The Amazing Kreskin

About 1980, when I was a junior in high school, The Amazing Kreskin -- a mentalist and illusionist -- came to the local university to perform. For the grand finale of his show, four people randomly selected from the audience would hide his paycheck (for that evening's performance) somewhere in the room. Then he would find his check with the 'mental' assistance of those four people. The four were selected by a respected member of the community, in this case the Dean of Students at the university.

Out of about 1,000 people in the audience that night, I was one of the four chosen. Since my mother was an organ student in the music department, I knew that there was a gap under the hood of the organ in the orchestra pit. We slipped the check under this hood and set it out of sight on the bottom keyboard. It seemed like the perfect place to hide the check. (By the way, the check was for $3,000; not bad for 90 minutes' work.)

Kreskin returned to the stage, and the audience buzzed with anticipation. In order to "read our minds" and find the check, he would hold one corner of a handkerchief and have a volunteer hold the other corner. I volunteered to go first and took hold of his handkerchief.

Rather than hold the kerchief loosely, he stretched it tight and clamped my fist securely between his elbow and his ribs. Although he asked me to "think hard about the place you hid the check," I quickly discovered that he responded to the very least movement of my hand. If I twitched to the left, he would immediately stride to the left several paces, nearly dragging me along behind him. After a couple of random movements, he reminded me once again to concentrate on the location of the check.

Naturally, I chose to concentrate on some other random place. I decide to focus on the shoe of a student sitting toward the back of the hall. Within 60 seconds, Kreskin had homed in on that shoe. As he got closer and closer, I noticed that the audience watched, but didn't rise out of their seats or show too much interest. (In retrospect, I'm certain Kreskin noticed this as well, but went along to look in the shoe to humor me.) Finally, he had the student take off his shoe. Empty, of course.

The next thing Kreskin said to me was the most startling of all. He still had my hand clasped under his arm, and he said "now you are thinking of nothing." It was true. I was busted. He knew he was being bullshitted, and he was done with me. He took back his handkerchief and asked for the next volunteer. (That must be the reason he has four and not just one.) Within two minutes the next person had led him right to the organ and to the check. And naturally, the closer he got to the check's actual location, the more the audience stood in their seats and hummed with curiosity and eager interest--a dead giveaway to him that he was on the right track.

That night I learned the same thing that Kreskin says about himself: that he has no magical powers. Instead, he depends on heightened sensitivity to motion and to involuntary cues. No doubt anyone could learn to 'read' the mind of another the same way. I left the hall that evening amazed that he could be so sensitive, and gratified that he was not privvy to powers that the rest of us did not have. In fact, I think his skills impressed me even more than his suposed magical powers would have.

That evening Kreskin announced that out of hundreds of shows, he had only failed to find his check twice before. He claimed that if it happened a third time, he would never perform this feat again. 27 years later, a quick check of his article on Wikipedia reports that he has failed to find his check nine times over the years. I guess the trick it is too profitable to pass up!