Walter Brown Gibson was an American writer and professional magician, best known for his work on the pulp fiction character The Shadow. Gibson, under the pen-name Maxwell Grant, wrote "more than 300 novel-length" Shadow stories, writing up to "10,000 words a day" to satisfy public demand during the character's golden age in the 1930s and 1940s. He authored several novels in the Biff Brewster juvenile series of the 1960s. He was married to Litzka R. Gibson, also a writer, and the couple lived in New York state.
Mentalism is a performing art in which its practitioners, known as mentalists, appear to demonstrate highly developed mental or intuitive abilities. Performances may appear to include hypnosis, telepathy, clairvoyance, divination, precognition, psychokinesis, mediumship, mind control, memory feats, deduction, and rapid mathematics. Mentalists perform a theatrical act that includes special effects that may appear to employ psychic or supernatural forces but that are actually achieved by "ordinary conjuring means", natural human abilities, and an in-depth understanding of key principles from human psychology or other behavioral sciences.
Captain Frederick William Holmes VC also known as F. W. Holmes, was an English recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces.
Daniel Dunglas Home was a Scottish physical medium with the reported ability to levitate to a variety of heights, speak with the dead, and to produce rapping and knocks in houses at will. His biographer Peter Lamont opines that he was one of the most famous men of his era. Harry Houdini described him as "one of the most conspicuous and lauded of his type and generation" and "the forerunner of the mediums whose forte is fleecing by presuming on the credulity of the public." Home conducted hundreds of séances, which were attended by many eminent Victorians. There have been eyewitness accounts by séance sitters describing conjuring methods and fraud that Home may have employed.
Milbourne Christopher was a prominent American illusionist, magic historian, and author.
Exposure in magic refers to the practice of revealing the methods of magic tricks.
John Henry Anderson (1814–1874) was a Scottish professional magician. Anderson is credited with helping bring the art of magic from street performances into theatres and presenting magic performances to entertain and delight the audience.
The Indian rope trick is a magic trick said to have been performed in and around India during the 19th century. Sometimes described as "the world’s greatest illusion", it reputedly involved a magician, a length of rope, and one or more boy assistants.
Richard J. Wiseman is a Professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom. He has written several psychology books. He has given keynote addresses to The Royal Society, The Swiss Economic Forum, Google and Amazon. He is a fellow for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and a patron of Humanists UK. Wiseman is also the creator of the YouTube channel Quirkology.
Ian Saville is a British magician whose act incorporates ventriloquism and comedy. His performance is distinctive primarily for the fact that it is geared towards a comic form of socialist propaganda. He says of his act, "whereas David Copperfield is content with little tricks like making the Statue of Liberty disappear, I aim at the much more ambitious goal of making International Capitalism and exploitation disappear".
David Devant was an English magician, shadowgraphist and film exhibitor. He was born David Wighton in Holloway, London. He is regarded by magicians as a consummate exponent of suave and witty presentation of stage illusion. According to magic historian Jim Steinmeyer, Devant was “England’s greatest magician—arguably the greatest magician of the 20th Century”.
John Nevil Maskelyne was an English stage magician and inventor of the pay toilet, along with other Victorian-era devices. He worked with magicians George Alfred Cooke and David Devant, and many of his illusions are still performed today. His book Sharps and Flats: A Complete Revelation of the Secrets of Cheating at Games of Chance and Skill is considered a classic overview of card sharp practices.In 1914 he founded the Occult Committee, a group to "investigate claims to supernatural power and to expose fraud".
Will Goldston (1878–1948) was an English stage magician in the first half of the 20th century.
Washington Irving Bishop, also known as Wellington was an American stage mentalist. He started his career as an assistant under the muscle reader J. Randall Brown, but was most well known for his performance of the blindfold drive.
Trevor Henry Hall (1910–1991) was a British author, surveyor, and sceptic of paranormal phenomena. Hall made controversial claims regarding early members of the Society for Psychical Research. His books caused a heated controversy within the parapsychology community.
Major Lionel Hugh Branson was a British magician and officer of the British Indian Army.
John Nicholls Booth was an American professional magician and prolific author on the history of magic performance. He was recognized for his work, and is also known for having the longest running membership in the International Brotherhood of Magicians.
Antoine Charles Ernest Barthez (1811-1891) most well known as Dr. Barthez was a French physician.
Charles Alexander Lockhart Robertson, best known as C. Lockhart Robertson, was a Scottish asylum doctor and spiritualist.
John Stephen Farmer also known as J. S. Farmer was a British lexicographer, spiritualist and writer. He was most well known for his seven volume dictionary of slang.
