The Archive
What used to be premium-only is going public in weekly stages. Past posts are being updated regularly, so check in.
Part 1 of 2 · The Center Tear
The Center Tear: A Design History of Mentalism’s Most Important Move
March 22, 2024
There is a moment in every strong billet routine where the paper touches your hands and something happens that no camera in the room can...
The Hand That Writes Itself: A History of Automatic Writing in Séance and Stage Work
February 1, 2024
A woman's hand starts moving before she tells it to. She isn't trying to write anything, she says so herself, but the pen keeps dragging...
The Dual Act: Two-Person Telepathy, Coded Systems, and the Vanishing Format That Changed Modern Mentalism
September 2, 2023
Two people. No visible signal between them that anyone could verify. An audience of seven million listening on BBC Radio in 1949, and a woman...
Part 1 of 2 · Contact Mind Reading
Hellstromism: The Lost Art of Contact Mind Reading and the Performers Who Nearly Buried It
December 18, 2022
I don't necessarily believe that thought travels through skin. I do, however, have a strong conviction that something travels, something real, something the body broadcasts...
The Q&A Act Reconsidered: Billet Work, Switches, and the Power of the Written Confession
November 20, 2022
In Part 1: Annemann's Shadow: How 'Practical Mental Effects' Quietly Rewired Modern Mentalism, we traced how Annemann's foundational text quietly restructured the philosophy beneath the...
Beyond the Slate: Forgotten Instruments of the Victorian Séance Room
June 5, 2022
In Part 1: Spirit Slates and Their Shadows: The Forgotten Spiritualist Prop That Still Haunts the Stage, I talked about how people began using the...
Annemann’s Shadow: How ‘Practical Mental Effects’ Quietly Rewired Modern Mentalism
April 7, 2022
The Book That Defined the Genre Without Saying SoPick up a copy of Practical Mental Effects and you are holding something that has shaped every...
Spirit Slates and Their Shadows: The Forgotten Spiritualist Prop That Still Haunts the Stage
March 23, 2022
Chalk and Darkness Pick up a genuine Victorian spirit slate. Feel the weight of it. The blackened surface, the wooden frame, the faint ghost of...