Jeff Horton looks the part of a magician. Dressed in a tuxedo and purple bow tie, Horton has gray hair that makes him seem slightly older than his 40 some-odd years. Standing at around six-foot-three, he towered over the audience at his show on Tues., Oct. 27. His venue, after all, was the New Haven Public Library at 200 Dixwell Ave., and his audience was a fifth-grade class.

Horton’s show ran the gauntlet of simple illusions; he made small red balls appear and disappear under cups, turned a scarf into a dove, joined and separated large rings, and did a few card tricks. His act, obviously geared towards children, involved equal parts clowning and illusion: One of his “tricks” involved a can filled with spring-loaded “wands,” like trick peanut jars with snakes inside. For the most part, the kids loved it. There were a few exceptions, however. One particularly cynical fifth-grader, Nivon, when asked if he was ready for the next trick, responded with a grim, “Whatever.” When Horton was changing a black-and-white picture of a clown into a colored one, Nivon shouted, “He’s got two pictures with him!”

Horton, along with his dove, Puffy, were doing a free performance—one of several this past week organized by the New Haven Circle of the International Brotherhood of Magicians to promote magic in New Haven and celebrate the eighty-third anniversary of Harry Houdini’s death, which falls on Halloween night.

Although Houdini may be the most famous American magician who ever lived, in many ways he was an atypical one. Houdini, for example, was decidedly mediocre at actual sleight of hand; he was more of an escape artist than a magician. However, his uncanny ability to escape from handcuffs, straitjackets, milk cans, and locked boxes—arising largely from his ability to dislocate his shoulders, regurgitate keys at will, and pick locks with ease—catapulted him to sensational fame and renown.

Houdini took pride in his ability to see through other magicians’ tricks and debunk so-called spiritualists. He even offered a cash prize to any person who could fool him with an illusion. The only man who ever collected that prize was known as Dai Vernon.

Vernon, born David Verner, remains a mythical figure in the world of magic. This comes as something of a surprise, given the fact that Vernon spent a large part of his professional career—before his death in 1992—as a magician in residence at an exclusive private magic club, the Magic Castle in Hollywood. Vernon, over his 98 years on earth, served as a mentor for many of the best close-up magicians living today. Born in Ottowa in 1894, Vernon learned his first trick at the age of seven, saying later that he had “wasted the first six years” of his life.

An up-and-coming musician during the Great Depression, Vernon spent the early years of his career not in the large Vaudeville theaters that Houdini frequented, but rather among gamblers in illegal poker games. During the 1920’s, ’30s and ’40s, Vernon traveled the country, mingling with professional gamblers and learning their sleight-of-hand techniques. While Houdini awed crowds with his death-defying escapes, Vernon would daily risk getting shot at card tables. Over the course of three decades, Vernon developed an enormous body of card-based illusions, famously spending several years tracking down Allen Kennedy, a cardsharp who had the ability to pull a given card from the middle of the deck, instead of just the top or bottom. Vernon’s obsession with card cheats and their relationship with magic arose from the first magic book he ever owned, Expert at the Card Table.

Expert at the Card Table, published in 1905, is a fittingly mysterious book. Nobody really knows who its author, S.W. Erdnase, was, nor why he wrote the book. Whatever Erdnase’s true identity may have been (many suspect it is a pseudonym for someone named E. S. Andrews), he was a very talented cheater at cards. Expert remains one of the foundational works of modern close-up illusion, providing detailed descriptions and illustrations of the various deck-handling techniques that serve as the basis for most card tricks. And yet Erdnase’s work was far from the first magic book to be published. That distinction probably goes to The Discoverie of Witchcraft, a volume published in 1584 as an exposé of medieval witchcraft.

For a great deal of magic’s history, however, there were very few books on the art, and magicians were often reluctant (as the best ones still are) to teach their tricks to the uninitiated. More recently, of course, it has become possible for anybody with a library card (or, in this day and age, an Internet card) to gain a working knowledge of most magic tricks, and magic camps are readily available for children who are ready to learn.

And all this is because magic is currently enjoying a popular resurgence. David Copperfield is one of the 50 highest-paid celebrities in the world, having grossed over one billion dollars in ticket sales throughout his career. David Blaine and Criss Angel do endurance and escape stunts in the spirit of Houdini, while magicians such as Ricky Jay and John Carney have taken close-up magic to new heights. All of them have achieved substantial mainstream success.

Most magicians, however, labor thanklessly in obscurity—and it is they who keep the art alive in the lives of everyday people. The MagicNewHaven website quotes magician Karl Fulves: “Magic is the only subject that has been accepted throughout history by all cultures and all levels of society in every part of the world.”

After the show, I got a chance to talk to Horton for a few minutes. Born near New Haven, in Glastonbury, he has been doing magic for the better part of the past 30 years. “I got into it when I was a kid,” he said. “I completely idolized David Copperfield.” According to Horton’s website, after seeing Copperfield make a Ferrari disappear, Jeff developed a trick that allowed him to “disappear in his family’s Ford Gran Torino every Saturday night.”

Although magic is a passion for Horton, it is not a full time job. Magic, said Horton, will always be his first love, but he also moonlights as the general manager of Scoozi, an Italian restaurant on Chapel Street. “Most of my act is family-oriented,” he said. “I also do company picnics and Christmas parties, through.”

When I asked Horton to do a card trick for me, his face lit up. He pulled a deck out of his pocket and asked me to take half the deck and pick a card. Then he asked me to put my card in the middle of my pile and give it to him. After shuffling the two piles together, he spread out the deck on the table. Every card was face-down except for mine. In this moment, I saw a different Jeff Horton, not the goofy dude struggling to entertain a crowd of fickle fifth-graders, but a cool and natural artist clearly devoted to his art.

My interview with Horton was cut short when Jeff’s friend Neil—“no last names, please”—a short, stocky guy in his fifties, came into the room and started packing up the equipment. “Come on Jeff,” he gruffly barked at Horton, “if we get this shit loaded in the car, maybe we can catch a happy hour somewhere.”