Magic Tricks

Seance is a collection of 12 magazines that were published between 1988 and 1991. In this book all 12 issues are reprinted and offered together without edit or modification.

There is a lot of information contained in those 12 issues. Not everything will be to your liking, and not all of it suited my style, but you will find ideas for effects (with methods), you will get articles related to history (for example: a wonderful article on the origin of the "Dr. Q Spirit Slates"), you will get tips on developing your routines and presentation, advise on handling spectators and more. Every aspect of performing a theatrical seance is touched on by various authors in one way or another. I can't imagine not finding something of value, no matter your personal style and taste.

If I try REALLY hard I can find maybe two things to critique, but they come down to my personal subjective taste. For example, there was way too much to do about Houdini and Houdini-themed seances. By the end I was thinking "If I read the name Houdini one more time I'm going to scream!" But that's just because my taste is obviously for something different, "presentation-ally" speaking. And even those articles always had something I could take from them. Another critique is that because the 12 magazines are reprinted without modification, the pages are numbered as such. For example, page 214 in the book might be numbered page 7 because it's issue #9, page 7 etc. That's a small inconvenience that really doesn't affect the experience. I just bring it up because I'm trying to find something to critique, which goes to say how good the book is.

Given how much I did find to interest me throughout the 12 magazines I can't give this book anything less than 5 stars. It was just chalk full of great information and ideas. If you're considering performing theatrical seances then this book will definitely have something that you will find of value: be it various ways to gimmick a candle, or how to build your own gimmicked spirit slates on a budget (and even more than one way to produce spirit slate effects with un-gimmicked slates), or how to deal with spectators, or history lessons etc. I can't imagine anyone being disappointed in this book.