(ambient music)
(snake hisses)
(match strikes)
- So, before the oija board existed mediums believed that
if you destroy something,
you send it over to the spirit world
and then the spirits can communicate that information
back to other people.
And that's where the tradition of the oija board came from.
We're gonna try something a little strange.
I've got some bits of paper over here.
They're all blank pieces of paper.
Go ahead and just grab any one of them.
I want you to think of any playing card in the entire deck.
You're gonna unfold that paper,
write down what it is on the piece of paper
and then fold it back to the way it was.
You good? Fold it up.
Make sure there's no way I can see what you wrote down.
- Alright.
- Set it down.
There's no way I can see what that is, right?
- Nope.
- In a moment we're gonna destroy this,
but before we do I'm gonna pick one for myself as well.
I'm gonna think of a card,
grab one of these pieces of paper.
I'm gonna write down.
I'm wanna make sure you don't see this.
Imma go with that one.
- Okay.
- I'm gonna put mine along with yours.
You see both of them in there?
Give it a little bit of magic potion.
And this is the part where mediums believed that
by destroying something, you send it over
to the spirit world.
Now traditionally, they believe that
the information is now being conveyed to the spirits.
- Okay.
- I've got a deck of cards here.
All 52 cards are there.
54, the jokers are in there as well.
- Alright.
- You can see that they're all there.
In a moment, we're gonna try to see if
the information can come back to us.
- Okay.
- So, I'm gonna give you half the cards, here you go.
Take half the cards
and hold it in your hand like this.
And I don't want you to do these decisions consciously,
just almost let your instincts guide you.
I want you to reach over with your right hand
and cut a small pack from your cards like this.
Turn it over.
Set it back down on top of the deck.
Now I want you to reach over,
cut a bigger pack, cut it deeper.
Flip the whole thing over.
Set it down on top of the deck.
Spread through all the face up cards.
Go to the first face down card.
The one you randomly cut to.
Set it down in front of you.
Give me the rest of the cards.
You just cut twice and this is the card you randomly cut to.
- Correct.
- Before we did this, you thought of a card,
I thought of a card.
We burnt it and sent it over to the spirit world
and hopefully they guided us to find each other's cards.
What card were you thinking of?
- King of clubs.
- I randomly cut to this card.
- Damn.
- I was thinking of the two of clubs.
- What?
- You randomly just let your instincts guide you
to cut to that card.
Take a look.
- Ah! What? Wait.
- The spirits have guided us.
(laughs)
- That was good.
You guys wanna learn it?
Let's go.
What's up guys, welcome back.
Chris Ramsey here
and I'm joined by my good buddy Spidey, Spiderman.
Spidey is, as you may know if you tune into this channel,
but if you're new here,
Spidey is a mentalist and a hypnotist,
but not only that, he is a performing, touring artist.
He does a lot of college shows across the states.
And he's really known for a lot of his sort of,
seance-y type magic.
By the way, if you guys wanna see a really cool seance trick
like a oija trick.
I don't know if you don't believe in that sort of thing.
It's incredibly
- Oh yeah,
- Incredibly well put together.
- That's the premise.
We're all aware that it's trickery,
but still the effect it has
- Or is it?
Okay, so I'll leave the link to that below,
go check out Spidey and his channel,
that video and all that,
but today we're not here to talk about that.
No sir!
We're here to talk about one thing in particular.
What's the name of this effect?
- I don't know, I never named it.
I was too busy creating it.
Let's call it, the Seance Trick.
- The Seance Trick.
You heard it here first.
Alright, so I'll let Spidey take it away,
talk to you guys about The Seance Trick.
- Hey guys, so to do this trick
you're gonna need a couple of things.
You're gonna need your trusty deck of cards,
you're gonna need a pen
and you're gonna need some matches,
some lighter fluid.
You can get this at any corner store.
Some sort of ash tray or cup.
I use this gothic looking chalice.
I think that looks really great.
And then you're gonna need little bits of paper.
I use blank business cards.
You can use business cards with writing on them.
Bits of just regular paper that are torn up into rectangles.
- [Chris] What about the alphabet cards?
- Now the good thing about this routine
is that it's very customizable.
In this tutorial, we're gonna learn how to do it
with playing cards.
I usually do it with creepy looking alphabet cards.
- Link in the description, sorry.
- A chalice and the lighter fluid and the matches,
you can just tear them up or just leave the billets there.
I just think it looks really good with this set up.
But it is customizable so even all this isn't necessary.
Now, let's get into a tutorial.
So, before we begin,
the beauty of this trick like I said,
is that it's very customizable.
You don't have to have all these elements.
You can tailor it to your performance style.
But if you are going to be using matches and lighter fluid
please make sure that if you're under the age of 18
that you have adult supervision.
It's very important.
So, we begin with the pieces of paper.
These are all actually blank pieces of paper
and I've got this little pouch that I keep them in
and that's gonna be important in just a second.
You offer the person a choice of piece of paper.
They choose one legitimately.
They're all blank so it doesn't matter.
So, they're gonna take a piece of paper
and they're gonna write down the name of any card
that they want to think of.
So, let's say three of hearts.
Three of hearts.
That's a free choice.
They can write down whatever they want.
And then they're gonna fold it up.
While they're doing this,
while they're busy writing this card out,
here's what you're doing.
You're taking all these other bits of paper
and you're putting them back inside the pouch.
And on the last one that you put in there,
you're hand goes into the pouch,
retains it in finger palm.
This is finger palm and it's very easy with pieces of paper.
Especially if they're rigid.
That's why I like to use rigid paper
cause it's easy to really like clip it.
So, that last one remains in your right hand like this
and you come out of the pouch like this.
Now, to look natural you can hold onto the pouch,
you can just sit casual like this,
which is what I did earlier.
They're gonna fold this up,
then you're gonna have them set it down on the table.
Now, here comes the switch.
Don't be nervous about this.
Practice this so it feels comfortable,
but it's really not that big a deal.
You're hands aren't being burned at this point.
Because all you're doing seemingly is
putting that piece of paper in that cup
or ash tray or whatever.
And the way that looks is this.
You're gonna pick it up with your left hand
and now the psychology is
you realize you gotta go get that cup
and you need your left hand to get that cup.
So, you're gonna come over
and make it seem like you're picking up this piece of paper.
In fact, what happens is, this goes into finger palm,
this empty piece of paper lies flat on top of it
so, my fingers flatten out like this
and as I come up and expose this one,
my left hand turns over to go get the cup.
So, you're gonna pick that up,
and you're like, "Oh no, I gotta go get that cup."
Come over like this, this is in your right hand,
that finger palm,
It's gonna lie flat on top it.
I clip it with my thumb, I lie flat on top of it
and as I push this up into view
my left hand keeps that other one in finger palm
and turns over like this.
So, this is empty and yours,
the one that the spectator wrote on, it's over here.
This, they wrote on this one.
Grab it, you switch it,
you go over to grab the cup
and again, this is very natural,
this is why I like to use the cup or the ash tray
because after the switch my hand doesn't feel guilty.
Now, this goes inside the cup.
They think this is the one they wrote on.
It's not.
It's a blank piece of paper.
I immediately now am gonna bring my left hand into the pouch
in order to take a piece of paper for myself.
In fact, what I do is I go into the pouch
and I just bring this piece of paper
into my fingertips like this.
And I come out like this,
as if I took a piece of paper for myself.
So, the cup is set down.
I go into the pouch
and I just come out with a piece of paper.
- [Chris] Now they think that this piece of paper
is completely blank.
- Yeah, when in fact, it has what they wrote on it.
You're now gonna say, "I'm gonna write one down,
but I don't want you guys to see it, either."
So, you open it up
and now I can see what they wrote.
I see the three of hearts.
So, I open my pen and I pretend to write something.
I'm not writing anything.
I'm just scratching my nail against the card.
- [Chris] So, he's just using his fingernail
to make the sound, what's up next?
- While doing that, I've just seen the card that they wrote.
I fold this up.
- [Chris] Now, you're way ahead.
- I'm so far ahead.
Place it inside the cup.
If you're doing the lighter fluid version
with adult supervision.
Use some of that.
Then you burn them.
Now, of course, you can tear them
or you can destroy them another way
or not even tear them, just get rid of them,
but for seance magic I love the beauty of this moment.
It's just theatrically so strong.
You know, the billets are being burned.
The information is being sent to the spirits.
I've got this cup that looks creepy as all heck, so.
- [Chris] This is a nice visual piece for the audience
to look at while you're talking.
- While you're doing the rest.
Especially if the lights are a little dim.
You got this nice seance set up going on.
It's just beautiful.
So, now I know their card is the three of hearts.
Here's what I'm gonna do now.
Pick up the deck and as I talk,
cause I say look all the cards are there,
or we're now gonna try to whatever.
However you please.
I'm gonna go look for the three of hearts.
It's here.
I'm going to keep a pinky break under that three of hearts.
So, just as I close it up I'll have a pinky break.
And I'm just gonna cut the cards.
Now, the three of hearts is on top.
If you have another control, like you wanna call it
or whatever you wanna do, you can do that.
You basically have their card on top, three of hearts.
The other thing you're doing,
don't forget this, this is very important.
You have to remember the next card
below their card so, in this case the five of spades.
I've gotta remember five of spades.
Again, let's say the three of hearts was here.
I just go through like this.
There it is.
Now, I remember, three of hearts, five of spades.
You remember the card next to it.
Keep that pinky on the three and cut.
The situation now is their card
that they picked is at the top.
It's the three of hearts.
And the next card down is known to me, five of spades.
You're gonna do a slip cut.
Very simple move.
Grab half the cards,
your left thumb stays on top of the deck
and as you move away with this top portion,
that one card remains on the bottom portion.
And you're really not trying to hide anything.
So, it doesn't matter if you're not subtle
because no one's really, no one really cares.
So, now the situation is this.
The three of hearts is here
and the five of spades is here.
You hand them this portion.
Now, you're gonna do what's called a cut deeper force.
You're basically gonna force the three of hearts on yourself
and you're gonna force that five of spades on them.
Trust your instincts.
You know, use your presentation here
because the spirits are guiding you.
You're gonna cut about a third of the deck
or you say cut a small packet of cards,
turn the whole thing upside down,
set it back down on the deck.
Now, cut a bigger portion, turn the whole thing over,
set it down on top of the deck.
Spread through the cards and what this does,
it repositions the face up card you got right there.
And now, you reemphasize, you go,
this is the cards that we cut to.
- [Chris] By the way guys, if you have not seen this force
cause I have not taught it on the channel.
This is an excellent way to force a card.
In my opinion, it's like one step over the crisscross force.
Now, with a crisscross force
seems a little obvious to a lot of people.
This one, because there's so many cuts,
they kinda lose what's happening
and they can't really reconstruct exactly what happens.
So this is a great force that you can use in any routine
you like to force a card with,
but especially in this one.
- Yeah, and I particularly like it in this trick
because it kinda makes sense the spirits are guiding you
to these series of cuts, like it's just sorta like
there's like this beautiful choreography to it.
But now you say, we cut these cards randomly.
Now, you're gonna start with them.
You ask them, what card did you send to the spirits.
And they're gonna say three of hearts.
Boom and this is a killer moment.
They have no idea that you saw what their card was.
They have no idea that you controlled it.
Now, you're gonna miscall.
You're gonna lie about what you wrote down
cause you didn't write down anything.
I wrote down the five of spades.
Take a look at what card you cut to.
This is them, they did it.
They found your card, go ahead.
And there it is the five of spades.
And then they just go (whisper scream)
and then they take the fluid and they burn you
cause they think you're a witch.
- [Chris] That would make for a good video.
- Burn the witch!
- Burn the witch.
That was it. That was Spidey.
That was The Seance Trick.
Hope you enjoyed that
and as Spidey mentioned before,
you know, this is something you can customize yourself.
Don't go out there performing exactly like he did
if this isn't you.
Do it the way you would do it.
Change it up a bit.
And I would love to hear your feedback
and I'm sure Spidey would as well.
Comment below, let us know what you thought of this effect
and don't forget to subscribe to Spidey's channel.
Check out his seance video.
- It's creepy, it's creepy, it's so creepy.
- It is pretty creepy actually.
- Just that reaction at the end.
- I bet you were surprised in that video a few times,
you're like really?
- Yeah, dude, I went with it.
I didn't know that was gonna happen.
If you guys see it, there's something that happens in there
that I didn't know was gonna happen.
I was just like, okay I guess that's what happened.
I'm just gonna go with it.
I just rolled with it.
- Well, let's see if you guys can figure
what that little thing is
and comment it on his video.
We'll see you guys on the next video, peace!
(hip hop music)