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ABBOTT'S ROLE - "NO POLITICS"

How did Abbott's become a recognized leader in spooky and seance magic? The death of Houdini in 1926 had an effect on Abbott's Magic shop even though Abbott's would not exist till 1934. Houdini began a crusade of exposing fraudulent mediums and their methods by duplicating their effects on stage. This generated an incredible buzz and soon other magicians were following suit. When Houdini died on October 31, 1926, his wife Bess began seances to try and contact Houdini in the afterlife. Houdini had given his wife Bess a code word so that if contact was made, she would know it was him and not a stunt. Thus annual seances by magicians to contact Houdini began and were very well publicized. These usually took place each Halloween - the day Houdini died.

Houdini's crusade inspired other magicians to perform midnight spookshows and by the time Abbott's doors opened in 1934, there was quite a demand for spooky magic tricks, both from magicians and mediums. Since the Abbott Magic Company was located in the middle of a corn field in Colon Michigan and not a major city, Percy Abbott knew that an aggressive advertising campaign promoting mail order would be needed. Percy decided to print a catalog for $1,000 and partnered with one of his magic students Recil Bordner (who bought into the company for . . . you guessed it, $1,000) and they put their items on the market through a mail order campaign . . . the gamble paid off!

The first catalog was printed in 1934 and was 24 pages. It did well mostly due to the legendary "Squash" trick which became known later as the "the trick that built the Abbott Magic Company". It should also be noted that the first catalog did not contain any spooky ads or effects.

With the success of the first catalog, the next question for the partners was a simple one. How do you get more people to look at your catalog? The answer was making the catalog more attractive to more people. In order to do that they had to make a bigger and more diverse catalog and the second catalog in 1935 was all that. It was three times the size of the first catalog and had several "spooky" effects including a complete "60 Minute Ghost Show" which stated "At no other time has there been such a demand for Spook Material".

This "Ghost Show" was the only time in the Abbott Magic Company history that a grand illusion was not the most expensive item in the catalog as the "Ghost Show" sold for a whopping $150 during the Great Depression! The target audience for this "Ghost Show" was spook show performers, seance acts, mediums, hypnotist, and psychics. Rather than constantly saying all those names Abbott's simply referred to them as the "midnight performers" and any advertising they used became known as "TARGET: MIDNIGHT".

The Abbott Magic Company would not only sell to spook shows and magicians, they would also sell spook show expose's to help magicians expose fake mediums of the day. Houdini had inspired this and with his recent death (less than a decade before the Abbott Magic Company opened) so this subject was still fresh in many magicians mind. Now for a mere $50 dollar (in 1935 dollars, about $1200 in 2026 dollars) a magician could go on tour exposing mediums. The Abbott Magic Company would supply these magicians everything they needed to expose the mediums including the patter and the props that the mediums used. It was easy enough for Abbott's to get their hands on these props since they were also the ones selling them to the mediums of the mid 1930's.

The Abbott Magic Company also had another advantage regarding spook shows over other magic shops of the era. Since its first days in a wooden horse carriage shop they had skeletons painted on the facade of the building (and still do to this day). They are the adopted mascots of the Abbott Magic Company. Although they were not painted on the shop originally to capture the spook show market (they actually put skeletons on the front because they could only afford black and white paint when they first opened), it certainly did not hurt when dealing with spook show performers. If you were looking for spook show or seance material and had a choice between a magic shop with bunnies on the facade or a magic shop with skeletons on the facade, which one would you choose?

All this was put together in just two years without internet and without television. There was not any Face Book or Twitter, it was simply word of mouth and mail order advertising that generated the initial interest, the rest would happen on its own.

As the 1930's progressed, so did the need for bigger and better seance and spook show magic. This was evident with the release of effects such as Living and Dead Test (1936), Spirit Pictures (1936), Flaming Handkerchiefs (1937), Luminous Paint (1938), and Giant Guillotine (1939). Abbott's even began to expand into accessories for spook shows such as luminescent paint and realistic skulls. Abbott's also had a line of real skulls and human bones available, but they wisely kept that out of their advertisements. They certainly did not want to scare away the kids and/or the family magicians from their shop by getting a real human bone mixed in with a kids first magic trick.

World War II came about and Abbott's found itself with another advantage over other magic shops. Abbott's had been supplying the military with small sleight of hand books that could fit in a soldiers pocket which were good for morale. When the war began, Abbott's was granted "essential business" status which allowed them to purchase materials that were rationed or unavailable to other magic companies. Because of this, Abbott's was able to continue their spooky magic production in the 1940's with the Spirit Clock (1940), Mummy Cloth (1941), Shrunken Head Illusion (1941), Disecto (1942), Zombie (1943), Painless Surgery (1943), Talking Skull (1944), Modernistic Amputation (1945), Witches Wine (1946), Spirit Spooks (1947), Spirit Writes (1948), and Snake in the Basket (1949). Disecto and Zombie would be two of the biggest sellers of the decade for Abbott's Magic and they - like the Super X Levitation (1942) - were designed with the spook show workers in mind. The large theatres with huge stages of the 1920's were slowly being replaced with larger and more modern screens but with a smaller stage. The large grand illusions that many spook shows used could not be performed on these smaller theatre stages that were sometimes only 3' wide.

The 50's would bring many more new "atomic age" effects such as Frame of Life & Death (1951), Torturette (1952), Ghostly Tumblers (1953), Living Marionettes (1955), Spirit Messages (1956), and Snake Eyes (1957).

Today Abbott's continues to be a player in scary magic illusions and spooky effects and is still very much involved in bringing quality spook show magic to the magic fraternity. Although the demand for large scale illusions in general is nowhere near what it was in past decades, the smaller spook show magic is still very popular to this day.

If you were to walk into Abbotts today you might see someone touching up the skeletons on the outside of the building (if it's a nice summer day), or maybe a blindfolded driver is getting ready to take a tour of the small city of Colon. As you walk inside you might see the owner Greg performing the "Abbott Floating Table" in the Abbott office. On the walls of this office you can see performer pictures of magicians from the past and present. In these photo's spook show greats like Phillip Morris and Bill Neff are still entertaining audiences as they enter the shop. As you move past the office you may see BJ Mallen demonstrating a spooky "Sefalaljia" on the stage in the Abbott showroom. On the bookshelves behind BJ are many books on magic and many of them the spooky kind. That whirring sound you hear from the basement is probably Karin, Abbotts seamstress. She will be out of sight but very busy in the basement making "Haunted Hanks" and "Spirit Spooks" for a new generation of spooky magicians.

As you look around the showroom you will find many standard magic props but you will also find many mysterious items. Perhaps an "Imagino" where you transport a silk from one box to another, just like they did with a human in the movie "The Prestige". However the teleportation in Imagino is the same silk. This was something they could not even do in "The Prestige" movie as they used duplicates! By the way, if you saw "The Prestige" you might be interested in knowing that when they needed 15 water torture effects for their spooky magic movie, who do you think they called first?

Out of the corner of your eye, if you look real hard, and squint your eyes just right as the sun sets through the front windows, you will see a ghost or two from Abbotts past checking the inventory of new and old effects Abbott's has made available for you for the 100th anniversary of Houdini's death.

Four of the links above are seance/party stunts that can be handed out to your guests and each guest can experience the effect simultaneously. Even we are not sure how they all work (and they are not explained, they simply work). They have been converted to html for your viewing to sort of sample them, but they work best when printed and handed out to an audience. The fifth link above is the infamous 1935 spook lecture (Percy would sell the effects to mediums and then sell the expose lecture to magicians). Some of the "expose" effects are still manufactured tody but better disguised. The lecture is a real look back in the mid 30's and can still entertain an audience when done properly.