Jim Gerrish has just completed his e-book "The Hardboard and Duct Tape Magic Show - Book 1" and it contains his version of Mental Epic entitled Mental Epilogue. Actually, it only bears a surface resemblance to Mental Epic, because there are no forces involved, no one ahead or one behind... just three predictions made before the show and sealed and locked behind a panel on the lower half of the board. Then three random events occur (you choose them and Jim gives suggestions for this) such as three different people calling out a digit between zero and 9, with the three digits forming a 3 digit number to be recorded on the top of the board. Several pocket dictionaries might be tossed out into the audience and the people who caught them each choose a word, then the audience decides by a vote which word will be the one they want chosen. It is recorded. Finally you spread a deck of cards out before someone and ask them to make an absolutely free selection of one of the cards. Then another person does the same, and a third spectator for good measure. The three cards are recorded.

Now the moment of truth arrives, when the bottom half of the board is unlocked and the predictions are revealed. There may be slight differences in the predictions (for example, the three cards might have been AC, 2D, 10S and the prediction reads in a different order: 2D, 10S, AC) but other than that the predictions are 100% accurate. The best part is, you can make everything yourself from Hardboard and Duct Tape... well maybe some wood for the locking panel on the bottom, but it is really inexpensive to make and easy to perform. It's on my site.

The Wizards' Journal # 12 (on my site) has just been released and it contains "Mainly Mental" effects including such titles as: OSCAR - Clear Clipboard Prediction - Forked! - Telematic Prediction - Brainpower - Water Witching Cards - Voodoo Hoodoo - Mystic Mosaic - Single Slate Séance - Parallel Universe (Stage Version).

While some of these may appeal more to the Bizarre or Wizard-style magician, they all contain elements that should make them useful to mentalists.

While, I'm not a big fan of slates and large props, Mental Epilogue does sound good.

Too bad there aren't as many mentalism enthusiasts out there.

It could also be that many magicians don't know how to take a mentalist's effect and turn it into an effect that works for anyone, anytime. For example, Water Witching Cards is a natural for street workers, and you can collect a large crowd as you use your water witching sticks to walk around a large circle of cards while dowsing for watery card images.

Brainpower can be presented as a super card trick, as a mentalist's prediction, or an example of thought control.

It's all in the presentation!