Mark Edward- Bio

Mark Edward is a professional mentalist who specializes in magic of the mind. He has spent over twenty five years in world class venues from high-end night clubs and theaters to hundreds of private party and corporate events. As one of only five specially chosen and trained mediums in the history of Hollywood's famed Magic Castle, he has performed fifteen years of seances that helped him perfect the role of spirit medium and psychic entertainer. During this time he wrote several books on these subjects and appeared on television as both primary consultant and on-air performer in such diverse programming as A & E's Biography: "Houdini, the Great Escape," NBC's "The Other Side" and "Psychic Secrets Revealed," The Sci-Fi Channel's "Mysteries, Magic and Miracles," The Discovery Channel's "Forces Beyond," and most recently on two episodes of The Learning Channel's "Exploring the Unknown." His featured segment as a spirit medium on the pilot episode of Showtime's "Penn & Teller's Bullshit!" series entitled "Speaking with the Dead" helped secure an Emmy Award nomination for that episode in 2002. He continues to be consulted by the media for his knowledge of spiritualism, psychic fraud and ghost lore.

Mark also spent over ten years as a "professional psychic" working on a 900 telephone service and observing spiritualist church groups while at the same time acting on the editorial board of the highly acclaimed Skeptic magazine. He has written articles for various metaphysical magazines including Foretold where his activities as a consulting ghost hunter attracted the attention of other periodicals such as Fate Magazine, The Altar Flame, Magic, The New Invocation, Seance Magazine, Vibrations, and Magick.

When the infamous Psychic Friends Network sent out a call for "World's Greatest Psychic" to groom for their ill-fated nationally syndicated Psychic Friends Radio Network, Mark stepped up to the plate and was chosen out of sixteen hundred applicants to be one of three on-air radio psychics. During that time he also answered hundreds of questions about love, money and career as an on-air psychic for Hawaiian radio KSSK's "Night Magic" and twice weekly on Hollywood's KBIG "Night Mix" psychic program for eighteen months.

Mark taught both beginning and advanced magic classes for ten years at several local L.A. adult schools and developed a special first-time-ever class in mentalism and mediumship for The Magic Castle membership. Many of his students have gone on to become full-time professionals in the magic business.

All this time his interest in working with performers who would only be content to totally stretch the envelope of what would come to be known as bizarre or spirit magic brought him into contact with The Psychic Entertainers Association and many smaller groups that gathered together to learn all they could share about seances, sideshow acts and other non-traditional forms of performance magic. He has been lucky enough to have dozens of internationally renowned magic teachers who shared with him real world methods of how to create believable hauntings, hoaxes, publicity stunts and paranormal events. He also offers his services to agencies and party planners as a tarot reader, palmist, rune stone reader and handwriting analyst. His books on these subjects
have been well received and reviewed in major magic periodicals and on websites and internet forums around the world.

Mark received his Bachelor of Fine Art from California Institute of the Arts in 1974 and he continues to produce art, illustrations and performance pieces with an edge of surrealism, alchemy and mystical thinking that has been his primary motivation since he first experienced the wonder of magic as a small child in the presence of his magician grandfather. He has dedicated his life to the pursuit of both integrity and honesty in fields where deception as entertainment has not always been used to help others. Claims of psychic phenomena challenge even the most rational thinker. Mark neither declares himself as a genuine psychic nor gives any disclaimers, preferring to let his work stand on its own merit and allow each individual to arrive at their own personal conclusions.