Carmichael Haig | |
Notability: | Supporting character |
Type: | Antagonist |
Occupation: | Magician; Illusionist; Paranormal debunker |
Gender: | Male |
Race: | Human |
Associations: | International Federation of Scientific Investigation into the Paranormal |
Status: | Deceased |
Died: | October 31st, 1977 |
First: | Late Night With the Devil |
Actor: | Ian Bliss |
Carmichael Haig is a fictionalized version of a real person and a supporting character featured in the 2023 feature film Late Night With the Devil. He was played by Australian actor Ian Bliss.
Biography[]

Carmichael Haig.
Carmichael Haig plied his trade as a successful stage magician and illusionist. By the 1970s however, he pivoted his career towards becoming a debunker of the supernatural. Although he was a skeptic when it came to paranormal phenomena, he was open minded to the possibility. Haig founded the organization known as the International Federation of Scientific Investigation into the Paranormal (IFSIP). Through IFSIP, he offered a reward of $100,000 to anyone who could provide incontrovertible proof of the existence of the supernatural.
On October 31st, 1977, Carmichael Haig appeared as a guest on the Night Owls late night talk show hosted by Jack Delroy. Pompous and arrogant, he delighted in impressing the audience with simple close-up hand magic and poking fun at another guest named Christou, who was an alleged spiritualist. Haig got Christou so enraged that the man threw his drink onto Carmichael Haig. He then experienced a violent bout of intense vomiting and threw up a stream of black ichor all over Carmichael's back, forcing the debunker to switch out his blazer. Even this failed to impress the former stage magician, who dismissed the act as an old Vaudeville technique called "spouting".

Carmichael demonstrates some close-up magic.
Jack Delroy's next guest was a psychiatrist named June Ross-Mitchell and her patient, Lilly, who was a 14-year-old cult survivor who was allegedly possessed by a demon. At Jack Delroy's urging, June reluctantly agreed to conduct a séance with Lilly to draw out the demon. The séance went as expected with Lilly demonstrating demonic physical characteristics and even an act of levitation. Carmichael however, was unimpressed.
To prove that June and Lilly, and possibly even Jack Delroy himself had staged the entire affair, Carmichael performed a demonstration of mass hypnosis before the audience, using Jack's sidekick, Gus McConnell, as his test subject. He made Gus, and the audience believe, that worms had begun pushing their way outward from within Gus's body. When Carmichael had the studio play the recording back, it was clear that no such phenomena had taken place.

Carmichael takes center stage.
At Lilly's behest, the studio then played back the recording of her possession, to prove to Carmichael that what took place on stage actually happened. The tape proved that the supernatural phenomena that occurred during June's conjuring appeared unaltered in the recorded playback. Despite this, Carmichael continued to accuse Jack Delroy of conspiring to stage the entire affair as an elaborate hoax.
Lilly became possessed again and a bolt of lightning from the ceiling made contact with her left hand, while a bolt from a nearby television monitor connected to her right. Her head split open and began to glow with a bright light. She used a form of supernatural telekinesis to break Gus's neck and throw Jack against the wall. Carmichael Haig, upon seeing this, became a true believer and offered himself up to whatever power had taken hold of Lilly. He also proffered forth the $100,000 check that he had promised earlier. The possessed Lilly was unimpressed and used her power cause Carmichael's skin to blister and melt until his tortured body finally slumped to the floor dead.
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Notes & Trivia[]
- The character of Carmichael Haig was created by Directors and writers Cameron Cairnes and Colin Cairnes.
- Carmichael Haig's background and personality were strongly based on an actual magician turned debunker named James Randi, aka The Amazing Randi. Some aspects of Carmichael's persona were also derived from radio and film personality Orson Welles.
- Actor Ian Bliss was originally hired to play another character after he was originally hired to be a cast reader. Bliss had just four days to prepare for the role of Haig as the original actor withdrew at the last minute.
- Carmichael had previous interactions with Jack Delroy before the fabled October, 1977 incident. He knew of Jack's association with The Grove and was hoping he could use his influence to get him a membership. He was particularly interested in the orgies.
- In the film, Carmichael Haig showed a photograph of himself standing before the house at 112 Ocean Avenue - the Long Island Dutch Colonial home that was the central setting for The Amityville Horror. He makes reference to paranormal researchers Ed and Lorraine Warren, indicating that they were too "spooked" to go inside. Although largely regarded as charlatans in the real world, the cinematic versions of Ed and Lorraine Warren are the central protagonists of The Conjuring film series. The opening scene from The Conjuring 2 demonstrated that were not in fact "too spooked" to investigate the Amityville house.
External Links[]
- Late Night With the Devil at IMDB
- Late Night with the Devil at Wikipedia
- Late Night With the Devil at Letterboxd.com
- Late Night With the Devil at Themoviedb.org
- Late Night With the Devil at Rotten Tomatoes
Keywords[]
1970s | 1977 | Demons | Halloween | Hypnosis | Lilly | Prestidigitation | Smoking