The Tricks and Props of Magic and Spiritualism: How Magicians and Psychics Fooled the World—and What Scientists Can Learn from Them

In The Spectacle of Illusion, professional magician turned experimental psychologist Dr. Matthew L. Tompkins investigates the arts of deception as practiced and popularized by mesmerists, magicians, and psychics since the early 18th century. Organized thematically along a broadly chronological trajectory, this compelling book explores how illusions created by magicians and fraudulent mystics can not only fool our senses but also reveal the inner workings of the human mind. Modern scientists are increasingly turning to magic tricks as a tool for studying perception, memory, and belief.

The book begins with an examination of mesmerism and spiritualism before moving on to consider how professional magicians such as John Nevil Maskelyne and Harry Houdini engaged with these movements, often with the aim of challenging and debunking paranormal claims. It traces the interactions between magicians, mystics, and scientists over the past 200 years, showing how even researchers investigating magical and paranormal phenomena could be deceived—and what such deception teaches us about the nature of belief and perception.

Highly illustrated throughout with entertaining and bizarre drawings, double-exposure spirit photographs, and images of spoon-bending from previously inaccessible archives—including the Wellcome Collection, the Harry Price Library, the Society for Physical Research, and the Magic Circle’s closely guarded collection—the book also features newly commissioned photography of planchettes, rapping boards, tilting tables, ectoplasm, automata, and illusion boxes.

Concluding with a modern-day analysis of the science of magic and illusion, the book examines surprisingly strange phenomena such as ideomotor action, sleep paralysis, choice blindness, and the psychology of misdirection. The Spectacle of Illusion is a captivating and unnerving exploration of how unreliable our minds can be and how willing they are to participate in the perpetuation of illusions.