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Wonder if anyone has any tips, clues or ideas that can help.

I have a few ideas for some real gross illusions.. particularly with Halloween around the corner.

The old cutting wrists and maggots appearing needs a little revamping - in my opinion.

My questions :

1. Is there a way of (quite quickly if possible) enticing maggots to move in a particular direction (or indeed, any other “unpleasant” animal e.g. worms, cockroaches, spiders, etc). The idea is that they appear from an “infected cut” and travel to another “cut”.

There are other ways I can get around this, but I would prefer this method to maximise the “gross” factor.

2. Anyone have ANY idea where I could research this without becoming a maggot expert…?? lol


The full illusion is that I (assumedly) cut open my stomach, the maggots crawl to my belly button and crawl inside my body then out my mouth.

I know how to achieve all of this except the travelling from one cut to another. Am well aware that I can reverse the trick and “swallow” the maggots and have them appear, but is not the affect I am looking for.

Grim, I know… but would be grateful of any (serious) feedback you can give.

I would imagine that training maggots would be near impossible.

Even if you did, the time factor would cause your audience to fall asleep during the maggot's journey.

Realistically, do you think that there's an audience for something so horrible?

One thing you could do is put a load of maggots in a bag and tape it to your stomach/neck wherever and paint over it with liquid skin and then slice the opening and let all the maggots fall out. You could add fake blood if you wanted to be really gross

Spiders wouldn't be a good idea. Tarantulas are expensive and incredibly panicky unless you hand rear them from spidlings. And even then they're not particularly impressed by being thrust into pockets.

Have you thought about crickets? They're cheap and jump around a lot.

I know it doesn’t seem likely, but when I was performing at a club on Halloween last year i was asked about performing some real gross effects.

I performed the illusion where i cut out my heart and their chosen card was inside (if you know it), and they wanted more.

Would be nice to have something to show them that they haven’t seen before.

lol... two replies why i typed that last msg.

I know the cutting and they appear routine, but want to take the effect to the next level.

Crickets would not work (but thanks for the idea ) as i need to make them dissapear after and appear from (probably) my mouth - like a transposition.

Well I saw on Youtube that Pete guy doing a nice routine with goldfish production from mouth (was on "dirty tricks" I believe).

Any way he uses a maggot in a "corn from mouth to eye" trick (of course the one in the eye is already dead or just a fake), so this is a cool thing to do is you are cool with eating a maggot or two.

Try to gaff "borrowed" items with maggots or worms. For instance, get a cigarette, take out the tobacco, fill it a few maggots or a small worm. Then on the show pretend to take it out of a borrowed cigarette box and break the cigarette in some poor guy's hand.

You could certainly do the maggots appearing from, say, a cut. But as for them actually travelling to the cut, im not so sure. I take it you're after something that looks similar to the mummies on films like 'The Mummy' when the beetles are crawling in and out of the skeleton... only you want to do it with your skin?

Maggots get into cuts from flies laying eggs into flesh and them hatching and feeding off the flesh (thats just gross!). So having them just crawl into the cut wouldnt be as realistic, unless you want to somehow find a way to atract flies and start laying eggs, and then for the eggs to hatch all in front of an audience.

Maybe instead of having the transposition, you could do something like slashing your wrist and reaching into the gash with maggots coming out of it, and you remove their signed card from your rotting arm.

Thank everyone. Some real good ideas there

Will let you know how things come along.

Mark

kozak gimmick could let you "transport" your maggots harmlessly...

On a related note, does anyone know where to start looking for the effect on THEM where flies crawl out of the mouth? They all travel in one direction so I don't think it's as simple as just keeping flies in your cheek... I'd also hope it's not that gross...

I seen that one.. I can only assume that guy had a handful of flies in a container and as he went to cough, he put the container to his mouth and released the flies..

I hope that isn't the method as that would indeed be gross... and kinda dangerous.. flies aren't the cleanest insects in the world now