Lewis Jones died on September 9, 2021. He would have been ninety-seven in November. He will be best known by skeptics for writing eighty-four articles for his column “Inklings” in the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry newsletter, Skeptical Briefs. I first met Lewis in 1980 when I represented Prometheus Books in Europe. Lewis telephoned me to order The Psychology of the Psychic and ESP and Parapsychology. During our long conversation, it transpired that we had much in common, not only as skeptics but also an interest in magic. Lewis was a prolific inventor of magic and published many books on card tricks, including Encyclopedia of Impromptu Card Forces, Ahead of the Pack, and Seventh Heaven, the latter being a collection of the best effects of his first seven books. Now out of print, Seventh Heaven is still in great demand by magicians. His effects included cards, coins, business cards, and calendars; see lewisjonesmagic.co.uk for plaudits given him by magicians. Before he died, Lewis had arranged for many of his books to be republished by an American company. An announcement about this will be posted to his website soon.
In Paul Daniels’s BBC magic show broadcast on February 22, 1992, Daniels and Debbie McGee presented a mind reading effect that Lewis had published in Person to Person: A Book of Telephone Telepathy. It was only when watching the show that he knew his effect was being used. Lewis’s effect, called “Pattern Principle,” formed part of the trick that Rick Lax used to fool Penn and Teller on their television show Fool Us.