In 2017, Anastasia Synn had been performing magic for a decade when she made a decision that would eventually put her in the Guinness book of Records.
The native Canadian living in California decided to get an implant into her body – a small magnetic chip in the little finger of her left hand.
Fast-forward just six years and she’s officially the person with the most technological implants in the body – a grand total of 52.
Although a unique record holder, she’s part of a whole global community of ‘biohackers – who make alterations to the body with technology to make life easier.
Speaking from her home in the Californian mountains, the stunt performer told MailOnline that her daughter played a large part in getting the first one done.
Anastasia Synn has got her name in the Guinness World Records as the person with the most technological implants in the body – a total of 52. Here, Ms Synn pushes a needle through her arm during the 2016 Amazing Magic Live party in Las Vegas
Functions of the tiny objects include opening locks, finding magnetic objects and even triggering shortcuts on a smartphone. This x-ray of her arm shows the locations of some of them including a heart-shaped locket containing her late husband’s ashes
‘She came up to me when she was probably about 16 and said, “I want to get this microchip, there’s this gamer girl online and she can unlock her computer with her microchip so nobody else can get into it”.
‘So I said, “Listen, I don’t know if it’s safe or not so how about I get it and we’ll see how it works out”, because I thought it was pretty cool when she told me about it.’
It was about a year after she bought the first implant that it was actually inserted to her left hand, along with an NFC chip.
‘I was afraid of it, I’m not going to lie – I saw it sitting in the package at my desk and I thought, “What if it causes cancer?” I didn’t know enough about it.’
Along with a couple of friends, she got them put in while sat at the dining room table of her home – an event which turned into something of an ‘implant party’.
‘My daughter watched but didn’t get one of course.’
In her words, Anastasia then ‘went down the rabbit hole’ of biohacking after reading about ‘pioneers’ such as British engineer Professor Kevin Warwick, whom she describes as ‘the modfather’.
Another of her inspirations was Tim Cannon, founder of a Pittsburgh firm called Grindhouse Wetware, which makes implantable devices designed to ‘augment human abilities and senses’.
Anastasia Synn, magician, stunt performer and biohacker, performs a terrifying fire eating act while in the bath. She had been performing magic for a decade before realising implants could be part of her performances
Mrs Synn’s first two insertions – a magnet and an NFC chip in her left hand – were actually fairly recent, in August 2017
Among Grindhouse Wetware’s devices is the ‘Bottlenose’, which uses an implanted hand magnet to transmit information to the user through haptic feedback along the nerves.
‘With your eyes blindfolded and a sensor on your wrist you could put your hand towards objects on a table and tell which object was which because of the sensors that were vibrating with haptic feedback,’ Anastasia said.
‘I thought immediately the applications for magic with something like this are amazing.’
In a relatively short time – just six years – Anastasia has gone from no implants to the record figure of 52.
Functions of the tiny objects include opening locks with the wave of a hand, finding magnetic objects and even triggering shortcuts on a smartphone.
‘One thing I like about my implants is you can’t really see any of them – you don’t know where they are.
‘So you wouldn’t think I’m this hardcore, implanted person.’
And although she never set out to become ‘the most implanted person’, she admits her last procedure had 11 put in at once, partly to secure the record.
As the saying goes, records are meant to be broken, and she doesn’t sound totally protective over her Guinness title.
‘Honestly, I look forward to meeting the person who breaks my record – it’s there to be taken.’
Synn said: ‘I can officially announce that I’m the world’s most technologically implanted human! Since it’s a first, they had to create a new record category’
Her implants not only make life easier and let her perform magic tricks, but memorialise her late husband, The Amazing Johnathan, who died in February 2022 from heart failure.
Dubbed the ‘Freddy Krueger of comedy’, he was famed for his gory tricks including appearing to swallow his own eyeballs and skewering his own tongue.
Anastasia now has part of his ashes inside a heart-shaped locket implanted in her arm, while an NFC chip in her hand tells Johnathan’s favourite joke when scanned.
But one of Anastasia’s most treasured chips is the NFC-scannable microchip that initiates a call to his phone.
‘I don’t think I’ll ever change it,’ she said.
Anastasia does have ideas for more insertions, including an NFC scanner in her leg and NFC tags inside playing cards.
In a game of poker, she’d be able to run the cards over her leg to read them with her eyes closed without other players knowing.
In 2014, Anastasia Synn married the Amazing Johnathan, self-described as the ‘Freddy Krueger of comedy’ for his use of gore and wild tricks
But there’s one thing she wouldn’t get inserted – a battery implant, largely due to the threat of it exploding or catching fire.
‘A lot of people I know with these battery devices still have them and they have not exploded in their body, which is great.
‘However, I’m not willing to take that risk.
‘I don’t have anything with a battery implanted and I think it’ll stay that way.’
