CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/19/2019

Mind-unbending 'Spectacle of Illusion' excerpted in the 'Financial Times.' Pre-order now!

This weekend, the Financial Times published a major excerpt from our forthcoming book, The Spectacle of Illusion, magician-turned-experimental-psychologist Matthew L. Tompkins's riveting investigation of deception, magic and the paranormal from the eighteenth-century until now. Mesmerism, hypnotism, seances, spirit photographs, trance drawings, automata, trick photography, sleight of hand, ghost hunting, levitation, ectoplasmic ejaculations, ESP and many other tricks and practices are discussed in this fascinating exposé of our will to be deceived. "While neither magicians nor scientists can ever really 'prove' that past testimonials of supernatural phenomena are fraudulent or mistaken, contemporary researchers regularly demonstrate how eccentricities of healthy human perception, memory and cognition can result in vivid and robust illusions," Tompkins writes. "In many cases, scientific explanations of how our minds can produce such illusions are at least as wondrous as the proposed supernatural explanations… Indeed, some scientists are increasingly turning to magic as a tool to explore how sane, intelligent individuals can experience remarkably weird illusory episodes." Featured image, of a young girl operating a planchette, is from the collection of magician William Marriott.