I've always love the idea of doing a haunted magic show for a circle of people on Halloween and I've decided to do it this year. I have material already and was wondering if any of you have done a haunted show before? Any subtleties you used?
Bit early for this
- Thread starter JD
- Start date
I have never done a Haunted Magic show before but think it would be really cool if you had the right props and did it in the correct setting.
I'm talking like down in a dark damp basement or in the attic of an old house. The room would only be lit with a single candle..maybe two. You could have invisible thread dangling down all over the place so people are always feeling little things on them as they enter and exit the room.
You could do so much with dark magic, ghost stories, etc. and props from somewhere like Outlaw effects.
This would be right up Draven's alley.
I think it would be better to only have only about 4-5 spectators present to make it more intimate than 20-30.
I'm talking like down in a dark damp basement or in the attic of an old house. The room would only be lit with a single candle..maybe two. You could have invisible thread dangling down all over the place so people are always feeling little things on them as they enter and exit the room.
You could do so much with dark magic, ghost stories, etc. and props from somewhere like Outlaw effects.
This would be right up Draven's alley.
I think it would be better to only have only about 4-5 spectators present to make it more intimate than 20-30.
Dexter Morgan (Who you may know as a consultant on Mindfreak) is doing a Seance for a local haunted house. I'm really looking forward to it. A friend of mine helped him with it last year and said it was great.
For doing a seance, my advice would be read a lot of H.P. Lovecraft. Well, if you're going for actually scary instead of just a series of shocks. You want to build suspense and make it really creepy. Also, Derren Brown did a great seance show, which I think was just called 'The Seance'.
For doing a seance, my advice would be read a lot of H.P. Lovecraft. Well, if you're going for actually scary instead of just a series of shocks. You want to build suspense and make it really creepy. Also, Derren Brown did a great seance show, which I think was just called 'The Seance'.
what is a seance? sorry I have never heard that word...and english is not my native language
Google translates it as: sesión de espiritismo
It's where you gather a group of people and try to contact the dead. Spiritualists used to do it, and they'd do things like table tipping and manifesting ectoplasm, etc.
It's where you gather a group of people and try to contact the dead. Spiritualists used to do it, and they'd do things like table tipping and manifesting ectoplasm, etc.
wow!! I have never tried to do something like that...
I am planing a PK session in the near future...but this looks diferent...thanks!!
This may sound slightly off-topic but if you are doing card magic , do consider using Tragic Royalty or other 'scary'decks. 
Go buy the book Spirit Theater by Eugene Burger, look in the Review section for my review on it this week.
If you're going to commit to this style of performance, then this is a MUST read for you.
If you're going to commit to this style of performance, then this is a MUST read for you.
I'm not doing card tricks lol. But thanks for the advice Bill. I don't what type of haunted show I want to do yet. A lot of the material in Shivers sparked my interest in haunted magic again.
For starters, your not "early" at all but LATE. If you want to create a solid Halloween season program, especially a Seance, you should have started a year ago.
This is quite possibly the most difficult mode of performance one could attempt in that it's very easy to come of cheesy or just plain bad. For starters, few of us are as good at acting as we think we are and because we have huge egos we refuse to sit down with those not involved with magic but theater, who can assist us in creating a script, story line, setting and all the proper theatrical elements this sort of thing requires. The other thing you must do is play it "right" for you... that is to say, if you don't have a poker face and have a tendency to giggle, then allow yourself to do an obvious "over the top' character who is a "parody" of sorts.. .think "Elvira" and her dark humor as well as Vincent Price in the old Beach Blanket movies, etc.
On the other hand... if you have never done this kind of thing before I'd recommend that you find existing scripts to proven programs just so you can get the feel of things. Docc Hilford's "From the Mountains of Madness" is most excellent but there are others out there with Jack the Ripper themes as well as several different Seance scripts that are quite solid... my personal recommendation is to start with Paul Bell's "Paranormal Entertainment" and not try to be Lee Earle... if you get my drift.
On the Seance front, go and attend some REAL Seances done by real spiritualists. Keep you mouth shut, sit down and study what they do and how little has to happen. Real Seances are quite underwhelming and even boring for the most part; time consuming and very little in way of dramatic happenings, actually manifests. One of the easiest and most practical to learn is Docc Hilford's "$1,000.00 Seance"
If you just want a macabre stage show... well, there are a dozen and one ways of pulling such a program off but again, you need to know the character and make him solid. I did a 90 minute Rock-n-Roll Macabre show for years complete with burnt sacrifices, impalements and myriad of other gruesome fun... some of it was quite funny too... it has to be. It's still one of my favorite shows in the whole of my career.
This is quite possibly the most difficult mode of performance one could attempt in that it's very easy to come of cheesy or just plain bad. For starters, few of us are as good at acting as we think we are and because we have huge egos we refuse to sit down with those not involved with magic but theater, who can assist us in creating a script, story line, setting and all the proper theatrical elements this sort of thing requires. The other thing you must do is play it "right" for you... that is to say, if you don't have a poker face and have a tendency to giggle, then allow yourself to do an obvious "over the top' character who is a "parody" of sorts.. .think "Elvira" and her dark humor as well as Vincent Price in the old Beach Blanket movies, etc.
On the other hand... if you have never done this kind of thing before I'd recommend that you find existing scripts to proven programs just so you can get the feel of things. Docc Hilford's "From the Mountains of Madness" is most excellent but there are others out there with Jack the Ripper themes as well as several different Seance scripts that are quite solid... my personal recommendation is to start with Paul Bell's "Paranormal Entertainment" and not try to be Lee Earle... if you get my drift.
On the Seance front, go and attend some REAL Seances done by real spiritualists. Keep you mouth shut, sit down and study what they do and how little has to happen. Real Seances are quite underwhelming and even boring for the most part; time consuming and very little in way of dramatic happenings, actually manifests. One of the easiest and most practical to learn is Docc Hilford's "$1,000.00 Seance"
If you just want a macabre stage show... well, there are a dozen and one ways of pulling such a program off but again, you need to know the character and make him solid. I did a 90 minute Rock-n-Roll Macabre show for years complete with burnt sacrifices, impalements and myriad of other gruesome fun... some of it was quite funny too... it has to be. It's still one of my favorite shows in the whole of my career.