#conjurors — Public Fediverse posts

The Trick That Kills – The Bullet Catch

I loved watching the TV magicians when I was growing up. There was David Nixon and Ali Bongo, then Paul Daniels and the lovely Debbie McGee, The Great Soprendo and then, sometimes we got to see an American show with David Copperfield or maybe the Canadian Doug Henning. All were masters of sleight of hand and card tricks, and making things and people disappear (and then hopefully, reappear!) A glamorous young woman assistant could always be persuaded to enter a barrel, or tunnel or chest, where swords would be thrust, or enormous wood saws would cut them in half. I’ve seen them live too, again, when I was young, at the Top of Blackpool Tower, and later in my teens we saw a magic show in the middle of Manor Park in Glossop, during the summer holidays, and the guy made a full motorbike and rider disappear! When I ran pubs, I have paid them to come and wander around the pub, sitting with people at their tables, doing card tricks, sleight of hand tricks and any other close up magic right there in front of the punters. The ladies would laugh and marvel and the blokes would sit there trying to debunk or guess or learn the trick, envious that their girlfriend or wife was mesmerised by this show-off … It was great to watch, both the magic itself, and the reaction of the viewers.

Later on, TV and society seems to have demanded that the new magicians and illusionists give bigger shows, larger tricks, ‘better’ magic. Seigfried and Roy with their Tiger (that ended badly!), David Copperfield making jet planes and buildings disappear and then David Blaine’s take on magic with impossible outcomes or extreme abilities. Do you remember the daily news reports in 2003, showing him in that plexiglass box for 44 days in London? And the reaction of the British, a nation with a long, long history of enjoying magic and stunts? Fly a McDonalds burger up to him by remote control, to taunt him… Hilarious!

After that, magicians seem to have taken their skills back to the start, with card tricks and close up magic, but doing it in the street and filmed for TV shows and the internet, often direct to YouTube. Derren Brown, Dynamo, Penn and Teller and a host of others took illusion in so many directions, and the rise of the UK’s ‘Britain’s Got talent’, and the syndicated regional shows around the world meant that once again magic and magicians were becoming a big draw for viewers everywhere.

Anyway, while doing our usual driving aimlessly around Derbyshire, looking for anything interesting, or pretty, we started to talk about Magicians, and their different tricks, and as you probably know, Kirst likes to research so she decided to look into the history of a particular trick, ‘The Bullet Catch’ which neither of us had ever seen performed. What she found was a bit mind-blowing, and I decided to have a look at it myself.

Ever since the invention of guns, it seems there have been people who were driven to prove they could catch the bullets ejected from the guns, between their teeth. Even today, in our modern world of TV shows, Deep Fake videos and constant warfare, the idea of trying the trick seems madness. Yet for 450 years, that is exactly what has happened, with Magician and Illusionist, one after another seeking to entertain us with what seems like the most dangerous or tricks.
The rollcall of proponents of this madness is much longer than we thought it would be, and of course, the way each person presented the trick had a myriad designs and outcomes. There were many who would present a rifle or pistol, fire it first to prove it worked, make a show of loading another bullet but have a variety of devices to replace it with a dummy. The real bullet would be hidden in the hilt of the gun, or fall into bowl or cushion or some other place, by design. Sometimes the person firing would aim to the side on purpose, with the bullet flying past. A real bullet would then be brought out of the magician’s mouth, or between his teeth. The trick worked on a series of assumptions made by the magician; that the pre-hype and showmanship would misdirect the audience to miss any trickery, that the audience’s suspended belief that it was impossible would allow them to believe it was possible and thirdly, that the anticipation of the trick going wrong and someone getting hurt was enough to create a situation where people would watch with all their concentration, so that they didn’t miss anything, meaning obviously that they miss almost everything!
It is amazing how many of these tricks went wrong, with guns misfiring the wrong bullet, assistants firing real bullets accidentally or purposefully, for whatever reason… Most sources quote between 13 and 20 magicians dying from the trick being carried out wrongly, and countless tales of close calls and ‘near misses’, though that seems a strange phrase for something where the idea it to hit the target… The fact that there have been mistakes and deaths in the past has only built up the myth which surrounds ‘The Bullet Catch’ and the magicians who have shown it.
Much is made of the fact that Harry Houdini, the great escapologist and illusionist, never showed the bullet catch trick, possibly because he received a letter begging him not to do it. The letter was from another illusionist Harry Kellar, but whether this is true or not seems to still be a matter of opinion.

There are online a number of videos of Penn & Teller’s bullet catch trick, David Blaine’s variation, where he had a special metal cup made that he held in his mouth, and that of Ted Anneman in 1938, supposedly catching a bullet fired by a rifleman in front of a crowd of people. I watched them all. I don’t know whether they are real or not, hands up. It is a cold subject in my head, maybe because I am a man who has thankfully lived without the experience of real gunshots, and real bullet injuries. I enjoy films and TV where everyone ends up shot, but don’t really want to see it live, and I think personally, I still prefer the kind of magic where a smiling man with Brylcreemed hair rotates 52 playing cards mesmerically in front of me, and makes one appear from my ear…..

There are a number of online sources for further research into this fascinating subject, and the trick is discussed in many books and articles about Magicians, Illusionists and Conjurors.

www.bulletcatch.com www.wikipedia.org/wiki/bullet_catch

The Trick That Kills – The Bullet Catch

I loved watching the TV magicians when I was growing up. There was David Nixon and Ali Bongo, then Paul Daniels and the lovely Debbie McGee, The Great Soprendo and then, sometimes we got to see an American show with David Copperfield or maybe the Canadian Doug Henning. All were masters of sleight of hand and card tricks, and making things and people disappear (and then hopefully, reappear!) A glamorous young woman assistant could always be persuaded to enter a barrel, or tunnel or chest, where swords would be thrust, or enormous wood saws would cut them in half. I’ve seen them live too, again, when I was young, at the Top of Blackpool Tower, and later in my teens we saw a magic show in the middle of Manor Park in Glossop, during the summer holidays, and the guy made a full motorbike and rider disappear! When I ran pubs, I have paid them to come and wander around the pub, sitting with people at their tables, doing card tricks, sleight of hand tricks and any other close up magic right there in front of the punters. The ladies would laugh and marvel and the blokes would sit there trying to debunk or guess or learn the trick, envious that their girlfriend or wife was mesmerised by this show-off … It was great to watch, both the magic itself, and the reaction of the viewers.

Later on, TV and society seems to have demanded that the new magicians and illusionists give bigger shows, larger tricks, ‘better’ magic. Seigfried and Roy with their Tiger (that ended badly!), David Copperfield making jet planes and buildings disappear and then David Blaine’s take on magic with impossible outcomes or extreme abilities. Do you remember the daily news reports in 2003, showing him in that plexiglass box for 44 days in London? And the reaction of the British, a nation with a long, long history of enjoying magic and stunts? Fly a McDonalds burger up to him by remote control, to taunt him… Hilarious!

After that, magicians seem to have taken their skills back to the start, with card tricks and close up magic, but doing it in the street and filmed for TV shows and the internet, often direct to YouTube. Derren Brown, Dynamo, Penn and Teller and a host of others took illusion in so many directions, and the rise of the UK’s ‘Britain’s Got talent’, and the syndicated regional shows around the world meant that once again magic and magicians were becoming a big draw for viewers everywhere.

Anyway, while doing our usual driving aimlessly around Derbyshire, looking for anything interesting, or pretty, we started to talk about Magicians, and their different tricks, and as you probably know, Kirst likes to research so she decided to look into the history of a particular trick, ‘The Bullet Catch’ which neither of us had ever seen performed. What she found was a bit mind-blowing, and I decided to have a look at it myself.

Ever since the invention of guns, it seems there have been people who were driven to prove they could catch the bullets ejected from the guns, between their teeth. Even today, in our modern world of TV shows, Deep Fake videos and constant warfare, the idea of trying the trick seems madness. Yet for 450 years, that is exactly what has happened, with Magician and Illusionist, one after another seeking to entertain us with what seems like the most dangerous or tricks.
The rollcall of proponents of this madness is much longer than we thought it would be, and of course, the way each person presented the trick had a myriad designs and outcomes. There were many who would present a rifle or pistol, fire it first to prove it worked, make a show of loading another bullet but have a variety of devices to replace it with a dummy. The real bullet would be hidden in the hilt of the gun, or fall into bowl or cushion or some other place, by design. Sometimes the person firing would aim to the side on purpose, with the bullet flying past. A real bullet would then be brought out of the magician’s mouth, or between his teeth. The trick worked on a series of assumptions made by the magician; that the pre-hype and showmanship would misdirect the audience to miss any trickery, that the audience’s suspended belief that it was impossible would allow them to believe it was possible and thirdly, that the anticipation of the trick going wrong and someone getting hurt was enough to create a situation where people would watch with all their concentration, so that they didn’t miss anything, meaning obviously that they miss almost everything!
It is amazing how many of these tricks went wrong, with guns misfiring the wrong bullet, assistants firing real bullets accidentally or purposefully, for whatever reason… Most sources quote between 13 and 20 magicians dying from the trick being carried out wrongly, and countless tales of close calls and ‘near misses’, though that seems a strange phrase for something where the idea it to hit the target… The fact that there have been mistakes and deaths in the past has only built up the myth which surrounds ‘The Bullet Catch’ and the magicians who have shown it.
Much is made of the fact that Harry Houdini, the great escapologist and illusionist, never showed the bullet catch trick, possibly because he received a letter begging him not to do it. The letter was from another illusionist Harry Kellar, but whether this is true or not seems to still be a matter of opinion.

There are online a number of videos of Penn & Teller’s bullet catch trick, David Blaine’s variation, where he had a special metal cup made that he held in his mouth, and that of Ted Anneman in 1938, supposedly catching a bullet fired by a rifleman in front of a crowd of people. I watched them all. I don’t know whether they are real or not, hands up. It is a cold subject in my head, maybe because I am a man who has thankfully lived without the experience of real gunshots, and real bullet injuries. I enjoy films and TV where everyone ends up shot, but don’t really want to see it live, and I think personally, I still prefer the kind of magic where a smiling man with Brylcreemed hair rotates 52 playing cards mesmerically in front of me, and makes one appear from my ear…..

There are a number of online sources for further research into this fascinating subject, and the trick is discussed in many books and articles about Magicians, Illusionists and Conjurors.

www.bulletcatch.com www.wikipedia.org/wiki/bullet_catch

The Trick That Kills – The Bullet Catch

I loved watching the TV magicians when I was growing up. There was David Nixon and Ali Bongo, then Paul Daniels and the lovely Debbie McGee, The Great Soprendo and then, sometimes we got to see an American show with David Copperfield or maybe the Canadian Doug Henning. All were masters of sleight of hand and card tricks, and making things and people disappear (and then hopefully, reappear!) A glamorous young woman assistant could always be persuaded to enter a barrel, or tunnel or chest, where swords would be thrust, or enormous wood saws would cut them in half. I’ve seen them live too, again, when I was young, at the Top of Blackpool Tower, and later in my teens we saw a magic show in the middle of Manor Park in Glossop, during the summer holidays, and the guy made a full motorbike and rider disappear! When I ran pubs, I have paid them to come and wander around the pub, sitting with people at their tables, doing card tricks, sleight of hand tricks and any other close up magic right there in front of the punters. The ladies would laugh and marvel and the blokes would sit there trying to debunk or guess or learn the trick, envious that their girlfriend or wife was mesmerised by this show-off … It was great to watch, both the magic itself, and the reaction of the viewers.

Later on, TV and society seems to have demanded that the new magicians and illusionists give bigger shows, larger tricks, ‘better’ magic. Seigfried and Roy with their Tiger (that ended badly!), David Copperfield making jet planes and buildings disappear and then David Blaine’s take on magic with impossible outcomes or extreme abilities. Do you remember the daily news reports in 2003, showing him in that plexiglass box for 44 days in London? And the reaction of the British, a nation with a long, long history of enjoying magic and stunts? Fly a McDonalds burger up to him by remote control, to taunt him… Hilarious!

After that, magicians seem to have taken their skills back to the start, with card tricks and close up magic, but doing it in the street and filmed for TV shows and the internet, often direct to YouTube. Derren Brown, Dynamo, Penn and Teller and a host of others took illusion in so many directions, and the rise of the UK’s ‘Britain’s Got talent’, and the syndicated regional shows around the world meant that once again magic and magicians were becoming a big draw for viewers everywhere.

Anyway, while doing our usual driving aimlessly around Derbyshire, looking for anything interesting, or pretty, we started to talk about Magicians, and their different tricks, and as you probably know, Kirst likes to research so she decided to look into the history of a particular trick, ‘The Bullet Catch’ which neither of us had ever seen performed. What she found was a bit mind-blowing, and I decided to have a look at it myself.

Ever since the invention of guns, it seems there have been people who were driven to prove they could catch the bullets ejected from the guns, between their teeth. Even today, in our modern world of TV shows, Deep Fake videos and constant warfare, the idea of trying the trick seems madness. Yet for 450 years, that is exactly what has happened, with Magician and Illusionist, one after another seeking to entertain us with what seems like the most dangerous or tricks.
The rollcall of proponents of this madness is much longer than we thought it would be, and of course, the way each person presented the trick had a myriad designs and outcomes. There were many who would present a rifle or pistol, fire it first to prove it worked, make a show of loading another bullet but have a variety of devices to replace it with a dummy. The real bullet would be hidden in the hilt of the gun, or fall into bowl or cushion or some other place, by design. Sometimes the person firing would aim to the side on purpose, with the bullet flying past. A real bullet would then be brought out of the magician’s mouth, or between his teeth. The trick worked on a series of assumptions made by the magician; that the pre-hype and showmanship would misdirect the audience to miss any trickery, that the audience’s suspended belief that it was impossible would allow them to believe it was possible and thirdly, that the anticipation of the trick going wrong and someone getting hurt was enough to create a situation where people would watch with all their concentration, so that they didn’t miss anything, meaning obviously that they miss almost everything!
It is amazing how many of these tricks went wrong, with guns misfiring the wrong bullet, assistants firing real bullets accidentally or purposefully, for whatever reason… Most sources quote between 13 and 20 magicians dying from the trick being carried out wrongly, and countless tales of close calls and ‘near misses’, though that seems a strange phrase for something where the idea it to hit the target… The fact that there have been mistakes and deaths in the past has only built up the myth which surrounds ‘The Bullet Catch’ and the magicians who have shown it.
Much is made of the fact that Harry Houdini, the great escapologist and illusionist, never showed the bullet catch trick, possibly because he received a letter begging him not to do it. The letter was from another illusionist Harry Kellar, but whether this is true or not seems to still be a matter of opinion.

There are online a number of videos of Penn & Teller’s bullet catch trick, David Blaine’s variation, where he had a special metal cup made that he held in his mouth, and that of Ted Anneman in 1938, supposedly catching a bullet fired by a rifleman in front of a crowd of people. I watched them all. I don’t know whether they are real or not, hands up. It is a cold subject in my head, maybe because I am a man who has thankfully lived without the experience of real gunshots, and real bullet injuries. I enjoy films and TV where everyone ends up shot, but don’t really want to see it live, and I think personally, I still prefer the kind of magic where a smiling man with Brylcreemed hair rotates 52 playing cards mesmerically in front of me, and makes one appear from my ear…..

There are a number of online sources for further research into this fascinating subject, and the trick is discussed in many books and articles about Magicians, Illusionists and Conjurors.

www.bulletcatch.com www.wikipedia.org/wiki/bullet_catch