Dixie Haygood

Who was Dixie Haygood?

Dixie Annie Haygood aka Annie Abbott, was a Georgia-born American stage magician.

After witnessing Lulu Hurst performing as the "Georgia Wonder" in 1884, Dixie Haygood developed her own version of the "human magnet" act, under the stage name "Annie Abbott", the Georgia Magnet. Her act, like Hurst's, involved her displacing objects held securely by one or more strong men, and was also a huge success. Because Haygood was a small, slender woman, her performances were regarded as even more miraculous. She was particularly noted for the "lift test", in which she easily resisted the efforts of several large men to lift her 100-pound frame from the ground. In 1896, her husband, whom she married when she was 17 years old, Charles N. Haygood, a deputy marshal, was shot and killed during an argument, leaving her the sole earner for their three children.

Haygood was an inventive self-promoter, going so far as to claim that her "powers" caused her terrible headaches and advertising in newspapers for a cure. Despite numerous media outlets reporting on the physical tricks that made her act possible, her popularity was undiminished. She herself never commented on the source of her abilities.