that one says seventy-seven.
Well I don't have enough pieces of paper in for every page in this book but I think that
that's kind of indicative of a few of the pages, there's some more in here and you can
fold them and put them back in there.
Now you must understand that on stage there is somebody with this book in their hands
and they are looking through the book.
And then after having done that I put, I'll wrinkle it up here on the sides and close
it up and in doing so I can now hand it to you.
You can hold this and you can look at this until Hill freezes over, excuse expression,
and you will not be able to tell that, oops, there are two compartments in there.
Oh my gosh.
No you don't see it at all.
Now this is where it differs.
I'm handing it to him.
I'm saying to him because he's got the book up there, would you slide it open?
Would you reach inside and take out a piece of paper?
See one, close it up, lay it aside, we have no further need of it, open it up and would
you turn to page, I don't need to do that, I messed up the whole table top here, but
we'll turn to page 193.
How did I know that?
Because I just forced it on him.
And the nice thing that I do with this I think which kind of helps the deception a bit.
Is that it appears that 193 has a photograph on it.
But in reality they don't number those and over here is 193.
So what I say in my instructions to him, reach in there, take out a page number, turn to
the page, if it happens to be a picture there, turn to the next page.
So it would appear that I've allowed him that liberal choice and I don't know whether
he's going to hit a picture or not.
I know he's going to hit a picture.
And he's going to turn to that and in 90% of your book tests they have to either look
at the first word, the last word, there's only one on the market that I know by my dear
friend Larry Becker that allows you to do a whole paragraph.
And all you have to do is memorize the sense of the first paragraph on page 193.
And that's all there is to it.
And while he's reading that paragraph to himself you're standing over to the side and you're
saying I feel that like in a movie screen you're making pictures in your mind and you're
describing this scene which he's reading.
He stops and he stops.
And then he reads out loud and the audience can see that you have just paraphrased what
he was doing.
You must have been picking up pictures.
Since it was an absolute free choice of what page he turned to, after all he didn't have
one of these things that we see in the supermarkets, such as a bag, he opened it himself, he took
the paper out himself.
And how is that happening?
Well it's happening because this is now, I'll put this back in the proper compartment, is
now stuck to the front by a temporary glue which seems to be sticking very tightly.
There we go.
And I was asked the other day by a customer how many times, do I have to replace that
every time?
I've used it up to 50 times because it depends on how much dirt gets on this.
So I store it in a closed and sealed position.
That way it doesn't get any dirt on it.
It doesn't lose its adhesion.
It's a temporary adhesion.
So you can go back in, open this up again and the same thing is true.
Now another thing that happens, and I want to tell that, I don't know what I told it
last night at the lecture or not, but you see how puffy and full this bag is?
When you store it in your at-the-shay case or wherever you're carrying your act, it's
going to get compressed.
These are going to get compressed.
Here's a little secret that you might want to learn.
You simply open it up, take all of them out, first one compartment, fill it up, seal it,
then use it so you don't get them mixed up.
Open this up, fold it in the opposite direction and fold this back in the opposite direction.
Now it's puffy.
You can do this eight or ten times before you have to ever change these papers.
They will each time take a fold in the opposite direction and poof right out, which fills
the bag up and makes it easier to grab and look fuller and everything else.
So that is the effect with the forcing bag, as I call it, and with the bag that I do sell
commercial there, commercial, commercial.
I have three different effects in it, one by Dick Christian, a good dear friend of mine,
and another one that I devised years ago called Eight is Enough, wherein people take the forced
number last, or actually first, and the other number is last, and they actually toss it
through the audience.
You put the indiscriminate numbers in the back and the forced number in the front.
So they take it first, then seal it up and toss it and toss it and toss it.
Eight people then come up here on a thing and using a very simple equivocay, the audience,
point to four people.
If your mark is in the first four group, that group stays in, the other four come over to
this side of the stage.
Now we have four people here.
Point to two of them, these two.
You move over here.
Ah, we have two left.
Choose one of them.
They say what's going to happen to the choice, and he chooses the man that's not the mark.
Bring your friends over here.
Now the person in the audience opens up the envelope and it says that the last person
standing on the right side of the stage, or left side of the stage as they're facing it,
will have the number 279, and he opens it up and he has 279.
So that's Eight is Enough, which comes with this.
Are there any questions on that?
No, I'll tell you what, it's a very, very nice bag.
It's very, very well.
That is the Working Mentalist Carlyle Forcing Bag.
This next effect that I'd like to show you is an outgrowth of an effect that was shown
to me by a dear friend and very inventive mentalist, Ted Karamalovich, who invented,
for those of you who are in the know on mentalism, the mother of all book tests, among other
things, Visions in Black, and oh, just so many very creative things.
And he created a one, he called One on One, I, with his permission, modified it slightly
and called Did I Send You a Thought.
For that I'm going to ask the gentleman sitting back there in the last row to stand please.
Step out in front of it a little bit.
Whoop, right, right there.
I want you now, sir, of the 52 cards in a deck of playing cards to name any one of those
52 cards.
The Jack of Spades.
You're sure?
Yes, sir.
Okay.
Stay right where you are.
The Jack of Spades.
Must be in here somewhere, I hope.
Ah, there we go.
The Jack of Spades.
Would you pass this back to that nice gentleman back there, please?
That's it.
That's the card that you want.
Okay.
Jack of Spades.
You thought of that without any prompting from me, is that correct?
That's correct.
Right.
I reached into my pocket, you named the card, and I removed a deck of cards.
Is that not true?
Yes, sir.
I opened them up, I removed the Jack of Spades, and I then sent it back to you.
Why did you say the Jack of Spades?
No particular reason.
No particular reason?
Would you entertain the thought that possibly I sent you a thought that I wanted you to
say the Jack of Spades?
Would you entertain that thought?
At this point, perhaps.
Perhaps.
I ask you please to stand up here in the audience with me.
Would you please stand up here on stage?
Stand over here to my left, please.
Would you hold that card in your left hand and hold it up for all to see?
Would you reach into my left trouser pocket and remove the only thing which you find in
there?
What is it?
This is the Jack of Spades.
Thank you very much.
This is for the card men in the audience.
You finger flingers, you.
This is an old idea.
What I have here, but first I just got a big hunk of L on it, that's all I can remember,
goes to my left pocket.
Why are you laughing?
This one's got an R on it, that's why it goes to my right pocket.
You know, in the lecture last night, I had to throw something in for the finger flingers
in the audience.
And I owe the jettis of this effect to a dear friend of mine, Ted Karamalovitch, who has
got one of the most brilliant minds in metalism today.
I'm dearly waiting for his book.
By the time somebody gets this videotape, the book may be out.
Hear me, God, from my mouth to God's ears.
Anyway, it's been, and the original effect I think is going to be in that book.
But I was able to modify it a bit with his permission and put it out as, did I send you
a thought?
And in that, if you remember last night, I asked somebody in the audience to think of
a card, any card, the 52 cards in a deck.
What is that card, please?
The two of hearts.
The two of hearts.
And then I stood and I removed a deck of cards from my pocket and removed that deck and I
went through and I found the two of hearts, correct?
Now I passed that back to the gentleman in the back for him to hold.
And while he was doing that I put the deck away and put that in my pocket again.
I'm doing a lot of standing here for the camera will drive me nuts.
Then I recapitulated.
I said you know, I took out a deck and I had somebody name a card and I took the cards
out and I re-go through it and I sent back a card.
Now he came up and I asked him to walk in.
I said, did any reason that you might think that you picked the two of hearts, or did
I send you a thought?
Will you accept that?
The proof of that is that there is nothing in my pocket but one item.
Would you reach in and take it out?
And what is it please?
It's the two of hearts.
Thank you very much.
Okay this has been around for a long time and for those here will notice I have an R
on it because I'm very bad in memorizing things and this means it goes in my right pocket
and another deck goes in my left pocket and it's got an L on it.
I leave nothing to chance.
Anyway the thing that makes it different, oh you're saying how are the decks different?
Well in this deck, and this is up to the person doing it, I have red and black cards in here
and can show it, I can't shuffle it because the cards are all in pairs.
There's a pair of eights, a pair of queens, a pair of sixes, a pair of fours and so on
and so forth.
And then we got the pair of eights of hearts.
Okay I drink a lot.
Two of hearts.
When I find it and I take it off I cut those cards to the top so the duplicate two of hearts
is on top of the deck.
And then I put it back in the box and the old way of doing it and Ted's way of doing
it, of course when you squeeze the side of the box it causes the card to belly a little
bit and you can slip this in between the first card and the rest of the deck.
Here to four, the only way to get this card out was to pull here at the half moon.
I didn't like that because I missed it as many times as I got it not being a finger
flinger.
So a friend of mine from Las Vegas gets these decks from Sam's Town and Frontier and a
few other places and they have this lovely beautiful window in them which then does this
and boom, and putting the deck back in.
If you can't do that you're in big trouble.
But two fingers, touch the card, flip it with your thumb and drop it in your pocket.
Now there's nothing in your pocket except for this deck which you just put in there,
extracted the card, recapitulating you take the deck out, say I took the deck out, I moved
the cards from it, I had a person name a card, I removed it from the deck, I sent it back
to him.
You now bring that card up.
He does.
Now the only thing that's in your pocket is the duplicate card.
One thing to remember, that sometimes you'll be working for the females.
To my mind and to my way of thinking, and I may be because of my age, I think there's
nothing grosser than having a lady put her hand in your side pocket.
Ya ha ha, it may be great in some circles, but you're working for God knows who and
you don't know these people.
You have been hired to entertain them, not to get a laugh at their expense.
I'm sorry, that's the way I feel about it, take it or not.
And I will put the decks in my coat pockets.
The same thing happens, outcomes and they can go into a coat pocket and they can take
out the duplicate card.
In fact, it's most times a lot easier than doing it in your pants pockets.
But that's just me.
For whatever it's worth, did I send you a thought?
Now can I ask a question on that?
Why certainly.
You have the two decks, the one to the left and the other right, obviously each is a half
deck.
Even?
Odd.
Okay.
Sounds good to me.
If you say odd, I know where to go to my left pocket because left is always odd.
The next one I'd like to show you is also a bit of fun.
I believe in putting some lighthearted things into a show.
I wouldn't necessarily use all of them in one show, but since this is a lecture, I'm
showing you what there is available in my thinking that can be added to an otherwise
very serious show, which may come down to very boring and so you need something to sort
of pick me up.
I won't bother with the genus of it.
It's in the description, which I'll do tomorrow morning, but it'll be on the tape.
This again I owe to the good mind, wonderful mind of a friend of mine, Ned Rutledge.
I give him credit for it because it was because of his inspiration that I was able to put
this together.
I need a volunteer from the audience to step up here with me who has in his possession
or her possession a credit card, be it a Visa, MasterCard, store card, whatever, please sir.
Remove it please.
Do you have a pen with you?
You don't.
I need a pencil or a pen.
Pencil, okay.
Pen, whatever.
I don't care.
Keeps rolling.
I want you please to put your initial here on the bottom of the envelope.
Would you do that for me please?
Wonderful.
Would you now, let me see the credit card.
Uh-huh.
Did you sign the back?
Oh you did sign the back.
It's surprising how many people don't sign the back of their credit card.
And you know they're not really valid if they don't.
I'll place it here in this envelope, like so.
I now give you another book.
I ask you please to, would you open it up anywhere?
And I'll place it right in there, close it up and keep it.
You've got it.
I need another gentleman to step up here with me just momentarily.
Would you please?
Yes, thank you.
I'm going to ask you to put both hands on this and hold it very tightly.
Boom, boom.
You got it?
Okay, wonderful.
What we have done is place a credit card in an envelope over here.
We have a book over here.
Now I know that I am pestered by a poltergeist.
I see a bunch of blank stares out there.
Everybody knows what a poltergeist is.
It's a noisy ghost.
Somebody who is mischievous comes from Germany.
However, I know that I have got one that likes credit cards.
How do I know that?
Because every month when I get the bloody bill, there's all these charges.
I say to my wife, did you put a chart?
No, I didn't chart.
Well I didn't chart it.
I must be the poltergeist.
You don't believe me.
You're laughing at me.
There he goes again.
You don't look like you believe a word of what I'm saying.
Open up and give me your credit card.
Again, wonderful.
There we go.
You guarded that with your life, didn't you?
Let's see.
I put it in an envelope.
There it is.
That's got my initial on it.
Has it not?
All right, fine.
It says, you can't get it.
You can't get it.
It says here, tear here or cut here.
Would you tear that up?
Well, here, like that.
Just tear it.
You got it?
I'm going to ask you to reach inside.
Take the envelope.
Reach inside.
Tell me what you have there.
I have his credit card.
He has your credit card.
You've got to get together with him later.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Oh, you want this back.
Actually, the next one, which is I didn't know what to call it, so I call it credit card
portation, is an outgrowth of something that my dear and late departed friend Ned Rutledge
came up with in 1968 or 69, which he called teleportation.
And basically what it had to do with was getting somebody's credit card and putting it inside
of a paperback book, and then it ended up in another paperback book across the states.
And actually, he and I in conversation said, it doesn't work.
It's a mentalist toy.
It's a magic trick.
It's not a mentalism effect.
He agreed with me.
And no longer could you use his method because it used a plate stuck inside of the cover
of the book, which is metal.
And you had magnets in there that held it down.
You take today's credit card and put it in there, and wow, wow.
There went the whole thing.
So I liked the effect.
I liked what it did.
And so I came up with what I now call credit card portation, which is the same thing with
no magnets.
And basically, do you have a credit card in your pocket?
Absolutely.
You'll never see that again.
Got to have a little humor.
Won the white day again.
Oh yes.
Isn't that world hunger.
Number one, we have an envelope and we have a couple of paperback books.
So what we do is we get somebody to put their initial.
They won't bother to do it now.
And then we have this slipped inside of the envelope.
Then the envelope is removed and put inside of the pages of a book.
And then somehow it ends up over there.
Well because this, as we said with Ned, was a magic trick more, I had to think up something
to do it.
I called it that nasty poltergeist.
And what we did was to say a line that we used last night that this must be a poltergeist
that likes credit cards because they get this bill every month.
And my wife says she didn't charge this.
And I know I didn't charge it.
So there must be a poltergeist playing around with these credit cards.
Thus you inject some humor into what is normally a very dry sometimes and, God help us, once
in a while boring show.
So what we do is we have you turn to somewhere in the middle and open it up and we put your
envelope in there and we close it up and you hold it.
Now I send this book over here to this person and then we do the whole poltergeist thing
and then I reach over here and I find your envelope and I tear it up because you see
your credit card isn't there and is gone.
And I go here to this one and I open it up somewhere in the middle.
There it is.
It is my, and I, whoops, I dropped it.
And I tear it open and out comes your credit card.
And so that is, wow, kind of wonderful.
But how did it happen?
Well what they don't know is there is a slit here in the top of the book.
You see that?
Good.
Can you see that?
Oh good.
And on the back of this, which I didn't tear up because I didn't make enough more, is a
big hunk and flap here on the back which is very easily inserted into that hole which
is invisible because of where it is cut.
Then by taking this envelope which has a line that says cut here and cut here, well actually
there's a slit there, and that goes on there very easily.
And I said very easily, of course it does.
Only when you're trying to videotape it does it not.
Okay, so now the credit card goes in.
You hold your thumb here like so, so that the envelope doesn't slide.
Take the credit card, go inside pressing down, and now the credit card, and you can feel
it there, has actually gone into the inside envelope that's in here.
Seal this, slide this off, and now you can't see that.
That's invisible.
And so that is now given to this fellow over here.
You've opened this book up anywhere and stick that in.
Boom.
We do the thing with the story with the, whoop, there it goes.
And take this out, tear it up, destroying the evidence with your initial on it, and
go over here and get this one and do this.
Ah, there it is.
There's mine that's got a C on the bottom of it.
Well this doesn't fall because it's glued in.
And you thought it was just laying there?
But if you insert your finger in the cover and over here it appears as if you have taken
that right out of the page and you're holding it.
Now it says cut here, so you either have them tear it or take a pair of shears and cut it
off, thus destroying the evidence of the slot here, and they take it out, and then you have
him deliver it to them.
Let's give them both a hand, and boom, boom, boom.
You have a bit of comedy, a bit of lightheartedness, and a mystery.
Credit card portation.
Any questions on that sir?
No, not at all.
Thanks for watching.
What I'm showing you now is an effect that would, if you were doing it in your act, run
completely through the act.
Some may say this is bank night, but I always hated bank night because the mentalist, magician,
whatever always won.
And I don't think that that's fair, and you'll see what I mean in a minute.
This also has a running gag.
Let me start it from the top.
Bear in mind this would be happening every other effect throughout the show, not consistently
as I'm doing it here.
I start out by saying that here is a lock through a bag, and inside the bag there is
something of value.
I'll go into that in greater detail at the end.
The lock is locked.
I ask the gentleman to step up here with me please.
Over here on my right side, I guess.
Then a little bit up, there we go.
Here are a set of keys.
I ask you to examine them to say to the audience that they are in fact all cut differently.
Is that correct?
There's no two alike?
They are.
Would you open that up and drop the keys into the glass?
We don't need that anymore.
We'll strike that off to the side here.
And do you have intuition?
Have you known things before they have happened?
Sometimes.
Sometimes.
I'm going to ask you to use your intuition tonight and reach in there and grab the key
that opens that lock.
Right here.
Fine.
Would you have your seat again?
No, don't go because when it's going to happen, normally, yes, he would return to his seat.
I would do something and then I'd ask him to come back up here and choose another key.
Now the beauty of it is that the running gag, I say to the man seated in the seat over there,
you know, when you walk out of this demonstration tonight and you walk back into the audience,
you're going to say to yourself, self, what would it have been had I taken a different
key?
And so I give you now an opportunity to choose a different key.
Would you like to do that?
I would.
You would like to do it.
All right, fine.
Would you now retrieve a different key and give me that one?
All right.
He has taken another one.
Now I want to show you that you did a wise thing because this key will not open the lock.
We'll try it for yourself.
So you're up here with me.
It does not open the lock.
Is that true?
That is true.
This we will go through several times during the presentation.
The next time I'll say to him, he's sitting over here.
You know, when you leave tonight and you walk out towards your car, you're going to say,
self, what would it have been if I had changed another key?
Would you like to change another key?
One more.
One more.
Okey dokey, artichoke.
I'll take that one back and you choose yourself another one.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
And let's see what this is.
Is it a good thing you got rid of that one?
Oh yeah.
No way does that work.
Okay now he goes back to his seat.
He's got that key now and I say to him after another effect has happened, you know, you're
driving down the street and you stop at a traffic light and you say to yourself, self,
because you don't want the people next to you to hear this, and you say, what would
it have been different if I had taken a different key?
Yes or no?
We're running out of keys.
This has to be it.
That has to be it?
No, I tell you what, I'll take one out and I'll try it.
Nothing special, right?
It don't work.
It don't.
It's a good thing you didn't take that one.
Now we come to the time he's sitting, another effect, he's got this key in the hand, he's
sweating because we're getting down to the bottom.
He don't know whether this one is real or not and I say to him, you know, you're at
home tonight and you're having a tanny for the body.
And you know, you said the guy offered me all these chances to change keys, some I did,
some I didn't.
Should I have changed it again?
Yeah.
Okay, one more.
You relinquished this one, huh?
Good thing you did that.
It didn't work either.
Now he's back in his seat and we're down to the last go around.
I say to him, yeah, you, you know, it's four o'clock in the morning and you sit full right
up in bed.
And you say to yourself, what would it be if I had taken a different key?
A different key.
Oh, am I glad you did that.
Because you see I got the last one.
Oh, what do you see?
Oh great.
Oh, he gavolks.
All right, all right.
I promise you, stick it in.
I promise you that whatever value was inside of this bag, you would receive.
Reach inside and remove.
There is something in there, isn't there?
Oh, yes there is.
Wow.
And what does it say on it?
It's a $20 gift certificate from the Carlyle Lecturer on Mentalism.
That's the way bank night should end.
He wins.
He wins.
When I was doing this on stage and I did it for many years, the lock wasn't as perfected
as it is now.
I put 10% of whatever my fee was in $1 bills inside of that bag.
Let's just say for the sake of argument, it's $500 for the evening.
I would take $51 bills and put in there.
Can you imagine the look on his face when he pulled that wad of $1 bills out of there,
50 of them.
That makes a big wad of money.
And can you imagine what the audience think?
He tries to give it back.
They say, no, no, you won.
Take it.
It's yours.
They don't know what to think.
Now the guy that hired you, his chest is way out there.
Y'all hired him.
Y'all hired him.
You know, because you opened by giving a dollar bill for the kind use of the man's thoughts,
inflation being what it is.
You closed by giving this gentleman $50.
You know this effect, when you wake up tonight, takes its title from the comedy lines that
I use with the effect.
Basically I took this and I had this happen because I never liked bank night.
And I like to have humor in my show too.
And what we can't do now, but what those that saw the taping from last night, that this
is a running gag that starts at the very beginning of your show and goes between effects as you
go along.
So the first thing is to clamp down the keys, like so, so that any person with an obvious
eye can look at those set and tell that there's no two alike.
That to me is important that you do that because otherwise they say, well he didn't really
have a good look at those keys and there may have been more than one that was alike.
Then you remove the clamp and drop them into the glass.
Now this is plastic, cheap glasses, but you'll notice that it has a straight side of martini
glass, I'm not being a drinking man, I don't know anything about these, but it's easy to
take a key out.
Unlike a straight sided glass or a bold wine glass or whatever, you get fish in there and
try to get a key.
Here you've got a big wide mouth opening and you can get any key out.
Now the thing is to say that inside of the bag is something of value.
And you say, I want, you talk about intuition and the fact that we've known for years that
women have the women's intuition.
What about one of you guys?
Do you have an intuitive nature, something that you know is going to happen before it
happens?
And so having examined the keys, you allow him to reach in and take any key out that
he wants.
He goes back to his seat and boom, that's it.
Now I won't go through all the comedy lines, you've watched the tape, you saw the ones
during the show last night.
So basically he then comes with the key and after you say you're going to try it or not
and he tries it and that key didn't open the lock.
Now if he said he doesn't want to exchange it, well then you say fine, I'll take one
out of the thing myself and it's a good thing you didn't transfer for that key because that
key doesn't work either.
And of course you can always have somebody in the audience also try it and then they
find out that that doesn't work.
It gets two of them out of the way.
And as you move along through the show, each one of the lines that you say, there's an
example I said last night.
You know when you're driving home you'll say to yourself, self?
And that always gets alive each time as you go along and get more outrageous.
And this just depends on your own acting ability that you can make this hilarious.
It's you again, that kind of a thing.
How much laughing you get out of this depends upon you as an actor.
So it keeps going and that one is no good.
Let's see, is this one any good?
And that one's no good.
And there's one more key in there that I can try and get it in here right?
No, that doesn't work either.
And now would you remove the last key and take it out and would you put it inside the
lock if you can and open if it does?
Does it open the lock?
It does.
It's right open.
It opens and the bag comes off and I said well, and at this point I'm always feigned
surprise because I had this and it didn't work.
And now he gets to do the last key.
Well I said you could have something of value that's inside the bag and I remove what's
in the bag.
In this particular case it says it's good for $20 in exchange for one of my books on
the Carlisle Touch and both of them I give it.
This is what I use in lectures.
What I did in shows, when I did shows, was to put one tenth of my salary in there in
$1 bills.
Now that was usually a wad big enough to choke a horse.
And when they came out, remember that the first thing that we did in this explanation
in this lecture was to tell the serial number of a dollar bill he kept $1.
That opened the show.
Nice guy.
He gave the fellow a buck.
The end of the show, bing, he opens this up and whoo hoo hoo hoo hoo!
Look at the wad of money that guy's got.
Well he offers to give it back and you say no, no, no, this is yours.
Now if you don't, and the guy that hired you, his chest is out to here and pop the buttons
off and the whole thing.
But if you don't feel like giving away ten percent, which to me is the best money spent,
then you can always go to a restaurant in town and get a dinner for two certificate
for advertising them and put that in the bag and hey look what a wonderful guy this is,
he gave away dinner for two, blah blah blah and so on and so forth.
How it works.
I think everybody by now knows that this is a gravity lock.
Well there have been gravity locks and there have been gravity locks over the years.
I've spent 15 years devising this gravity lock.
It's a number 27 master lock.
It is not the kind used in key erect.
This is a brass one-sided natural key, not a ward wafer key, which is what the key erect
lock is.
This now will open because I've turned it over, thus gravity.
Any key will open it.
On the base there is a little button or knob which is a part of the re-keying cylinder
that comes out.
When my locksmith makes these for me under my instructions, with this being in the upper
position, no key will open the lock.
Not here, not there, not anywhere.
There is a key lock on the market called a Hemingway which you pull the top part away
and open up.
I don't like them.
I never would have one.
But I guarantee you that all these keys are cut differently and every one will go in there
you can try to do your heart's content.
And all you have to do is tip it over, put it in, and I'll guarantee you that this will
open it up.
Because it's a special way of making this unlike any of the others on the market that
will not open when that key is only pulled in a certain direction.
Some of them with a single pin in there will open if you pull it back a little bit.
And a combination on the computer of what cuts to put where on these keys is the other
factor.
I won't tell you more than that because this is part of my secret, thank you, to know that
that is the way that these are made.
I have several of these on the market and nobody has ever come back to me and said,
well, it opened up after I did this and so.
Your secret to this, should you acquire one of these from me, is never put oil, graphite,
WD-40, any other lubricant inside this lock or any lock that's mechanical.
The only thing that needs to go into this lock is acetone or some other degreaser.
Put it in, shake it around, shake it down until it's all out, let it dry, evaporate,
and that's taken all the grease and crud that might have gotten in there and now it'll
work like it did in day one.
That only has to be done maybe once a year.
I'll tell you what, after seeing your lecture several times, this is the piece that I hear
people talking about afterwards, the running bit that goes from start to finish.
Yeah, it has all the moments and as we like to say, the spectator wins.
And that's the part that takes the curse off of the bank night.
When you wake up tonight.
What I'm going to explain now, you see I'm seated here behind this table, is something
that again, I keep saying this but I am, I'm very proud of this, this was born out of necessity.
I think I said earlier that I did the Houdini seance at the Magic Castle for ten years.
I have the honor and distinction of being the first resident medium at the Magic Castle
and have taught each and every successive medium who has worked there.
Sandy Spillman, Leo Kostka, and two of the assistants that understudied them when they
couldn't be there.
So with that I had to while I was working devise a methodology for releasing one hand
in the dark.
I call it the medium's grip because that's what it is.
I read all the books on how to do it and all this foolishness which is what it is.
They were all pie in the sky, they didn't work.
This one works, I did it for ten years.
I have demonstrated all over the world, England, Germany, everywhere that I've gone to lecture,
I have demonstrated this.
It never fails to get a reaction.
I need two people.
In the seance at the Magic Castle we had a round table, we'll assume that this is round,
and we had twelve people seated around the table.
We would make the psychic circle and I'd instruct the sitters, and that's what you're called,
sit in your clothes.
You form the circle by grasping the person on their right by their left wrist and I offer
mine for you to grab and hold on and please hold on tightly and at no time release that
grip.
I will hold your wrist and you would grab the person next to him.
Now all I need you to do is relax, relax, relax.
I'm going to be able to move, I want you to sit up a little closer, that's it, good, because
I'm going to get aggravated here and the whole thing and I'm going to really be moving around
in the dark.
Now because we don't turn these lights out, that makes it very difficult for the guy with
the camera over there, I'm going to ask you to close your eyes and pretend you're in the
dark.
Now I do all the stuff in a circle, a symbol of eternity which has no beginning and no
end.
Bring here spirits, come with me in this period of the night, be with us now and so on and
so forth and I'm telling you to come here tonight.
Be with me now as you would be, here in this room, come, be with me now, attend me closely,
be with me now, spirits, oh you're with me, I can feel it now.
I know that you're here, I know that you're here, now come with me, oh yes, okay, now
things happen, boom, boom, boom, boom and spirits, leave me as you came, please be with me no
more, depart in peace as you came, spirits, open your eyes.
Thank you.
Yes.
On whom did I practice?
The poor moochers that came up there for the seance.
You don't, you can't.
You've just got to say this is what I think it's going to do and you do it and in the
dark and these nice people don't want to object until I perfected it.
But no, there was no practice session.
It couldn't be.
It's like most stuff in mentalism, you haven't got any, your wife can only tolerate you so
long.
You've probably noticed that there is another person sitting here.
Thank you very much for being a part of our taping.
I'm going to show now in detail something which was on last night's show but I think
needed some real close up shots for you to understand.
And I'm very proud of this.
I call it the medium's grip.
I used it for the ten years that I performed at the Magic Castle in Hollywood to do the
Houdini seance.
It was always my contention that I had to in some way get one hand free so that I could
do some foolishness in the dark.
And to do that I had to devise a method so that these two sitters would not know when
I had my hand free.
I'm going to act as if there are other people around this circle and not just these two
people so please understand that.
My instructions to them would be, would you grasp my left wrist and let that person next
to you grab that wrist and would you let me grab yours and hold it.
I only ask that you give me enough freedom to move in the dark because I get excited.
Alright, fine.
Thank you very much.
And now I ask you to close your eyes and pretend that you're in the dark.
And now we do our opening blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and the spirits come back and
be with us here in this room and I'm going to say symbol of eternity of the circle, blah,
blah, blah, and all the rest of the stuff that goes on and spirits come be with me here
in this room.
And now come close to me spirits and be with me here.
And now let these sitters know that somebody is here, here in this room with them.
Now spirits, you've been with us, leave now as you came.
Leave me in peace.
Go.
Now you may open your eyes.
That's just freaky.
There are some very important steps to be realized in this grip because it isn't just
as you saw it here, this, this, this.
There's some very intricate moves here that make this work.
As you're doing all this and whatever you want to say for the invocation and the circle
of symbol of eternity which has no end, blah, blah, blah, and so forth, you're moving this
hand over this way and this one, I call it the T position so that my left hand is in
a T to his left hand.
And now the thumb starts pulsing.
Again I'm becoming more agitated and whatever and as it comes up this thumb goes in and
takes its place.
We are looking for the two bones that make up the wrist joint here and there's a socket
between that and the finger that comes off both the thumb side or the other side of the
hand.
There is a detent, these are your cues as to where to put your thumbs or your fingers.
Now one of the key things is that as you probably saw when these fingers came up they knuckled
under and these fingers came in and now this hand reaches back and leans against the knuckles
that braces this right hand of mine, this hand.
And now I can lift this hand using two hands.
I can move it together using two hands if I wish.
And it still feels to him as if it's one hand.
Now these fingers start playing as I call it the pity pat, getting excited, and as these
come up these immediately come in.
The secret is that the baby finger comes back into that notch right there where the first
finger of this hand was so that these are not, if you did it this way you see they'd
know that that wasn't it.
It has to be this way so that the baby finger and the pressure on here, feeling good hard
pressure they can't tell whether it's a big finger or a small finger.
And so that's there.
Now this hand is free to do all the foolishness, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,
reach in the pocket, pull out a reaching rod, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, close it back
up, put it in the pocket, whatever you want to do.
You've got free reign, take off the glasses, toss them out in the middle of the table,
leave the hearing aid there, one of these things, whatever, and now we're going to come out
of it.
Now we're at the end of the seance and we're going to come out of it.
We're dismissing the spirits, we're letting them go, and these fingers start doing the
pity pat again.
Now watch that this comes right over the top, even in the dark you can see it because the
heel of this hand comes down and rests on this knuckle.
This is something that I couldn't tell in the book.
It was impossible to do all this.
Again, these fingers come up and knuckle under high up, a lot of space here, a lot of space,
not down low, high up, and this lays, it was laying on it, remember, and the fingers come
back down, now we're in that same position where I could move the hand if I wanted to.
Now the pity pat happens here and away and the thumb comes back down in, now we're free,
we can separate the hands so that when the lights come back up or when they open their
eyes the hands are far apart.
As with all of my shows when they come to an end, I step out before my audience, I gave
you my opening when I first walked out here.
Through all my shows that I have done all through my career I have ended them exactly
the same way.
It has been said that mystics can cast spells.
If this be true, I should like to cast a spell on you for happiness and for glee and only
hope you'd wish the same for me.
Before we meet again, may Kismet be kind to all of you.
Good night.
Some of the effects on this video tape are my versions of other inventors.
To them I give thanks for their inspiration.
If there are those who think that an effect on this tape is theirs, I may have reinvented
the wheel.
It happens all the time where people come up with the same idea or handling of an effect.
In those effects where I have ended the title with, My Way, this is my handling of another's
effect.
I have tried to acknowledge those who have given their effect to the magic mentalist
world and have therein led me to devise my handling of those effects.
I have in no way, on purpose or otherwise, taken another's work.
It is clear that we cannot know the works of all the magic mentalist world.
I have tried to be fair in all my writings and performances and in this video tape.
To others where I have known their work, I have given credit where I can.
I have asked permission where it is possible.
Where not, I am sorry, but I have tried.
Some have gone on to their reward.
May God bless them.
I wish to give thanks to the following for their effects.
Mr. Larry Becker, Mr. Bob Cassidy, Mr. Dick Siner, Mr. Bob Fenton, Mr. Paul Green, Mr.
Ted Karamalovich, Mr. Al Karan, Mr. Ned Rutledge and last but not least, Mr. Bob Nelson.
I wish to acknowledge the help, support, financing and above all, the friendship of Mr. Rick Maher.
Without him this video would never have happened.
I hope that this video finds favor with those who have bought it, viewed it and learned.
Above all, you have paid for this video and the secrets that lie within.
Keep them to yourself.
If anything hurts our art form, it is exposure.
When the secret is known, we all lose.
Mums the word.