In 1793, a young woman meets her end in the jaws of the guillotine. But when her severed head is held up to the crowd, her expression is clearly seen to change by multiple witnesses, as though she is still conscious. Similar accounts follow, of freshly-severed heads blinking and winking, blushing and moving their lips, until there are so many witnesses to this gruesome phenomena, they can’t all be mistaken. But surely they must be, as a head remaining conscious after it has been decapitated sounds far too much like a magic trick. Doesn’t it? In this episode of The Magician’s Wife, Barry and Lora investigate the grisly topic of ‘lucid decapitation’.

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