Lightning Box (Willi Wessel Collection) by Alan Warner

For more details on Willi Wessel’s unique Alan Warner collection click here.

This effect has always pleased me. The box looks wonderful with inlaid wood and the routine is fun, magical, and amazing. If you add something like Vapr by Sans Minds I think you could really freak out the spectators and make this a real Shin Lim moment 🙂

Yeah this is definitely one of those effects you could make a feature of in your act – and it all is clean and easy to do.

Effect: The Lightning Box has the unique ability to attract a special form of lightning which is so ‘lightning’ fast it is invisible to the human eye: however, while remaining itself impervious to the destructive effects of this special lightning, the same thing does not necessarily apply to anything contained within it.

The lightning in this instance comes from a mini magic lightning-rod which, according to legend, purports to have been made from a splinter of wood taken from the original magic staff or rod of the greatest of all magicians, Merlin.

To demonstrate the power of the lightning-rod, the performer selects a spectator to assist him. The lid is lifted off The Lightning Box and a deck of cards is removed from the box. The spectator selects a card, notes its value and then returns it to the deck. The deck, after having been shuffled thoroughly, is now placed back in the box and the lid is replaced.

With the box held in his hand, the performer requests the spectator to take up Merlin’s mini magic lightning-rod and shoot a bolt of lightning towards the box. The performer then opens the box and allows everyone to see the cards. Nothing has happened, the cards are unharmed, which, the performer suggests, might possibly have something to do with the fact that the spectator is holding the mini magic lightning-rod the wrong way round!

The spectator tried again: he directs the mini magic lightning-rod at the box and when the box is opened this time, THE TOP CARD NOW HAS A SMALL HOLE BURNT RIGHT THROUGH IT. The deck is removed from the box and cards are dealt from the top, one at a time, to reveal that EACH CARD HAS A SMALL HOLE BURNT RIGHT THROUGH IT. Suddenly, though, all of this changes when not only is the next card to be dealt out unharmed, but also the remainder of the deck. That one card, the performer concludes, apparently acted as a shield against the bolt of lightning. On turning this particular card over, the performer reveals that it is THE CARD THE SPECTATOR SELECTED.

The apparatus comes complete with The Alan Warner Routine.

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