Mentalist magician Nickerson closes Magic Week

The Johns Hopkins Magic Initiative and Johns Hopkins Magic Team hosted award-winning magician Nathan Nickerson in Shriver Hall as the last event of the annual Magic Week.

Nickerson, who hails from Pensacola, Fla., specializes in mentalism tricks, or tricks that suggest superhuman mental capabilities.

Many student attendees said they were inspired by Nickerson’s performance.

“Magic really brings everyone together,” freshman Luke Zhu said.

Freshman Hugh Han, who already is interested in magic, said that watching Nickerson’s performance encouraged him to consider trying new tricks.

“I thought [Nickerson’s] tricks were amazing, honestly,” Han said. “I was always into card tricks, but seeing someone as great as Nickerson makes me want to get back into my game and get into something different once in a while.”

At one point, Nickerson invited a member of the audience to pick a paper bag for him to smash, informing the audience that one of the bags contained a smashed glass bottle that would injure Nickerson’s hand. The subject managed to correctly select the bags, sparing Nickerson’s hand from the bottle.

In another trick, an audience member had to choose between three colored envelopes. The envelope the individual chose happened to contain a slip of paper that marked it as the “selected” envelope, while the other unchosen envelopes had other slips of paper that said “Not this one.”

Nickerson also solved a Rubik’s cube in 31 seconds and put two Rubik’s cubes in identical positions in less that 31 seconds. With the remaining time, Nickerson managed to conjure a magic box where the box’s rows, columns, corners and subsets all magically summed up to 31.

Nickerson also performed physical magic tricks, including a rope trick with magically moving knots and an escapist act inspired by Harry Houdini, in which he broke out of a straight-jacket.

Between sets, Nickerson talked about sharing and promoting magic as a practice, in accordance with Magic Week’s goals of promoting magical education.

Magic Week, a campaign to celebrate the life of Harry Houdini and promote magical education in the U.S., takes place annually from Oct. 25-31. The Johns Hopkins Magic Initiative chose to host Nickerson to show the possibilities of a magical education and to increase its presence on campus.

“Magic Week is the biggest event for this semester, but it’s definitely not the only event for this year,” Ronann Carrero, the group’s president, said.