Jamie Daws – He’s Not Here 2.0

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Have you ever had the sensation that the eyes of a photo are following you around the room? 

 

Years ago, when we first moved into our current house, there was this small family photo hanging on the wall. Weird things started to happen. At first, it was small things like the photo not being straight. Then one day, the photo was on the table even though no one had touched it. 

 

Then things started to move about in the photo. One morning we swore the table in the photo was on the left and when we came home, it was on the right. It was only when one day, somehow, the photo was thrown against my head and the frame cracked that I couldn’t take it any more! 

 

I took it off the wall, ripped it from the frame tore it up and threw away the pieces. Things seemed to get better past that point. However,  a week later, there was a parcel delivered to us. Inside was the cracked frame with the pieces of the photo perfectly aligned like a jigsaw. We have no idea who sent it to us or why. 

 

The magician takes out the pieces of the photo and places them on the table like a jigsaw. He asks the spectator to look over the pieces and have a good look through the photo and notice where everyone and everything is. 

 

The pieces are collected and the spectator is asked to select a piece of the photo and to focus on one person in that piece of photo. 

 

They then hold onto the face down piece. You ask them to put a name to the face and read through a list of random names.

 

It was only after these things happened that we began to research who the people were in the photo. We found out years before, one of the people in the photo had gone missing just a year before this photo was taken. His name was Robert. (The spectators thought of name) They never found him or his body and to this day, no one knows what happened to him. 

 

The magician asks if she remembers who was in the piece of the photo she is holding. She explains what he looked like. However, when the piece is turned over, the person in the photo is now missing. When the photo is reassembled, the piece fits perfectly as before, but no Robbie…

…He’s not here.