Creepy Video Illusion

[Terrormaster]

Check this out... I have no idea how they're doing it. I tried tricking it and got mixed results. Would love to duplicate this live:

http://necropolislabs.com/2010/04/creepy-video-trick/

[Mr_Chicken]

It knows if you don't pause the video. My guess is it's not a normal video player, but one that identifies where you paused the video and selects the next clip based on that.

[Terrormaster]

I kinda suspected the player was gimmicked. Duh why didn't I think NOT to pause to see what happens.

[Terrormaster]

HAhaha... Yup it's a flash app not an actual video. It keeps looping until you pause it telling you "lets do that again".

[GothicCandle]

lol if you don't pause then he just keeps repeating "did you get one, its very important you pause the video and really stare at that picture for about ten seconds. Lets do that again."

[ELH Erin Loves Halloween]

Still a very cool video!

[Dr Morbius]

First thing that gave it away for me was the fact that you can't move the progress slider. Also, I paused it multiple times and it will pick the last face you paused on...and you don't have to wait 10 seconds. It's cool though, it did surprise me the first time I tried it.

[GothicCandle]

yeah. It is pretty cool.

[scareme]

Don't ruin it for me you guys. Next you'll try to tell me it wasn't Easter Bunny who brought me that basket of eggs and candy today. I believe in magic...I believe in magic...I believe in magic...I believe in magic...

[madmomma]

At first I got creeped out by this...thank goodness didn't take me long to figure it out. I have a person in mind for the emotion test...these are cute, especially for kids who are more gullible.

[corey872]

I once saw a magician do something similar IRL. In that case, it was a deck of cards. He held the deck up to the subject and said he would flip through them fast, but the person should remember one card for later. So he flips the cards, subject remembers and after a bit of hocus-pocus, the subjects proper card is revealed.

In this case, all the cards basically went by too fast to see except one which hung for just a second. Of course, that is the one the person 'remembered' so the trick could then be completed. There might be some way to meld that with the image showing up in the static.

I've also seen a similar trick where images are arranged in a grid, say 4x4. The subject is ask to pick any one of the images. Then they are ask to make a series of several seemingly random moves, finally remembering the image they land on. That image is then revealed as the 'trick'

In this instance, the seemingly random moves actually get a person to arrive at one specific image on the grid regardless of which one they start out at. Substitute ghost images with one specific image coming out of the static and presto - instant live trick. The down side is - if you do it with a group of people, they all obviously end up with the same final image.