I wrote this brief script for a Free Will routine using 3 antique objects: a button, a bullet and an old tintype. The article has been tweaked minimally (just an added name or two). It's something I love to do for people and I hope you all enjoy it! Have a great Christmas- I gotta get back to
mine as well as my thinking in regards to reprinting Codex. Enjoy!

Jesse Hutchins was a soldier like more than 3 million others, who fought in the civil war. And, unlike the 600,000 who died… either by a musket, or a sword or even disease, Jesse died of a guilty conscience: one so terribly guilty that he fought the rest of the war wanting to die. But fate wasn’t kind, and even though he was injured, his carelessness on the battlefield wasn’t enough. Two years after the war, when the alcohol started to taste like water, a piece of rope set him free and at the same time, widowed his young wife.
I’d like to read to you a first-hand account of what happened to Jesse… of what drove him to kill himself and leave behind the love of his life.
It was written by Phelix Adair, a soldier who, after the war, became a journalist. This is an excerpt from a newspaper article he wrote in 1883. (At this point just read this from a piece of paper.)
-------The 39th Indiana was in the advance, and moved cautiously upon the town, and found that the rebels had evacuated, leaving nothing but a rear guard to cover their retreat. The regiment then pushed on into the heart of the place driving the remaining rebels out and across a small river beyond, at which our troops came to a halt; and, seeing the enemy on the opposite side of the river, they awaited for our sharp-shooters to come up before venturing across.
The rebels could be seen riding around through the woods and fields six or seven hundred yards away, and just as they passed through a gap in a fence near a farm house, a man was seen to cross the road and enter the house, but soon came out again in plain view of our men. He was too far away to be reached with any common gun and was not fired upon.
It was not long before the sharp-shooters came up to the river with their long range, globe-sight riffles. The rebel could yet plainly be seen near the house, seeming to defy our guns. Jesse H. Hutchins, one of our best sharp-shooters, brought his gun up to his shoulder and fired. The man fell to the ground, and in a few minutes time a woman and several little children were seen about the fallen rebel.
The enemy had now disappeared and our troops crossed the river and moved on down the road, feeling their way. When they came up to the spot where the soldier had been killed, there lay in death’s embrace—not a Confederate soldier—but an innocent little twelve year old boy, and his poor, heart-broken mother and little brothers and sisters weeping over him, and praying the God might bring him back to them again.
The boy was engaged in putting up the fence near his home that the rebels had thrown down to pass through in their retreat and was mistaken by our men for a Confederate soldier.
It was truly a sorrowful event; but the soldier that killed the little fellow would have laid down his own life as a sacrifice if it would have brought the boy back to life again to comfort his mother, who had already been robbed of a husband and an older son by the cruel war.
The regiment passed on in pursuit of the flying rebels, and left the poor woman weeping and wailing over the death of her dear boy.
Several days afterwards, when the soldiers of the 39th regiment returned to Tullahoma and passed by the house where the sad affair occurred, and saw a little mound in the front yard near the road, a feeling of sadness crept over the hardened veterans, and they could not keep back the tears that chased each other down their bronzed cheeks.
Though twenty summers have come and gone since the death of the boy, that little mound near the door of his home, where he had spent many happy days, is still green in the memory of those who saw him shot.------

I’d like to try an experiment. I have 3 objects here that hold a lot of history. I was told that they belonged to Jesse, but I have no way of knowing for sure. Regardless, they should work just fine. The first is a button. An authentic Union soldier’s infantry button, just like the one a sharpshooter like Jesse would have worn, and maybe it even was his. Either way, this button saw more tragedy than any of us could dream of, and with so much empathy attached to it, it should work perfectly in our experiment.

The second object is this bullet. It’s a real civil war musket ball, and as we can tell by the threaded hole on the tip, it was misfired and lodged in a musket. The soldier would have had to screw a rod into the lead bullet in order to pull it out. The misfire could have saved somebody’s life, but it also could have killed the soldier who had to spend all that time to dig it out of his musket. If, or why, Jesse brought this home with him is a mystery. But the fact that it saw battle and most likely saved a life makes it more than suitable for our needs.

Finally, a picture of a woman by the name of Sarah Hutchins. Everything, including the inscription inside the frame, points to this really being her. Being a widow to suicide, and not knowing what drove her husband to do it, must have been what killed her so young. This frame will be the third object in our little trial.

Without thinking too much about it, please point to any of the three objects. Don’t point to one for any specific reason, just choose one at random.
--- "I like to believe that the devastation of tragedy and death can linger throughout time- and that sometimes that lingering devastation can touch our lives and even influence our decisions in order to get a message across."---
After you go through your process- have them read the following from your prediction.

1. The bullet, representing the senseless death of a young boy, is in my hand.
2. The button, representing the Civil War and all it's casualties, is in your hand.
3. Remaining on the table is the photo of Sarah, representing a tragic love left behind.

That's the bare-bones version- feel free to edit the prediction in order to make the "message" more of an actual message. I have my own justification for what the slip of paper/prediction is but I'll leave that to the imagination so you all can customize it. The authentic props are all available on eBay for not-so-expensive prices. Also, I gave you guys the full article but for the sake of brevity I recommend shortening it for your performance. I find that music is essential when doing this.

Thanks Bobby,

Merry Christmas

Very nice,
Thankyou Bobby


Kotah

Awesome!!! Thank you Bobby!!
Very Happy Holidays to you!!

Very nice. Thanks!

I have been doing one based around Voodoo, but this is much better. It packs so much emotion. This is simply beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing.

Thanks for sharing and merry Christmas!

Very touching and inspiring. I like the brevity of the story, yet it gets the message - and emotions - across very effectively. Thank you for sharing.

Excellent. I love free will, and it is great to have another presentation of it beside the original and two Higley versions. These types of effect are so much fun to present, allow in depth presentations and end clean with an amazed reaction fro the participant. Fantastic. Merry Xmas.

Thanks for sharing, it really is appreciated.

A wonderful story Bobby! Kind of you to share it with us.

So great to have you here on the Café. Your presence is appreciated.

Merry Christmas!

Andre

Awesome Bobby, thanks!

Thank you for sharing Bobby, it is most appreciated!

Bobby, thank you for sharing!

Thanks,Bobby !

Thanks Bobby. I'll have to use this one at the next reenactment when the season starts in 2014.

Bob

Thanks Bobby! Happy New Year!

I'm trying to post some photos but it's proving to be too difficult for me lol I'll keep trying