Recently, some visitors to the site have expressed concerns about this week of Trunk Illusion posts, and whether I am exposing magic secrets. I just want to be clear to everyone that this was made with the full approval of John Gaughan who built the illusion in 1978 and currently owns it. He was very much aware of what it was for, and actively participated in what he wanted shown. The illusion itself was only performed a handful of times and is no longer in circulation.
In fact, there was a whole other illusion that I was shown that day that was later requested not to be put on the site. I have respected his wishes and declined to do so.
This website is a celebration of Doug Henning’s life and work, and everything that is done on it is done with honesty and truthfulness. I greatly respect magic history and its secrets just like you all, and would not do anything to betray that.
A once in a life time experiences thank you so much. Gaughan is the man his., Word is all the magic world need to hear .
It should be know how. Amazing. His work was.
I’m sorry. But even though I’m into ethics, etc like any other magician, I get mighty sick & tired of all the worry about magic exposure. If someone was to truly study this post, & want to try building one, that would mean they have a true interest in the art. I’m sorry, but to me, the general public as a whole has way too much else on their plate to really care one way or another about how tricks work. Sure, when they’re fooled, they say, 99.9 % of the time “How did you do that?!” Used to be, it bothered me. But now I realize it’s more a reflex action than anything else. I truly believe we as magicians spend way too much time worrying about things like this. & it’s been said that one of the reasons magicians don’t patent any of their original ideas, is due to the fact they’d have to give the secret away to get the patent. Do you really think the general public {or even magic rip off artists} would actually have the time to sift through patents to find out how a card trick, illusion, etc is done???? First, they’d have to know the title it was patented under, & then do TONS of digging for it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go scour my set of official U.S. patent books to see if I can find out how that coin trick I saw that street magician do last night was done…………
THE DOUG HENNING PROJECT 
A once in a life time experiences thank you so much. Gaughan is the man his., Word is all the magic world need to hear .
It should be know how. Amazing. His work was.
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I’m sorry. But even though I’m into ethics, etc like any other magician, I get mighty sick & tired of all the worry about magic exposure. If someone was to truly study this post, & want to try building one, that would mean they have a true interest in the art. I’m sorry, but to me, the general public as a whole has way too much else on their plate to really care one way or another about how tricks work. Sure, when they’re fooled, they say, 99.9 % of the time “How did you do that?!” Used to be, it bothered me. But now I realize it’s more a reflex action than anything else. I truly believe we as magicians spend way too much time worrying about things like this. & it’s been said that one of the reasons magicians don’t patent any of their original ideas, is due to the fact they’d have to give the secret away to get the patent. Do you really think the general public {or even magic rip off artists} would actually have the time to sift through patents to find out how a card trick, illusion, etc is done???? First, they’d have to know the title it was patented under, & then do TONS of digging for it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go scour my set of official U.S. patent books to see if I can find out how that coin trick I saw that street magician do last night was done…………
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And by the way, yes, I am against BLATANT exposure of magic, but I don’t feel something like this falls into that category at all.
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