His real name is Christopher Nicolas, but we know him as
Criss Angel, an American Greek magician, who is brilliant in staging his tricks,
and today we're going to unlock the secrets behind his most complex magic tricks.
Trick 1: The Invisible Angel
This trick is peculiar and mind-boggling. At first the magician stands above a simple
hand-made stage, then asks his assistants to raise the curtain until it conceals him completely.
After seconds, the assistants take the curtain down, but there is no sign of the magician,
he vanished in the thin air. So, where did he go ? In the beginning of the trick, you can see
that every person has a shadow, including the man in the back in phosphoric T-shirt
and the barrel next to him. Moments after, the camera angle was changed a little bit,
and when it came back to the same scene, a trained eye would observe some differences. First of all,
you can see that the shadows of the man in the back and the barrel next to him
shrank and moved back. The reason of that and the secret of the trick is because the magician used
a mirror and placed it in this exact area. As the mirror would definitely hide the lower body of the
man in the back, the magician brought another man in the front wearing a similar pants to appear in
the mirror reflection, and The camera angle made them look like one standing person. Simultaneously
with removing the curtain, the magician jumped down and hid behind the mirror, making the viewer
think he is the invisible man. If you still doubt using a mirror in this trick, take a closer look
at this comparison between the shadows before and after placing the mirror. The shadow size
of both the man in the back and the barrel have changed, and the barrel color has changed too.
Even the shape of the ground looks different. And for the part when Criss untied the rope
clutching on his hands, two elements included. The first,
the magician took more than 12 seconds talking to his assistants, during that time and giving his
skills, he managed to untie the rope using his sleight of hand. The second, the two assistants
holding that rope loosened the rope to help Criss untie his hands and reconnect the rope quickly.
These little mistakes have revealed the secret of this near-perfect trick.
Trick 2: Salt and ground pepper break up In this trick, the magician mixes some salt and
some ground pepper on a glass table, then takes the girl's hand and places it on the mixture.
In the same time he extends his left hand under the table right beneath the mixture. Few seconds
later, he opens that hand, and surprisingly, the ground pepper is there in his palm while
the salt above is free of pepper. The question is, how did he manage to disassemble the mixture,
and how did the ground pepper move to his hand under the table. As a matter of fact,
if we want to separate both components that are as tiny as sands, we will need hours and
hours. But the magician did it in seconds. The secret of this trick is as follows;
firstly, what the magician blends with salt was not actually ground pepper,
but magnet powder that looks like it. And when he asked the girl to place her hand
on the mixture this way, he secretly inserted his hand in his pants pocket and extracted
another fistful of magnet powder. Here you can notice how he inserted his open empty hand,
and how then he extracted it tightly closed, because it contained magnet powder inside.
After that, he started circling the magnet right under the mixture. It's then a simple Physics;
magnet attracts to magnet despite the glass barrier. And when it does, the magnet powder in
the mixture goes down and disappears below salt, while salt goes up and appears pure and clean.
And this is how he did it. Trick 3: The moving lipstick spot
This trick is simple and depends on the magician sleight of hand. At first the magician asks the
woman to hand over her lipstick, and requests her to stretch her hands this way. He chooses one hand
and asks the woman to close it. Then he takes the lipstick and makes a spot on the outer surface of
his palm. Soon, he deleted it and challenged the woman that the spot has transported to her palm.
The woman doubtfully opens her hand, and yes the red spot is in there. So, how did the spot move
despite the fact that the woman's hand was closed? The secret of this trick is very simple,
and you can do it yourself. When the magician took the lipstick from the woman he put some
of it on his finger, and when he asked her to stretch her hands, he secretly stained her palm
using that finger as you see here. And that is how the spot moved from his palm to hers.
Trick 4: Coin under skin
This trick is quite scary. At first the magician takes a coin from this girl,
and asks her to sign it with her initials. Then he swallows it, and shows everyone his empty mouth.
Seconds later, the coin appears under the skin of his forearm, and it is moving down to his wrist.
In a terrifying scene, he cuts his wrist skin open to extract the coin,
surprisingly, it is the same coin the girl has just signed. Everybody is shocked but
we just wonder, how did he perform this trick? The secret of this trick is that the magician
used two coins not one, the first one which the girl signed and the magician
swallowed is a gimmick eatable coin probably made of chocolate, the second is a real coin
that the magician previously planted under his skin. It is not a human skin actually,
it is synthetic skin made of latex, widely used in designing visual effects for movies.
In order to make the coin move, a tiny invisible thread under the latex skin
is used joining the coin with the bracelet that the magician wears on his wrist.
If you pay a little attention, you will notice that the bracelet size is quite large, and that
because it embraces a mechanical device with the purpose of withdrawing the thread on time,
and when it does that, it pulls the coin down with it, so it appears like it is magically moving.
In the part where the magician extracted the coin from under the skin, he used a fake blood
under the latex skin that he cut open to take the coin out. To assure you that the magician used two
different coins, take a look at both signatures and recognize the difference in letters writing.
Also ask yourself, why does the magician use the same bracelet every time he performs the trick?
Trick 5: The resurrection of the dead pigeon
The trick starts by Criss invading the place, finding a decapitated pigeon. Why is it dead?
because it hit the glass panel, no problem at all. The magician takes the head, sticks
it to the pigeon's body, and it is resurrected in seconds alive and flying. The trick seems silly,
but beautifully done, let's explain its secret. Actually, all what you saw in the video was a
charade. The videographer had been there before Criss and his friend arrived. Criss said that
the pigeon hit the glass panel so its head was cut off. That doesn't make any sense, if that
was the scenario, then its head would be far from the rest of its body not so close as you can see.
The pigeon didn't run into anything, and wasn't decapitated. Its head was bended down
and tied up smoothly. The magician brought a fake blood, and smeared the pigeon's nick and the floor
with it. The decapitated head was a gimmick too and Criss acted like he was sticking it back to
the pigeon's body. But the truth is that he was untying the real head of the pigeon while hiding
the fake head in his hand. In this scene you can see him hiding that fake head in his hand.
Trick 6: Frankenstein Experiment
This trick is one of his best and most complicated. At first, the magician lays down
a man and a woman on two separated benches as you can see. Then he cuts the woman's body in half and
does the same with the man's body. Thus we have four human body parts, all alive all dismembered.
It's time now for a Frankenstein experiment, the magician starts gluing body parts but with
a twist, he glues the upper body of the man with the lower body of the woman, and the upper body
of the woman with the lower body of the man. The result is new human species that left the audience
astonished. So how did he do this uncanny trick? Before revealing the secret, you should know
that Criss Angel is talented in staging optical illusion tricks that depends of the sleight of
hands and mind games. So, this trick is a smart play performed with the participation of the
surrounding people appearing in the video. It's like shooting a movie where everyone knows his
pre-planned role. Criss Angel usually uses a fake audience when shooting his
tricks because his focus is not on the participants, but on the people who will
watch the final version of the act. Putting that in mind, let's move to the secret.
First of all, the magician brought two identical women for the trick not one.
Both have blonde hair and both wear similar clothes. The first woman is sound and healthy,
the other one however is double leg amputee. The same applies to the man, there are two identical
men with similar clothes one is healthy and one is double leg amputee. The magician also brought
two pairs of synthetic legs to replace the lower body of the amputees. Now, everything is in its
place waiting the magician to do his magic. After he laid the healthy woman on the bench,
the camera angle was changed. During that he replaced the healthy woman with the amputated one,
positioned it in the exact way, and attached the synthetic legs to her upper body part.
To assure you that the woman was actually replaced, take a look at the previous footage
and see the bracelet on the woman's hand which is barely noticeable because the fist of the female
assistant is covering most of it. However, after changing the camera angle, the bracelet appears
clearly on the woman's hand indicating that she wasn't the first one. This might
seem unconvincing, but wait for another clue. When the magician pressed on the middle area of
the woman's body and cut her in half, he demanded his assistant lady to pull the half body back.
In that moment, the bracelet fell down because it hadn't been properly placed on her hand when
borrowing it from the other women. Also, if you take a closer look at the healthy woman's face,
you will notice that it is a little bit different than the amputated woman's face
despite the same dress. So, they are definitely two women shifting their places.
After that, the magician went straight to the man to cut him in half. This man also was replaced by
an amputated one and synthetic legs were attached to his body. You can see here the
legs are slightly separated from the upper body even before the magician touches him. You can
also see when the magician was approaching him to cut him in half, the assistant lady rushed it and
pulled the half-body back before the magician arrives. The legs you see moving are synthetic,
controlled remotely or by a technical mechanism. Furthermore, after the magician took the amputated
man and placed him on the bench, you can notice that his sitting posture looks different than the
posture in the next camera shot, and that because he was replaced with his healthy duplicate. Have
a closer look at the sitting posture of the amputated man, and how it differs from the
posture of the healthy one. See here how he tries to hide his middle body area by his blouse to
make you think his body is still cut in half. A moment later, Criss covered the scene by his body
for few seconds, so the camera couldn't capture what he was doing. In that moment, he concealed
the synthetic legs appeared behind the man and just showed him sound and complete but wearing
the lower piece of the previous woman;s dress to make the impression that he was glued to a
foreign lower body. And we know that, he wore that lower dress before he acted like he was amputated.
In the same moment, the magician's assistants replaced the amputated woman with the healthy
one and made her wear the man's short to appear like she has become a new creature
with different body parts, and that how this Frankenstein trick was performed.
Another clue worth mentioning in this act is the timing. In the beginning of the trick the
size and the length of the basket shadow were small, but after a while they changed. Also, the
shadow of the nearby trees expanded and covered the whole area proving that the magician took
hours in staging and filming the trick. Trick 7: Through the gate of iron bars
This trick is brilliant and truly hard to figure out. At first the magician stands behind this
gate of iron bars, brings someone to make sure it is not a fake, and it is tightly closed.
Criss then takes a cardboard to cover his front look. He starts moving towards the iron gate,
and surprisingly passes through it as if his body is made of air. So,
how did he perform this amazing trick? Actually, the secret of this trick is
complex and all what we have is a theory. Let's state the facts first. The man who was examining
the gate never approached the joining points of the bars, he only laid his hand on the side
columns and the safety lock. Als0o, if you look at the joining points of the bars you will notice
that they are thicker than normal. And look at the way the magician went through the gate,
he seemed pushing something forward. And lastly, why was he covering himself in the process?
So, based on that, I will say that the secret lies in the custom design of the gate.
It has a hidden hinges in the joining points of the bars that facilitate the movement of the bar
segments to the outside when pushing it from the opposite direction and go back to normal after
passing through. And This is why the magician appeared like he was struggling while passing the
gate. If you don't agree with this explanation let us know your theory in the comments below.
In the end of this video, we are so grateful for the amusement Criss Angel provides. And
from your point of view, which trick did you find the most captivating? If you enjoy this
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