One of the things I love most about what I do is the opportunity that I have to get tons of people out of the audience every night up on stage.  That means that every single performance is unique.  When you get a volunteer on stage, you just never have any idea what will happen, or how they’ll react to the illusion they’re participating in.  This past weekend in Bradenton, FL was no different!

In my show, I often perform an illusion where an old, antique table floats mysteriously around the stage, without anyone touching it.  It was inspired by an experience I had over 10 years ago in southeast Asia. While on a tour with another performer in Sri Lanka, we discovered a man in one of the communities we were performing in who was performing one of the same illusions we were.  He had invested the same time, resources, and months of practice we had into creating the same illusion of levitation, but with one major difference: He was actually deceiving people. There were no spirits…it was all just an illusion.

This guy had convinced hundreds of people in his country that the levitation of the table was made possible by spirits, and that the spirits were manifesting their presence by making the table move.  I learned more than one valuable lesson that day about how easily it is for our senses to be fooled, and how simply we are tricked and cleverly deceived into believing things that totally untrue.  All because we “saw something with our own eyes,” and after all, “seeing is believing.”

You’ll have to check out our show to get the full story, as well as experience the illusion live, but for now, enjoy this clip of what was for me, a very unique presentation of my floating table illusion.  I’ve never had anyone respond quite like this before, but it’s these kind of unexpected moments with audience volunteers that continue to make my job so much fun. Enjoy…