I've always been intrigued by the supernatural, so I was really psyched when we were given the chance to speak with legendary mentalist The Amazing Kreskin. He spoke with us about how he started, whether he was treated as an outcast, what type of person is easiest to read, his thoughts on the future of music, and more!I know you get asked this all the time, but please tell us how you got started.
Your timing is unbelievable because I have a new book out that's just been released two weeks ago called Conversations With Kreskin. It's my nineteenth book. In the book, there's a center section that we're all excited about because it's been done by Joe St. Pierre who's a very popular comic book illustrator here in the United States. He's done many of the major comics. It captures in eight pages the first incident that was the turning point of my life.
I was nine years old. I was in third grade and it was raining outside so we didn't go out and play. Our teacher said, "I'm going to teach you a game." She sent someone out of the classroom and I can remember to this day it was Jane Hamilton. While she was out of the classroom, we took a little cloth beanbag and hid it somewhere in the room. We put it in someone's desk, I recall. So she calls Jane Hamilton in and says, "I'm going to teach you a game. You walk around and the class will say, 'You're getting warm. You're getting cold. You're getting hot' if you're near it. It's an old game called Hot And Cold."
I was really disappointed that I wasn't picked to play it. I'm walking home about a mile to my house. My brother, who's three years younger, is at the house and my Mom's shopping. So I said, "Joey, let's go over to Grandma and Grandpa's house." They were from Sicily, did not speak much English, and I loved them dearly. So I said, "Joey, go upstairs and hide a penny." He goes upstairs, he calls me. I wander up these old steps into an old kitchen. I'm walking slowly through the kitchen into my uncle's bedroom, he was at work. I climbed up into an old chair and I find myself reaching behind a curtain rod and I suddenly felt the penny. It dawned on me I forgot to tell my brother to talk to me. He never said [Hot or Cold]. Somehow, I picked up vibrations and that was the beginning of my career. It got around the family. I was doing it in grade school, reading people's thoughts. By the time I was fourteen years old, I was doing two-hour performances.
Today, in all my performances around the world, I've done this over six thousand times. I get someone from the audience I do not know, hand them my check, I leave the theater under guard, and while I'm out of the theater they hide my check anywhere in the theater. When I return, no one talks to me; they just simply think about what they've done. If I don't find my check hidden inside that theater auditorium, I return it to the company that booked me and the show is for free and that's a hell of a way to make a living, you've got to admit that.
Yeah it is.
People ask if I've ever failed. I've failed nine times and you can say, "That's not many out of six thousand." But one of them is very memorable; it took place in New Zealand. It isn't that I simply failed, it's that I lost in one night $51,000.
