I've learned an interesting lesson this October. People come to seances with very specific ideas of what a seance is. These ideas range from a real seance to a special effects laden magic show. What I was doing was a mentalism based seance with only subtle physical manifestations.
The venue where I was performing a seance this past month chose to keep the advertising fairly vague as to what kind of seance we were doing. This resulted in some people expecting things quite different from what was planned.
The lesson seems to be that a very specific explanation of what is to be expected should be included in any promotional campaign for a theatrical seance. Anything else just creates confusion with the public.

One of the most logical approaches to seances is to start as a theatrical exposé about what seances were in the late XIXth century. And little by little, let the audience glide to the other side...

You’ve brought up some interesting points.

When you say the word “dog”
a different dog pops into everyone’s mind,
probably the dog they have or had or one that bit them.

Same with the word Séance.
Part of the conjurer’s skill is to create word-pictures
within the spectator’s mind.

So being specific, and as Christian suggests,
giving a prologue or introduction is key.

Beginning with:
“A Séance can be” or
“A Séance historically was”
will help a great deal in setting up expectations and clarifying terms.

I personally believe that as a general trend,
there is too much mentalism performed during theatrical Séances.
It’s almost gotten to the point of mixing apples with oranges.

It is bound to confuse an audience
if they expect you to bring forth Spirit emanations,
and instead you read their thoughts.

That said, you can use mentalist’s *techniques* as a vehicle for the Spirits,
as in performing a drop-dead good “living and dead test”
but, I’ve seen guys do a book-test during a Séance,
and that makes little sense.

A Séance is a unique and unusual form of entertainment these days,
and not for every performer to tackle, nor appropriate for every audience.

It is a specialized genre within a specialized art-form.

It sounds like you’ve learned a great deal for the future,
about putting together, and then marketing this type of performance.

Magically,
Walt

The mentalism aspect was basically Q and A. Answering questions written to the spirit by audience members as per Docc Hilford's seance.

Seance.
But today ….
What is the meaning of this word?
Is it the work of spiritistic at the end of the 19th century?
Is it a name imposed by the magicians of the 20th century who imitated and pirated the work of real spiritistics at the end of the 19th century?
Today a seance has really nothing to see but a table which turns. And nothing to see but a show of special effects. Spritism is a religion with respect. Nothing more!
I think that today a trick seance must be presented, as in the beginning of spiritism, like a new scientific revolution, allowing us to contact the people of another world.
The Ouija and the turning tables should be found in the cave of a collector as dusty as the objects of its collection. But the new mentalist should make use of more contemporary objects.
Plastic of our today’s computers of is more credible than a parchment aged by a bath in a herb tea coloring.
We have not just invented electricity.

Those who understood my bad language gain five points of charisma!

Experimentalist, I know exactly what you are talking about. I have just finished a run of a seance show and what a seance should be is something I don't think I have an answer to. After discovering in an earlier run that less is not more (because of the point of view of my show) I threw the kitchen sink at them this time. The end result was a successful show, but not all I wanted it to be. I am now taking a break and working on some other projects. I will get back to the seance show, but it is the most difficult thing I have ever done.

I think it is all Criss Angels's fault! It seems that everything else is.

Well, things are only Criss Angel's fault,
that have not been pinned on Dave Copperfield I guess...

And thanks for saying that the Seance was the most difficult thing you've ever done. That is so true, and hey you eat glass for a living!

Magically,
Walt

Thanks guys. I'll be older and wiser the next time I enter the "seance room".

Of couse, the more you tell someone what to expect in your seances... the better chance they come in with a better frame of mind....

This is true to a certain degree.

My show was called the Charlatan's Seance. Everything used to promote the show let the public know it was just a show with no claims of the paranormal. I put a very skeptical history of Spiritualism in the program. The show was dedicated to James Randi.

And some people to still surprised that is was all fake!

You can only do so much, and then it is up to the public to figure out the rest.

The marketing of "the supernatural" and its counterpart issues is always a niche decision. Interesting discussion men!

Experimentalist, when doing the kind of seances you are doing it might be good to use a line that I picked up somewhere, I think it might have been from Eugene Burger, but I can't remember. It is as follows:

"What you will experience here tonight is not like what you have seen in movies or on TV. What you will hear, you will hear with you inner ear. What you will see, you will see with your mind's eye. For each and everyone of you, it will be different. What you encounter tonight is really up to you. Open your souls to this experience, for it is their that the spirit will reach out to you and embrace you."

This can put people in the right mindset for a more subtle seance show.

Guess some of you have put my mind to rest about seances. Some of the things I've purchased in the past leave the experience simple and try to put everything in the spectator's mind. Sounds like the correct approach from everyone's experience here.

I was expecting information on creating the Disneyland seance.

That's a SPOOK SHOW - which is also a lot of fun!

La9,look at Spirit Theater by Eugene Burger. What Eugene wrote up in that book is clearly a show, but is still a spooky experience. It does not lapse into the broad spectacle of a spook show, but it still has a lot of bang for your buck in the way of manifestations.

I think what you are looking for is what I refer to as a Hollywood seance. It is along the lines of what has been seen in movies. The Magic Castle has a seance show that fits the bill very well.

Seances in general are very hard to do well and a Hollywood seance is a very complicated production to make work.

I would love to take a storefront here in NYC and make it into a high end intimate seance theater. There would be a large round table and another raised row of seating beyond that. I would think that no more than 25 people at a time would be able to see the show. All the bells and whistles would be built into the room.

If done well, I think it could be a successful endeavor, but the start up costs would be high and the money making potential would be limited due to the seating capacity.

Still, it is something to dream about.

I'm in if you want to cook up something together, maybe we should try it in a market with cheaper start up costs before trying downtown NYC. Also thought about coming up with a cool haunted house, maybe you could make enough money in one month to take the rest of the year off. What do you thing about that ?

The problem I find anymore is finding people with the same passion as me or trying something new. Most just want to go to work 9 - 5 over and over and keep there life simple instead of taking chances and trying something new.

I'd love to do a haunted house once a year. You could fill it full of all kinds of stuff and even have a magician out front. My mind just runs wild thinking about it.

I can't remember if I couldn't find spirit theatre of it the places I ordered from didn't carry it.

I think the ones I picked up were $1000 secret seance, have seance will travel, dixie dooley and Lizzie Bordon seance.

You might also want to check out Brother Shadow's seance. I don't have the info with me now, but I can get it tonight. It's a very different kind of seance. It happens totally in the groups heads. There are no "tricks" in it per se. Also Annabelle's Erotic Seance (not really what you're thinking at first) works in a very similar way to Brother Shadow's (she actually based it on Brother Shadow's, I believe). Both can work well as long as you prepare the audience well in your introduction. Both can fall flat if you do not.

Mark

I have the Brother Shadow seance book. Thanks Mark.

Dixie Dooley's is more in the spirit theatre vane, rather than in the true Seance genre, I remember when I saw it in Vegas as almost "a spook show" and certainly not with the subtle elegance of Burger's show.

As soon as you bring a zombie on stage (the ball or the corpse) it stops being realistic enough to pass as a true mediumistic experience.

My two-cents,
Walt

I have long said that a major part of a successful theatrical seance is managing audience expectations. If people pay money expecting a Hollywood style seance and there are not big special effects, they may feel cheated. If they expect a very subtle, 'real' type experience and get manifestations and things flying about the room, they may conclude that the show was 'corny and fake.'

I enjoy performing both types of seance, but I believe that it is absolutely critical to give your sitters some idea of what to expect beforehand. Otherwise, no matter how carefully planned and well executed, it is likely to fall flat.

Dave