A three-phase in-hand routine that lets your audience experience what it feels like to be a mentalist with a jaw-dropping kicker they never see coming.
PHASE I - GUT FEELING
You show five cards, each bearing a different ESP symbol. After mixing them face down, you ask the participant to point to one of the symbols. Astonishingly, they choose exactly the symbol you named. (You hand all five cards to the participant.)
PHASE II - MIND READER
You secretly draw one of the ESP symbols on a card and the participant reads your mind and accurately guesses which one you drew. (The card with your drawing joins the others in their hand.)
PHASE III - HALLUCINATION
You ask the participant if they remember the exact order of the symbols on the cards in their hand. Naturally, they do not.
Then comes the big reveal with the cards they were holding the entire time: Everything they thought they saw never existed. The card with the symbol from Phase I never existed, it's blank. The other four cards with symbols never existed, they're blank too. In fact, the marker you used to draw in Phase II doesn't write, the symbol on the card you drew on never existed, it is blank as well. It was a hallucination from start to finish.
- Simple, easy and direct.
- Can be done in-hand without table.
- Making the cards takes less than 2 minutes.
- No reset required, it resets itself as you perform it.
- The final phase happens in their hand and that makes it jaw-dropping.
Update Nov '24: Includes an additional section with the transition - Why do the cards go blank?
1st edition 2024, PDF 4 pages, video 12 min.
word count: 1067 which is equivalent to 4 standard pages of text
