Telethot

The mental transmission of pictures from the performer to the medium has been a bugaboo of telepathists. Everything else has fallen but pictures. So, if one cannot successfully code them, one must falsify the whole proceedings. The following routine will enable you to do this with but 15 minutes practice.

Effect

The performer has a piece of paper perforated for tearing into eight strips. He asks his audience to think of some simple diagrams and then steps among them. The various spectators approached each draw some simple design or figure upon the paper. Stepping back to the platform, the performer tears the paper into eight strips and drops them, one by one, into a bowl or hat. The medium now enters and is seated with her back to the audience, and is given a slate and a piece of chalk.

Any person from the audience now freely selects from the bowl one slip which he puts in his pocket. He is then given a slate and a piece of chalk and retires with them to a far corner of the room or auditorium, where he waits while the effect goes on.

The performer now reaches into the hat and removes one paper which he looks at in silence. At once, the medium is heard to be writing on her slate. She holds it up to show the picture she has drawn. The performer asks whose drawing the medium has reproduced. The design is acknowl-edged as correct, and the performer takes another paper. The effect is repeated quickly and, one after another, the spectators acknowledge their drawings, as each is duplicated by the medium. Throughout, the performer remains silent, and does nothing more than pick out slips and look at them.

When the seventh slip has been duplicated, the performer asks the spectator across the room, who is holding the eighth slip and a slate, to draw a picture of the figure on his slip. He does so and then returns to the front where he shows his sketch to everyone in the audience. The medium, who has finished her work and is standing before the audience, turns her slate around and shows it also. Both drawings are the same!