Target: Midnight performers (which include spook shows, séances, mediums, etc.) have been around since man first walked upright so saying it all started with the Abbott’s Magic Company would be a falsehood. Kellar, Thurston, Blackstone, and many others all did some form of “spook show” magic in their acts but they were simply part of a larger magic act. However three major catalysts happened in a 5 year period that really led to the conditions being right for the Abbott’s Magic Company to have the success it did enjoy (and does to this day) with the Target: Midnight performers.

The first catalyst was in 1926 when Harry Houdini died on Oct 31st. Houdini began a crusade of exposing fraudulent mediums and their methods by duplicating their effects on stage. This generated an incredible buzz and soon other magicians were following suit. When Houdini died on October 31, 1926, his wife Bess began séances to try and contact Houdini in the afterlife. Houdini had given his wife Bess a code word so that if contact was made, she would know it was him and not a stunt. Thus annual séances by magicians to contact Houdini began and were very well publicized. These usually took place each Halloween - the day Houdini died.

The second catalyst was in 1929, when what many consider to be the first theatre spook show was put on by a magician called El-Wyn. El-Wyn called his show the “Midnight Spook Show” and in the show he would perform some standard magic along with some of the medium methods that Houdini had uncovered. The finale was the entire theatre being put into darkness similar to the séances of the day, and luminous beings and “spooks” would enchant the theatre. The difference between Houdini’s séances and El-Wyn’s séances was that El-Wyn did not expose the effects, nor did he endorse them as real. He simply did them to entertain the audience and the audience loved it! One thing that would remain constant (through the El-Wyn era to the Rocky Horror Picture era) was that the audience was young, mostly teens and young folks in their early twenties.

The third catalyst occurred in 1931 when the movies Dracula and Frankenstein were released and they generated a whole host of horror movies. Other midnight spook shows began popping up using the same format as El- Wyn, with psychic phenomenon, séances, and even hypnotism being used with standard magic effects. They all ended the same way, with the theatre in darkness and luminous spooks running about the place. It should also be mentioned that many magicians who worked the spook shows did so not because they loved horror, but rather to earn a living. It was the middle of the Great Depression and there were not many jobs for magicians available. Working a spook show was a pretty good way to start a career in magic.

It was in this environment that the Abbott Magic Company was born and while Abbott’s was not created for the spook show or séance workers, it would find out very soon that there was money to be made if you could secure a good percentage of the magicians who worked the spook show circuit as customers.

1934 was the year that Percy Abbott decided to open a magic shop in Colon Michigan. This was risky business because the last magic shop to open in Colon Michigan - The Blackstone Magic Shop - had just closed. Percy was determined to make this magic shop different than the last, especially since the owner of the new magic shop - Percy Abbott - was the manager of the now closed Blackstone Magic shop!

To capture the Target: Midnight performers business, Percy decided to print a catalog for $1,000 and partnered with one of his magic students Recil Bordner (who bought into the company for . . . you guessed it, $1,000) and they put their items on the market through a mail order campaign . . . the gamble paid off!

This is the story of how the campaign, the performers, and the magic of the Target Midnight era.