Room for Doubt

I've always associated magic with Halloween.  Maybe it's because Houdini died on Halloween. Or maybe it's just that commonality of the "lifting of the spiritual veil" when anything can happen.

I went to the estate sale of a magician this past year.  I've loved magic since I was a kid, not that I ever executed a magic trick particularly well.  I've told the tale of how a childhood friend and I attempted to have a magic show only to have no one show up.  But I've nonetheless had a fascination with magic that continues to current day, particularly vintage magic. I found some fun items at the sale, and one of them was this magic trick which employs some visuals that certainly fit in with Halloween.

"Room for Doubt" is a twist on a similar premise to the game Clue.  In the trick, a spectator participates in solving a murder through the selection of hidden murder weapons and room cards.  Actions are dictated from an audio cassette tape. The trick was created by Tony Spina. His name probably isn't known to many people, but it's known to many magicians.  David Copperfield spent hours in his magic shop as a child. He was friends with Siegfried and Roy and even taught Orson Welles a trick or two. And he invented the trick where a person is cut into thirds and the middle section is removed and shown to the audience.  He also eventually bought the company where he bought his first magic trick: Louis Tannen, Inc.

The potential murder weapons are a knife, rope or gun.

I love the art on the cards and honestly, it's the reason I bought this.  The artist is signed "EEM".  I couldn't find his actual name, but the art has a very familiar feel to me.

You can see from the instructions the original cost in the 1970's was $10.  

If you'd like to see the trick performed, you can watch this video, although in this demonstration, the magician reads the instructions rather than playing them from the cassette tape.

If that trick wasn't treat enough, why not head over to The Countdown and check out the magic there.