Hey guys.

I was just watching a bit of derren brown and I somehow ran into the idea of performing a parlour or stage seance. I do have a rough skeleton of stuff that I want to do but I was wondering if anyone had any experience what soever

CSJ

You need to first decide whether you are going to do this in your parlor, someone else's parlor, or on a public stage. All three require different kinds of set-ups and different approaches. Just as an example, if it is in your own parlor, you can cut holes in the walls for wires and peek holes, etc. But you cannot do this in someone else's parlor. If you are on a stage, there's no sense doing effects with needles or matches or objects too small to be seen by the audience, but they work perfectlt well in either parlor setting.

I have several parlor seance effects posten in The Wizards' Journals, as well as some stage seance effects.
Parlor:
Tarot Box & Seeing Eye Skull (Wizards' Journal #1)
Magnetic Personality & Electronic Crystal Ball (Wizards' Journal #2
Creepy Bookends (Wizards' Journal #3)
Self Lighting Candles (Wizards' Journal #4)
Tiki Masks (Wizards' Journal #5)
Autumn Decorations (Wizards' Journal #6)
Magic Rune Sticks (Wizards' Journal #9)
Sefalaljia (Wizards' Journal #10)
Single Slate Seance (Wizards' Journal #12)

Stage:
Poltergeist (Wizards' Journal #6)
Bizarre ook (Wizards' Journal #9)
The Red Masque of Death (Wizards' Journal #10)
Parallel Universe (Wizards' Journal #12)
Eisenheim's Ghost (Wizards' Journal #13)

As you can see, there is plenty of "stuff" available, but you need to first decide what setting you will use for it.

hey.

Thanks for the advice. I was planning to get a friend who was into theatre invovled as I planned a 50% magic, 50% theatre kind of seance. So in a sense audience members do not see it as a magic trick, they know it is a thetrical thing and so voluntarily suspend disbelief because its like watching a movie.

I plan to keep the effects essentially simple and am trying not to include radically new material outside my repertoire. I am interested in meshing together sound, lighting and simple props to give an overall effect.

One of the pervading themes I intend to apply throughout is skepticism. In a sense I admit, initially, that certain outcomes might be due to chance but as the seance progresses, I am working towards the audience subconsciously eliminating that kind of explanation from their minds so that it makes the whole thing more realistic.

Would it be useful if i posted a rough sketch? I'm at camp now so that might take a few days.

CSJ

I filmed a seance for my TV show MAYA but MDA refused to air it due to the nature of what the result was. Some magicians managed to see the footage and saw what a well done Seance does to pple. They cired and reallyfelt fear... its about mental conditioning. Placing them in a state of altered reality. Email me and we'd have a nice chat... info@kyleravin.com