The Messed Up Truth Of The Bullet Catch Magic Trick

Magicians are, by their very nature, big fat liars. That's their whole job — to confuse the senses and mystify their audience. Their tricks (no, Michael, illusions!) are a series of artistically constructed con jobs designed to make you, the viewer, go "wha?"

With that in mind, it can be easy to look at an escape act or supposed feat of bravery enacted by a sleight of hand performer and feel zero sense of danger. There's a reason we use the phrase "smoke and mirrors" to describe dishonest shenanigans, but the uncomfortable truth is that many magic acts come with a tragic history mired in incompetence, hubris, cruelty, and on the rare occasion, all three.

By way of example: the bullet catch. It's a classic trick that people have been attempting for about as long as there have been bullets, and its backstory is about as wild as you would imagine. After all, the basic premise is "a guy who does pretty good card tricks stands in front of a loaded gun." What could possibly go wrong?

The first recorded instance of a bullet catch was described in the late 16th century. According to Conjuring Arts, it came via a man named Jean Chassanion who, writing on the subject of folks living outside of the boundaries of God's societal lines in the sand, talked about a man who would have pistols and rifles fired at him, but somehow manage to catch the bullets in his hand. His fate, as relayed in the original text, was the stuff of perturbed stage assistants' dreams: "...his servant, who was angry with him, fired such a pistol shot at him that he killed him."

Then there was Torrini, aka Edmund de Grisy, a performer in the early 1800s who performed an act called "The Son of William Tell" in which his young son would (this gets uncomfortable) hold an apple in his mouth, then have a bullet fired at him, only to mystically stop the projectile in the heart of the fruit. The bullet fired was a fake, likely made out of wax so as to evaporate after being fired. Then one day, an actual ball was loaded into the gun during a performance. Torrini's son was killed, and the magician was arrested on charges of "homicide through imprudence."

Usually, a kid taking a musket ball through the gourd is enough to give entertainers pause, but in this case, no such luck. In 1918, an American performer named William E. Robinson died performing a bullet catch when one of the trick rifles he used malfunctioned and actually fired. In 2007, a man performing under the pseudonym Zamba Powers was killed in a bullet catch gone wrong in Ghana, as relayed on Ghana Web. Ambitious magicians have lost limbs, eyes, and decent chunks of their jaws trying to pull off this crowd-drawing spectacle. Houdini was famously talked out of performing the act by a friend who stated "you owe it to your friends and your family to cut out all stuff that entails risk of your life."

Not everybody has a friend like that, though. Today, bullet catches continue to be performed by big name acts like David Blaine and Penn and Teller. But don't worry. They'll probably be fine. After all, what could possibly go wrong?