Hello friends,

I travel around the world for my job and love doing magic tricks for the people I meet just for fun as a way to connect.

I carry 'Flux' with me and have a few impromptu mentalism effects and palm reading.

Soon I will be flying into Asia for the majority of next year and I was just wondering, if you were to travel around, what small arsenal of bizarre/spooky effects would you take with you? Can be gimmicks or your favorite routines.

6 dice for Horoscope (and sometimes the watch), one of my favorite effect.

I can't say I do much on the fly bizarre work. Bizarre work is largely booked and planned, so I have whatever I actually need with me. Much of my work is as a reader though which doesn't involve anything difficult to transport: a Tarot deck, pendulums, a mat, maybe ESP cards or normal playing cards and maybe a book. All fits in my satchel. Bigger performances usually work around a theme. You can see a lot of my sets on here. I've shared my more recent Harry Price/Borley Rectory one a lot, but my fortune telling one and Houdini are probably two of my favourites. Both fit in fairly small boxes and can deliver an evenings entertainment. Bizarre doesn't necessarily need a lot of kit to deliver a good story and create the necessary atmosphere. Prof BC's performances come to mind. He does so much from just one of his books. Perkins on stage at Doomsday this year did so much with a simple light stand and bulb as a stage set up. Easy to pack away, but beautifully set the scene and you can see created wonderful visuals. An awful lot can be done from very little.



A decade ago, Micheal McDonald proposed the challenge of what you would do if you had no props, if say your luggage was lost, and I wrote up a little resource list of areas I'd look at doing. It's a decade old and I don't necessarily agree with myself on everything I said anymore. It's not what I would normally do and many of the suggestions are not things I'd ideally want to do. It was just a challenge put forward of what you could do. Plus there has been other material released since, but has a few suggestions in terms of easy to carry work. Links a bit to what you are asking. Here if anyone wants a read.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/gv54n665h......ype&dl=0

Oh how I miss Michael.

Joshua, thanks for bringing this back up, and for sharing your work! I look forward to reading it!

David

A lot of people who have sadly departed this mortal coil or just lost interest in the forums. I feel the loss more reading threads on penny. In the past people like Bob Cassidy would have stepped up to offer a lot of the newcomers advice and steer people around various pitfalls. Increasingly just seeing newcomers talking about their electronic gadgets, but don't know any basic forces or fundamentals. It's these threads where you really notice how many of the experienced performers have gone

Though to give a more useful idea of easy to carry tools I'd say, rather than effects is a general load out.

I usually have a pendulum on me as there are endless effects I do of that alone. Failing that the necklace I usually wear comes apart and reassembles nicely as one. With that you can see one of my homemade pendulum cards. This sits in my wallet. I keep meaning to redesign it to have a maybe for for when it goes around, but I usually just explain that.

For many years I've used a peak wallet Roni made and sold. I've had far better ones over the years, but I end up using this one as I'm familiar with it. You can also see an orphic wallet which was a rare purchase in the black Friday sales. I very rarely actually buy anything new anymore as I have tools I'm familiar with, so it tends to just be me replacing or upgrading things I like. Books are a different kettle of fish.

The wallets set with business cards for Docc Hilford's dead or alive which I mix with the technique he taught in Pendule on the vault DVD. Excellent material. Obviously I can also do any number of effects with the business cards. You can see the little card that came with Paul Voodini's palmistry DVD that offers a quick recap of giving a reading. Many years since I've needed it, but still keep it in there as the pocket needs something in.

This Tarot deck is a bridge sized one that I've used for bar work and hen parties where I often ended up working with limited space or sometimes into there hands. Between this and palmistry that's reading taken care of.

Then Max Maven's Bwave is often in my phone case. I learnt it early on when I became interested in mentalism and bizarre and I still love it. It's simple. I've used it countless times, but it has a great impact for something that is only really a one in four chance. Though with the presentation feels like much more.

Quite often have thumbcuffs as they are great and even though much of my work has been more mentalism they seem to fit within my persona oddly.

If I was to add something a little bigger it would probably be one of Prof BC's book tests. All this together is enough for doing a whole variety of work. Hope that was a slightly more helpful answer. Though I wouldn't describe a lot of it as bizarre. It would be a bit odd for me to be carrying random haunted antiques day to day, though I'm sure many of the regulars will now share their haunted items they generally carry with them.

With a nod to Docc Hilford, this is always in my carry-on luggage:

Click here to view attached image.

B'wave lives permanently in my wallet. It's the only thing I've always got with me and covers the random "do a trick!"

Gets great reactions--it reads so fair and sleightless. And it packs down to four cards! (I keep it in a little sleeve in my wallet to protect them and to help me track the orientation as I draw it.)

Joshua, very kind of you to share your notes with us.
Thank you!

No worries, it was mainly compiling ideas lots of people contributed to. The whole propless mentalism was very "in" at the time so there was a lot of ideas using readily available items bouncing around.