The Story Deck Jermay

I consider this to be the heaviest of all of the deceptions contained in this manuscript. For me, this is the single demonstration within these pages that carries with it the biggest ethical concern for the performer. I believe this is due to the fact that this experience is as real as it is fake. It happens entirely in the mind of the participant and due to this for them it is without any doubt real. It is best suited for a one on one performance. I have used this presentational concept in many different ways, both onstage and in less heavy routines. However after exploring it for several years, I firmly believe it is at its most potent and powerful in the form that follows. Use with caution. Sitting with a participant in an intimate setting the miracle worker begins: “Have you ever felt a thought? I mean really experienced what a thought feels like inside your head?” The participant responds that they have not. The performer continues:

“Not many people have. I have an ability to allow you to actually feel the thoughts inside your head. It is not something meany people can do, at least I have never met anyone else who can do it. I hope one day I will but for now I can do this if and only if you are ready and willing to accept the experience. If you are…” The performer pauses and places his left hand to his chest, seemingly feeling his heart beating after a moment he continues: “Place your left hand, your psychic hand, onto your chest so you can feel your heart beating. Once you feel your heart beating say out loud; ‘I am ready and willing to accept this experience’…” The performer allows the participant the time they need to first feel their own heart beating inside their chest and then for them to say aloud ‘I am ready and willing to accept this experience.’ Once they have done so the performer continues: “Then it will be yours… I want you to begin by thinking about the sound of your mothers voice. Inside your head hear your mother telling you she loves you. Hear her voice telling you that.” The performer allows the spectator a moment to really enter into this process and gives them the time they need to imagine their mothers voice inside their head. The performer then continues:

“O.K stop that for a moment… Right now that thought is only imagined. It has no form. You can not feel it but to give form to this thought all you need to do is reach out and take my hand…” The performer extends his right hand and the participant reaches for it. Once they are in contact with the performer once again places his left hand to his chest. He seems to be feeling his heart beating. He closes his eyes and pauses for a moment. After a moment he opens his eyes, looking directly into the participants and continues: “I have made your thoughts mothers voice inside your head. inside your head now…close When you can hear it… and eyes…”

tangible… again hear the sound of your Really hear it. Hear her saying ‘I love you’ your eyes and hear that inside your head. only when you can really hear it open your

The performer allows the participant to do this. Once they open their eyes the performer continues: “This is very strange but do not be alarmed. Right now pay attention to the thought inside your head… where is it coming from. Literally right inside your head… where is that thought. Now I have allowed you to feel it inside your mind… use your finger and point to where that thought is…” The participant takes a moment and amazingly points to a spot on their head. Indicating the place that they can feel the thought inside their head. The perform continues:

“It is strange isn’t it. You have never felt your own thoughts before but now it feels like it has always been this way. You can feel it inside your mind correct?” The participant confirms that they can indeed feel the thought inside their head. The performer continues; “The most interesting thing… different thoughts live in different places in your head… take a moment to remember a sunset. Try to remember a time in your life that you saw the sun in the sky beginning to set… it doesn’t have to be an entire sunset from light to dark… just a time when the sun was in the sky beginning to set… really see it inside your mind… close your eyes and easily visualise that…when you can see it open your eyes…” The participant does so. They close their eyes and remember a sunset. They open their eyes and the performer continues: “Now pay attention to where that thought is coming from. Use your finger to point to the exact place you can feel that thought inside your head…” Once again the spectator points to a spot on their head. This time it is a different place to the first time. The performer continues: “That thought lives in a different place than the other. Interestingly it also feels different. I do not know which one of the two thoughts was soft and which was hard for you… its different for different people but this thought

of the sunset is it soft inside your head or is it hard… pay attention to it… how does it feel?” The participant explains how it feels to them and the performer continues: “You are feeling a thought! Your thoughts have real form inside your own experience of thinking. It is remarkable…” The performer then pauses for a moment. After enough time to build tension he continues: “Now the thoughts inside your mind have form. We can move them. We can even remove them entirely. Literally we can take them from the inside and pull them out into the world on the outside… but only if you are ready and will to expand this experience further… are you?” The participant agrees and the performer reaches for their hand. He once again places his left hand to his chest, seemingly feeling his own heart beating and continues: “I want you to bring to mind a thought that is negative. Something about yourself that comes into your mind when you do not want it to. A troubling, intrusive thought. We all have them, things that bother us. Do not think of something that will really upset you here and now… we are in public and I do not want you to be that vulnerable but pick a thought you wish you could remove from your mind… really bring it to your consciousness… close your eyes and notice how the thought makes you feel

and also notice how the thought itself feels inside your head… when you have found it… and remember it might be harder to find that the thoughts before… you see the negative thoughts are better at hiding from us than the positive ones, that is why they are so hard to eliminate… but when you have found it open your eyes and point to where it is inside your head…” The participant does as the performer requests. They close their eyes and bring a negative thought into their mind. They locate it inside their own head and point to it and open their eyes. The performer then continues: “Notice how that thought feels inside your head. It is not like the others we have been thinking about. It feels different. It hides in a different place. It feels like heat. The more you think about how that thought feels inside your head the more clearly you feel it. Now you have found where it is hiding it will do everything it can to run from you… do not let it. Really feel it inside your mind… it is hot correct? You feel that?” The participant confirms they feel heat inside their head. The performer continues: “I can remove that thought from where it is hiding but only if you allow me to remove it from you. You have to be ready to let go of it, to allow it to leave, and I can do the rest. Are you will to let that feeling, that thought go?” The participant confirms they are willing to allow the thought to go and the performer places his finger onto their head, at the

spot they are pointing to. He has them remove their own finger and place their hands into their lap. He continues: “In a moment I am going to take that thought from the inside and bring it to the outside. It will not leave any long lasting effects but in the moment you might experience a short term pain. Negative thoughts are full of pain… thats how they stay hidden bringing them to light causes pain so we stop looking for them… so you might feel a moment of pain but inside your mind and your body but it will pass very quickly and once the pain is gone, the thought is gone… are you ready for that?” The performer mimes pulling an invisible string from the participants head. The participant reacts as if they have experienced a short but real sensation of pain. Holding the invisible thread between two hands the performer continues looking at it: “I can see this thought has been a problem for you for a long time. Now the pain has gone, the thought has gone. It doesn’t have form anymore. When you think about it, it won’t feel like it used to. It will not longer have a place inside your head. It is nothing… hold out your hands…” The spectator holds their hands like a bowl. The performer mimes dropping the invisible thread into their hands as he concludes: “No weight, no form, no function, no reality. Nothing. No.. thing. It has gone…”

The performer reaches out and touches the spectators hands and smiles.

The Method This demonstration is a genuinely powerful experience for the participant providing they genuinely follow the instructions and requests that are made of them during the process. If the participant does not truly engage with the process and is not really focusing their mind on the various thoughts, memories and sensations during the process it will have very little effect or impact. I mention this at the very start of our examination because it has become the deciding factor for me as to when where and with who I use this demonstration. Obviously it is not well suited to a very loud setting in which the participant can not easily hear me. Equally it is not all that well suited to a large scale theatre stage setting where the participant might find themselves feeling to vulnerable to engage fully. I feel it is best suited for one on one use and also for small platform work, only after a sense of trust and rapport has been built with the group so the participant can relax and engage with the process with the required level of intensity to bring about genuine impact. There is one other, very suitable setting and one I have used extensively with this demonstration that I will detail at the end of this section. For me, this special use is pure dynamite

and one that I think you will instantly see the incredible value and power of. This demonstration highlights that real magic can be built simply from the words we speak. This sequence is 99% reliant on the script. It does however incorporate some more traditional mechanisms of deception into the script that in combination create a super strong construction. We will examine the script, in depth in the next section but for the moment we will look at the two simple mechanisms at work in addition to the script. The first is a quirk of psychology. Right now, imagine inside your head the voice of someone you love, telling you that they love you. Really do this. Imagine the voice in your head, now take a moment to find where you feel that thought inside your own head. Stop reading and do this now. Welcome back! Its really, really strange isn’t it! Once we give something attention, the thing we have given attention to becomes real. This quirk of psychology goes further. Now think of a beautiful sea view. Imagine yourself on the beach. Really visualise that scene inside your own mind and once you have it point to the spot inside your own head that you feel that thought is coming from. Again! How strange that you felt this thought was coming from a different place than the first!

This works. It always works and honestly I do not know why it works. I do not need to know why it works. I am sure many people smarter than me, could explain the process inside the mind that makes this work. However, I am not smarter than me, so I can not. All I know is, the experience works and it is enough to build an entire concept around. I first encountered this strange psychological quirk during a meditation lesson in which this concept of giving attention was highlighted to our thoughts by locating a thought inside my own mind. From here I expanded it further and used it in the context of the demonstration as I have detailed. I think its remarkable. I have been holding back on sharing this idea for some time. The second and final mechanism is present in the closing part of the process in which the spectator ‘feels’ a thought being pulled from the inside of their head to the outside. To achieve this, I actually touch their scalp, and pinch between my fingers a hair or two from their head. I then apply downward pressure onto their scalp for a few seconds, and then immediately release all pressure but retain the hair trapped between my fingernails of the right thumb and first finger. I now sharply and quickly move upwards still gripping the strands of hair, since I do not hold onto a ‘clump’ of hair, but rather literally one or two strands of hair, this is not visible to anyone who might be watching. I then sharply pull the hair upwards and then release it from my grasp. It all happens in a matter of seconds and does not cause any real harm or pain to

the participant however the sensation has been, at this point, framed so it completes the illusion properly. These two things, first the quirk in thinking that allows us when giving attention to a thought, to perceive it as something with form inside our minds and the combination of applying pressure, releasing pressure and pulling on a strand or two of hair together are more than enough to produce remarkable results when used in conjunction with a carefully prepared and thoughtfully delivered script. The script used in performance for this sequence really is 99% of its secret. I suggest you rewrite this script to better suit your own style of speech, intonation and vocabulary but do use this as a model to work from. I will break down the script, highlighting what I feel are the important aspects to retain and keep in mind when constructing your own performance script. The Magic Words… The stage directions have been removed from the script below, with the assumption that now toy have familiarised yourself with the process they are superfluous to our need in examining what is being said and the function of it. “Have you ever felt a thought? I mean really experienced what a thought feels like inside your head?”

This opening moment is important. I believe that in order to maximise the engagement with the process of thought that will follow you need to hook the participant into the experience from the very start. This simple single line has proven highly effective in this goal and one I suggest you retain even if constructing your own script. Once the spectator is effectively intrigued, engagement is the next logical step for them. “Not many people have. I have an ability to allow you to actually feel the thoughts inside your head. It is not something meany people can do, at least I have never met anyone else who can do it. I hope one day I will but for now I can do this if and only if you are ready and willing to accept the experience. If you are…” In my experience the need to make the claim of an ability here is not pivotal to the success of the process. The claim can easily be removed and the impact remains in tact. However keeping the goal of true engagement at the forefront of the scripting in use, the invitation for the spectator to accept the experience is needed. It sets the tone well, adds a sense of ritual and reverence to the process and also increases their engagement once more sending them further into the process. At each step along the way the goal is to increase their level of engagement so they will continue to engage with the next steps in the process.

“Place your left hand, your psychic hand, onto your chest so you can feel your heart beating. Once you feel your heart beating say out loud; ‘I am ready and willing to accept this experience’…” It is important to allow the participant enough time to actually follow the instructions. So often in the performance of magic and mentalism the performer will ask someone to do something and then hurriedly rush to the next part of the script. Without the time to truly do what is asked of them, the participant can not engage with the process. Do not rush this part. Instead allow it to settle and be truly acted upon by the participant. “Then it will be yours… I want you to begin by thinking about the sound of your mothers voice. Inside your head hear your mother telling you she loves you. Hear her voice telling you that.” Once again the single most important factor to this is to allow the participant enough time to truly engage and follow the instructions. Do not rush. Allow the participant to really do this. “O.K stop that for a moment… Right now that thought is only imagined. It has no form. You can not feel it but to give form to this thought all you need to do is reach out and take my hand…” This is pure theatre. We are simply providing the participant with a ‘magic moment’ an apparent before and after that

connects the phenomena that will follow with the perfumers apparent ability or claim. Without this moment, there is no change of state and therefor nothing magical or mysterious to observe. We need to set the base line of ‘normal’ in order to demonstrate our ‘remarkable’ effect and impact on the spectator. Since you do not ask them to locate the thought inside their mind at this moment they will naturally assume it does not have a sensation of form inside their mind. No one I have encountered has ever thought anything other than this, since the process of giving a thought a sensation of form inside the mind is not something people naturally do. Since they do not give thoughts the attention or definition of occupying a sensation of form, all we will need to do is draw their attention to this sensation and we appear to be the source of the mysterious experience. “I have made your thoughts mothers voice inside your head. inside your head now…close When you can hear it… and eyes…”

tangible… again hear the sound of your Really hear it. Hear her saying ‘I love you’ your eyes and hear that inside your head. only when you can really hear it open your

Here we provide the participant with a literal claim to connect the phenomena that will follow with our mysterious, strange power. Next we need, once again to truly allow the spectator to follow the instruction and once again hear the sound of their mothers voice inside their own mind. The choice of the ‘mothers voice’ is one you will need to pay attention to. I use

this most of the time. However sometimes I use a more vague request and ask that they hear the voice of a ‘loved one’ meaning that if their mother is no longer living or if they did not know their mother, there is no resistance to the experience itself. When performing this routine for a mass audience I always use this instruction over the mothers voice, since it allows me to move into the next part without the worry that someone is sitting resisting the process due to a recent bereavement or loss. When working this process in a one on one setting you will probably know which of these instructions is needed and indeed which is better. When possible use the mothers voice since specificity in the instructions will produce a stronger engagement. Using the final language of having the spectator open their eyes only when they are experiencing something inside their head will be a linguistic ploy that is returned to throughout the rest of the demonstration. It allows me to know where the participant is in the process without the need for me to continually verbally confirm things with them. It also serves as something of a ‘double bind’ as hypnotists like to call it. “This is very strange but do not be alarmed. Right now pay attention to the thought inside your head… where is it coming from. Literally right inside your head… where is that thought. Now I have allowed you to feel it inside your mind… use your finger and point to where that thought is…” Here I begin to increase the pace of my speech and the intensity. I want them to experience the thought inside their

head with intensity as it serves to intensity the experience itself in a larger way. This is always a wonderful moment. I believe this will always work, simply due to the strange quirk in the way we think that means as soon as we give something attention, that something becomes real. By defining something we create it. Here is a good example of this basic rule of suggestion technique but also remember that this strange experience always works. Enjoy it! “It is strange isn’t it. You have never felt your own thoughts before but now it feels like it has always been this way. You can feel it inside your mind correct?” Here I am simply allowing the spectator to verbally confirm the strange nature of the experience and to say aloud that it has worked. Much in the same way that when we give something attention that thing becomes real, when we say something aloud that thing becomes true. Having the spectator say this aloud confirms their experience internally. I change my tone with this speech to be upbeat and excited. I want that feeling to spread to the spectator and in my experience the best way to make someone feel something is to feel it yourself and communicate that in your attitude and mannerisms. “The most interesting thing… different thoughts live in different places in your head… take a moment to remember a sunset. Try to remember a time in your life that you saw the sun in the sky beginning to set… it doesn’t have to be an entire sunset from light to dark… just a time when the sun

was in the sky beginning to set… really see it inside your mind… close your eyes and easily visualise that…when you can see it open your eyes…” Here we will further the illusion. You can use any visualisation you wish, however it is important the it not be a sound. For whatever reason, when someone hears a sound in their head and then locates it, even if different sounds, they tend to locate them in the same area. By switching to a visualisation of an image the area the spectator will locate will be in a very different place on their own head. Once again we use the ‘double bind’ of eyes opening to avoid the need for verbal confirmations and to continue with the true engagement and action from the participant. “Now pay attention to where that thought is coming from. Use your finger to point to the exact place you can feel that thought inside your head…” Since we have so strongly set up that this will be in a different place, combined with the quirk of thinking we have already explored, this will be in a different place. This is a real moment within the sequence. Something really strange is happening. For the first time the participant is feeling a thought and now different thoughts ate being felt in different places inside their mind. I try to celebrate this with my tone, body language and inner dialogue to share that feeling with the spectator. “That thought lives in a different place than the other. Interestingly it also feels different. I do not know which one of the two thoughts was soft and

which was hard for you… its different for different people but this thought of the sunset is it soft inside your head or is it hard… pay attention to it… how does it feel… is it soft or hard?” At this point I have used the strange nature of the previously located thought being in a different place as a jumping off point to use some simple suggestive language to bring about a further developed sense of form to the thought itself. Notice that the final choice given to the spectator means that they have to pick one of these options. Again having them say this out loud makes it real. Simply by giving it attention and allowing it a definition it becomes real in the experience of the participant. “You are feeling a thought! Your thoughts have real form inside your own experience of thinking. It is remarkable…” This is said with great happiness and excitement. Its a remarkable situation and one that is worth pointing out to the participant in a simple and easy to follow script. It normally becomes the thing that they will then repeat when telling others about the experience. “Now the thoughts inside your mind have form. We can move them. We can even remove them entirely. Literally we can take them from the inside and pull them out into the world on the outside… but only if you are ready and will to expand this experience further… are you?”

Once again we will increase the level of engagement in the participant by having them confirm their willingness. “I want you to bring to mind a thought that is negative. Something about yourself that comes into your mind when you do not want it to. A troubling, intrusive thought. We all have them, things that bother us. Do not think of something that will really upset you here and now… we are in public and I do not want you to be that vulnerable but pick a thought you wish you could remove from your mind… really bring it to your consciousness… close your eyes and notice how the thought makes you feel and also notice how the thought itself feels inside your head… when you have found it… and remember it might be harder to find that the thoughts before… you see the negative thoughts are better at hiding from us than the positive ones, that is why they are so hard to eliminate… but when you have found it open your eyes and point to where it is inside your head…” Much is happening in this part of the script. First it ensures that the spectator does not think of something that will bring to their mind crippling emotional pain that will snap them out of the engagement and reduce them to an emotional wreck. Second it once again forces the spectator to give a thought attention and thereby locate it inside their own mind. “Notice how that thought feels inside your head. It is not like the others we have been thinking about. It feels different. It hides in a different place. It feels like heat. The more you think about how that thought feels inside your head the more clearly you feel it. Now you have found where it is hiding it

will do everything it can to run from you… do not let it. Really feel it inside your mind… it is hot correct? You feel that?” Once again a simple piece of suggestion language is employed to further develop the idea that thoughts have form. Here we begin to move the concept into a reality in which the negative thought has its own behavioural patterns and we begin to frame it as thou it were an adversary that the participant will outwit and concur. By moving the language into this direction the engagement level will remain high and the process will remain powerful and intriguing. “I can remove that thought from where it is hiding but only if you allow me to remove it from you. You have to be ready to let go of it, to allow it to leave, and I can do the rest. Are you will to let that feeling, that thought go?” In truth this single piece of scripting has been what we have been building up to. In order for the participant to feel the thought has left their mind, all they need to do it allow it to leave their mind. However, without the build up this would not work as well. Once again it is about ensuring the spectator is fully engaged with the process and cloaking the simple truth that if they wish to let the thought go, and if they accept that, then the thought will go. You are not claiming the ability to cause people to ‘forget’ something. Instead the apparent demonstration is one in which the negative thought will no longer trouble them. Keep this clear in your mind. If you

attempt to use this framework for a demonstration of amnesia it will fail. That is not the goal here. Nor would it be as useful as the goal. Simple having the participant no longer feel such a bond to the negative thought is honestly a more useful and helpful outcome. “In a moment I am going to take that thought from the inside and bring it to the outside. It will not leave any long lasting effects but in the moment you might experience a short term pain. Negative thoughts are full of pain… thats how they stay hidden bringing them to light causes pain so we stop looking for them… so you might feel a moment of pain but inside your mind and your body but it will pass very quickly and once the pain is gone, the thought is gone… are you ready for that?” Here we are setting the participant up to expect a real sensation. By position the sensation in this way it means that when they do experience this all the other things we connected to it are accepted as true and as truly having happened. “I can see this thought has been a problem for you for a long time. Now the pain has gone, the thought has gone. It doesn’t have form anymore. When you think about it, it won’t feel like it used to. It will not longer have a place inside your head. It is nothing… hold out your hands…” Now we conclude the demonstration by making something that is invisible vanish. Its the easiest thing in the world. We simply choose not to give it any attention anymore.

“No weight, no form, no function, no reality. Nothing. No.. thing. It has gone…” Now wait and allow the participant to really process the experience they have just had. The Very Special Setting… I mentioned during the beginning of the examination of this remarkable sequence one performance setting that I feel is the very best for this. Counter intuitively it is in platform and stage work. However, it is not performed to one person at a time. Instead the entire audience are engaged with the process all at once. Obviously this negates the use of the final moment in which you apply pressure to the head of the participant, however instead I simply have the audience press on their own scalps and ‘dig the thought out.’ I then have them look at their empty hand and ‘throw the negative thought away.’ I present the entire process with some music in the background and with all stage light and house light off. The audience sit in the dark and experience the entire process like this, with the light returning only at the final moments before they ‘throw away’ the negative thought. Performing this sequence with an entire audience at one time is as close to real magic as I have experienced. It is something very special. It does require some adjustments in the script, which you will need to make to ensure the language feels natural and authentic from your own mouth but I promise you,

your effort will be rewarded ten fold with the impact it can create on even the biggest audience , all with nothing but the real magic of words.