GHOSTS PRODUCED to ORDER!

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 305, 24 December 1937, Page 4 (Supplement)

GHOSTS PRODUCED to ORDER!

An awkward moment!/ with a Georgian Beau t

by

JASPER MASKELYNE

IT is sometimes very awkward for a professional magician when a trick goes too far, and never more so that when this occurs at a Yuletide party, thronged with eager onlookers only too anxious to try to sec just how an illusion is performed. I will tell you of a few such cases. One of my favourite bits of magic, which is always ingreat demand at this time of the year, is to "raise a ghost.” I stand out clear of apparatus and curtains, make mysterious passes with my hands, and under the very eyes of the awed onlookers there grows first a grey mist, then an amorphous shape, and finally a wild, white-faced, lovely unsubstantial girl —or perhaps a clinking ghost in armour, or a miser plucking madly at the dripping dagger in his shadowy bosom. Finally, the vision fades away again as it has come. At its climax you can see clean through it. Stare of Terror. I attended a famous society Christmas party in Mayfair two years ago, and nothing would satisfy the madcap daughter of my host than that I should raise a ghost. It happened that the house was said to own a real ghost—that of a Georgian dandy who drank himself to death there. Working on this theme, I made some eerie passes, end soon the mist took the shape of a fat, pasty-cheeked beau, a wineglass clutched in his hand, a stare of awful terror in his eyes. At the height of the illusion I heard a thump in the fashionably-dressed, paper-capped audience; the girl who had called for the ghost had fainted. I got rid of my sham “ghost” rather quicker than usual, but when the girl came to her only feeling was indignation that she had, as she put it. missed all the fun. You have probably heard of the famous Indian Basket Trick? The magician is faced with a big wicker basket, and an assistant climbs info it; the lid is then shut and roped. Then the magician fires a pistol through the basket, thrusts a sword completely through it, opens the basket—and it is empty! Finally, he shuts and ropes the basket again, stabs it further, opens it —and his assistant steps out unharmed. LIGHT WAS WRONG. A few years ago I attended a Christmas party at the country house of a colonel of the Indian Army. He had seen the trick done by fakirs in India and asked me if I could do it. I could. I may say in passing that there is only one trick known to man which the inner members of the Magicians’ Circle cannot perform, and that is the famous Rope Trick—and, up to date, there is no authentic record of its ever being performed by anyone else either, despite all the rumours 4 Well, I started the trick at this houseparty, only to discover half-way through, that the light was wrong

and would show the waiting audience so much of the “works" of the trick that it would certainly cease to enthral them. Inside the trunk my assistant was waiting for my signal to slip from the box and glide off the impromptu stage. I became desperate, for seemed quite impossible to carry the trick through successfully. At that moment the Colonel was stricken with such a fit of coughing as threatened to send him into a fit. For a crucial moment all eyes wen* off me as his alarmed friends gathered round and thumped the old gentleman on the back.

In that moment I gave the signal, and my assistant fled rapidly—and obviously—off the “stage.” My luck was completed when the Colonel, having recovered from his coughing fi>, was so impressed by seeing me stab the trunk and then display its empty interior that, he wouldn’t even let me finish the trick. With the light as it then was I could not have done so without hopelessly exposing “the works.”

Certainly the most horrifying trick I have ever seen done, though I am afraid this is a story against myself took place at a Christmas party which I attended some years ago. Among other illusions I did one which created a mild sensation. I borrowed my host'.; opera hat and apparently cut it into small pieces with an enormous pair of scissors, doing the cutting before the guests’ very eyes.

When I had finished cutting up the glossy topper into small bits I put them in a cloth, shook them up well, and lo! the topper took shape beneath the cloth and was withdrawn whole. My host that time was a worldfamous practical joker. He rose with a smile.

“That’s hardly a new one, Mr Maskelyne.” he said. “I can do that one, I believe. Would you lend me your hat to try it with?” I complied then slowly froze in horror, For I knew the “works” of the trick and I could see that he did not perform it in the right way; and I could see him, moreover, slowly and cold-bloodedly snipping up my topper till it was apparently reduced to snippets in the very truth. We all waited—l was more breathless than anyone—while he put th* bits into the cloth, shook them up, muttered charms over them and opened the cloth. The bits were still bits! The host looked at me with a twinkle in his eye.

“I’m sorry,” he said in a shocked tone. “I'm afraid your trick is a better one than I had supposed, because, begad, I certainly can’t do it—and now look at your hat!” Although the joke was on me I couldn’t help collapsing with laughter at the unexpected denouement; in fact the whole room rocked with laughter, with the one exception of the amateur magician.