James Randi - Early Life

Early Life

Randi was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the son of Marie Alice (née Paradis) and George Randall Zwinge. He has a younger brother and sister. He took up magic after seeing Harry Blackstone, Sr and reading magic books while spending 13 months in a body cast following a bicycle accident. He confounded doctors who expected he would never walk again. Although a brilliant student, Randi often skipped classes, and, at 17, dropped out of high school to perform as a conjurer in a carnival roadshow. He practiced as a mentalist at Toronto's Canadian National Exhibition, and wrote for Montreal's tabloid press. In his twenties, Randi posed as a psychic to establish that they were actually doing simple tricks and briefly wrote an astrological column in the Canadian tabloid Midnight under the name "Zo-ran," by simply shuffling up items from newspaper astrology columns and pasting them randomly into a column. In his thirties, Randi worked in Philippine night clubs and all across Japan. He witnessed many tricks that were presented as being supernatural. One of his earliest reported experiences is that of seeing an evangelist using a version of the "one-ahead" technique to convince churchgoers of his divine powers.