Trivia

Mind reader/psychic/entertainer.

Once spoofed on The Benny Hill Show (1969).

Distantly related to Sebastian Kresge, founder of the Kresge's department store chain, the forerunner of K-Mart.

Frequently performs on David Letterman's talk shows.

Always refers to himself as a "mentalist," not a psychic.

His first television appearance was on The Steve Allen Show in 1964. He went on to appear approximately 100 times on each of the The Mike Douglas Show, The Merv Griffin Show, and Live with Regis and Kathy Lee, and 88 times on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.

The 2008 movie The Great Buck Howard is based on the experiences of writer-director Sean McGinly, who worked briefly as Kreskin's road manager.

He was inspired to become a mentalist by Lee Falk's comic strip Mandrake the Magician, which features a crime-fighting stage magician.

In the 1980s and '90s he came to prominence again through several appearances on Late Night with David Letterman and on the Howard Stern Show.

Kreskin correctly predicted in 2012 the outcome of the presidential election in written statements made in advance and secured in four places, including the Jimmy Fallon show space at NBC.

He also was proud to have proved that hypnosis is a joke. "There is no such thing on the face of the Earth," he said in 2018. "Nobody has ever gotten into a hypnotic trance. And by the way, because of my findings, you cannot offer hypnosis evidence into any courtroom case in the United States.".

On January 31, 2022, it was announced that Kreskin would provide the voice of The Magic Tree in a new animated series called, "The Adventures of Little Billy: In Search of the Magic Tree," based on a book of the same name by Barry J. Farber.

From 1972 to 1975, Kreskin's television series The Amazing World of Kreskin was broadcast throughout Canada on CTV and distributed in syndication in the United States. It was produced in Ottawa, Ontario at the CJOH-TV studios. An additional set of episodes was produced from 1975 to 1977 at the studios of CFTO-TV in Toronto, billed as The New Kreskin Show.

Kreskin attended Seton Hall University.

One staple of his stage act was finding the paycheck, hidden by members of the audience, that he was to receive for his performance. He found checks in some of the oddest places, like in the stuffing of a turkey, in a fire hose and under the upper bridge inside a man's mouth.

Kreskin was an American mentalist who became popular on television in the 1970s.

Though Kreskin made "predictions", he did not claim to have paranormal or clairvoyant powers, and did not like to be considered a "psychic". One of his best known tricks was to find his own check for his current performance. If he did not find it, he did not get paid for that day. He would instruct the audience to hide an envelope containing his paycheck, while he was escorted off stage and into seclusion by other members of the audience. He then re-emerged and hunted through the audience, almost always being able to ferret out the correct location.

Kreskin taught classes for law enforcement groups, which "focuses on psychological methods such as jogging lost memories through relaxation techniques or detecting lies through body language and voice inflections".

He always presented himself as an "entertainer," never as a psychic, who operated on the basis of suggestion, not the paranormal or supernatural.

A copy of a comic book that featured the crime-fighting Mandrake the Magician made a big impact on him, and he began to exploit his mental acumen in the third grade.

It was Johnny Carson who dubbed Kreskin "The Amazing Kreskin". Kreskin claimed that his appearance on the Steve Allen Show during which he tripped when blinded by stage lights, inspired Carson's Carnac the Magnificent character.

In September 2022, after Hugh Neutron became a playable character for Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl, Mark DeCarlo, the voice actor of Hugh Neutron, wrote on Twitter that he wanted Jimmy Neutron and Kreskin to also be added to the game's roster. Afterwards, Kreskin had posted a video on Twitter saying that he would accept if he was brought into the game. In July 2023, when the trailer of Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 was released and Jimmy Neutron was confirmed to be in the sequel, Kreskin released another video saying that he was still interested in being in this game.

In 2009 he became the first guest to make three appearances on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

When he appeared on television for the first time on The Steve Allen Show in 1964, he walked over to shake hands with the host and, blinded by the stage lights, tripped. "I fell on my face on national TV," Kreskin told the New Jersey Herald in 2012.

Kreskin remained active as a performer late in life and appeared regularly on WPIX in New York City, and annually on both the Fox News Channel and CNN to give his New Year's Day predictions for the coming year.