Alright… I admit defeat. I’m going to take a 10 minute nap… but then we’re going straight on thru until morning.
While I’m out I’m going to leave you in the capable hands of the only other person I know who posts wrote about magic anonymously and was accused of being Derren Brown is Hector Chadwick.
Of course, the difference between the two of us is I actually am Derren Brown.
But whatever. Here’s Hector. If you like his thinking here, I encourage you to sign up for his mailing list where you can receive news about his newest book. And if you don’t have his Mental Mysteries book, you should get it to see why people thought he was me, Derren Brown.
Take it away, Hector…
Scopaesthesia
The Effect
'Ooh, that's weird,' you say.
'What's weird?' Carmen asks.
'Someone was staring at me just then.'
Let's imagine you've attended an informal get-together for the holiday season. (*Not* The Jerx holiday party going on right now, but rather a gathering of your own friends.) Old acquaintances mingle and drink, a few huddle around a game of Pictionary, and Paul McCartney's 'Wonderful Christmastime' plays softly in the background. You stand in the kitchen, sipping hot mulled cider from a brown paper cup. Your friend Carmen made a batch, and she stirs it absently as you talk. You like mulled cider, you realise. You should drink it more often.
Carmen presses you: 'What do you mean someone was staring at you?'
You look around the room anxiously. 'I don't want to get into it,' you say.
Carmen tilts her head. 'Obviously you have to now you've said that.'
'Yeah,' you say. 'I guess I do.'
'So...?'
'Fine.' You take a sip of your cider. 'Do you ever get that feeling that someone's staring at you from behind? Like on the street or in a cafe or something. Then you turn around and you were right – someone's looking directly at you. That ever happen to you?'
'I guess,' Carmen says. 'Once or twice maybe.'
'It's weird, right? What do you attribute that to?'
Carmen shrugs. 'I dunno. Maybe it's a kind of stillness or something? And maybe you notice it unconsciously?'
'Yeah, that's what I thought. Maybe you're picking up on other cues in the environment somehow,' you say. 'But now I'm not so sure.'
'What do you mean?'
'It keeps happening to me.'
'People keep staring at you?'
'No, not that. I don't think people stare at me more than they stare at other people. Just that I seem to be really dialled in to exactly when it's happening. I've become kind of obsessed.'
'Okaaay...' Carmen hesitates, unsure how to respond.
'It's a whole thing,' you say. 'Did you know that? It's called scopaesthesia – the sense that someone's staring at us from behind. Research on it began in 1898, then it was studied a bit in the 80s, and then again in the 2000s.'
'Wow,' Carmen says. 'What did they study?'
'I mean...' You glance around the room. 'I could show you one of the experiments. I could replicate it?'
'Yes,' Carmen says. 'Yes, that's exactly what you're going to do.'
'It's tricky,' you say. 'We'd need at least three other people.'
Carmen downs her mulled cider, slams the empty paper cup on the countertop, and looks you dead in the eye. 'I'll bring you five,' she says.
The party is curious now. Carmen buzzed around the room, interrupting conversations and gathering people for the experiment. 'It'll be worth it,' she told them. 'Trust me.' Five people came over to volunteer – let's call them Michael, Dennis, Scottie, Ron and Luc – and everyone else in the room followed them. You have an audience.
'Okay,' you say, addressing the room at large. 'Just to clarify what's going on here: I'm going to replicate an experiment done by a psychologist called Phillip Douglas Jackson – or as I like to call him, Philly D – back in 1898. He was convinced that students in his class could feel when someone was staring at them in the back of their head. Not only that, but he said they knew exactly which direction the sensation was coming from.'
You arrange the scene to replicate the conditions of the experiment: five people stood in a line facing a single chair on the other side of the room, and the chair itself turned to face the wall.
'The chair is for me,' you say. 'I'm going to be the test subject. And one of you five is going to be the starer. Philly D was very particular about the starer being decided at random, so he would have them draw lots to choose. Let's see here...'
You look around the room, searching for something to improvise with. You grab a paper towel, rip it into smaller pieces and mark an X on one of them with a Pictionary pen.
'Whoever gets the one with the X will be the starer,' you say, screwing all the pieces up into little balls. You cup them in your closed hands, give them a good shake, and turn your head to face away as you lift your hands apart slightly, offering a piece to each person.
'Grab one out,' you say, facing away. 'Doesn't really matter who gets what.' You offer a piece to each person. 'I don't want to turn around, but did you all get one each? Good. I'm going to sit down and face the wall. Does anyone have a scarf?' Carmen has a scarf and you ask her to come and tie it around your eyes.
'Obviously I'm facing the other way anyway,' you point out, 'but I don't want anyone to think that I somehow managed to peek. That's not what this is about.'
'If you haven't already, take a little look at your piece of paper towel. Whoever got the piece with the X on it – you're the starer, okay? You're going to be the one who looks at the back of my head, and the other four of you need to look somewhere else. Make sense? Starer, stare at me. Everyone else, look away. Ready? Do it now.'
You wait for a moment. Wham's 'Last Christmas' plays gently in the background. You hate that song.
'Okay, I might just be kidding myself, but I think I feel that,' you say. 'The thing is, whether or not someone's staring at you is a binary condition. Either they are or they aren't, right? That's why Phil's experiments focussed more on tracking the *movement* of whoever was staring. And he did that with small adjustments – by making the starer switch places with someone next to them in the line. At this point, I'm only talking to the starer. You're about to swap places with someone next to you. If you're somewhere in the middle of the line, you can choose which direction you switch in, but if you happen to be on the *end* of the line, or if at any point you find yourself on the end, you won't have a choice – you'll just have to switch back inward again. Make sense? So, starer, I want you to swap places with someone on either side of you. Do that now.'
...
'Interesting. I'm not sure I felt that at all. Can you switch again?'
...
'...Shit. No, I think I lost track. Switch one more time?'
...
'Yeah, it's not really working and I don't know why. Hmm. Carmen, is anyone else in the room looking at me too?'
Carmen answers laughing: 'We all are, pretty much!'
'Yep. That'll do it,' you say. 'Can *everyone* in the room apart from the starer look away from me please? Do that now. Woah! Yeah, that's so much clearer. Okay, I'm going to start eliminating people I know it's *not*. I'm definitely not getting anything from the far left. Don't say anything, don't give me any help, but would the person on the far left quietly step away to the side?'
Silence.
'And I'm not getting anything from the far right of the line. Would that person step away quietly too please?'
You sit for a moment, lost in thought.
'It's a bit hazy. I want to see if I can pick up on the movement again. Would the starer switch again please?'
A beat.
'Yeah, that was pretty clear. I'm just gonna commit now. It's *not* Ron or Luc. It's *not* Michael or Scottie. You just stepped from the end into the middle, and it feels to me like it's Dennis. Yes?'
You hear the room react around you, take off the scarf and turn around to confirm your success. The room stands bewildered, people mouth the word 'what?' and look to each other for answers.
'Show's over people,' you say. 'Go back to your Pictionary. I'm going to have another cider.'
The Method
The more seasoned among you will know exactly what's going on here method-wise, but I hope the framing makes it interesting regardless. There are two pieces of method in play. Let's start with your need to know who got the paper towel with the X on it. There are a number of ways you might approach this, so do consider what would work best for you, but here's my solution.
I propose gently thumb clipping the corner of the X-piece as you roll the pieces up into a ball. The idea is that you can then *feel* when this piece is taken from your cupped hands. There's no particular technique to this, and no heat on you so long as you're not tense, so just get the force piece into thumb clip in whatever way feels natural. Clip too much of the X-piece and something may look amiss. Clip too little of it and you may not feel when it goes, so experiment to find the right balance. This is the only 'move' of the routine. You offer a piece by keeping your lower hand stationary and hinging your top hand open to create a small gap thumb-side. Be sure to clip the X-piece in the *lower* hand. You don't want it looking like it's floating in mid-air when you lift your hands apart.
You cup your hands together, one on top of the other, apparently mixing the pieces as you shake your hands. You *don't* want to use language like, 'There's no way I could possibly know which piece you will take!' Rather you want to throw it away, to treat it as lightly as possible, using language like, 'I won't look. Doesn't really matter who gets what – just pull one out at random.' This kind of attitude, coupled with turning your head and shaking your cupped hands can be hugely disarming. It also discourages people from changing their mind and taking another piece when they've already grabbed the X-piece, which is the only thing that threatens to mess you up here. (If you're really worried about this, you could word your instructions accordingly and ask for them to take, 'the first piece you touch,' but to my mind, adding extra conditions only threatens to raise unnecessary suspicion.)
You're not forcing the X-piece, but when someone takes it out you'll know it's gone. Remember who took it and, equally importantly, remember their *position* in the line. What exactly do I mean by their 'position'? Good question. This brings us onto the second piece of method at play.
You need to mentally number the people in the line one to five, *right-to-left*, and then note which position (as well as which person) takes the X-piece. You number them right-to-left so that when you sit down to face away from them they'll be numbered left-to-right from your new perspective, and you'll have an easier time picturing what's going on behind you. In the case of our example performance above, you felt Dennis take the X-piece and he was in position three.
What follows is a rudimentary version of a basic mathematical idea. It's a principle that's been used occasionally in envelope tests over the years, and more often in interactive 'matrix' effects on TV and YouTube, where the viewer is encouraged to move their finger around some kind of grid as the performer on the other side of the screen eliminates options one at a time. I've always thought it's a concept worth exploring with humans too. Here's how it works.
Dennis is in position three. Three is an odd number. When you tell him to switch with someone next to him, you *don't* know which way he'll go, but you *do* know he'll end up in an even-numbered position. Then the *next* time he switches, he'll switch back to an odd-numbered position, and if he switches one more time, he'll end up in an even-numbered position.
That's exactly what you did in the example performance above. You told him to switch three times, guaranteeing he was in an even-numbered position, and so you knew he was in position two or four. That's how you could announce with certainty that he wasn't on the far left of the line (position one), or the far right (position five), since those positions are odd.
Having eliminated the people on the ends of the line, you knew he was now standing at one end of a line of three. You didn't know which end, but you knew for sure that one more switch would bring him into the middle. So you told him to switch one last time, announced what just happened, and revealed his name to conclude. Those are the bones of it, but there are a couple of presentational points worth noting.
Firstly, doing an effect under the guise of a reenactment (an experiment, in this case) is a brilliant Derren Brown ruse. All your method constraints, and anything that seems remotely process-heavy, is nothing to do with you. No, sirree. You're simply trying to provide a faithful recreation of a historical event. It's an excellent bit of business and it works well in this context.
Secondly, the performer seeming to discard a piece of method that has, in fact, already worked is an idea I came across on this very blog – in Andy's 'Transgressive Anagram' presentations. Although the idea is at its strongest in the context it was originally created for, it remains a great ploy for any mentalism methods that are more procedural in nature. The concept is simple: you apparently discard the process necessary for the method to work, and then secure the effect's success through some other presentational ploy.
Remember, every time you ask the starer to switch places, they're switching from odd to even or even to odd, so if the starer starts the process in an even-numbered position, you'll need to have them switch an *even* number of times before you eliminate positions one and five. It's also worth being aware that you can do this effect with four people in a line, or with six, or even more if you have the opportunity to do so (and if you feel you can sustain the longer duration of the elimination process). The sequence of switches will change depending on the number of people, but you can figure that out easily enough.
Also bear in mind that the *sound* of people shuffling around is the most obvious method to this effect, and you don't want the whole thing to be explained away with, 'Couldn't he just *hear* us?' If that's going to be a factor in whatever location you perform, you'll need to find a way of ruling it out. Having people take off their shoes might be one way of doing it, and, framed correctly, this might even add intrigue to proceedings. Requesting the music be turned up might be another way of doing it. You might even get Carmen to cup her hands over your ears if you feel it's necessary. Acoustics will vary from place to place, so you'll have to judge this on the fly
Finally, it's worth giving some thought to the effect's conclusion. Remember in the performance what you said just before revealing the name? You said, 'You switched from the end to the middle.' Since everyone else in the room could *see* what was going on, your statement has the potential to sound more accurate than it really was. People see Dennis switch from a *particular* end of that line of three, and that's precisely what you seem to describe. Couple this idea with your naming of all the people who were *not* staring at you, and you create the feeling of providing more hits than you actually are. You're sewing the possibility of people later remembering that you knew exactly who you were eliminating, and that you were able to track the precise movements of the starer.
Layering one's methods is often a good idea, and it serves us well here too. Revealing the position of the starer in isolation would be a pretty soft effect, as would simply knowing who has the piece of paper with the X on it. But note how the starer's position doesn't explain their identity, nor does their identity explain their position, and so two simple pieces of method fit snugly together under the umbrella of what I personally find to be an intriguing premise.
