DonaldD makes a tremendous point that so much of the general public seems to glaze over. Parents are responsible for what their children are exposed to, and only they can know what those children are ready to see.

I am on the production crew of a major haunted attraction. (Major? It is now the third week of August and we are in full production - have been for about 12 days now!)
We advertise and enforce a "PG-13, Parents Strongly Cautioned" rating because the scares are **very** intense.
Yet every year, we have a parent or two loudly insisting that their 8 or 10 year old will be fine, and demanding that we sell them tickets. With a stern warning that we will not stop a tour, issue a refund, or pay the kid's therapy bills, we'll take their money.
They often come out p.o.'d at us because they ended up *physically carrying* their sobbing, screaming 10 year old through most of the haunt.
I feel deeply for the kids; not because they've been terrified once, but because their parents are so clueless and irresponsible.

Good point Laughing Otter.

Hi Magic Man,

You've got my curiousity going. Did you mean you've found a way to do Tip Over Trunk surrounded? Were you thinking of using backdrops? As someone who has produced people from big tip over trunks and glasses of water from small ones I can't see how this would be possible. Maybe I misunderstood the post.

Steve

Maybe Magic Man is referring to a version of the Tip Over Trunk wherein the trunk is within another trunk.

I saw it in a Doug Henning show, I think (?).

I remember when I was five a magician came to our school and climaxed his act by sawing the teacher in half with what I recalled as being a chainsaw but which was probably actually a jigsawing. And it did scare the bejesus out of me at that age, a reaction not helped by the fact I covered up my eyes while it was going on so I could only hear the noise of the motorised saw. The fact the teacher in question was obviously OK afterwards and reassured me as such was at the time more confusing than it was comforting.

I think if the magi had made her disappear instead of carving her up he'd have accomplished the same goal in terms of disposing of the teacher in a better way far less likely to cause nightmares, the natural reaction to that is more grounded in fantasy than in shock. Charles Morrit did good business in the 19th century making minor celebrities of the "men-we-love-to-hate" ilk disappear onstage, whereas blade illusions were designed not as mildly malevolent fantasies but as scary dramas, right up until television made it necessary to find ways to include those illusions (which were by then expected set pieces) while de-emphasising the violent connotations.

I have occasionally wondered if that early experience had any effect on the fascination I later developed for the death/resurection side of magic; I guess there are two directions someone can go in from that sort of an experience, either developing an abject fear/aversion to such things or the exact opposite (which was my own case). If that magi did indeed contribute to the happy maniac I went on to become, my hat is off to him, I'd never have had as much fun without him. But take that as you will.