Bob Garner

[flyboy217]

Does anyone know anything about this guy? Typical stage magician? He put on a show at an IEEE conference I attended last month, and his "skills" (whatever they were) were pretty neat. He would have an audience member write down a name on a 4"x4" piece of yellow paper, fold it in 4, and hand it to him. He tore it to shreds, put it in their palm, told some stuff about the written person, and then said their name.

He got the person's relationship (to the audience member) correct every time (6 times or so) with no prompting, as well as the names (less impressive), so I thought it was a pretty neat trick. Of course he claimed real psychic powers, and an affiliation to ASPR :). Is that standard magician's fare?

Edit: I guess this doesn't really belong in this forum, but it seemed close enough anyway...

[Ed]

http://www.bobgarner.com/press.html

Sounds like standard magician patter.

Suppose you had a "set" to believe that something paranormal was going to happen. Suppose you were in a room filled with the gullible and suppose this guy insisted that everything he did was paranormal. You have duplicated the experience of the credulous coming face to face with PSI.

[dharlow]

Originally posted by flyboy217
Does anyone know anything about this guy? Typical stage magician? He put on a show at an IEEE conference I attended last month, and his "skills" (whatever they were) were pretty neat. He would have an audience member write down a name on a 4"x4" piece of yellow paper, fold it in 4, and hand it to him. He tore it to shreds, put it in their palm, told some stuff about the written person, and then said their name.

There should be no need to write this information down on paper, assuming true psychic abilities. Nor should this piece of paper need be held by the "psychic", if even to only tear it up. This is a classic magic trick, well known to mentalists and has been employed for centuries.

[Weeb]

I saw Bob Garner perform this week at a trade show. He was really good and very entertaining. He would do several tricks with various people at the same time, usually requiring the participants to write something on a small piece of paper. He had me play three different games on one small piece of paper while doing something similar but slightly different with several other participants. Instead of tearing the sheet up, he had me fold it and slip it in a tiny envelope which he did not open until after the trick was completed (at least as far as I could tell). He got all three of my answers correctly, and the same for every participant. I watched the show three times and he never got one wrong answer. I did observe him doing one trick. He asked someone to think of the first name of a friend or relative and used a pencil to seemingly write it down on a post-it-note. He opened the note and asked the name that was the thought. Just as the person was telling him the name, he seemed to very quickly, almost instantly, scratch the post-it-note with his thumb nail as if a piece of lead was embedded under the thumb nail. He was so fast, and everyone assumed that he wrote the name previously with a pencil, so most were not paying attention. But the other tricks were much more impressive, and I have no idea how he pulled them off. Anyone have an idea? BTW, Bob did not call himself a psychic, but also claimed he was not a magician. His websites are another story.

[RSLancastr]

Weeb: Do a web search on "thumb tip" and "magic."