The Tiny Michigan Town That's the 'Magic Capital of the World'

Drive into Colon, Michigan — population around 1,200, tucked among Amish farms near the Indiana border — and you’ll find a town where the high school teams are the Magi, the mascot is a six-foot rabbit named Hare E., and bronze stars in the sidewalk honor famous magicians. This little village is, by recognition of the U.S. Congress, “The Magic Capital of the World.”

It started in the 1920s when Harry Blackstone Sr., one of America’s most famous stage magicians, bought a summer home on Sturgeon Lake. Blackstone invited a friend, Australian magician Percy Abbott, to visit. Abbott fell for a local woman, married her, and stayed. He and Blackstone started a magic company together — then had a legendary falling-out and never spoke again. Abbott struck out on his own, and in 1934 founded Abbott’s Magic Company, which grew into the largest manufacturer of magic supplies on the planet, shipping tricks to magicians from Las Vegas to Japan.

In 1934, Abbott launched a get-together for magicians. Today Abbott’s Magic Get-Together draws more than a thousand magicians each August, doubling the town’s population. And here’s the spooky-delightful kicker: so many magicians chose to be buried in Colon’s Lakeside Cemetery — including Blackstone Sr. and Jr. — that it holds more magicians than any cemetery on earth.