Der Shattenjaeger – The Shadow Hunter Copyright 2003 by Robert E Cassidy

All rights reserved

They might be giants. - Cervantes, Don Quixote

Absolute authenticity of detail is essential to our work. Anything less is mere quackery.

-The Magic Christian

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Schattenjaeger’s Workshop 2 Dr. Crow’s Book of Numbers 2 Bandaged 7 The Paradigm Deck 8 Vision Quest (The Schattenjaeger’s Cards) 10 The Jam Readings - “Ragtime Mentalism” 14

The Schattenjaeger’s Workshop One of his secrets is the knowledge that everyday objects are really effects whose instructions

have been lost. A glass object on a supermarket shelf might look like a jelly jar, for example, but is that what it really is? He looks at the fluted glass sides that distort the appearance of the contents and realizes that it is a cleverly disguised secret device. He asks himself, “How does it work?”

At the checkout counter, while he is waiting to purchase his new discovery, he carefully peruses

the mini-magazines that purport to reveal the secrets of numerology and how to harness your psychic powers. Are they simply pieces of bait to hook the gullible, or do they have another purpose? He looks behind their tacky facade and sees what they are really for.

His own appearance is equally deceptive. Most people assume he’s dangerously psychotic. They are wrong. He is the Schattenjaeger. His workshop is everywhere. Dr. Crow’s Book of Numbers Every two weeks or so, a company called American Media Mini Mags, of Boca Raton, Florida,

delivers yet another publication to supermarket checkout counters throughout the country. Featuring such titles as “Is Your Pet Psychic?” “Are You Psychic?” “How to Talk to Your Cat” and “Everyone is Psychic Except You”, these and similar “mini-mags” have become commonplace..

“Dr. Crow’s Book of Numbers” is a mentalist’s utility device that appears to be just another of

these ubiquitous releases. It is a sixty-six-page booklet, which you can easily print out on your computer. (Separate .pdf and .doc files, ready for printing, are included in the file that contains this eBook, as are full size versions of the front and back covers.)

Here are the covers and the first few pages from the booklet:

The booklet is 4 inches by 6 inches in size. The pages are printed on blank index card stock. (You can do them on newsprint if you want to make the book look exactly like the supermarket versions. I prefer the cardstock as I use the booklet in a platform routine in which it is only handled by one person. The card stock makes the book somewhat more durable.

The covers are printed in color on glossy photo paper. (You may prefer to have these done at your local print shop.)

The next several pages continue in this manner,

giving the meanings for each of the “name numbers”. (The actual pages, contained in the files accompanying this eBook, are formatted with headers, footers, appropriate margins, and gutters)

The remainder of the book consists of entries for

every day in the year. These correspond with your volunteer’s birthday and contain his lucky number combination and lucky color.

Following are some of the entries from the

“January” section of the book - E

very day of the year has a different six-digit lucky number combination and is assigned one of nine different colors – the seven colors of the spectrum plus “black” and “white.”

Again, look at the attached files to see how

these pages are laid out. The secret to the booklet is very simple –

without referring to its pages you are able to determine the number and the color assigned to every day of the year!

Unassembled book printed on 4 x 6 blank index cards

The most effective way of using the booklet is to first secretly obtain the participant’s birth date -

unless you use the pocket writing option mentioned below. A center tear, billet switch, or impression device can also be used for this purpose. (If you perform an effect with a borrowed bill earlier in your routine, you can often get a glimpse at the driver’s license when the spectator removes the bill from his or her wallet.)

I ask the participant if she believes in lucky numbers. I show the Dr. Crow book and state that it

is a numerology book I picked up in the supermarket. Handing the booklet to her, I ask her to look through it.

“Look up your birthday and it will tell you your lucky number combination and your special

color.” You already know what her number and color will be, and may reveal that information as you

wish. (Those who are skilled in pocket writing will have no problem presenting this as a prediction effect – just ask for the birth date and while the spectator looks it up you pocket-write the lucky number and later pretend to remove the slip with your “prediction” from an envelope that has been in plain view from the start.

The color is the easiest to determine quickly. Simply by body indexing nine envelopes, you can

hand one containing the proper color as soon as you know the date. Use the mnemonic you probably learned in school to help you remember the seven colors of

the visible spectrum – ROY G. BIV. The letters of this guy Roy’s name stand for the colors Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet. Since the name is a three-letter word, a single initial, and then another three letter word. It is easy to determine the numerical value, from one to seven, of any of the colors and vice versa. There are, however, nine different colors used in the book, so we use “Black” and “White” to represent numbers eight and nine.

To determine the color for any given day of the year, add the values of the month and day

together and then add the digits in the result. If the result is a two-digit number, add those two digits

together until you arrive at a single digit. That digit corresponds to the color for the date in question. (Mathematically speaking, you are simply “casting out nines.”)

For example, if the birthday were June 23rd, you would add 6 (for June – it is the sixth month)

and 23, arriving at a total of 29. 2 + 9 = 11 1 + 1 = 2 Color #2 is Orange. (“O” is the second letter in “ROY”)

January 8th is White. Why? Because 1 + 8 = 9 and 9 is White. Determining the number for any given date is almost as easy. A very simple calculation, based

on Burling Hull’s “Master Memory Feats”, gives you the number for any day of the year. While you should have no problem doing it all in your head, you may, if you wish, calculate the number with pencil and paper while ostensibly working out the participant’s “Name Number” as per the first section of the booklet.

Put the value of the month FIRST and the date SECOND. (This is the normal way of writing a

date in the US, but the rest of the world puts the date first. So if my overseas friends will just remember that we are a little backwards over here, you will know to put the month first when doing the calculations for this effect.)

Ex. - January 1 = 11 January 2 = 12 January 13 = 113 October 31 = 1031 Etc. Thus, the month and date will yield a two, three or four digit number. (Think of January 1st, for

example, as eleven, January 13th as one hundred and thirteen, and October 31st as one thousand thirty-one.)

Add five to this number. Using January 13th as an example, our number would now be 118.

(113 + 5) Reverse this number: 118 becomes 811. Now, as per Hull’s system, add the last two digits together to obtain the next digit: 8112 Again add the last two digits together to obtain the fifth digit: 81123. Once more add the last two together to get the sixth, and final digit: 811235 If you arrive at a two-digit number when adding the last two digits together, disregard the

number in the “tens” place. Only use numbers in the “ones” place. Example: August 7 Written as a two-digit number: 87 Add five and your total is 92 Reverse these digits to get 29 Add these two together to get the next digit and your total is 11. DISREGARD the 1 in the “tens”

place. The number is now 291 Add nine and one together for the next digit. The total is 10, but disregard the 1. The number is now 2910 One and zero give us the fifth number: 29101

Zero plus one gives us the sixth, and last, digit of the lucky number: 291011 The “lucky numbers” in the book are listed sequentially by date, thus it is possible to see that

they have a discernable relationship to one another – especially in the two-digit months of October, November, and December. This would be a problem if the effect were based on the premise that a random number was assigned to each day of the year. These numbers, however, are NOT represented as being random at all – they are ostensibly the result of careful numerological computations and OF COURSE there are relationships between the numbers in given months. (That’s if anyone should ask about it in the first place, which is unlikely if the presentation is fairly brisk and the spectator is not given the opportunity to leisurely look through the book.)

If, however, you have secretly obtained the birth information as suggested earlier, the spectator

should believe that you didn’t know her birth date to begin with, let alone the six-digit number and color it is associated with.

As you become familiar with the booklet, many other applications will suggest themselves to

you. As the Shattenjaeger says, “Look beneath the surface.”

Bandaged There are those who will say that this portrait of me is among the

finest of my many likenesses . It is a perfect example, however, of things that are not quite what they seem to be. While it appears that my head is wrapped in an Ace bandage, it is in fact wrapped in a disposable paper-like athletic wrap manufactured by a company named Nexcare. It has two qualities that set it apart from the cloth Ace bandages that it so closely

resembles. The first is that it sticks to itself, so there is no

need to pin or knot it after putting it on. While this makes it very convenient to use as a blindfold or as a base for an even more elaborate eye covering, its other quality is what makes it particularly valuable to the mentalist.

It is a very stretchable material, but unlike the

Ace bandage, which contains elastic, the Nexcare is best described as a sort of heavy-duty crepe paper. Something very interesting happens when you stretch it out – it becomes almost transparent.

I took the photograph of myself wearing the bandage with the webcam mounted on the top of my computer. I am actually looking at the monitor and setting up the shot with four feet of this material wrapped around my head.

The visibility is so good that I have taken to wearing the bandage underneath my regular cloth

blindfold (The Master Mentalist’s Blindfold – which is also based on a hidden transparency principle) I still have adequate straight ahead vision.

I recently tested the bandage with Osterlind’s Stainless Steel Blindfold and found that I still had

perfect vision to the left and right. In practice, the bandage should be removed from the inner plastic cylinder (around which it is wrapped when you take it from the box.) and rolled up like a regular Ace Bandage. You should also refer to it as an Ace bandage during your performance. (Throw away the box that it comes in – you don’t want anyone to realize that it is anything other than an Ace.)

The bandage comes in two varieties – one is designed for use on the elbows and wrists, and is

an inch narrower that the leg bandage shown in the photo on the right. To my knowledge, the unique properties of this relatively new first-aid item have not, until now, been discovered by mentalists or magicians. For that reason, this is an extremely valuable secret and I ask that you keep it closely to yourself.

The Paradigm Deck

Can you guess which card the

Schattenjaeger is peeking at? But there is a bit more to the

Paradigm Deck than what lies before your eyes or the Schattenjaeger’s. The marks are worth noting, however. I think you will agree that they are pretty hard to miss. As in the original “Peek Deck Pappy” described in J.G. Thompson’s My Best, each card, with the exception of the top card, which is not marked, bears the identity of the card directly above it. Since the marks are on the upper halves of the cards, the pack can be casually spread from the other end without the markings being seen.

The Paradigm Deck, though, is

also a “Psychomatic Deck” – in other words, the cards are glued together in pairs and the uppermost card of each pair is one of twenty-six identical force cards. The lowermost cards of each pair are all

different and are cut short. (It is exactly the opposite of a Svengali pack, in which the force cards are short) The pairs of cards are glued together at the ends. The cards, therefore, can be freely spread in a face up condition and shown to be “well mixed”, “all different” or whatever else you claim them to show.

In the photograph, the pairs are glued together at the upper end of the pack. No matter where the spectator stops me as I riffle the cards toward him at eye level, he will see an indifferent card. Of course, I will know what it is as soon as he does - thanks to the blatant mark that is facing me.

In combination, these two principles create a very powerful and fast platform demonstration. As

the routine begins, the pack is secured with a rubber band and resides in the performer’s jacket pocket. The cards are not kept in their case – if they were, what would you need the rubber band for?

The performer approaches a spectator, removes the pack from his pocket, and takes off the

rubber band, which he snaps around his wrist. He spreads the cards face up, asking her to verify “for the benefit of the people in the cheap seats” that all of the cards are different.

“As I flip through them like this, just stop me somewhere.” The cards are held at the spectator’s

eye level, as in the photograph, and riffled with the right fingers, which pull back toward the performer – ie. the cards spring towards the spectator. When you perform this routine yourself, keep your head turned to the side during the riffle, thus making it obvious that you are not looking at the cards. Caution the spectator not to think of the bottom card “because everyone can see what it is.”

Hold the cards high enough so that the spectator cannot see the faces as they riffle. When she

tells you to stop, show her the card in the exact manner shown in the photo. At the same time, turn your head back toward the spectator and tell her to remember the card she is looking at. Since the mark is staring you in the face, you remember the card as well. Close up the pack and rapidly go to another spectator who is asked to think of a card in the same manner. Repeat this procedure as rapidly as you can with as many spectators as you can handle. This, of course, will be dictated by how many cards you feel comfortable memorizing. If you have mastered a card memory system, you should have no problem remembering seven or eight cards, which is about right.

After the eighth spectator has remembered a card, say, “You know, maybe it’s not so good that I

am touching the cards. Here, let’s try it this way.” As you speak, give the cards several overhand shuffles – faces of the cards toward the audience so as not to flash the markings. Retain the top (unmarked) card in position at all times.

Approach a final spectator and, as you reach her, snap the rubber band around the pack. “Here, I want you to hold the cards like this on your outstretched left hand.” Demonstrate by

holding the cards on your own palm-up hand. The deck should be face down and the glued ends of the cards should be closest to you.

“I am not going to watch when you peek at a card. In fact, I am not even going to touch the

cards. I am going to hand you the deck and I want you to lift up a bunch of them from the end, like this, and peek at just one card. Don’t let a lot of them flip by like this, because then you will be thinking of too many different images.”

The performer turns so that the spectator can see over his right shoulder as he gives this little

demonstration. Since the performer riffles from the glued end while he is explaining why the spectator should not flip through the pack, the participant will see several indifferent cards, thus “proving” once again that all of the cards are different.

When the mentalist hands the deck to the spectator, however, he places it face down on her hand so that the unglued “force” end of the pack is facing her. This is the standard handling for the Psychomatic deck.

Turn away from the spectator and ask her to peek at a card and fix it into her mind. When she

indicates that she has done so, ask her to drop the cards into your jacket pocket, as you “don’t want to touch them again.”

That last bit is important, for it is what the audience will remember after the show – many will even forget that you were holding the cards while the other spectators made their selections.

Conclude by asking everyone to concentrate intently on the card images they have fixed in their

minds. In a brisk and forthright manner call out all of the selections, finally turning to the volunteer who got the force card. Reveal the card she is thinking of, once again mentioning that you never handled the cards after giving them to her.

While the handling in this routine is almost obscenely blatant, the effect is nonetheless very

powerful. The main thing to remember –other than the cards, which you’d better remember - is to work this one as fast as you can without confusing anyone.

Vision Quest (The Schattenjaeger’s Cards) I was playing around with one of Doctor Crow’s “Allegedly Authentic Mojo Dolls” a while back

and I realized that the little pocket on the front of his outfit was a perfect holder for a billet switch. Those of you who have read Theories and Methods for the Practical Psychic, Part 3, will remember the “Crossover Billet Switch,” performed as the right hand removes a folded billet from a candlestick-like holder. The same maneuver can be performed while removing a billet from the doll’s pocket. (Or in PRETENDING to remove it – it’s just as simple to push the billet all the way down into his pocket while apparently removing the one you had palmed in your right hand. It’s a nice approach that leaves you completely clean.)

I went to my cabinet for some 2” by 2” billets to practice with, and there I found two packs of

miniature playing cards that I had purchased many years ago. They were (and still are) made by Piatnik of Austria. I liked them because of the lifelike images on the court cards. Here’s a picture of a few of them. See what I mean?

The cards are about an inch high, and,

as I quickly noticed, just about the same size as a folded billet. Why not put one in the doll’s pocket and use it for a prediction?

I mulled over several possible

approaches, all of which involved switching the card in the doll’s pocket for one that matched a full-sized card freely selected, or

thought of, by a spectator.

I realized, of course, that I could just as easily force a duplicate of the card in the doll’s pocket. I could even use the “Psychomatic” force pack to make it extremely clean and fair in appearance. But the “Psychomatic” is part of my set program and I really didn’t want to have it serve double duty as a close-up item. And besides, for all of my preaching about the best method being the most direct one, I still like to have fun once in a while by playing with novel approaches.

I remembered an effect that Don Tanner put out years ago involving ESP cards. Each card had a

little pocket on the back – sort of like the ones that have been used for years in the mechanical version of the classic “Six Card Repeat”. Each pocket held a folded billet made of very thin paper, which contained a prediction of the ESP card in whose pocket, it resided. The deck, then, was essentially a billet index. The basic idea goes back to the 1930’s when magicians experimented with the idea of sticking cigarette paper billets to the back of every card in a deck. The cigarette papers had to be used because anything else would add altogether too much bulk to the pack. Fifty-two billets cut from the index stock I usually use, could never be hidden on the backs of a deck.

But the Piatnik cards made me realize that there was no need to use a full deck. The twelve

picture cards each seemed to have a personality of its own, and I decided that if I simply spread a pack of Bee playing cards face up on the table, and asked a spectator to simply touch any one of the picture

cards, I would only need to index eleven of the miniature cards in order to switch the doll’s card for one that matched the selection. (I only needed eleven because the Queen of Hearts – a popular choice – would be in the doll’s pocket to begin with, setting up a minor miracle if she was the card touched by the spectator.)

I also knew that if I positioned pockets on the backs of the twelve

court cards from a Bee deck so that they were off center and at an angle, that it would be possible to spread the cards facedown without exposing them.

Here’s how I attached the pockets, which I made from pieces cut

from a duplicate deck. Note how neatly the Piatnik card fits. (This will also give you a better idea of the actual size of these mini cards)

“Why the Bee cards?” I hear you ask. (Or maybe that’s just the Voices again – they are always

asking me things like that just to annoy me.) It’s because I cut some cards from the duplicate deck to make new backs for the Piatniks – Bee

backs that matched the pattern of the deck I would be using. (That is also why the Piatnik card in the photo is face-up. If she were face- down she would be

almost invisible amid the crosshatching.) It all seemed pretty simple and effective from there. The cards are handled freely – the entire

deck is spread face-up – and the spectator is asked to touch a court card. I would just pick up the card she touched, and while showing it around to everyone the mini card would slip neatly into a finger palm, ready to be switched for the card protruding from the doll’s pocket.

In case you haven’t seen the doll I’m talking about, here is a photo of one with a standard billet

– the same size as the mini card - protruding from his pocket.

Overall, I thought it was a pretty cute idea. But that was about it – pretty cute. I imagined what the Shattenjaeger might have said about the idea. “Why are you limiting yourself to cards or billets? How else can you use the idea of the little

pockets?” The answer was found in another effect I had been playing around with. In Bruce Elliot’s classic

Magic as a Hobby, he described an off-the-wall bar stunt in which the performer secretly wrote the name of a spectator’s card (or the number or word you forced on him) on the foam that rises to the top of a beer glass when the beer is properly poured. (A rapidly fading art, I am sad to report – even many bartenders nowadays don’t know that you have to hold the glass at a forty-five degree angle and let the beer pour down the side in order to raise about an inch of foam. And if you can’t get good head from a … but I’m digressing, back to the effect…)

You can really write on beer foam, it turns out, if you use a fountain pen. The foam seems to draw out the ink. And it’s pretty strange to see writing on your beer foam! Almost as strange as people who claim to see visions while looking into a glass or bowl of liquid – a feat that is sometimes accomplished in the séance room, where the combination of atmosphere and the glimmering reflection of candle flames on the liquid’s surface can play very convincing games with the imagination. (In fact, my good friend Carl Herron, a/k/a Brother Shadow, described a very effective use of this technique in his now hard-to-obtain “Have Séance, Will Travel” It’s well worth reading if you can find a copy.)

I wasn’t particularly interested, though, in writing on my beer foam – the ink interferes with my

digestion. What I was looking for was a practical way to make words or pictures appear to be floating on or just below the surface of liquid in a goblet or glass. My idea was to have one spectator think of a famous person who had passed away and then to have another participant gaze into the goblet and describe anything she might see. Of course, this would best be performed in a slightly darkened room with a candle on each side of the goblet. (See “The Luck of Edenhall” in Annemann’s Jinx for his approach to the problem. You won’t find it in the truncated version of the original piece that was published in Practical Mental Effects, but now that the complete Jinx is available on cd-rom for about twenty dollars, you should have no trouble finding the effect.)

The solution to floating an image in the glass is quite simple. All you need is some celluloid

(clear plastic report covers from the office supply store will work perfectly), a scissor and/or a razor knife, super glue, a few empty plastic cd-rom cases and some clear plastic laminating material – also available from the office supply store. You will also need a silver dollar (old style large ones) size coin.

You are going to make a little “ table” that sits inside of the goblet. Cut a disk from the celluloid

whose diameter is about the same as the diameter of the inside bottom of the goblet. If you are going to glue the “table” into the goblet, the diameter isn’t critical. Otherwise, cut is just a little too big so that it will wedge into the bottom of the goblet – you don’t want it floating up to the surface at an inopportune moment!

Cut another disk that is equal to the diameter of the goblet at a point approximately

one inch below the level that the liquid will reach. Make a tube out of another piece of celluloid (or you can use a clear plastic vial cut to the appropriate height). The uppermost

disk is your “table top” and the other is the base. They are glued to both ends of the plastic tube. (It ends up looking like a tiny magician’s table!)

The cd-rom cases are your source of rigid plastic for the pictures that will appear in the liquid.

With the exacto knife cut out silver dollar size disks from the plastic. (That’s what the silver dollar size coin is for. It is your template.) You will need one disc for each image you wish to produce.

Now you need some images. If you wish to perform the “famous dead person” routine, take a trip to a movie memorabilia store or go shopping on the internet for postcard sized photos of famous, easily recognizable stars and celebrities who are no longer among the living. In my presentation, I use ten post cards. They include pictures of Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, Judy Garland, Rod Serling, John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart and four other equally recognizable figures.

If you have a scanner and printer, the rest is easy. If not, I am sure you know someone who

does who can help you out. Scan each of the postcards. On your computer, crop them down to headshots and reduce them

to about one inch by one inch. Create a new, blank, 8 ½ by 11 bitmap image, and cut and paste all of the little celebrity images onto the new bitmap. You will now print this new image onto an Avery decal sheet or onto a plastic transparency. These materials are readily available for both laser and inkjet printers.

Cut out the individual images and laminate them to the plastic disks. If you fill the goblet and drop one of the disks into it – at an angle so that it doesn’t float – it

will settle onto the “table top” about an inch below the surface. Put a candle on each side of the goblet and dim the lights. Look into the glass and you will see an eerie image of a famous dead person floating beneath the surface.

You will use the postcards to allow the first spectator to select a dead celebrity. If you want to

force one of the postcards – go ahead. If you choose this route, you can have the corresponding image disk in the glass before your performance. No doubt, this is the easiest, and some would reasonably argue, the best way to go in most circumstances.

But the force is not necessary if you don’t mind just a little extra work. Using pieces of playing

cards or extra postcards, make pockets on the back of each postcard similar to the ones I described for the Piatnik cards. Since the spectator never handles the cards and there is no reason whatsoever to show their backs, this does not require precision work. Do not put the pockets in the same position on each card. They will be used to hold the image disks that match them. If you put them all in the same place, the cards will not stack properly. This is also why I don’t use more than ten cards – the stack becomes much too bulky. (If you want to take the extra trouble, you can mount the postcards on extra heavy cardboard – book cover stock is perfect. You can then cut “U” shaped notches into the cardboard so that the discs are actually recessed into the cards. This allows for easier stacking but you still don’t want to use too many as the stack will look abnormally thick.)

Never mention the exact number of pictures in the stack. Most people will assume that

there are at least twenty or twenty-five based on the thickness of the pile. Let them think so. Prior to performing, place a pitcher of liquid and two candles on your table. The goblet is

in a large cloth pouch, which is also on the table. The rest should be fairly obvious. Ask the first spectator to indicate one of the pictures as you pass the cards face up in front of her. Remove her selection from the stack and fingerpalm the disk from the pocket on its back. Tell the participant to concentrate on her selected celebrity.

Put the cards away and go to the table. Open up the pouch and reach in to remove the

goblet. This is how you get the disk onto the plastic stand inside the goblet. Fill the goblet from the pitcher, dim the lights and ignite the candles. Finally, select an imaginative looking spectator to gaze into the liquid and to describe any visions she may see.

The Jam Readings - “Ragtime Mentalism” “It must be jelly cause jam don’t shake like that” In The Principia Mentalia, I coined the term “Jazz Mentalism” as a way of defining my approach

to the classic Question Answering act. Over the years, I have released several different methods for accomplishing the classic feat, which I consider the Major Effect in mentalism. (“Major” because it involves, or potentially involves, everyone in the audience, as opposed to most effects which incorporate the assistance of only one or a few audience members.)

While my current approach is the one I described in Scorpio’s Message, I still like to incorporate

aspects of the jazz approach. [For those not familiar with the term, “Jazz Mentalism” describes an improvisational

approach to the art. While still adhering to a basic structure and premise, alternate endings, variations in technique, and extra pieces of equipment are all available so that the performer can take advantage of any unforeseen developments and opportunities that arise during the course of the performance.

Jazz Mentalism is not, as some have suggested, improvisational in the sense that the

performer just “makes up the act as he goes along. It is more like “If the audience does this, then I’ll do that, “ or, “If I hit on something here I will then go in this direction, if I miss I’ll go in that direction.”]

One of those aspects is utilizing props that are uniquely appropriate to a given performance

venue. The “Jam Readings” gimmick is just such a prop. It is a completely impromptu- looking billet-switching device and is best used in informal settings. It wouldn’t look right at a corporate banquet, for example, but it is perfect for restaurant work or at the annual corporate picnic.

It’s the jelly jar that the Schattenjaeger was looking at in the grocery store. It’s low tech but

extremely efficient. It’s based on a principle that is as old as the hills, yet it’s always dependable and effective.

By itself, it isn’t really jazz. But its excellent ragtime. Here is the jelly jar.

The jar is about four inches high and my hand wraps half way around it as I walk amongst the audience, allowing them to insert billets through the slot cut into the lid. Note that the slot is slightly off-center and the sides of the jar are fluted.

It’s the most deceptive mirror glass I have ever seen. Unlike its progenitors, still available, I’m sure; from EZ Magic the jelly jar has the advantage of a

lid, which largely eliminates angle problems. It also utilizes a curved mirror – easily made from chrome tape available at automobile shop. The curve eliminates unwanted reflections and adds to the transparent appearance of the device. As I already noted, when you are holding the jar, the hidden compartment is completely hidden by your hand.

Here is a view into the jar with the lid removed:

Dummy billets are stored in the rear portion of the jar. (The uppermost “compartment” in the photo to the left) This is because the principle is most effective when the audience views the concave side of the mirror. (If you look again at the previous picture, you will see just how deceptive it is.)

But the audience shouldn’t

have any reason to pay any particular attention to the appearance of the jar anyway. And after a bunch of billets are dropped in, your handling of the jar can become very casual, as there will be nothing to see from either side except a jar full of billets.

(Note that the slot should be

over the front section of the jar, not the rear as shown in the first photo.)

The mirror is easily fashioned

from chrome tape stuck to each side of a playing card.

The billets are easily switched simply by passing the jar to your other hand, bringing the

dummies into view and concealing the collected billets. Remove the lid and dump the dummies into a bowl on your table, where you can burn them or do whatever you’d like with them. It is easy to use the tips of your fingers to prevent the stolen billets from falling out of the jar with the dummies.

This is something you can make up in five minutes and when you do, I think you will be as enthusiastic about its uses and potentials as I am.

You might note that by casually turning the lid you can control which side of the jar receives the

spectator’s billets. This offers some interesting possibilities for psychometry and living and dead type tests. Also, if the jar is empty to begin with, there is no reason why you cannot use the chrome mirrors to make THREE compartments in the jar.

As the Schattenjaeger would ask, “What are the three compartments used for?” Think about it.