WEB QUEST (Tim Cridland)

Tim Cridland is one of the best known professional pincushions. He was born July 3, 1962 in Syracuse, New York.

Tim's act is unique as it contains not only standard play piercing and sword swallowing, but deep piercings through the body of his arms and through the flesh inside his jaw (like a Sprung piercing). Additionally, he cuts into his torso, appearing to remove swallowed objects directly from his stomach.

Especially considering that his act is repeated almost daily on a tour schedule, he pushes the boundaries of the pincushion act remarkably far. 

Prerequisites and early life

Tim Cridland, better know by his stage name Zamora The Torture King has spent years perfecting his chosen craft. Through his knowledge of martial arts techniques, hypnosis, Middle-Eastern teachings, science and anatomy, he is able to overcome dangerous situations - fire eating, sword swallowing, body skewering, electrocution, and more - to emerge unscathed and unharmed … and all in the name of entertainment.

Zamora, has been featured on television shows such as Guinness World Records Primetime, Ripley's Believe It or Not!, The National Geographic Channel, 48 Hours, and Stan Lee's Superhumans, among others. He has appeared many times on The Learning Channel and The Discovery Channel.

During the turn of the last century the American and European public and press were fascinated by strange tales of mystics of the East. Some of these men traveled to the West and gave public performances of feats that that seemed to transcend human possibilities; strange acts that ought to have resulted in pain, injury and even death, yet these men of mystery could perform these strange acts , involving swords, sharp skewers, pointed nails, fire, burning coals, broken glass and be no worse at the end of their ordeal.

Scientists and laymen alike were fascinated. Some, such as Richard Burton, traveled to the East and participated in these ordeals and demonstrations. Some Westerners emulated these feats of the fakirs and present them, sometimes along side actual Easterners, on stages in European cabaret and theatres, circuses, and worlds fairs. Eventually these acts became a staple at sideshows and dime museums all over the United States. The image of a man wearing a turban reclining on a bed of up-turned nails became a cartoon cliché, and, by the 1950s, had become a rarely seen anachronism.

Tim Cridland has been drawn to strange information all of his life. As a youngster read about the feats of the mystics of the east, and yearned to know more. Not satisfied with mere "book knowledge," he began the difficult process of learning the acts. He learned fire eating from members of a Washington State youth circus who were traveling through his home town of Pullman, home of Washington State University, where his father was a professor. The University environment gave him access to information that would aid him in his quest to resurrect the acts of the fakirs.

Career

Eventually, Tim moved to Seattle, the "big city" on the other side of the state, continuing his quest and building up his act, opening up for punk-rock bands, and eating fire before a performance by punk poet Henry Rollins.

It was in Seattle that he met others with who shared his interest in bizarre performance. Each had skills that complemented each other. Together they created a show, billed as modern day circus sideshow, which performed bi-weekly at a downtown nightclub, selling out shows on mid-week nights month after month.

The show was chosen to tour with the newly created Lollapalooza rock festival, which brought its revivalist sideshow style to a new generation who had no knowledge that such things had ever occurred before. Today this show is universally acknowledged as the most important event in resurrecting the sideshow arts, and being an inspiration for everything from reality TV shows to today's would-be MySpace sideshow performers. Cridland, along with road manager Jan Gregor, would chronicle the shows beginnings, wild tours and unfortunate demise in the book Circus of the Scars, published in 1998. It was during his time with this show that he was dubbed The Torture King, a traditional sideshow title for someone who performed the fakir acts.
Cridland left the show in 1994 to form his own show. He relocated from Seattle to Northern California, where he lived and studied with a group of genuine Sufi Dervish Fakirs who had originated in Turkey.

He added the stage name Zamora, and toured the US and Canada with Zamora's Touring Sideshow, featuring the Torture King, all though the remainder of the 90s. His show incorporated a series of co-performers, one of whom, Flexx the Rubber Boy, would go on to international fame as the world's most flexible man.

In the early 2000s, Zamora toured as the only male member of the all girl sideshow, Girly Freak Show.

In 2003 Zamora moved to Las Vegas when two Las Vegas show producers invited him to headline in casino show. The show SHOCK! was the first of its kind in Las Vegas history.

Zamora AKA Tim Cridland, presently lives in Las Vegas when he is not on tour. He continues to research and write about strange things. His second book, Weird Las Vegas, was published by Sterling Publications in 2007. He performs at special events in Las Vegas, as well as nationally and internationally. He performs annually at Knott's Berry Farms Halloween Haunt in Buena Park, CA. He appears in several TV shows per year, which, along with reruns of past shows, assures his continuing presence on TV screens around the world.

My impressions

Certainly, I understand that any employment should benefit, but I totally amazed, when I saw video with Tim Cridland. He is absolutely passionless and quiet, while sticks in himself a large quantity of sharp subjects. He doesn't feel any pain and laughs at it. Tim says that by means of control of consciousness he can pierce the body with hairpins and thus to remain that is called as "whole and safe". But before to be engaged in it he carefully studied human anatomy as artery piercing can have a deadly outcome. Therefore abilities of some our contemporaries simply amaze.