Secrets of Stage Mindreading

by Ormond McGill

189 pages Soft Bound

Crown House Publishing Limited, 2003

Reviewed by MagicWeek

Let's jump straight in with a quote from the book's introduction:

 

"Telepathy is sufficiently mysterious as to become popular with magicians as Mental Magic (which Theo Annemann called the most adult form of magic) in which pseudo-demonstrations are presented. You will find no pseudo-demonstrations of telepathy in this book. Its direction is exclusively genuine telepathy."

 

Then, further on in the introduction:

 

"Becoming a star with telepathy and presenting a genuine mindreading stage show will bring you great prestige, as everyone wishes they could do what you can do. Dunninger did it........Polgar did it........Kreskin does it. YOU CAN DO IT!"

 

What? Did I really just read that?!

 

I'm not going to go into great detail here... I'm assuming that this book isn't really aimed at magicians.

 

Chapter One - Proof of Telepathy

 

"You stand as proof of the existence of REAL Mindreading. For example, unquestionably you will have noticed, while attending a social group, when a person makes a remark, someone across the room will exclaim, 'why that's just what I was going to say.' Nearly everyone has experienced knowing what a person was going to say before the person spoke."

 

Actually I wouldn't call that "proof of telepathy" - I'd call it thinking on similar lines or coincidence.

 

But, strangely, for anyone considering "Mindreading" as a form of entertainment I would recommend this book. A number of chapters will stimulate thought and those on "Contact Mindreading" were fascinating.

 

Chapter 23 - Opening a Safe by Mindreading I wasn't too happy with though - I'd suggest you steer well clear of this one:

 

"This is the piece de resistance on Intimate Mindreading Experiments. Perform the feat of opening the private safe in the office of a newspaper editor and probably you'll get a full-page story." The chapter goes on to explain how to do this using "contact mindreading" alone!

 

Despite the content seeming dated and simply out of touch, you will find snippets of information that will have you reaching for your (ungimmicked) notepad.

 

Ormond McGill has an international reputation as a stage hypnotist and his book New Encyclopedia of Stage Hypnotism is highly regarded, however for me real stage mindreading is actually about performance and Secrets of Stage Mindreading didn't really do it...

 

None the less if I was putting together a "mindreading" type act then I wouldn't hesitate to get a copy of this book simply because the more you read about any given subject the better and Secrets of Stage Mindreading may help you develop some new ideas.

 



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© Duncan Trillo, August 2003

 

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