BEHIND THE SCENES WITH THE MEDIUMS
Book Details + Condition: Open Court Publishing Company (Chicago). Fourth revised edition, 1912. Hardcover with title and decoration to front. 340 pages, followed by publisher advertisements. By well-noted spiritualist, magician, author and inventor David Abbott (1863-1934), who here documents the "spirit channelling process" and exposes and explains the fraudulent tricks used by charlatans of the day. As a magician, he performed for invited guests in his private theater he built at his home from 1907 until he died. Many of the greats in magic - Kellar, Thurston, Horace Goldin, Theo Bamberg, Ching Ling Foo, Blackstone and Houdini among others - made pilgrimages to the Omaha Field Club neighborhood "Mystery House" to learn. Abbott was also a friend of the magician Harry Houdini. BEHIND THE SCENES is considered to be one of the best exposures of the tricks used by mediums, and went through several editions. Contents include:
- Mediumistic Reading of Sealed Writings
- Some Modern Sorcery
- Some Unusual Mediumistic Phenomena
- Materialization
- Relation of Mediumship to Palmistry, Astrology & Fortune Telling
- Performances of the Annie Eva Fay Type
- Vest-Turning
- An Improved Billet Test
- And more.
Firm binding; light wear to boards, with a bit of darkening present; interior is clean and free of markings.
