The Archive
What used to be premium-only is going public in weekly stages. Past posts are being updated regularly, so check in.
Sealed Before You Arrived: Why a Prediction Hits Differently Than a Reading
October 7, 2026
Most mentalists treat prediction and reading as the same effect with different packaging. They're not. A reading pulls something that exists inside a mind. A...
The Silent Retrieval: Pocket Indexes, Organization, and the Discipline Behind a Clean Produce
October 6, 2026
I used to think the pocket index was a crutch. I was wrong. A man in Lyndon stood eighteen inches from my right side for...
Part 2 of 2 · Booking a Private Bizarre Magic Show
Part 2: Deposits, Riders, and Contracts, the Paperwork That Protects a Private Bizarre Magic Booking
October 1, 2026
If you read Part 1: Pricing the Impossible: What a Private Bizarre Magic Booking Should Actually Cost, you have a number. A fee you can...
Margery and the Scientific American Prize: The Séance Investigation That Split the Committee
October 1, 2026
I don't claim Mina Crandon spoke with the dead. I don't claim she didn't. What I'm certain of is that her case did something to...
The Story Grows in the Telling: How Audience Memory Rewrites Your Effect After the Show
September 29, 2026
A man once told me, with total sincerity, that I'd made a borrowed watch stop ticking. I hadn't touched a watch that night. I'd never...
The Unseen Hand: A History and Working Theory of the PK Touch
September 24, 2026
I don't believe the dead have hands. I've never had a reason to. But I've stood in a dim room and watched a grown man...
Provenance as Performance: Writing the Backstory for a Haunted Object Without Lying Your Way Into Trouble
September 3, 2026
I don't tell audiences an object is haunted. I don't tell them it isn't. That gap is where the work happens, and most performers I've...
Part 2 of 2 · Contact Mind Reading
Part 2: The Hidden Object Hunt, Building a Contact Mind Reading Routine That Plays to a Full Theatre
August 22, 2026
In Part 1: Hellstromism: The Lost Art of Contact Mind Reading and the Performers Who Nearly Buried It, we covered where this craft came from...
Equivoque Without the Tell: Making the Magician’s Choice Survive a Thinking Audience
August 9, 2026
A man in a Okolona living room folded his arms on the second "or." I saw it happen. He'd let the first two choices go...
Two Truths in One Room: Dual Reality and the Ethics of What Your Volunteer Knows
July 27, 2026
I don't believe a volunteer is ever a neutral instrument. I've stopped pretending otherwise. The person you pull from row two is a witness, a...
Part 2 of 2 · Spacing The Spectacle
Part 2: Pacing the Valleys, Designing the Quiet Moments That Let a Miracle Land
July 16, 2026
In Part 1: Impossibility Fatigue: Why the Third Miracle in a Row Lands Softer Than the First, I laid out the problem. Stack enough miracles...
Casting Before the Curtain: How Mentalists Choose a Volunteer Before the Room Notices
July 1, 2026
Every working mentalist has stood at the edge of a room and felt it before understanding it, a pull toward one face in the crowd...