Sword swallower performs piercing sideshow at DuPage County Fair
Dan Meyer began his sideshow at the DuPage County Fair Wednesday with a whole lot of disclaimers for a squeamish audience.
As much as his act leaves you with a serious case of the heebie jeebies, you can't look away from a man and his swords.
"Kids, do not try this at home. This is extremely dangerous," Meyer warned. "It could kill me. I hope you enjoy it."
Meyer is a sword swallower, one of the few ambassadors of an ancient tradition he said he discovered as a missionary in India. His performance is a revealing anatomy lesson: He shoves solid steel down his esophagus through extreme control of his body.
Straight razors. Hedge clippers. A 24-inch-long blade. That's just the tip - or should we say point - of his impressive collection of swords.
"The act you're about to witness is an act that has baffled and amazed doctors and scientists around the world for centuries," Meyer said with the flair of a circus ringmaster.
But his act is also part biography: Meyer was once an outcast who learned how to overcome his gag reflex and his fears to find his calling. And that's reason enough to see the 2016 "America's Got Talent" contestant in the fair's expo building along Manchester Road in Wheaton.
"The first 20 years of my life I suffered from extreme fear," Meyer, 62, said. "I suffered from low self-esteem, inferiority complex, fear of failure and rejection, something we didn't even know you could sign up for back then, something called social anxiety disorder."
He grew up in Michigan City, Indiana, and found escape and inspiration reading his Superman comics and Guinness World Records books.
"I wanted to prove the impossible is not impossible," he said.
There were still skeptics in his audience of families on the opening day of the fair, so Meyer revealed "The Convincer," a heavy, 18-inch-long blade he holds in his throat using just esophageal muscles, no hands.
Cathy Amos was the brave soul who agreed to extract another sword from the pit of Meyer's stomach. The Carol Stream woman confidently gripped the sword out of Meyer's mouth and triumphantly waved it over her head. After, she had her fill of audience participation.
"No," Amos said, laughing, when asked if she was willing to rejoin Meyer on stage.
For those fascinated by the anatomy of his stunts, Meyer traces the perilous path of the blade, first sliding it into the oral cavity in the mouth over the tongue and to the back of the throat. There, Meyer somehow represses his gag reflex and navigates a 90-degree turn down the esophagus.
"If you watch very carefully in the front row, you can see the blade beat with my heart like this because it'll be learning against the heart separated by about an eighth of an inch of esophageal tissue," Meyer said. "You can't fake that."
It looks effortless, but Meyer said he's been hospitalized four times from sword-swallowing injuries. To become a master, it took him about "three, four years" to relax the lower esophageal sphincter (a muscular ring) and voluntarily open that up to guide the blade into his stomach.
"I practiced 10 to 12 times a day, every day for four years, a total of about 14,000 unsuccessful attempts, 14,00 failures, before I got my first sword down my throat in 2001," Meyer said. "On average it takes between four years to 10 years to learn to swallow a single sword, and then another five years to work up the multiples and do more dangerous feats."
Thankfully, Meyer also has steady hands.
His fair appearances continue 1 and 6 p.m. Thursday; 2 and 7 p.m. Friday; noon and 7 p.m. Saturday; and 2 and 6 p.m. Sunday.