VooDoo (with Euro Card Box) by Viking Mfg., Richard Osterlind, Arthur Monroe

This is one of my favorite effects from the always amazing Richard Osterlind featured on his No Camera Tricks DVD! Coupled with Viking Euro Card Box you have a perfect but scary miracle!  It is an effect created by Arthur Monroe c. 1937 and featured in Annemann’s Practical Mental Effects and first seen in The Jinx May 1937.

Effect: Very seldom does an effect come to light and cover the weird phases as does this. It is strictly a “spook tale” and the reader will see at once that the whole thing is a gigantic “build-up” and must be done seriously to surround it with the right atmosphere. The effect is at its best in a home where you are a guest, or when you are performing at a small party. The room where you are working must be darkened for about four minutes during the “voodoo” portion of the trick.

A spectator scratches an identification mark on a Chinese coin which he hands back to you. Running a short length of string through the hole in the coin, you allow each of several spectators to tie one or more knots in the string, making it impossible to remove the coin without cutting or untying the cord.

The coin on the string is placed in a small metal box, and with it is put a blank piece of paper or calling card. Rubber bands are snapped around the box and it is handed to the host or hostess. You ask her to hide it in the most remote corner of the house, in an old trunk, under the mattress upstairs, or in the attic. She can go alone or take someone with her, but no one who stays in the room knows where the box has been hidden. When the lady returns, she is asked to select a card from the deck and to keep it in her possession.

The lights are now turned out, and after a moment or two of silence, a small green light glows at the table where you are standing and you are seen to be holding the box! You give it a gentle shake and the rubber bands which are of the heavy type and snapped tightly on, are seen to fall off. The box is opened and string with coin is removed. Another gentle shake and the coin drops off the cord onto the table, leaving only the knotted cord in your hand. The string is replaced in the box and you pick up the piece of paper or card. Writing something on the paper you put it back in the box on top of the string, close the box and snap the bands back on. Now the green light is extinguished, and after a few moments the lights are turned on.

The spectator who marked the coin is asked to pick it up from where it fell on the table, and it bears his identification mark! Then you ask the hostess to go and get the box from its hiding place. Upon returning she opens it herself and finds only the knotted string and the card upon which is written in bright green ink. “The card you selected was the Ace of Hearts.”

Read over the above routine again and see for yourself the tremendous possibilities this offers as a super spook stunt.

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