The fact that Shankara referred to the trick's method was pointed out in 1934 in a discussion of the Indian rope trick in the Indian press. Analyzing old eyewitness reports, Jim McKeague explained how poor, itinerant conjuring troupes could have performed the trick using known magical techniques. Thurston considered this to have never been achieved and in 1927 offered a reward of 5,000 rupees to anyone who could demonstrate it. Huddleston writing in Nature, claimed to have spent more than thirty years in India and knew many of the best conjurors in the country but not one of them could demonstrate the trick.

There are hundred's of tricks that you can perform with a piece of rope and this 46 page booklet gives you everything you need to get started. David Devant, Horace Goldin, Carl Hertz, Servais Le Roy and Howard Thurston incorporated the Indian rope trick into their stage shows. According to Lamont, none of these stories proved credible, but with every repetition the story became more widely believed despite being only a myth. The American magician Robert Heger claimed to have perfected the trick over 20 years and would demonstrate it to an audience on stage in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Accounts collected by Wiseman did not have any single account describing severing of the limbs of the magician's assistant.John Keel reports that he was told the secret of the trick in 1955 from an aged mystic who claimed to have performed it in the past. According to Hanussen the spectators were positioned in front of a blazing sun and the "rope" was actually made from the vertebrae of a sheep covered with sailing cord that was twisted into a solid pole.

When all the parts of the body, including the torso, land on the ground, the magician climbs down the rope. Holmes later admitted this, but the photograph was reproduced by the press in several magazines and newspapers as proof of the trick having been successfully demonstrated. According to Bertram "none of them laid any claim to being able to perform it, and when they were questioned upon the subject, disclaimed any idea of ever having seen, and in many cases, having heard of it. A more elaborate version has the magician (or his assistant) disappearing after reaching the top of the rope, then reappearing at ground level.To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Then a noisy distraction from other members of the troupe is the misdirection needed which allows the climber to drop unseen to the ground and hide. As they uncoiled it and held it up it became stiff; it was evidently jointed bamboo with the joints made to lock. According to that miniseries, the tour travelled the world investigating historical tricks, and while in India they travelled to Agra, where they recreated the trick.

The journalist James Saxon Childers reported in 1932 that he visited India with a desire to see the trick but noted that "the first conjuror I asked about the rope trick smiled at me, the second laughed, and the third swore that the trick could not be done, had never been done, and that only the amazing credulity of the Occident nurtures the rumor. Now uncoiling the rope you stretch the rope between the two hands, horizontally, and pretend to hypnotize the rope. As it unwinds completely the illusion of the ball disappearing into the sky is striking, especially if the pale cord is similar in color to any overcast cloud. He argued that Ibn Battuta did report a magic trick with a thong, and Jahangir with a chain, not a rope, and the tricks they described are different from the "classic" Indian rope trick. The boy then conceals himself inside the magician's voluminous outer garment, and clings to him as the magician climbs down seemingly alone.Other illusionists have successfully staged the trick out of doors, but under those circumstances, a demonstration of pole balancing has been all they could offer to the spectators. The witnesses saw what they thought was the end of the trick, the rope falling as if it had been in mid-air seconds before. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries as the fame of the trick increased performers would have had increasing difficulty in puzzling audiences with it, until finally the disappearance of the climber ceased to be a feature and the rare witness who had seen it spoke of a time long before. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.

Lord Frederick Spencer Hamilton in 1921 described an alleged demonstration of the trick, told to him by Colonel Bernard. In 1935, Karachi sent a challenge to the skeptics, for 200 guineas to be deposited with a neutral party who would decide if the rope trick was performed satisfactorily.An argument is heard, and then human limbs fall, presumably cut from the assistant's body by the magician.