Michael Prescott's Blog

Now I'm doing Substack

I've made the possibly unwise decision to start up a Substack. It's essentially a new incarnation of my blog.

 

I call it Michael Prescott: Chaos Come Again.

 

https://michaelprescott2024.substack.com/p/back-from-the-dead

 

 

Essay: Unusual Occurrences

NOTE: I used to have several older essays on the paranormal posted on my author site. When I recently updated the site, I removed all this material and decided to post it here. This essay was originally posted in 2003.

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Unusual Occurrences

 

One day, for no apparent reason, I found myself wondering, “Is Katharine Hepburn still alive?” That night I went to dinner and out of the blue someone asked, “Is Katharine Hepburn still alive?”

Walking on the beach, I started imagining myself playing tennis, though I hadn’t picked up a racket in years. I looked down at my feet, and there on the sand was a tennis ball. About three weeks later I was walking on the boardwalk when I again found myself thinking of tennis. I looked down, and on a wooden bench I found a tennis ball.

Recently I took an online test of psychic abilities. I scored no better than chance. On one test, I was supposed to visualize and describe whatever image came to mind. Then the actual image would be revealed, and I would be scored on how closely my impressions matched reality. I visualized leafless trees in the snow, their branches interlaced, the colors muted against a dark background. The image that came up on the computer screen was nothing like this – a total miss! But the next day I went to the dentist, whose office I had never visited before. In the waiting room, across from where I sat, was a photo of leafless trees in the snow against a dark background, in muted blue tones. That’s the picture, I thought.

This sort of thing probably happens to most of us. In fact, it may happen more often than we realize. Because such incidents are usually insignificant in themselves, and because they don’t fit in with the conventional view of the way the universe works, we may be inclined to dismiss or forget them. That could be a mistake. Such events, however trivial, may be a small window giving us a glimpse of a larger world.

To illustrate my point, I’ve collected some stories from my own experience, like the anecdotes recounted above. All of these stories are true, and I have done my best not to embellish or exaggerate. Some of them were written down soon after they happened, so I can refer to my notes at the time.

I suppose all these events could be chalked up to coincidence or the workings of the subconscious mind. None would convince a skeptic. I list them here simply to give some sense of the strange things that routinely take place in our lives – and are just as routinely overlooked.

Let’s start with some really trivial incidents involving TV.

One day I found myself thinking about an opening scene in The Bride of Frankenstein –an old mill aflame against a night sky. A few hours later, I flipped through TV Guide to see what was on. Starting at that very minute was … The Bride of Frankenstein. I switched to it as the main titles appeared, and after a brief prologue, there was the burning mill. I hadn’t seen or even thought about that movie in years.

One morning I happened to remember a scene in The Simpsons in which Homer mangles the story of “Androcles and the Lion” (he calls it “Hercules and the Lion”). That evening, I turned on the TV to watch a syndicated episode of The Simpsons. It was the same episode.

Similarly, while driving, I remembered a Simpsons episode in which miserly billionaire Mr. Burns reviews his out-of-date stock portfolio, which includes such properties as Confederated Slave Holdings. Later that day … you guessed it, the same episode aired.

Another Simpsons synchronicity: I remembered Homer being taken to the electric chair while the warden calls out, “Dead man walking on the green mile!” That night – same episode.

One day I suddenly became interested in buying a massage device for my back, and spent a good deal of time looking for it on the Web. I had never been interested in such a purchase before. Later that day, I watched an episode of the sitcom NewsRadio. The episode focused on a character’s purchase of a massage chair.

I was watching Crossing Over With John Edward. During a commercial break, I imagined myself as a guest in the studio audience being “read” by Edward. I imagined Edward saying, “I picture you at a typewriter … writing … are you a writer?” The show came back on, and the first thing Edward said as he surveyed the audience was “Writing, publishing … I’m getting writing, publishing.”

Speaking of publishing, let’s move on to some incidents that involve books.

The Bible phrase “My father’s house has many mansions” (John 14:2) stuck in my mind for two or three days. Then I started reading a book, the first chapter of which described a woman who had become obsessed with a Bible phrase. Which phrase? You’re two steps ahead of me by now. It was, of course, “My father’s house has many mansions.”

About nine months after the September 11 attacks, I found myself feeling agitated and angry about terrorists. I decided to take my mind off it and do some reading. Having been working my way through the Bible, I picked up where I’d left off, at Psalm 37. It begins “Don’t worry about the wicked” and goes on to say that fretting about evildoers will only cause you grief. I couldn’t have picked a more appropriate passage. None of the psalms in the vicinity of Psalm 37 were remotely as appropriate.

My book Last Breath features a villain who is double-jointed. I described him as suffering from Marfan Syndrome. In the first nine months after the book came out, I received many emails from readers, but none touched on this aspect of the story. Then, on the same day, I received two unrelated emails, both on the topic of Marfan Syndrome. In fact, both readers had the same message – that I had misunderstood the illness and that double-jointedness is not associated with it. (Both readers were wrong.) To date, I have received no more Marfan-related emails. None for nine months, and none since, but two in one day?  

Here’s a different kind of experience, one that involved my health. I’d had a bad case of the flu for several days. Finally I decided to try some mental healing, something I had read about but never attempted. In a meditative state, I visualized a ball of white energy hovering over me, then entering my body through the belly and suffusing me with healing light. Afterward, I felt markedly better. The next day my flu was gone.

Having the flu is bad enough, but how about getting in a traffic accident? Here are two near misses.

I was stopped at a traffic signal. Normally I’m one of those people who like to move as soon as the light changes. This time I hesitated. Suddenly a car sped around a curve, running the red light. If I hadn’t paused, I would have been rammed at high speed.

I was driving a mountain road when I had the impulse to pull onto a side street. Although I drive this route often, I had never turned onto any of the side streets before. I made the turn, and a minute later my car, which had been giving no indication of trouble, abruptly died – the fan belt had failed. If I hadn’t taken the side street, my car would have conked out on the main road, where traffic moves at fifty miles an hour and there are many blind curves.

I’ve saved two fairly dramatic experiences for last. One involves writing. Since I described this incident in an interview with FictionFix magazine, I will simply quote from the interview.

“How did I come up with the plot [of my novel Comes the Dark]? That was a rather odd experience. I had thought of a few elements of the story but couldn't see any way to put it together, so I just forgot about it. Actually, I got frustrated, fed up with thinking about the whole thing, and simply put it out of my mind. I went to bed thinking that I would never come up with a decent story idea. The next day, as I was doing some chores around the house, I suddenly had the urge to try again. I powered on my laptop computer and started typing a synopsis. And the words just came. The title, the characters, the setting, the theme, the several parallel plot lines, and all the main plot twists – everything just came to me. It was as if I was simply typing, and someone else was doing the actual writing. A few times I started to slow down, and then I would say aloud, ‘What's next?’ And, boom, the pump would be primed again, and more words would come. When I finished after an hour or two, I had a complete synopsis that contained all the essentials of the story. Before I sat down, I had nothing workable at all. Nothing like this has happened to me before or since.”

The other experience, sadly, involves the death of my parents’ dog. This incident was so vivid that I wrote it down in an email message the day after it occurred. Here’s what I set down at that time.

“For about 48 hours before [my mother’s] birthday, I felt really depressed at having to go [to my parents’ house] on Friday night. I dreaded it. This is odd because I visit my folks two or three times a week and normally don't think twice about it. But I did not look forward to Friday. In fact, I remember thinking on Thursday night, ‘Enjoy this night.’ Because I knew that Friday would not be good.

“I also had a dream, which I did not connect with this feeling. The dream was probably three or four days ago. In the dream, I am at my parents' house and a brown dachshund [the same breed and color as my parents’ dog] is running around the living room when suddenly his/her hind legs just collapse. Now the dog is dragging itself around the room, pulling its suddenly useless hindquarters behind it. My father says very sadly, ‘This looks like the end. Goodbye, old friend,’ or words to that effect.”

My dream and my feeling of dread both proved accurate. That Friday, while I was at my parents’ house, their elderly dachshund suffered a stroke which left her hindquarters paralyzed. She was unable to walk and had to be put to sleep the next day. The dog had not suffered any back trouble before this time.

What conclusion can we draw from this grab-bag of anecdotes? Only that my title for this essay may be all wrong. Instead of being unusual occurrences, such incidents may be fairly commonplace – so commonplace that nearly all of us can tell similar stories.

And we should tell them. They make life interesting, and they hint at patterns of meaning underlying the ostensibly random events of our lives. And in a world that often seems dedicated to proving the proposition that life is purposeless and accidental, we need all the meaning we can find.

Essay: More Unusual Occurrences

NOTE: I used to have several older essays on the paranormal posted on my author site. When I recently updated the site, I removed all this material and decided to post it here. This essay, a sequel to "Unusual Occurrences," was originally posted in 2003.

The essay, like the first one, mentions some premonitions or synchronicities involving TV shows. Having thought more about this, I suspect that TV often plays a role in these events because it consists of a stream of images and scenes that are jarringly different from everyday reality. If the thought of a grocery store that you visit every few days pops into your head, and later you find yourself in that store, there's nothing particularly interesting or noteworthy about it. It's just too ordinary to seem meaningful. On the other hand, if the thought of a purple dragon who speaks French occurs to you, and later the same day you happen to see a TV show that features a purple dragon who's fluent in French — well, the coincidence is more likely to catch your attention. It's not that the TV show is important; it's just strikingly odd compared to other, more mundane coincidences that may pass completely unnoticed. 

 

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More Unusual Occurrences

 

What’s an unusual occurrence? Here’s a sample.

I’d spent much of the day working on a previously posted essay called "Flim-Flam Flummery." The essay found fault with some claims made by skeptical debunker James Randi in his book Flim-Flam. Randi had written a response, which I’d posted, and one thing led to another, and the subject occupied my mind for hours. The focus of my essay was Randi’s critique of a series of experiments involving the Israeli psychic (or alleged psychic) Uri Geller.

So these were the thoughts in my head: Flim-Flam, and Uri Geller.

To relax and take my mind off things, I did three crossword puzzles that night. All were short puzzles that could be done in ten minutes or less.

In one of them, there was a four-letter word with the clue "hoax." The answer was "flam," as in flim-flam. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen "flam" used as a standalone word before.

In a second crossword puzzle, there was a three-letter word with the clue "the mysterious Mr. Geller." The answer, of course, was "Uri."

I wish I could cap my story by saying that the third crossword also contained a relevant term, but it didn’t. Sometimes, as Freud might have said, a puzzle is just a puzzle.

Now, I’m not sure what the odds are of encountering two seldom-used words, "flam" and "Uri," in two of three puzzles, on the same day when my mind was consumed with thoughts of Uri Geller and Flim-Flam. But it struck me as – well, as an unusual occurrence.

If you read my first essay on this subject, "Unusual Occurrences," you may recall a couple of odd coincidences involving tennis balls on the beach and boardwalk. Well, it happened again.

I had been away from the shore for the winter. In May, I was back on the East Coast and taking a stroll on the boardwalk. I passed the gazebo where I’d spotted a tennis ball once before. Somewhat whimsically, I took a look inside the gazebo, as if to ask, "Any tennis balls in here?" There were none. But when I went down onto the beach, I noticed a seagull pecking at a greenish thing in the surf. Actually, I couldn’t miss it. The seagull was flapping its wings and making quite a commotion. I walked closer to see what it was working on. You guessed it – an old, punctured tennis ball.

There was at least one other such instance that I bothered to write down. That makes four in all. Now, you might think there must be tennis balls all over the beach, or that I'm constantly on the lookout for them. Not so. I seem to find them only on those rare occasions when they're on my mind.

It appears that such impressions are most likely to occur to us when our minds are relaxed. Many of my premonitions took place while I was walking outdoors, just strolling along.

Taking a walk one afternoon, I found myself thinking of the lyrics to the Simon and Garfunkel song "I Am a Rock." This was odd, because I’m not a Simon and Garfunkel fan, and I don't particularly like that song. Two hours later, I was in a grocery store when "I Am a Rock" came over the public address system – not an instrumental Muzak version, but the original recording, complete with lyrics.

Again while walking, I was thinking of - and humming - a song from the musical Hair called "Where Do I Go?" That night I did (what else?) a crossword puzzle. One of the clues was "song from Hair," and the answer was "Where Do I Go?"

Shaving is another time when my mind wanders and offbeat thoughts can creep in. While shaving before going out to dinner, I happened to think of an episode of The Simpsons in which the clueless Homer, reading the comics, says, "Oh, Andy Capp, you lovable wife-beating drunk." The following evening, I watched a syndicated episode of The Simpsons. It had to be that episode, right? Nope. But it was an episode in which Homer arranges himself in the distinctive Andy Capp position on the couch and says, "Hey, that Andy Capp was on to something." I'm pretty sure these are the only two Andy Capp references in the entire Simpsons oeuvre to date (more than three hundred shows).

Watching TV is another way to let your mind shift into neutral. I was vegging out in front of a TV sitcom one evening. On the show a character got a phone call. Instantly I had a very strong expectation that a friend of mine would call me. Within thirty seconds, my phone rang. Guess who?

In all these instances, my mind was not sharply focused. It was free to wander and pick up whatever stray impressions might come to it. I don't think it's a coincidence that many of my premonitions involve The Simpsons or other TV shows. When my mind wanders, it often goes in a TV direction. One day a line from an episode of The Simpsons kept running through my mind. It was Lisa asking dramatically, "Is this the end of our series ... of events?" That evening, the syndicated Simpsons episode was the one containing that line. I’ve gotten so used to this sort of thing, I have to remind myself to write it down when it happens.

The state of mind that seems most receptive to these impressions is one of free association, in which one idea is linked to another in a way that seems random but may not be. A small example involves two items I got in the mail one afternoon. One was a bill from the phone company, and the other was TV Guide. Included with the phone bill was an ad featuring Catherine Zeta-Jones, the company's spokeswoman. I looked at this, then opened TV Guide to the first page, where I found a prominent reference to an upcoming TV special about Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. Nothing so strange about, is there? But the odd thing is that my train of thought seemed to anticipate the TV Guide listing.

Here’s a recap of my stream of consciousness, which I wrote down right after the fact: Catherine Zeta-Jones is married to Michael Douglas ... Douglas played opposite Gwyneth Paltrow in a movie a few years ago ... Paltrow won an Oscar for her role in Shakespeare in Love, and gave a very emotional speech ... Another actress who gave an emotional speech at the Oscars was Halle Berry ... The theme of Berry's speech was that winning the Oscar was a victory for civil rights. At this point, I said aloud (cynically, I'm afraid), "She wins an Oscar and all of a sudden she thinks she's Martin Luther King." I pictured King delivering his speech to the crowd assembled on the Mall.

Having uttered my snide comment, I opened TV Guide and saw the first page write-up on Peter Jennings Reporting: I Have a Dream - a retrospective on the historic address.

Skeptics have an answer for this. They say that while daydreaming, we have hundreds, even thousands, of fleeting thoughts and impressions. Later, if something in the real world reminds us of one of these thoughts, we ascribe significance to it, without recalling all the other thoughts that went through our mind and weren’t reflected in external events. Of course, it’s possible to turn this argument around and say that if we were able to recall more of our stray thoughts, we would experience even more synchronicities. My main objection to this argument, however, is that it doesn’t seem to fit the facts as I’ve observed them. Usually the impression in question is strong, clear, and vivid – not one stray thought among hundreds, but a real standout that sticks in the memory. That’s precisely why the real-world analog of this thought is so startling.

I would suggest that you test this hypothesis personally. Little do-it-yourself experiments testing your own intuitive talents can be done all the time. I tried one not long ago, at a Barnes & Noble store. And I’m sorry, but I have to talk about crosswords again.

You see, I was in the Games section of the bookstore, where hundreds of crossword-puzzle books occupied one long shelf, all jumbled together in no apparent order. What I wanted to find was a particular kind of puzzle book featuring British-style crosswords, otherwise known as cryptics. These are not popular in the United States, and there are very few books of that sort available here. I didn't feel like searching through all the titles on the slim chance that I would find the one that I wanted, so I decided to try an impromptu experiment.

Without looking, I intentionally relaxed my mind ... then placed my left hand at random on the shelf. My fingers touched three books. When I looked at the three, I found - surprise! - that one of them was indeed a cryptics collection.

Now intrigued, I went to the trouble of checking out all the other titles on the shelf. As best I could tell, there were no other collections of cryptics anywhere among the two hundred or more crossword books on display.

Note that I used my left hand. Possibly the right hemisphere of the brain, which controls the left side of the body, is responsible for picking up these impressions. When the left cerebral hemisphere is fully activated, we may find it harder to have premonitions or notice synchronicities. If this is true, we would not expect to have such experiences while reading or engaged in logical tasks that require linear thinking. We would be more likely to have these experiences when the left hemisphere is disengaged, and the right hemisphere is more easily accessed. This would be true when taking a walk, or when performing routine tasks like shaving, doing the dishes, taking a shower, and driving.

My guess is that in nontechnological, nonliterate societies, where the left cerebral hemisphere is not dominant, people may be more attuned to synchronistic and premonitory experiences, and more accepting of them.

In our own society, we tend to be dismissive of such things. I imagine that we actually pick up many more impressions than we consciously notice or remember. They are, I admit, frequently trivial or even downright silly.

Here’s a trivial one. One day, for no apparent reason, I was thinking of the words, "Attention must be paid!" - a line from Death of a Salesman. I repeated this line to myself several times. No, I’m not a big Arthur Miller fan. I haven’t read that play since I was in high school. But that night a friend of mine phoned, and out of the blue he used the phrase "on a smile and a shoeshine" – another line from the same play.

And here’s a silly one. One Sunday, I wrote an e-mail in which I related a very bad joke about a Quasimodo-like hunchbacked bell ringer, who has no arms and must set the bells in the tower tolling by running into them face-first. The punch line is, "I don't know his name, but his face sure rings a bell." On Monday, I received an advance manuscript of another author's book. Reading it that day, I came across a joking reference to a hunchback whose name "didn't ring a bell."

Some premonitory feelings can actually affect your behavior, at least in small ways. One day at 6:00 PM, I suddenly had a very strong urge to turn on the TV and watch the nightly newscast. I hadn't watched the evening news in quite a while and normally would not watch anything at that hour. The urge got stronger and finally felt very intense, so I turned on the TV - and learned that Saddam Hussein's two sons, Uday and Qusay, had been killed a short time earlier. This was big news to me. I had read a lot about the two psychopathic brothers, and I'd been extremely interested in seeing their much-deserved downfall.

It’s hard to draw a clear distinction between premonitions and synchronicities. Synchronicities have been described as "God winks" – sly acknowledgements from the universe. But sometimes synchronicity is not so much a wink as a nudge – a constellation of events seemingly designed to tell you that you’ve gone off-course. You may even be off-course in a literal sense – you’ve moved (or are about to move) in the wrong geographical direction. This has happened to me, not once, not twice, but three times.

1997: I moved to Phoenix. Within ten days of my arrival, everything that could go wrong did go wrong. I developed an infected cyst, for which I had to get emergency treatment. My car broke down in heavy traffic. The apartment I had moved into - supposedly a luxury unit - presented an astonishing array of problems. The toilet did not work, the air-conditioning did not work, the washing machine did not work, the dishwasher at first did not work and then, when it was "fixed," flooded the kitchen. The microwave oven caused a power overload whenever it was turned on. The key to my mailbox had been lost by the management, leaving me unable to obtain my mail. My neighbors on both sides were incredibly noisy, even at three o'clock in the morning. In retrospect, I feel that I simply was not meant to make that move - and in fact Phoenix was not a good place for me, and I didn't stay long.

1996: I was planning a trip to Wilmington, North Carolina, which I was seriously considering as a place to relocate. I’d booked my flight weeks in advance and was ready to go. On the day of my flight, torrential rains hit my neighborhood, causing flash floods. At the same time, a continent away, Hurricane Fran moved rapidly up the eastern seaboard. The confluence of two storms, one near my home and the other near my intended destination, threw a monkey wrench into my travel plans. I had to cancel my trip. That night, Fran made landfall at Cape Fear, a few miles from Wilmington, and proceeded inland through the heart of the city, passing directly over the hotel in which I'd reserved a room. Damage to Wilmington was extensive, water and electricity were in short supply, and fallen trees and power lines blocked roads for days. A local newspaper called Fran "the most catastrophic storm since Hurricane Hazel leveled beachfront areas in 1954." The upshot was that I had a definite feeling that I was not meant to move to Wilmington. I never looked into it again.

1994: After living in Los Angeles for more than ten years, I’d relocated to Tucson. I had a tough time adjusting to the desert, and after four months, I was ready to throw in the towel. I went to bed determined to call a moving company and begin making arrangements to return to LA. Early the next morning, a phone call from a friend woke me with the news that a major earthquake had hit Los Angeles. It was the Northridge quake, which caused widespread destruction. Needless to say, I put any plans to return to Southern California on hold. I’m glad I did. Tucson turned out to be the right place for me at the time. It would have been a serious mistake to move back to LA.

Now, someone might say, isn't it ridiculous to imagine that huge natural disasters like a hurricane and an earthquake occurred just change my mind or to affect my life? Yes, it is. But that's not what I'm suggesting. I have no doubt that these disasters would have occurred whether or not I'd been thinking about moving to these particular destinations. What is significant to me is the concurrence of these events with my thoughts and plans. It was not inevitable that I would book a flight to Wilmington for the particular day when the worst local hurricane in forty-two years would make landfall, or that I would book a room in a hotel that was directly in the hurricane's path. It was not inevitable that I would make the conscious decision to contact moving companies on the night before the most destructive earthquake to hit Los Angeles since 1971. These natural disasters occurred on their own timetable. What I find interesting is that my timetable so eerily coincided with theirs.

But how could our timetables possibly coincide? Is there any way of looking at these events that might make them a little less inexplicable? I'd like to suggest one possibility.

Let's suppose that there is such a thing as Mind. For the purpose of discussion, it doesn't matter whether this Mind is equivalent to our Higher Self, or to the mind of a spirit guide or angel, or to the mind of God, or to some other mind. All that matters is that this Mind is separate and distinct from brain -- the brain of any given person. I will put brain in lowercase and Mind in uppercase to emphasize the fact that Mind is, in some sense, superior to brain.

Now, imagine that Mind knows a great deal more than does brain. Mind sees further ahead and makes many more connections. Mind surveys reality from a higher vantage point and can see patterns and emerging developments that brain, mired in everyday distractions, cannot.

Moreover, imagine that Mind can pass hints or suggestions to brain -- perhaps in the form of dreams, or fleeting thoughts that seem to come from nowhere, or strangely urgent impulses with no rational foundation, or perhaps even by directly controlling a person's actions.

Isn't it possible to conceive of situations in which Mind could influence brain in such a way as to bring about a synchronicity?

For instance, Mind knows that relocating to Wilmington will be a bad move for me. Mind also knows that there will be torrential rains in my hometown on a certain date, and that a hurricane will be sweeping toward Wilmington on the same date. Mind influences brain (that is, my brain) to purchase a plane ticket for that very date -- thus insuring that my trip will be canceled.

Or: Mind knows that there is a tennis ball on the beach. Mind sends a hint to brain that I should walk on the beach at that spot and that I should think about tennis.

Or: Mind knows that the words "flam" and "Uri" are found in two crossword puzzles among dozens that are available to me. Mind influences brain to choose those particular puzzles to work on at the time when I am already preoccupied with Uri Geller and Flim-Flam.

Such influences need not be particularly significant in every case. Suppose Mind is simply aware, from its higher vantage point, that the song "I Am a Rock" will figure in my life later that day. The song lyrics may be transferred to brain through a kind of information leakage, rather than an intentional suggestion.

Sometimes the relationship may be more complicated than a simple transfer of information, whether intentional or not. For example, suppose Mind knows that moving to Phoenix is a bad idea. One way of looking at this, as in the previous examples, is that Mind knows that a certain apartment in Phoenix is going to have a huge number of problems, so Mind influences brain to put down a deposit on that particular apartment, thereby spoiling the move. But it's also conceivable that Mind, instead of influencing brain, instead influences the events themselves, acting on physical reality directly -- in this case, working things out so that the apartment develops a rash of mysterious problems.

More thoughts on the possible interaction of Mind and brain can be found in Casey Blood's well-written and provocative book, Science, Sense, and Soul (2001).

These ideas are obviously speculative, but if there's any truth in them, we ought to be able to encourage more synchronicities in our lives by becoming better attuned to these hints and nudges on the part of Mind -- "the still small voice" of intuition that we all too often ignore. Hearing this voice requires a rather tricky balancing act. On one hand, we need to be relaxed, allowing our thoughts to associate freely and spontaneously, without any pressure to "get results." On the other hand, we need to be sufficiently alert to pick up on the impression when it occurs.

What seems to be necessary is a state of relaxed attentiveness. Some people appear to have a natural talent in this direction, but others have to learn how to do it, perhaps through meditation or yoga. Probably anyone can learn, given the willingness to try. And if there is anything to the Mind/brain dichotomy I've sketched out, then I would imagine that there are considerable benefits to enhancing our relationship with Mind -- benefits that may extend far beyond an occasional "unusual occurrence."

Why not jot down any particularly vivid oddball thoughts that pop into your mind, and see if they correlate with anything that happens within the next day or so? You may be surprised at the results. Like the man who’d been speaking prose all his life without knowing it, you may discover you have a talent you’d never imagined.

Oh, one more thing about Flim-Flam, Uri Geller, and the crossword puzzles. I was working on my Randi essay only because a reader, James Plaskett, had brought the piece to Randi’s attention. Mr. Plaskett had previously written a book documenting the strange, synchronistic things that happen to him every day. One section of his book involves things that took place while he was reading The Geller Effect, a book about you-know-who.

And the title of Mr. Plaskett’s own book? Coincidences.

Essay: Hits and Misses

NOTE: I used to have several older essays on the paranormal posted on my author site. When I recently updated the site, I removed all this material and decided to post it here. This essay was originally posted in 2004.

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Hits and Misses:
A Crossing Over Transcript

 

After three controversial years on the air, Crossing Over With John Edward is going off the air.

When I began watching this show during its first season, I never guessed that I would end up writing three essays about it - much less that I would argue that Edward's abilities are (probably) genuine, and that skeptical explanations are simply inadequate.

As a sendoff to the TV show, I've decided to post one more essay, this time presenting a point-by-point analysis of a John Edward reading. This particular reading took place during an episode of Crossing Over that aired in syndication on December 29, 2003. The episode may have originally aired earlier; I don't know if the broadcast I saw was a repeat.

Skeptics tend to focus on Edward's least impressive readings, while Edward's defenders often select the most impressive ones. I tried to choose an average reading. It was not spectacular, and there were apparent misses as well as apparent hits. Because four audience members ultimately became involved (identified as No. 1, No. 2, etc.), there was a certain amount of confusion. This made writing the transcript difficult. The fact that Edward talks so fast didn't help.

My transcript of the reading follows, with my comments in square brackets.

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Edward. I'm being pulled over here in that back row. Whoa. Um, I need to come to the lawyer or the legal person.

[No "lawyer or legal person" responds.]

Edward. There's like a legal issue that they want me - they're showing me the scales of justice in that whole back section up there.

[From "a law person," he switches to "a legal issue," a subtle shift.]

No. 1. Libra is the scale.

Edward. Same symbol but not for being a Libra.

[Here Edward is offered the chance to reinterpret the scale as Libra, but he sticks to the legal symbolism. A cold reader would probably have taken the bait.]

Edward. The symbol for legality is what I'm seeing. So either there's a legality that's pending or there's something lawsuit-related happening right now.

No. 1. Yes, there may be one coming up.

[The sitter's response is too tepid and uncertain to qualify as a hit. Edward rejects it, while continuing to defend his position.]

Edward. No, let me tell you there is a total legality or lawsuit issue or court-related thing that is coming up in that back section. So that's what I'm seeing, I'm seeing the scales of justice, and it's not the sign of being a Libra.

[No further confirmation. It's interesting that Edward has now passed up two opportunities for "easy" validations. He could have gone with the Libra suggestion, or he could have accepted the sitter's uncertain response. Again, a cold reader lets the sitter guide him, but Edward seems intent on sticking to his guns.]

Edward. Now either your dad, or there's a father-in-law who's passed, but I've got a father figure who's coming through. They're telling me to say Richard or Rich. There's got to be an R name.

No. 1. Raymond.

Edward. There's got to be an R connection. Is that for him?

No. 1. Raymond was my father.

[Edward said there was a dad or father-in-law with an R name, and this is correct. On the other hand, he said "they're telling me to say Richard or Rich," and the name is Raymond.]

Edward. Okay, well, your "R" dad is here. He's telling me to talk about having your dog with him, or his dog is with him 'cause he's got a dog barking.

[Here he gives three options: "your dog," "his dog," or "a dog," multiplying his chances of a favorable response.]

Edward. And it's not a small dog, it's a bigger dog, so to me it's got to be like a shepherd, it's got to be like a bigger dog.

No. 1. My sister's dog -

Edward. It's a big dog, though.

No. 1. Yeah, my sister's lost two big dogs.

[On the minus side, Edward mentioned one dog, not two; the dogs were actually associated with the sister, not the father; and lots of people have owned a dog at some point in their lives. On the plus side, Edward was correct in specifying a big dog that is deceased. Still, a less than impressive "hit." But keep reading ...]

Edward. Okay. I'm only getting one of them, but to me when they give you the fact that a dog barks, you can let her know that our pets are well taken care of on the other side.

[This could be seen as a fudge, since he may be rationalizing his error in claiming there was only one dog.]

Edward. They're telling me to talk about Charles or Charlie as well. There's a CH or an SH name that I'm supposed to be letting you know connected to your dad.

[The statement is not confirmed, although Edward is talking so fast that the sitter may have failed to register what he's saying.]

Edward. And your dad's telling me to talk about colon cancer. So I don't know if he had something that affected here or surgery here but somebody has this or they had this in this area.

[Edward is indicating his stomach. Note that while "colon cancer" is specific, the statement "he had something that affected" his stomach is vague. "Or surgery" brings in another option. "Somebody has this" - not the dad anymore? "Or they had this" - another reformulation, so that the claim can now apply to anyone, living or dead. Even with all these possibilities presented to the sitter, there is no confirmation.]

Edward. And Maggie. Or Maggie or Margie or M with a G, Mugs, Muggsy.

No. 2. Muggsy was our dad's dog that died.

[Edward ran through Maggie, Margie, and Mugs before getting to Muggsy. Still, the name Muggsy is so unusual that it's hardly likely to be a lucky guess. Edward doesn't appear to register the audience member's response, though he does switch his attention to Sitter No. 2.]

Edward. Your dad passed through [sic] too?

No. 2. My dad's dog died the day of my dad's funeral. That was his favorite -

[Although Edward does not pick up on it, this statement may apply to the barking dog mentioned earlier. Muggsy clearly had a close relationship to Sitter No. 2's dad. Were Edward's earlier statements about the "R dad" really meant for Sitter No. 2? Unfortunately, we never learn the name of Sitter No. 2's dad.]

Edward. Okay, I thought I was cracking up here because they're telling me to say like Maggie -

No. 2. My name is Maureen, my dad's sister's Margaret -

[Note that the sitter, who has already identified the dog as Muggsy, is now stretching to make the name "Maggie" fit also. Edward, however, does not accept these suggestions.]

Edward. It's an MG name like Maggie, Margie, Muggsy.

No. 2. Muggsy is -

Edward. Is that the dog?

No. 2. That's the dog that died.

[He finally registers that Muggsy is the dog. If he really didn't hear it the first time, this tends to give the lie to the claim that Edward is a cold reader. A cold reader would pay much closer attention to what the sitter is saying. Also note that Sitter No. 2 described Muggsy as her dad's "favorite" and said Muggsy "died the day of my dad's funeral." Thus the dog would have had strong emotional significance to the dad.]

Edward. Okay. But your dad's passed as well.

[Sitter No. 2 already mentioned "my dad's funeral," so this information was given to Edward. He did not seem to be "divining" this, merely repeating it for clarification.]

No. 2. My dad's passed.

Edward. And the P name like Pete or Peter?

No. 3. Peter was my grandfather, and we came together.

[This is the third audience member to participate. All three are sitting together. "Peter" is correct, but of course it's a common name.]

Edward. Passed?

No. 3. Yes.

Edward. Did you actually say that if they came through, you'd be happy to hear from [addressing Sitter No. 2] your dad and [addressing Sitter No. 3] your grandfather?

No. 2. Yes, we did.

[Skeptics would say that this sort of conversation would be predicted, but there seems to be no necessity that the sitters would have singled out one's father and the other's grandfather, as opposed to various other deceased relatives.]

Edward. Somebody worked for the Transportation Department too. Somebody worked like subways, buses. They did something that would be transportation-related.

No. 3. My grandfather was a tractor truck driver.

[Note that Peter was Sitter No. 3's grandfather, so this information connects with Edward 's earlier reference to Peter. Driving a truck is not the same as working for the Transportation Department. Still, it's certainly "transportation-related." Edward is wrong in saying "subways, buses," but a tractor-trailer truck is arguably pretty close.]

Edward. Your mom is still here, right?

No. 2. My mom is.

[Edward is correct.]

Edward. And she's got the Eileen background or the Ellen, where's the Eileen name?

No. 2. My dad's cousin Eileen who passed away - it's Eileen -

[The name Eileen does mean something to the sitter, but the association comes on the father's side, and Edward said it was on the mother's side.]

Edward. Okay, for some reason you need to let your mom know that Eileen is with your dad, okay?

[This could be seen as a way of rationalizing the mistake. Eileen is associated with the dad, but "for some reason" it's important to convey Eileen's message to the mom.]

No. 2. Okay.

Edward. And Donna or Diana, the D name is still living, or [addressing Sitter No. 1] is that back for you?

[Edward's query "Is that back for you?" may have been prompted by Sitter No. 1's reaction to the name.]

No. 1. That's me, I have a brother Don.

[The name Don is fairly common, and since Edward is now talking to three people, there is a good chance that one of them will know a Don.]

Edward. Okay.

No. 1. Actually we're best friends. We all came together.

[If they describe themselves as "best friends" as opposed to sisters, cousins, etc., they are probably not related. Thus there is a large pool of deceased relatives connected to three of them - a separate group for each family. This increases the chance that any given name will be verified by someone in the group.]

No. 3. We all came together.

Edward. Oh, you came together. No wonder why ...

[Edward seems to be indicating here that the messages for the three of them were somewhat confused because they all came together. It had not previously been clear to him that all three sitters - not just sitters No. 2 and No. 3 - were connected.]

Edward. Then one of you has the story about the woodpecker outside your house. Or you actually have a woodpecker-like thing outside your house. There's either a woodpecker or a hummingbird right outside the house.

["Woodpecker" or "hummingbird" or "woodpecker-like thing" multiplies the chances of a hit.]

No. 1. My sister has a hummingbird feeder attached to her glass doors.

[Since Edward said, "You actually have...", he was referring to someone present, not to the sister. This would appear to be a miss - but in the post-reading interview, it is revealed to have been a very good hit, when a fourth member of the group says, "The woodpecker - the woodpecker my daughter and my husband watch every morning on our tree right in front of water out the window in the kitchen! Every morning!" Sitter No. 4 is embarrassed not to have thought of this during the reading, and adds, "Putting the pieces together - it takes a while."]

Edward. Okay, let her know that, you know, your family sees this as a way of acknowledging that this might be new since their passing, or her residence is new since their passing, and this is their way of kind of looking at this.

[A vague formulation that could mean the bird feeder is new or the house is new.]

Edward. And there's an issue about either the new house, the construction, or something about the property that was built upon where they didn't know what kind of, like, staircase to put in or should it be like straight up, should it be like a curved one, should it be like up, level, then up again, but there's an issue about a curve or something with construction with a staircase happening too.

[This prompts the fourth member of the group to speak up.]

No. 4. I live on the lake where we're disputing where we're going to -

Edward. Put your stairs?

No. 4. Put the stairs to the lake because we are up on a hill and I have two little kids.

[Edward has said there is an issue about construction, property, and a dispute about a staircase. All of this turns out to be accurate. Also, as we will learn in the post-reading interview, it was Sitter No. 4 who had the woodpecker outside her house, so Edward is correct in connecting the woodpecker with "the new house, the construction."]

Edward. Okay, a lot of property on the grounds?

No. 4. A lot of property.

[Edward is correct, although the sitter's statement that the house is "up on a hill" may have implied that there was a lot of property.]

Edward. Boundary's this then. [sic] It needs to be fenced. All I know is what they just showed me - it's a caution with the boundaries and the property.

No. 4. Okay. We've been disputing how we're going to put the boundary line at the hill to mark off where we go down to the lake.

[Edward seems to be right again, and the issue of building a staircase doesn't logically entail a boundary dispute. On the other hand, Edward did not specifically mention a boundary dispute. He said, "It needs to be fenced... It's a caution with the boundaries and the property" a fairly vague formulation.]

Edward. Okay, but these will be wood steps, correct?

No. 4. They're rock.

[Edward is incorrect.]

Edward. No, they're showing me wood steps, like I see wood, like I see a wood step or in this case maybe it's a wood decking.

No. 4. We have a huge deck we just built - we have a rope swing and everybody uses the rope swing -

Edward. Okay, from the wood deck?

No. 4. Yes.

[A skeptic could say that Edward, having failed with his identification of wood steps, rescued himself by switching to the subject of "wooden decking." Still there is a wood deck, which the sitter says "we just built" - a phrase that harks back to Edward's comment about "construction."]

Edward. Okay. They're pulling their energy back. Thank you very, very much.

[End of transcript.]

--------

Remember that the reading began with the claim that "a legal issue" was coming out - "a total legality or lawsuit issue or court-related thing." Unfortunately, Sitter No. 4 didn't make it clear if the dispute over the boundary had legal ramifications. Her statement, "We've been disputing how we're going to put the boundary line," could be taken to mean a dispute with the neighbors or simply a disagreement within the family over the best way "to mark off where we go down to the lake." If a dispute with the neighbors was taking place or was expected, then the early reference to a possible legal issue could well have been correct. Perhaps this is the issue that Sitter No. 1 was referring to when she said, "Yes, there may be one coming up." Or perhaps not. There's no way to know.

If we assume that the boundary of the property is a potential legal issue, and if we assume that the "R dad" is Sitter No. 2's father, then we have a pretty clear logical progression in both cases.

Logical progression A proceeds in a circle: real or potential legal issue > Sitter No. 4 > woodpecker > new house > stairs > property > boundary > real or potential legal issue.

Logical progression B also comes full circle: "R dad" > dog > Muggsy > Sitter No. 2 wanted to hear from her dad.

We also have a modest cluster of information around Sitter No. 3's grandfather: he is deceased, his name was Peter, he was a professional driver of a large vehicle, and Sitter No. 3 wanted particularly to hear from him.

People's reaction to a transcript like this is very much dependent on their standpoint on the subject of psychic phenomena as a whole. Skeptics will tend to focus on the clear or apparent misses: colon cancer, wood steps, a CH or SH name. Those who are not skeptical will tend to focus on the hits: Muggsy, woodpecker, stairs, boundary. As for the more ambiguous statements, such as the legal issue or the transportation-related job, each side will interpret them either positively or negatively to bolster their case.

The same is true of the Crossing Over series overall. After three years, the show has its passionate defenders and its equally passionate critics. Only one thing is certain: even with John Edward off the air, the controversy that surrounds him will go on.

Essay: Psychics and Trickery

NOTE: I used to have several older essays on the paranormal posted on my author site. When I recently updated the site, I removed all this material and decided to post it here. This essay was originally posted in 2004.

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Psychics and Trickery 

 

I'm sick of Uri Geller.

I mention this because, more than a year ago, I wrote an essay concerning some experiments in ESP in which Geller, the famed Israeli psychic, was the test subject ("Flim-Flam Flummery"). These experiments had come in for severe criticism by well-known skeptic James Randi in his book Flim-Flam. I, in turn, subjected Randi to criticism for what I saw as errors and omissions in his account. Since then I've posted several addenda to the piece - in fact, the addenda are now roughly equal in length to the original essay! Nothing much has been settled, and since these experiments were conducted back in the 1970s, it seems unlikely that the various arguments will ever be resolved.

But that's not why I'm sick of Uri Geller. No, I'm sick of him because in my modest efforts to challenge Flim-Flam's portrayal of the experiments, I had to become Geller's defender. And this put me in an uncomfortable position, because Geller is a hard person to defend.

Consider: This is a man who, at one point, claimed to be in telepathic contact with an intelligent supercomputer piloting an alien spaceship beyond the orbit of Pluto. This is a man who claims to have genuine psychic powers, yet has used them in glitzy stage performances and for such trivial purposes as bending spoons. This is a man who claims to be able to produce "apports," or materializations of physical objects out of midair or through solid walls - yet no apports have ever been detected in laboratory tests with Geller.

In short, this is someone who could easily be dismissed as a faker - not, mind you, a fakir, or Hindu holy man, but a plain old-fashioned phony-baloney snake-oil salesman.

And yet ... I have read of tests in which Geller, under close observation and with no apparent means of cheating, was able to producer results no one could explain.

Which is why I'm sick of Uri Geller. He makes my head hurt. Part of me cannot give any credence to a self-promoting confabulator and stage magician. But another part of me cannot dismiss well-conducted tests that yielded positive results. (The tests discussed in Flim-Flammay or may not have been carried out properly, depending on whom you believe. Examples of other experiments with Geller that appear to have been conducted according to rigorous standards are given in Richard S. Broughton's Parapsychology: The Controversial Science.)

What’s worse is that Geller is by no means unique. The history of research into psychic phenomena is rife with persons who appear to have had genuine paranormal abilities, yet who clearly resorted to trickery on some occasions.

A famous example is Eusapia Palladino, a Sicilian medium known for the "physical" (as opposed to mental) phenomena displayed in her séances. These phenomena took a bewildering variety of forms, including a cold draft clearly felt in the sealed séance room, the billowing of Eusapia's skirt with no apparent cause, the movements and levitations of tables and other objects, partial manifestations of spirit forms, unexplained noises, and the playing of musical instruments without human assistance. This is just a small sampling; a detailed first-hand report is found in Everard Feilding's Sittings with Eusapia Palladino and Other Studies, and a long summary can be read in Stephen E. Braude's The Limits of Influence.

Investigators who studied Eusapia closely and conscientiously most often concluded that she had genuine - and formidable - psychic powers. Experienced magicians testified that no sleight of hand and no use of hidden mechanical contrivances could have produced the effects generated by Eusapia, who often provided her demonstrations in a room chosen by the experimenters - a room carefully searched before and after each sitting.

But here's the thing about Eusapia: As genuine as her abilities seem to have been, she was still a notorious cheat.

Everyone who worked with her commented on this fact. Eusapia would cheat whenever she thought she could get away with it. She took a childish delight in cheating and showed no remorse when caught. She seemed to regard the experiments as a game, and the experimenters as stuffed shirts whom she was eager to deceive.

If Eusapia, was a cheat, how can any of her phenomena be taken seriously? For the simple reason that under conditions in which cheating was almost certainly impossible, she continued to produce results. In fact the results she obtained through the legitimate use of her powers were far more impressive than the crude parlor tricks she sometimes resorted to.

So here we have another case of a psychic with some measurable - in fact, quite dramatic - supernormal talents, yet who had a marked proclivity to deceive. Other possibly genuine psychics or mediums who nevertheless may have resorted to trickery include Kate and Margaretta Fox,  Florence Cook,  Madame Blavastky, Marthe Beraud (see my essay "Of Dinosaurs and Phantoms" and its sequel),  and Mina Crandon (see my essay "The Two Faces of Margery").  

Before we go on, it's important to observe that not all mediums and pyschics have been accused of trickery. Genuine mediums whose long careers were never tainted with any suspicion of deceit, despite frequent investigations, include D.D. Home, Leonora Piper, Gladys Osborne Leonard, Margaret Verral, and Eileen Garrett, who is discussed in my essay "R-101." 

Nevertheless, the flakes and the occasional deceivers outnumber the more reliable psychics. Any good history of parapsychology will provide numerous examples of this problem. See, for instance, Broughton's above-mentioned Parapsychology: The Controversial Science, or Brian Inglis's Natural and Supernatural and its follow-up Science and Parascience. I won’t belabor the point here. The really interesting question is how to explain this frequent confluence of deception and genuine abilities in the same person, whether that person is Uri Geller, Eusapia Palladino, or anybody else.

Various explanations have been offered. First, because psychic abilities are typically transient and unpredictable, psychics can be hard pressed to produce results on a regular basis. On days when they're feeling "off," they may resort to trickery to supplement their actual abilities.

Second, some psychics report physical and mental strain after a séance. Eusapia was said to be seriously ill for two or three days following any successful demonstration. A psychic wishing to avoid this penalty might be tempted to produce similar effects through legerdemain.

Third, some physics, like Eusapia, seem to regard the testing procedure as a kind of game. They may take a certain glee in showing up the supposed experts who have arrived to pass sober judgment on the case.

Fourth, psychics who become fatigued or disgruntled after an exhaustive series of tests may consciously or subconsciously sabotage the proceedings.

No doubt there is some validity to all these suggestions. Another possibility, related to the third and fourth points but with a slightly different emphasis, involves the nature of what we might call "the psychic personality."

Is there, in fact, a typical personality profile for people with psychic gifts? I suspect that there is, and that true psychics tend to be similar to artists, poets, musicians, and other creative types. That is, they tend to be sensitive, deeply intuitive, and right-brain-oriented. Creative people are generally not known for methodical reasoning and linear thinking, but rather for a more free-form, holistic way of processing information. Psychics, likewise, may not be keen logical thinkers who reason their way from premise to conclusion. Instead they may be more likely to follow a line of thought that "feels right" or "just seems to make sense," operating in a nonlinear, intuitive fashion.

This mindset is both the psychic's strength and weakness. It is the psychic's strength because it allows the uncensored, unconstrained development of a socially disreputable and psychologically unsettling talent. It is the psychic's weakness because it renders the psychic peculiarly vulnerable to any stray thought or passing impression. If the thought pops into Uri Geller's mind that he's in contact with an extraterrestrial supercomputer, he may lack the critical faculties necessary to subject this idea to rigorous analysis. To him, this idea might be just as true, this impression just as real, as any other idea or impression that registers with him. He may not be a critical thinker who can readily distinguish valid insights from nonsense.

Similarly, if Eusapia finds it entertaining to fool the investigators who have come to examine her, then she will have her fun. For her, there is no conception of the possible importance of the investigators' work. They are seeking data in their methodical, no-nonsense way, while she is a free spirit, uninterested in hypotheses and theories, evidence and proof. She cannot take them seriously because she cannot understand them - just as they, with their logical, analytical minds, cannot understand her.

Imagine how Picasso would respond if a team of scientists tried to study him in a lab. He would probably end up painting mustaches on their faces. They would call him crazy, and he would call them boring. They would accuse him of taking nothing seriously, and he would accuse them of having no sense of humor. They might even decide that he had no real talent, since they were not able to measure it - while he would conclude that they had no conception of talent, because they didn’t know how to recognize it when it was right in front of them. Between the two sides there would be an unbridgeable chasm - the distance between two very different mindsets.

I think this way of looking at things helps us to realize why the study of psychic phenomena can be so frustrating, so crowded with contradictions. The people gifted with these "wild talents" (as they are known in some cultures) are exactly the sort of folks who will not respond favorably or predictably to confinement in a laboratory. Just as it is difficult to quantify genius in a standardized test, so it is difficult to isolate unmistakable, repeatable psychic phenomena under standardized laboratory conditions - because the mentality most conducive to the development and exercise of these abilities is antithetical to that of the researchers designing the tests.

None of this means that scientific examination of psychic phenomena is useless. Despite the difficulties, considerable evidence has been collected. But much of this evidence is rendered less persuasive because of the test subjects' bizarre claims or erratic behavior. This is frustrating, but it may also be inevitable. If you work with a genius, you have to expect tantrums, moodiness, and other expressions of the creative temperament. And if you work with a psychic, you may have to expect - and accept - off-the-wall claims, childish trickery, and general monkey business. Except in rare cases, you probably can’t get one without the other.

 

Sources

Stephen E. Braude, The Limits of Influence (1991)

Richard S. Broughton, Parapsychology: the Controversial Science (1991)

Everard Feilding, Sittings with Eusapia Palladino and Other Studies (1963)

Brian Inglis, Natural and Supernatural (1977), and Science and Parascience (1984)

 

Essay: Flim-Flam Flummery

NOTE: I used to have several older essays on the paranormal posted on my author site. When I recently updated the site, I removed all this material and decided to post it here. This essay, originally posted in 2003, has been slightly abridged and reworded, mainly to eliminate references to outdated links.

A response from James Randi follows my essay. After his comments, there are some further remarks of my own, which shed additional light on some details mentioned in the main post.

James Randi died in 2020 at the age of 92.

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Flim-Flam Flummery: 

A Skeptical Look at James Randi

 

Years ago, when I was a full-fledged skeptic, atheist, and rationalist, I read James Randi's 1980 book Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns and other Delusions. Randi is an accomplished magician and a professional skeptic, dedicating to disproving any and all claims of what he considers pseudoscience. In line with this agenda, and as its title suggests, Flim-Flam is a concerted attack on miscellaneous purported irrationalities – everything from the pop-culture writings of Erich von Daniken to the more serious investigations of professional parapsychologists. I enjoyed the book, which reinforced my belief system at the time.

Recently I picked up Flim-Flam again. Having changed my mind about many things over the past twenty years, I responded to it much differently this time. I was particularly struck by the book's hectoring, sarcastic tone. Randi pictures psychic researchers as medieval fools clad in "caps and bells" and likens the delivery of an announcement at a parapsychology conference to the birth of "Rosemary's Baby." After debunking all manner of alleged frauds, he opens the book's epilogue with the words, "The tumbrels now stand empty but ready for another trip to the square" – a reference to the French Revolution, in which carts ("tumbrels") of victims were driven daily to the guillotine. Randi evidently pictures himself as the executioner who lowers the blade. In passing, two points might be made about this metaphor: the French Revolution was a product of "scientific rationalism" run amok ... and most of its victims were innocent.

Still, the tedious nastiness of Flim-Flam does not tell us anything about its accuracy. Intrigued, I decided to check out a few of Randi's claims in detail.

I chose to focus on Chapter Eight, Randi's dissection of the experiments of Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff, two well-known parapsychologists. Randi calls them "the Laurel and Hardy of psi" and proceeds to argue that their experiments were a tissue of ineptitude, gullibility, and dishonesty.

The first thing I noticed was that Randi never gives any indication that Targ and Puthoff have any scientific credentials or accomplishments. The casual reader could be forgiven for assuming that they are not "real" scientists at all. For the record, Targ is a physicist credited with inventing the FM laser, the high-power gas-tranport laser, and the tunable plasma oscillator. Puthoff, also a physicist, invented the tunable infra-red laser and is widely known for his theoretical work on quantum vacuum states and the zero point field. If these two are Laurel and Hardy, at least they come with good résumés. Randi, by contrast, has no scientific training.

Randi starts off by telling us how Targ and Puthoff took a professed psychic, Ingo Swann, to Stanford University, where, they said, Swann used his psychic abilities to affect the operation of a magnetometer. According to Randi, "the report was all wet." He knows this because he contacted Dr. Arthur Hebard, "the builder of the device, who was present and has excellent recollections of what took place." Hebard, Randi says disputes the Targ-Puthoff account. He is quoted as saying, "It's a lie. You can say it any way you want, but that's what I call a lie."

This is pretty compelling stuff. But is Randi's version of events accurate? Let's take a look.

First, he seems to make a rather basic error when he says that both Targ and Puthoff were present for this experiment. As best I can determine, Puthoff conducted the experiment, which took place in June, 1972, without Targ's assistance. Targ had met Puthoff prior to this time, but their work together apparently did not begin until a few months later.

That's a small point. Far more important is the matter of Dr. Hebard's testimony. There's another side to the story, which I found in Chapter 17 of Psychic Breakthroughs Today by D. Scott Rogo. Rogo, who died in 1990 at the age of forty, was a prolific journalist and researcher of psychic phenomena. He wrote numerous popular books, some of which have been used as college texts. He also published research papers in peer-reviewed parapsychology journals. Although Rogo was sometimes criticized for tackling overly esoteric subjects, he had a reputation for honesty and was respected for his willingness to do hands-on investigation and field work, rather than relying on armchair appraisals. A Scott Rogo tribute and bibliography can be found here.

Rogo writes, "There obviously exist several discrepancies between Dr Puthoff's views on what happened during this experiment, and what Randi claims Dr Hebard told him. So to clarify the matter, I decided to get in touch with Dr Hebard myself. I finally tracked him down at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. He was very willing to discuss the Swann magnetometer demonstration with me, and professed to be very interested in parapsychology." Hebard's interest in the paranormal contradicts Randi's statement that Hebard, "not being a reader of far-out literature," was unaware of Targ and Puthoff's claims.

Rogo acknowledges that Hebard's account differs in some respects from Puthoff's:

Dr Hebard denied in no uncertain terms, however, Randi's claim that Swann was never asked to 'stop the field charge' being recorded from the magnetometer. He easily recalled that he had suggested that it would be a fascinating effect if Swann could produce it . . . which, of course, he actually did soon after the suggestion was made. Randi also directly quotes Dr Hebard as calling some of Targ and Puthoff's claims 'lies'. Dr Hebard was very annoyed by this claim since, as he explained to me, Randi had tried to get him to make this charge and he had refused. Dr Hebard later signed a statement to this effect for me. [Ellipsis in original]

As for the discrepancies between Hebard's and Puthoff's accounts, Rogo reports that in a subsequent meeting with Puthoff, he was shown "the actual graphed print-outs given by the magnetometer during the Swann demonstrations. The records supported Dr Puthoff's contention more than they did Dr Hebard's."

So far, then, the best we can say is that Randi's criticism of Puthoff (and Targ, who apparently wasn't even involved in the magnetometer experiment) is far from the last word on the subject.

Randi proceeds to launch a comprehensive critique of Targ and Puthoff's article "Information Transmission under Conditions of Sensory Shielding," which appeared in the October 18, 1974, issue of the respected journal Nature. The article details experiments involving, among other participants, the professed psychic Uri Geller.

Randi's take on this series of experiments is withering. He skewers Targ and Puthoff as "bunglers." He reports that their experiments were conducted in a chaotic atmosphere conducive to cheating. He says that a hole in the wall of Geller's isolation room enabled him to spy on the scientists during their ESP experiments. He says that Targ and Puthoff falsified the results of the tests by omitting failed experiments that would have lowered Geller's averages to the level of chance. Further, he says that the scoring of Geller's performances was mishandled, generating higher scores than Geller deserved.

The question naturally arises: How does Randi know all this, since, as he admits, "I've never even set foot on the sacred grounds of SRI [Stanford Research Institute, where the experiments were conducted]"? He explains that he was given inside information by "an individual" who claimed to represent dozens of SRI scientists. This group, which worked in secret and even adopted a code name (Broomhilda), passed the information to Randi.

Unfortunately, Randi never names this individual or any other members of the Broomhilda group. He says that "Broomhilda verified for me much of the information that I had been holding on to for years," but where did he get this earlier information in the first place? "That data," he says, "now moved from the status of hearsay to documented fact." But documented is hardly a term applicable to either the initial information, which is never specified, or the Broomhilda information, which came from an anonymous source. He adds, "Additional facts were elicited during conversations and correspondence with individuals. Many of these persons were not aware of Broomhilda and were acting on their own. Their completely independent input supported Broomhilda's charges. Taken together," he concludes, "the information from all sources amounted to quite an indictment."

Maybe so, but it's an indictment that would never hold up in court. The reader is expected to take Randi's word that his unidentified sources are trustworthy – and that the sources themselves are well-informed about experimental procedures they may or may not have witnessed.

Thus when Randi alleges that "hundreds of [failed] experiments that were done by SRI ... were never reported," we must take the statement on faith, as it is unsupported by any documentation. Similarly, when Randi says definitively, "All the other tests [i.e., the successful ones] lacked proper controls and were useless," we search in vain for any footnote to back up this assertion.

A posting I found on a message board (2024 update: link has expired)  sums up the situation nicely: "Claims of poor scientific method leveled at the experimenters have been shown to be mainly unsubstantiated personal opinion and second-hand 'Chinese Whispers.'" (Chinese Whispers is the British equivalent of the American game Telephone.) It might be worth adding that critics of paranormal phenomena, like Randi, are forever decrying any reliance on "anecdotal evidence," which is precisely what the bulk of Randi's argument consists of.

Randi does produce two individuals willing to go on the record – Charles Rebert and Leon Otis, both of whom were SRI psychologists. Rebert and Otis apparently disagreed with the Targ-Puthoff conclusions; indeed, Randi tells us that "a horrified Rebert also heard that Targ and Puthoff were going to proclaim these erroneous findings before Stanford University's psychology department, and he forbade such a blunder. The talk was canceled." But this only tells us that there was a dispute among the scientists at SRI. Rebert and Otis ran some unsuccessful tests with Geller and decided that he was a fraud. Targ and Puthoff ran what they regarded as successful tests and decided that, in some areas at least, Geller had legitimate psychic powers. Nothing in Randi's text establishes which conclusion was correct.

Randi goes on to report that after he had criticized Geller in an earlier book, Targ and Puthoff "issued a 'fact sheet' in rebuttal to twenty-four" of his points. According to Randi, "This attempt was a failure, and in response to one claim that the SRI tests were done under tight controls, a scientist who was there declared flatly, 'This is b.s. As far as my colleagues and I are concerned, none of the experiments met accepted scientific protocol.' I will not burden you," Randi concludes, "with the other twenty-three points; they are as easily demolished."

Well, hold on. A quotation from yet another anonymous source ("a scientist who was there") hardly constitutes a demolition job, especially when the scientist's argument consists of an unsupported assertion ("none of the experiments met accepted scientific protocol"). Personally, I would have welcomed the "burden" of the other twenty-three points and of Randi's detailed and carefully documented rebuttals.

Some idea of the counter-arguments to Randi's claims can be obtained by taking another look at D. Scott Rogo, who earlier showed the initiative to track down Dr. Hebard. Unlike Randi, who, as we have seen, had "never even set foot" inside the research facility, Rogo visited SRI on June 12, 1981. He found that Randi had misrepresented the hole in the wall of the isolation room through which Geller was supposedly able to spy on the researchers. The hole, a conduit for cables, is depicted in Flim-Flam as being three and a half inches wide and therefore offering a good view of the experimental area where the researchers were working. Rogo found, however, that the hole 

is three-and-a-quarter inches [wide] and extends through a twelve-and-a-half inch wall. This scopes your vision and severely limits what you can see through it. The hole is not left open either, since it is covered by a plate through which cables are routinely run. Dr Puthoff and his colleague were, however, concerned that their subject might be ingenious enough to insert an optical probe through this hole, so they monitored the opening throughout their telepathy experiments.

Randi also indicates that the hole is stationed 34 inches above the floor. Not so, says Rogo:

It isn't three feet above the floor, but is located only a little above floor level. The only thing you can see through it - even under optimal conditions - is a small bit of exterior floor and opposing wall. (The viewing radius is only about 20°, and the targets for the Geller experiments were hung on a different wall completely.)* I also discovered during my trip to SRI that an equipment rack was situated in front of the hole throughout the Geller work, which obstructed any view through it even further. I ended my little investigation by talking with two people who were present during these critical experiments. They both agreed that wires were running through the hole – therefore totally blocking it – during the time of the Geller experiments.

It would appear that the hole in the isolation booth's wall poses considerably less of a problem than the holes in Randi's arguments.

By now, I felt that Randi's credibility was in doubt. He had committed careless errors of fact, had apparently misrepresented and misquoted Hebard, and had made unsupported assertions based on rumors. I wondered what Targ and Puthoff have to say about all this. The only responses from either of them that I could find online were part of Argument 18 in a long essay by Winston Wu, "Debunking Common Skeptical Arguments Against Paranormal and Psychic Phenomena," where Puthoff is quoted as saying the following:

In Flim- Flam, [Randi] gives something like 28 debunking points, if my memory serves me correctly. I had the opportunity to confront Randi at a Parapsychology Association conference with proof in hand, and in tape-recorded interaction he admitted he was wrong on all the points. He even said he would correct them for the upcoming paperback being published by the CSICOP group. (He did not.)* ...

The truth of the matter is that none of Randi's claimed suspected inadequate controls actually had anything to do with the experiments, which of course Randi was not there to know of. This has been independently reported by Scott Rogo somewhere in the literature, who came out specifically to check each of Randi's guesses about inadequate controls and found them inapplicable under the conditions in which the tests were conducted. In fact, all of Randi's suggestions were amateurish compared to the sophisticated steps we took, suspecting as we did everything from magician's tricks to an Israeli intelligence scam ...

In case one thinks that it was just a case of our opinions vs. his opinions, we chose for the list of incorrect points only those that could be independently verified. Examples: [Randi] said that in our Nature paper we verified Geller's metal-bending. Go to the paper, and you see that we said we were not able to obtain evidence for this. He said that a film of the Geller experiment made at SRI by famed photographer Zev Pressman was not made by him, but by us and we just put his name on it. We showed up with an affidavit by Pressman saying that indeed he did make the film.

There is no way for me to verify Puthoff's statement that he tape-recorded Randi's concession of defeat "on all the points." This has to stand as an unsupported assertion, just like Randi's own arguments. But it is possible to take a closer look at Puthoff's last two claims.

First, Puthoff insists that his and Targ's Nature article does not endorse Geller's alleged metal-bending. This is accurate, as you can see for yourself by reading the article. Puthoff and Targ write, "It has been widely reported that Geller has demonstrated the ability to bend metal by paranormal means. Although metal bending by Geller has been observed in our laboratory, we have not been able to combine such observations with adequately controlled experiments to obtain data sufficient to support the paranormal hypothesis."

On the other hand, I have not found any statement by Randi in Flim-Flam to the effect that Targ and Puthoff "had verified Geller's metal-bending." He may have made this statement elsewhere, of course.

How about Puthoff's second claim, regarding the SRI film? Randi certainly does make this an issue in Flim-Flam. Targ and Puthoff, he writes,

appended to [the film] – without his knowledge or permission – the name of Zev Pressman, the SRI photographer who had shot the film ... Pressman, said Targ and Puthoff, was present during [a particular series of] experiments. Not so, according to Pressman ... Most damning of all, Pressman said to others at SRI that he had been told the successful [tests] were done after he (Pressman) had gone home for the day. So it appears the film was a reenactment ... Pressman did not even know that Targ and Puthoff were issuing a statement, he did not sign it, and he did not give them permission to use his name. He knew nothing about most of what appeared under his name, and he disagreed with the part that he did know about. [Italics and parentheses in original]

Here we have Randi saying that this photographer, Pressman, was duped and used by the experimenters, while Puthoff says that Pressman signed an affidavit swearing that "indeed he did make the film." Is there any way to resolve this?

A further Web search turned up Chapter 14 of The Geller Effect (2024: link has expired). Part One of this book is written by Uri Geller. Part Two, which includes Chapter 14, was written by Guy Lyon Playfair. Living up to his name, Playfair offers an even-handed presentation of the various controversies surrounding the flamboyant and eccentric Geller.

Playfair writes,

[Randi] turned, in a later book, Flim-Flam, to the professional photographer who had made the film, a Stanford employee named Zev Pressman, with an extraordinary series of unfounded allegations....

Pressman flatly denied all of Randi's allegations in two public statements, neither of which was even mentioned in the 1982 reissue of the book. "I made the film," said Pressman, "and my name appeared with my full knowledge and permission . . . Nothing was restaged or specially created . . . I have never met nor spoken to nor corresponded with Randi. The 'revelations' he attributes to me are pure fiction."

It is true that no mention is made of these "two public statements" in Flim-Flam's 1982 edition – the edition I own.

For corroborating testimony, I turned once again to the indefatigable Scott Rogo, who investigated this claim just as he had looked into Dr. Hebard's testimony and the infamous hole in the wall.

Rogo writes, "I spoke directly with Mr Pressman on 5 January 1981 and he was quite interested when I told him about Randi's book. He denied that he had spoken to the magician. When I read him the section of Randi's book dealing with his alleged 'expose' of the Targ-Puthoff film, he became very vexed. He firmly backed up the authenticity of the film, told me how he had taken it on the spot, and labeled Randi's allegation as a total fabrication. (His own descriptive language was a little more colorful!)" Rogo also reports that Puthoff showed him Pressman's signed affidavit.

How could Randi's conversation with Pressman be so different from Rogo's? The truth is, Randi does not appear to have had a conversation with Pressman at all. Take another look at the quote from Flim-Flam. The key words are: "Most damning of all, Pressman said to others at SRI ..."

Evidently, then, Randi's source is not Pressman himself, but unnamed "others at SRI" who passed on this information to Randi. Another round of Chinese Whispers, it seems.

At this point Randi ends his discussion of the Geller experiments and proceeds to criticize Targ and Puthoff's later work, as well as the work of another researcher, Charles Tart. Dealing with these criticisms would require another long essay, so I'll stop here. 

Before I began this modest online research project for a rainy afternoon, I had mixed feelings about Randi. I saw him as closed-minded and supercilious, but I also assumed he was sincere and, by his own lights, honest. Now, having explored his contribution to the Targ-Puthoff controversy in some detail, I am thoroughly unimpressed. Randi comes across as a bullying figure, eager to attack and ridicule, willing to distort and even invent evidence – in short, the sort of person who will do anything to prevail in a debate, whether by fair means or foul.

The title of his book thus takes on a new and unintended meaning. From what I can tell, James Randi really is the Flim-Flam man.

------------------------------------------------

ADDENDUM: James Randi was kind enough to respond to my essay after a reader brought it to his attention. 

In a message dated September 24, 2003, James Randi responds:

Briefly....

I set out here to rebut the accusation by Michael Prescott, at [expired link]. I spent some two hours gathering the material, made brief notes, and then realized that I was wasting far too much time picking off fleas. Here are the notes I prepared:

Referring to the Prescott document: No, I did not specify the scientific credentials of Targ and Puthoff. They were laser scientists, which does not serve as any validation of their scientific – or other – ability to witness these matters.

When I contacted Dr. Arthur F. Hebard originally, he was unaware of most other work that was being done in parapsychology, until I informed him. He became "interested in parapsychology" as a result of the fiasco he saw presented by Targ and Puthoff.

Just today (September 24, 2003), he told me, "As far as my experience was concerned [with the Swann matter] there was no effect produced by him that could not be explained by ordinary means." He recalls the event well, and he also recalls that he told Scott Rogo that when they simply held a hand over the helium vent of the machine, the same effect was produced that Swann showed – and – that any use of the helium source by another facility in the building, produced the same effect! "There were unusual excursions of the data recorder," he told me – again! – "but nothing that did not have ordinary explanations." Note that Rogo did NOT report this! Hebard says that Rogo had "selective memory" of their discussion, and tried to get him to say things that Hebard just did not hold as opinions.

Hebard also repeated to me that he agrees with everything I wrote about the matter in Flim-Flam. And he denies that he ever made the "signed statement" that Rogo says he made.

Prescott says I "never set foot inside the SRI facility"? Look at Flim-Flam, pages 140-141 and see the drawings I made at SRI with Leon Otis. And I have a photograph of myself looking through the same "peep-hole" that Geller used. It was taken by Leon. I spent an entire afternoon there.

The "scientist who was there," as quoted by Prescott, was Leon Otis.

At this point, I have no time to pursue this tirade by Prescott, further. The rest of it would collapse, as above, under my point-for-point rebuttal.

In closing, I quote Prescott: "There is no way for me to verify Puthoff's statement that he tape-recorded Randi's concession of defeat 'on all the points.'" Oh yes there is, Prescott. Contact Puthoff and ask for a copy of that tape-recording. Hal Puthoff is still alive, and he's a liar. No such conversation ever took place, I did not make such a statement, and Puthoff has no evidence to support his outright lie, because there is none.

James Randi

The above are Randi's comments, reproduced in full. Now for my points, posted on September 29, 2003. 

First, on Dr. Herbard's statement ... If Rogo misquoted him, then I apologize. In Rogo's defense, he did say that Hebard's memory of the event differed from Puthoff's in some respects (as I noted). In my own defense, I never made much of the Ingo Swann-magnetometer business anyway. It was not a formal experiment, it was very poorly documented, and everyone involved disagrees on what happened. All I said was that Randi's statements are "far from the last word on the subject." I think this cautious appraisal remains true.

On the matter of the disputed quote from Flim-Flam, indicating that Randi "never even set foot" inside the SRI facility ... The quote is accurate. Here it is in full context:

Shortly thereafter, I received a communication from a member of a second special committee within SRI charged with looking into the Targ and Puthoff shenanigans (the first 'Psychic Research Review Committee' had found everything perfectly kosher, it seems), asking me for for details about my investigations of the situation there. They were asking me [both emphases in original], and I've never even set foot on the sacred grounds of SRI [emphasis added; page 142 of the 1980 edition].

Apprised of this, Randi responded, "Wasn't able to find that! But the scale diagrams I ran in F-F were the direct results of my visit there. I believe it should have read, 'They were asking me, and at that time I'd not set foot on the sacred grounds of SRI.'"

The same reader who kindly confirmed this quote for me (my copy of Flim-Flam being unavailable at the time) also directed me to a page of Randi's Web site showing photos of Randi at SRI. (The photos are about three-quarters of the way down the page.) No date is given for Randi's visit.

The Web site photos and accompanying diagram raise a few questions of their own. First, there is the question of just how big the hole in the isolation-room wall was and how much of the outside room could be seen through it. In Flim-Flam's 1980 edition, in the diagram on page 139, the hole is shown as 4.5" in diameter, providing a view of 4.5 feet of one wall and 6 feet of another wall - a substantial part of the room. However, in the diagram on Randi's Web page, all three values are different. Here the hole is 3.5" wide, affording a view of 39" of one wall and 4 feet of the other. By comparison, Rogo's measurement of the hole was 3.25" in diameter, which agrees pretty closely with one of Randi's diagrams but not the other.

The discrepancy between the 1980 diagram and the more recent diagram at least raises the question of when, exactly, the actual hands-on measurements were made - before or after the book's 1980 publication? If they were made before, then it seems inexplicable that the 1980 diagram could have been wrong in so many respects. If they were made after, then the arguments in Flim-Flam are based on second-hand information, at best - just as the text itself seems to imply.

The hole was unblocked when Randi observed it, but, according to Rogo, was entirely blocked with cables and a metal plate during the experiments. On the above-mentioned Web page and in Flim-Flam, Randi says that the hole had been stuffed with gauze, but fails to mention the cables and plate. Randi's accompanying diagram (both on his Web page and in the book ) indicates that the wall is indeed about twelve inches thick, as stated by Rogo, a fact that would inevitably "scope ... your vision and severely limit ... what you can see through it," in Rogo's words. 

On his Web page, Randi notes, "One would think that the targets might be placed face-up on a table, or fastened to the separating wall, but a magician would benefit from having them posted on the wall opposite the blocked-off window in the wall, if he could by some means get a peek through that wall. Would that have been possible, in the 1972 visit of Mr. Geller? 'Broomhilda' members seemed to think that a likely scenario."

If they merely thought it "likely," then they were just guessing and didn't actually know. Note that Rogo wrote in Psychic Breakthroughs Today, "... the targets for the Geller experiments were hung on a different wall completely."

It's up to the reader to decide if Puthoff and Targ, or any other scientists, whether skilled in conjuring or not (and Russell Targ is an amateur conjurer), would put Geller in an isolation booth while leaving a large, unblocked (or barely blocked) hole in the wall, directly facing the targets he was supposed to guess.

Now for the alleged tape recording made by Puthoff ... Taking Randi's advice, I did manage to contact Hal Puthoff by e-mail. He replied promptly, but said that after having relocated several times over the past three decades, and having put many of his belongings in storage, he no longer knows where to find the tape.

Puthoff wrote: "Of course, having got caught, Randi would have to call me a liar, and count on the fact that I would be unlikely after all these years to put my hands on the tape. You can quote me in saying that I say that Randi is a liar when he calls me a liar. My profession is as a scientist dedicated to reality and truth, his is as a charlatan dedicated to misdirection and tomfoolery to gain the moment. Let the audience figure out who is more likely to be lying!"

Although Randi doesn't comment on the part of my essay dealing with cameraman Zev Pressman, a reader alerted me to another source of information on this controversy. This is the 1999 book Uri Geller: Magician or Mystic?, by Jonathan Margolis. Margolis writes,

Another postulate still of the sceptics concerning the SRI tests in the 1970s is ... that the SRI film cameraman, an ex Life Magazine war photographer, Zev Pressman, had not really taken any of the 40 hours of footage which was edited down into the Geller film, and that he had been forced to say he had shot it, while in fact a group of conspirators in league with Uri Geller had contrived it. If the story is true, then someone must have had a great deal of leverage over Mr. Pressman, for even in his mid eighties and frail, he still insisted when I visited him at his home at Palo Alto, a few miles from SRI, that it was his film and his alone, and has a clear recall of several other of Geller's feats. Pressman was so keen to talk about his Uri Geller experiences that he even rounded up his neighbour, the then head of information at SRI, Ron Deutsch, now also well into retirement, for our morning coffee meeting.

This makes three independent, published accounts (Playfair, Rogo, Margolis) all of which concur on Pressman's continuing insistence that he did shoot the SRI film.

In my essay, Puthoff is quoted as writing, "... we chose for the list of incorrect points only those that could be independently verified. Examples: [Randi] said that in our Nature paper we verified Geller's metal-bending. Go to the paper, and you see that we said we were not able to obtain evidence for this." One e-mailer told me that Puthoff had indeed made a statement verifying Geller's metal-bending - but not in the Nature article. The statement, allegedly, was in the SRI film, and this is what Randi had challenged.

However, no such statement appears in the script of the SRI film (2024: link has expired). Indeed, the script says exactly the opposite. Nor do its contents come across - to me, at least - as the ravings of blundering pseudoscientists eager to convince themselves and dupe the public. Read for yourself:

These are a series of unconfirmed physical effects that need further investigation. One of Geller's main attributes that had been reported to us was that he was able to bend metal from a distance without touching it. In the laboratory we did not find him able to do so. In a more relaxed protocol, he was permitted to touch the metal, in which case, as you will see in the film, the metal is indeed bent. However, it becomes clear in watching this demonstration on film that simple photo interpretation is insufficient to determine whether the metal is bent by normal or paranormal means.

In the laboratory, these spoon-bending experiments were continuously filmed and video-taped. It is evident that some time during the photographic period this stainless steel spoon became bent. However, unlike the things we have heard about Geller, it was always necessary for him in the experimental situation to have physical contact with the spoon or for that matter any other object that he bends. It is not clear whether the spoon is being bent because he has extraordinarily strong fingers and good control of micro-manipulatory movements or whether, in fact, the spoon 'turns to plastic' in his hands, as he claims.

Here are a number of the spoons that were bent by one means or another during the course of our experiments. There is no doubt that the spoons were bent. The only doubt remains as to the manner of their bending. Similarly, we have rings that were bent by Mr. Geller. The rings that were bent are shown here. The copper ring at the left and the brass ring at the right were manufactured at SRI and measured to require 150 pounds force to bend them. These rings were in Geller's hand at the time they were bent ...

What we've demonstrated here are the experiments that we performed in the laboratory and should not be interpreted as proof of psychic functioning. Indeed, a film never proves anything. Rather, this film gives us the opportunity to share with the viewer observations of phenomena that in our estimation clearly deserve further study.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

---

Additional note, December 1, 2003: Steve Knight has informed me that authors Marks & Kamman report that at least one target drawing was displayed opposite the isolation room. They write, "He [Puthoff] told us that he taped this drawing 'right here,' pointing to a spot directly across from the covered window." (The Psychology of the Psychic, p. 135). This bolsters Randi's argument that Geller could have peeked through the hole in the door. On the other hand, a target drawing of a devil, which Randi describes as being "in full view" of Geller when he left the isolation room (Randi, The Truth About Uri Geller, p. 46), was actually in a different room altogether. According to the paper published in Nature, this "target location [was] an office at a distance of 475 m [meters]" from the isolation room. 

(May 15, 2004) James Randi has provided additional comments on his dispute with Hal Puthoff at this location : www.randi.org/jr/043004bad.html#4 .  Some earlier remarks by Randi on the Puthoff controversy can be read at: www.randi.org/jr/042304seven.html#10 .

 

 

SOURCES

Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and other Delusions, by James Randi

James Randi's SRI photos and diagrams, at www.randi.org/jr/082302.html

"Information Transfer under Conditions of Sensory Shielding," by Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff, in Nature, October 18, 1974, (Vol. 252, # 5476; pp. 602-7)

Psychic Breakthroughs Today, by D. Scott Rogo (Chapter 17)

The Geller Effect, by Guy Lyon Playfair and Uri Geller (Chapters 14, 15) 

"Debunking Common Skeptical Arguments Against Paranormal and Psychic Phenomena," by Winston Wu (Argument 18)

"CSICOP and the Skeptics: An Overview," by George P. Hansen

"D. Scott Rogo and His Contributions to Parapsychology," by George P. Hansen, at www.tricksterbook.com/ArticlesOnline/RogoObit.htm

Uri Geller: Magician or Mystic?, by Jonathan Margolis (Chapter 11) 

 

Essay: Talking to the Dead — Live & Uncut

NOTE: I used to have several older essays on the paranormal posted on my author site. When I recently updated the site, I removed all this material and decided to post it here. This essay was originally posted in 2004. It has been slightly abridged and reworded.

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Talking to the Dead - Live & Uncut

 

I have to admit I'd never paid much attention to psychic medium James Van Praagh. His syndicated TV show, now canceled, never did anything for me -- the format was too similar to John Edward's series Crossing Over, and I didn't care for the touchy-feely attitude Van Praagh projects. But the other night (Friday, January 30, 2004), I happened to catch his appearance on Larry King Live.

What intrigued me about Larry King Live was that the show was, well, live. No pretaping, no editing. Van Praagh had to take calls at random from all over the world, in real time. He had no chance to prepare and, with only a minute or two for each caller, little opportunity to ask questions. Since he couldn't see the caller, he certainly couldn't be accused of reading the person's body language or facial expression. It seemed like a good test of mediumship on live TV -- working without a net. Did Van Praagh pass the test?

He did. With flying colors.

There are times when I wonder how people can be so skeptical about psychic phenomena. Watching this edition of Larry King Live was one of those times. I would hate to be a skeptic trying to explain the remarkable series of hits Van Praagh produced in the course of this hour of television. If you didn't see the show, I urge you to read the transcript of the episode.

The transcript will give you all the details, but what it won't tell you is how thoroughly convincing Van Praagh's manner of presentation was. Skeptics say that mediums ask leading questions in order to elicit information, but Van Praagh asked almost no questions and frequently interrupted callers who were trying to tell him more than he wanted to know. More than once he said, "Don't tell me. Let me tell you." He looked genuinely irritated at callers who blurted out information he'd wanted to reveal. Skeptics also say that mediums issue vague generalities that could apply to anyone. But a lot of what Van Praagh said was specific -- in many instances uncannily so. Once or twice I felt a chill as a caller verified a piece of information that could not possibly be explained away as a lucky guess.

Finally, skeptics say that any trained mentalist -- i.e. a fake psychic -- can duplicate what Van Praagh, John Edward, George Anderson, and other mediums do. Well, I'd like to see them duplicate what Van Praagh did on Larry King Live. I'd like to see a mentalist come up with specific, detailed information pertinent to a caller who has phoned in at random, in circumstances that preclude cold reading or advance research. If mentalists can reproduce this feat, let them prove it. Until then, I'll be skeptical of their claims.

As I said, the complete transcript is the only way to get the full sense of this program. What follows are a few highlights based on my scribbled notes.

Van Praagh is told by a caller that both her parents have died. He interrupts, saying that the father had a problem with one leg and couldn't walk. The leg was going to be operated on and preliminary tests were carried out, but the operation never took place. Also, the father's sister is deceased. This is all correct.

A caller says her twin sister died three years go. Van Praagh says the sister was not expected to die and had a sudden passing. She was religious and was buried underneath a religious symbol. All correct.

A caller says her mother passed away. Van Praagh focuses on a respiratory problem involving the sinuses and lungs and an inability to breathe. He is told that the mother died of emphysema.

A caller says her grandfather died nine years ago. Van Praagh says he's getting somebody with the last name of Cook or Cooke. The caller does know people by this name. Van Praagh says there's a deceased man named Cook(e) whose death was covered in the newspapers. The caller doesn't verify this, but seems to understand the reference. Van Praagh switches to the caller's grandfather, saying he had an eye condition that affected only one eye, and was unable to speak before he died. This is correct.

A caller asks about his deceased brother. Van Praagh says the brother is "around your father" (who is living) and that the father has health concerns - specifically blood sugar problems. This is correct. The brother suffered an unexpected death. Correct -- he died in a car accident.

A caller asks about her deceased grandfather, Adam. Van Praagh identifies a farm and is told by the caller that the grandfather was raised on a farm. Van Praagh says the grandfather's brother is also dead and the two men were not close while alive. This is true. Van Praagh says somebody just went to the eye doctor. The caller says, "I just went and got my eyes checked."

A caller wants to know about her Aunt Barb. Van Praagh says Barb wants to send a message to the caller's mother, who, he says correctly, is still alive. He says the mother deserves a lot of credit because, when her husband was not working, the mother worked extra hard to pick up the slack. This is true.

During a commercial break, Van Praagh apparently tells Larry King he is getting somebody's son and expects the next call to relate to this person. The next caller inquires about a father or husband, but Van Praagh says a son must have died before the husband -- which is correct. The son, he says, died by someone else's hand -- correct. The son had a friend named Mike -- correct. The son died at night -- correct. There's a reference to a fishing boat -- correct; the husband had a boat.

A caller wants to know if there is a message from ... But Van Praagh interrupts to say that her father has passed over - correct. There was friction between the father and his sister. True. There is a girl, deceased, whom Van Praagh identifies as the caller's daughter - correct. The caller says she has a gold necklace belonging to her daughter. Van Praagh says the caller thought of holding the necklace in her hand before making the call. True. He says a tree was planted in memory of the daughter. True. Asked by the caller about a friend named Lou, Van Praagh says the daughter knew him, and he liked race cars. True.

A caller wants to know about her father. Van Praagh says someone in the family just got married or is planning a marriage -- correct. He says someone in the family had a heart condition and is told that it was the father. Van Praagh says the father tried a variety of different medicines that didn't work -- correct. The father was put on a liquid diet and hated it -- correct. There are three kids in the family ("Exactly," says the caller), and they are fighting over the terms of the father's will. Correct.

A caller wants to know about a friend named Michael who committed suicide. Van Praagh says Michael was creative, he was thinking of moving before he died, he had his heart broken by someone else, there were two memorial services for him, and there is an important memory involving Florida. All of this is correct.

A skeptic would say I've listed only the hits and ignored the misses. Absolutely. That is precisely what I've done, and deliberately so - I want to stress the most impressive parts of Van Praagh's performance. There were misses, although often they involved callers who seemed so nervous and flustered that they might have failed to take in what Van Praagh was saying. By my count, the hits outnumbered the misses, although a skeptic would count some of my hits as misses and others as lucky guesses.

Is that what we're dealing with - lucky guesses? If so, Van Praagh is the luckiest guesser in the world. Anybody who can make this many lucky guesses in an hour has a skill indistinguishable from psychic power. Or is it a hoax, a massive conspiracy involving Van Praagh, Larry King, and CNN? Count on the skeptics to fall back on this desperate argument when all else fails.

I suppose that by a massive effort at rationalization, a person could pick apart Van Praagh's comments one by one, in much the same way that the O.J. Simpson defense team picked apart the mountain of evidence against their client and succeeded in befuddling the jury. Someone could claim that a particular statement was a lucky guess, while another was a generalization, and another was derived from an unusual insight into human nature, and so on. This is the kind of argument that skeptics make - when they bother to address the specifics of psychic readings at all.

To me, it sounds a lot like Simpson defense attorney Johnnie Cochran arguing that one blood sample was planted by police, another blood sample was incorrectly collected, another blood sample was contaminated in the lab, etc. This strategy aims at getting us to focus on scattered bits of evidence, any one of which can be disputed, rather than stepping back to take in a broader view -- namely, that a trail of blood led from the the murder scene to Simpson's car, and from his car into his house. It can be an effective way to score debating points, but the only people who think it's a good approach for finding the truth are those who believe that O.J. is still searching for "the real killer."

What I think is that Van Praagh is for real. Call me naive, but for me, it's the simplest explanation, and the only one that fits the facts. And if he is for real, then there's no reason to doubt that some other mediums are for real also. Which means the world has suddenly become a much bigger, more interesting, and, I would say, better place.

Essay: Unreality TV

NOTE: I used to have several older essays on the paranormal posted on my author site. When I recently updated the site, I removed all this material and decided to post it here. This essay was originally posted in 2003.

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Unreality TV: "Psychic Secrets Revealed"

 

Recently, NBC aired an hour-long prime-time special called "Psychic Secrets Revealed," produced by reality TV pioneer Bruce Nash. In the style of earlier programs that demonstrated how professional magicians pull off their tricks, including Nash’s own "Breaking the Magician’s Code," the show ran through a variety of mentalist acts and revealed the ruses behind the illusions.

Actually, one of the secrets not revealed by the program was its exact title. In TV Guide, NBC press releases, and assorted other places it was known variously as "Psychic Secrets Revealed," "Secrets of the Psychics Revealed," "Secrets of Psychics Revealed" (sans "the"), and most dramatically, "Secrets of Psychics – Revealed!"

Whatever you call it, the show consisted of a wide range of mentalist tricks, most of which were nightclub-style acts that would probably never be taken as serious evidence of psychic ability. Some of the tricks were not so secret; the slate-writing gimmick, in which words magically appear on a chalkboard, has been known and written about for a century. Other tricks were barely tricks at all. We see a fake psychic reciting vague generalities to her clients, who claim to be amazed at her "accuracy." I can’t imagine that too many responsible adults would be taken in by that one.

The gullibility of the audience was pretty surprising at times. I almost wondered if their oohs and aahs weren’t a little bit rehearsed. In this respect it may or may not be relevant that the March 12, 2003, jobs bulletin at Tinseletown.com includes an audition notice for actors needed for "the NBC special ‘Secrets of Psychics – Revealed!’" No details are given, except that the job opportunity was first posted on October 8, 2002. It’s not clear if one or more actors are required. There may be a perfectly innocuous explanation, but I do wonder why the show, advertised as reality TV, would need any actors at all. What roles did they play? Gullible man #1? Credulous woman #2? Maybe "Psychic Secrets" is keeping a few secrets of its own.

Be that as it may, if "Secrets" was meant to warn us not to take every street-corner psychic seriously, it served its purpose well. If it was meant to convince us that psychic phenomena are never genuine – that all such occurrences are magic tricks – then I’d say it overreached. Let’s look at the some facts the show didn't choose to reveal.

Early in the program, one of the fake psychics demonstrates spoon bending, which is then revealed to be a trick made possible by a precut spoon that could be snapped with minimal pressure. The stage illusion has been explained. But how about spoon bending that isn't done by magicians? How about a party where regular folks – and their kids – start bending silverware with their minds? If you think it can’t happen, you haven’t heard of "spoon bending parties," a remarkable social phenomenon that’s been going on since the 1980s.

The best report I’ve read on the subject is found in Michael Crichton’s highly entertaining book Travels. "In the spring of 1985," Crichton writes,

I was invited to attend a spoon bending party. An aerospace engineer named Jack Houck had become interested in the phenomenon, and from time to time had parties in which people bent spoons. I ... was told to bring a half-dozen forks and spoons I didn’t care about, since they would be bent during the evening ...

About a hundred people were there, mostly families with young kids. The atmosphere was festive .... We were instructed to hold the spoon vertically and shout, "Bend! Bend!" Once intimidated by being shouted at, the spoon was to be rubbed gently between our fingers ... A lot of people were laughing. It was hard not to feel self-conscious, holding up a spoon and shouting at it ...

I was sitting on the floor next to Judith and Anne-Marie ... Rubbing her spoon, Anne-Marie said, "I don’t think this is going to work ..." I looked down at her hands. Her spoon was bending.

"Look, Anne-Marie."

Anne-Marie laughed. Her spoon was like rubber. She easily twisted the spoon into knots.

Suddenly Judith’s spoon began to bend, too. She was able to bend the bowl in half. All around me, spoons were bending....

My own spoon had begun to bend. I hadn't even realized. The metal was completely pliable, like soft plastic. It wasn’t particularly hot, either, just slightly warm. I easily bent the bowl of the spoken in half, using only my fingertips. This didn’t require any pressure at all, just guiding with my fingertips.

I put the spoon back and tried a fork. After a few moments of rubbing, the fork twisted like a pretzel. It was easy. I bent several more spoons and forks....

A year later, I mentioned to an M.I.T. professor that I had bent spoons. He frowned in silence for a while. "There’s a way to bend spoons," he said, "by a trick."

"I think so," I said. "But I don’t know the trick."

As of August 2002, Houck had reportedly hosted 354 such events. At 100 people per event, that’s 35,400 people "fooled."

In the course of "Psychic Secrets Revealed," other examples of fake psychokinesis (or PK) are shown, in which hidden mechanisms enable the mentalist to manipulate small items like matchsticks or dollar bills; another mechanism creates the illusion that the audience, using its collective psychic power, can shatter glass. These techniques work fine in a theatrical performance, but could they be employed in the controlled conditions of a laboratory, where the psychic is carefully searched and there is no opportunity to set up any hidden equipment? It is precisely in such conditions that countless small-scale PK phenomena been observed – and large-scale phenomena, as well.

Some of the most dramatic effects were observed in the presence of the Italian medium Eusapia Palladino. Sir William Barrett, a parapsychologist active in the early part of the 20^th Century, summarizes an investigation of Palladino undertaken by neurology professor Enrico Morselli. "The control of the medium was very strict," Barrett writes.

Her hands and feet were held by Dr. Morselli and Sig. Barzini, editor of the "Corriere della Sera," who states that he was present "with the object of unmasking fraud and trickery," but was in the end convinced of the reality of some of the phenomena. The person of the medium was thoroughly searched before the seance, and the room was also searched; the light was never entirely extinguished.

Under these conditions Dr. Morselli testifies to the occurrence of the following phenomena: movements of the table; raps on the table and sounds on musical instruments without contact; complete levitations of the table; movements of objects at a distance from the medium seen in the light, and, also, the operation of self-registering instruments by the unseen agency; "apports," i.e., objects brought into the room from outside; the sound of human voices not proceeding from any visible person; impressions on plastic substances of hands, feet and faces; the appearance of dark prolongations of the medium's body; of well delineated forms of faces, heads and busts. Although entirely sceptical at the outset of his experiments he declares himself convinced that most of the phenomena alleged to occur with Eusapia are "real, authentic, and genuine" ....

Professor Philippe Bottazzi, Director of the Physiological Institute at the University of Naples, having read the report of Dr. Morselli's experiments at Genoa, made an attempt to verify the phenomena by means of an elaborate and carefully arranged set of self-registering instruments, in the hope of obtaining an automatic graphic record of the psychic force exercised by the medium. Such a record would negative [i.e., nullify] the hypotheses of hallucination or mis-description on the part of the observer. These important experiments, carried on with the collaboration of several able professors of the same University, were remarkably successful, and Professor Bottazzi's article concludes by stating these experiments have "eliminated the slightest trace of suspicion or uncertainty relative to the genuineness of the phenomena. We obtained the same kind of assurance as that which we have concerning physical, chemical or physiological phenomena. From henceforth sceptics can only deny the facts by accusing us of fraud and charlatanism."

Investigations of Palladino continued, with varying results. At times she very obviously attempted to cheat. At other times no known trickery could account for the phenomena she produced.

"In 1909," Barrett continues,

three members of the S.P.R. [the Society for Psychical Research], the Hon Everard Feilding, Mr. W.W. Baggally and Mr. Hereward Carrington, were commissioned by the Society to carry out another serious investigation with this medium. The selection was specially made with a view to the qualifications of the investigators. Mr. Carrington was a clever amateur conjuror, and for ten years had carried on investigations on these physical phenomena in the United States. His book on this subject shows his familiarity with the methods adopted by fraudulent mediums and his cautious attitude towards all such experiences. Mr. Baggally was also an amateur conjuror with much experience, and had come to a negative conclusion as to the possibility of any genuine physical phenomena. Mr. Feilding's attitude was the same, and, moreover, he had had extensive experience in investigating physical phenomena.

The result of this investigation was that all three of these well-qualified men were convinced of the absolute genuineness of the remarkable supernormal phenomena they witnessed at their hotel in Naples.

Transcripts of the Naples sessions fill the greater part of a lengthy book, Sittings with Eusapia Palladino, by Everard Feilding. More recently, Stephen Braude has ably summarized these sessions in his important book The Limits of Influence. A reader willing to wade through the exhaustive, literally minute-by-minute transcripts of the Naples sittings cannot help but be impressed by the variety, complexity, and sheer scale of the effects witnessed by these competent and skeptical observers.

Less dramatic examples of PK have been documented extensively. Dozens of experiments conducted by parapsychologist J.B. Rhine, in which test subjects tried to influence the fall of dice, have been subjected to a statistical "meta-analysis" by Dean Radin. In The Conscious Universe, Radin writes that even after eliminating some possibly defective tests, "there was still highly significant evidence for mind-matter interaction, with odds against chance of greater than a trillion to one." His analysis of random number generator (RNG) tests yielded similar results. After looking at 597 RNG studies conducted between 1959 and 1987, Radin found that "the overall experimental results produced odds against chance beyond a trillion to one. Control results [from 235 control studies] were well within chance with odds of two to one."

The hundreds of participants in these studies were not skilled conjurers engaged in a massive, decades-long conspiracy. They were ordinary people demonstrating a little-known, barely understood, but perfectly genuine ability.

The last major "psychic secret" to be revealed was communication with the dead. "Is it for the real?" narrator Stacy Keach asks ominously. "You be the judge."

Two readings with audience members are shown; both sessions seem highly convincing. Then we learn that these audience members had earlier been approached by the mentalist’s accomplices, who engaged them in seemingly casual conversation. Personal details were elicited, which were given to the mentalist. Color-coded stickers discretely placed on these audience members’ seats ensured that the mentalist would know whom to select for the readings.

Afterward, a man who thought he’d been in touch with his dead grandfather was told the truth. He appeared crestfallen. "A big part of me genuinely wanted to believe. Ultimately I was really let down."

Assuming that this gentleman had really been duped and was not someone who’d responded to the show’s casting call, I find this part of the demonstration somewhat unethical. The mentalist and the TV crew are toying with the raw emotions of real people. It’s a cruel thing to do just to prove a point.

But the question remains: Does this ruse explain all mediumship?

It certainly does explain some of it. In his book The After Death Experience, Ian Wilson recounts the exposure of prominent British medium Doris Stokes, whose public performances were rigged to feature clients she already knew. "Not only had the key individuals been known to Doris beforehand," Wilson writes; "each had been specifically invited to the show by none other than Doris herself." Wilson gives the example of a certain Mrs. Stenning, who received an impressive reading in front of the audience. "A friend had written to Doris Stokes on her behalf, telling her about Mrs Stenning’s loss of her daughter Kerry. As a result, Doris Stokes had personally telephoned her at her home just the week before, offering her two complimentary tickets ... At the very least the fact that Doris undeniably knew beforehand Mrs Stenning’s surname, Christian name, and deceased daughter’s name makes a charade of her professed hearing of these names as ‘other side’ voices. And with Doris’s similarly undeniable prior knowledge of Mrs Stenning’s telephone number, there is scarcely anything other-worldly about how she could have known Mrs Stenning’s 239 Kingston Road address. She had only to look in the London telephone directory."

But Doris Stokes had never been subjected to close scrutiny. Are there any mediums who have been tested – and who’ve passed the test?

One of the most famous mediums in history was Leonore Piper of Boston, who was active in the late 1800s. Her abilities came to the attention of many prominent Bostonians, including William James. An investigation was undertaken by the American Society for Psychical Research, whose chief investigator, Richard Hodgson, was notoriously skeptical and had debunked countless mediums. His colleague F.W.H. Myers explains Hodgson's methods: "Mr. Hodgson has been in the habit of bringing acquaintances of his own to Mrs. Piper, without giving their names ... Mr. Hodgson also had Mr. and Mrs. Piper watched or ‘shadowed’ by private detectives for some weeks ..." All such efforts were fruitless. "It was thus shown that Mrs. Piper had made no discoverable attempt to acquire knowledge" used in her sittings.

It’s worth noting that even in the 19th Century, investigators knew that fake mediums would attempt to gather information about their clients in advance – hence Hodgson’s policy of bringing anonymous, unannounced visitors to see Mrs. Piper, while setting private detectives on her trail to ensure that she was not conferring with an accomplice.

In 1889, British parapsychologists arranged for Mrs. Piper to come to England. Myers writes,

Professor Lodge met her on the Liverpool landing-stage, November 19th, and conducted her to a hotel, where I joined her on November 20th, and escorted her and her children to Cambridge....

Mrs. Piper while in England was twice in Cambridge, twice in London, and twice in Liverpool, at dates arranged by ourselves; her sitters (almost always introduced under false names) belonged to quite different social groups, and were frequently unacquainted with each other. Her correspondence was addressed to my care, and I believe that almost every letter which she received was shown to one or the other of us. When in London she stayed at lodgings we selected; when in Liverpool, in Professor Lodge’s house; and when at Cambridge, in Professor Sidgwick’s or my own...

We took great pains to avoid giving information in talk; and a more complete security is to be found in the fact that we were ourselves ignorant of many of the facts given as to friends’ relations, etc. ...

Myers sums up, "Few persons have been so long and so carefully observed; and she has left on all observers the impression of thorough uprightness, candor, and honesty."

Other mediums whose reputation for honesty was never tainted, despite years of close observation by trained experts, include Gladys Osborne Leonard and Eileen Garrett. Garrett, in particular, went out of her way to be tested, even helping to set up an institute for research into psychic phenomena. More on Garrett can be found in my essay "R-101." 

There are, in short, two points for viewers of NBC’s "Psychic Secrets Revealed" to keep in mind. First, it’s a mistake to assume that professional parapsychologists would be taken in by any of the magicians’ tricks showcased on the program. These tricks, and many others like them, have been known for more than a hundred years. Members of the (British) Society for Psychical Research and its American sister society have exposed hundreds of fake psychics and mediums. In most cases the exposure isn’t especially difficult. Although my knowledge of magic tricks is very limited, even I could guess how some of the effects on the NBC show were done. A professional investigator would make short work of any of the mentalists who appeared on that stage. That’s what psychical investigators do – they identify the frauds and unmask them.

But not all the people they investigate are frauds. And that’s the second point. Just because some money is counterfeit, we can’t assume that all of it is. Likewise, the fact that some people can fake some psychic phenomena does not entitle us to assume that all such phenomena are – or can be – faked.

In his book The Afterlife Experiments, Gary Schwartz tells a revealing story. With his associate Linda Russek, he had designed a laboratory test for several mediums – John Edward, Suzane Northrup, Laurie Campbell, and Anne Gehman – and he wanted to know if a professional mentalist could duplicate the mediums’ impressive results. For this purpose, he found a local magician, Ross Horowitz, who was knowledgeable about mentalist techniques. But when Schwartz explained the protocols used in his experiments, the magician balked.

He quickly explained that his techniques were useless unless he had the opportunity of obtaining secret information beforehand, or of holding a dialogue with the sitter, or preferably both. I pushed him to try, and he reluctantly agreed. Giving it his best shot, his +3 accuracy [meaning his score for the most solid "hits"] was well under 20 percent.

When Linda and I told him that the mediums we had tested produced specific and accurate information during a silent period, when the medium did not even know who the sitter was, we had his full attention. He wanted to see the videotapes ...

The look on Ross’s face as he watched [the first tape] was actually funny to see. After only a few minutes, he told me he could not find any indications that Suzane [Northrup] was using psychic cold-reading techniques....

He told us that none of the tricks or tools he knew would allow him – or any psychic magicians he knew of – to score as high as Suzane did.

The mentalist’s only suggestion was that all four of the tested mediums, as a group, had cheated by tapping the laboratory’s phones and Professor Schwartz’s personal phones. Even this unlikely conspiracy would not explain all the data that the mediums provided. In subsequent experiments, the protocols were tightened still further, but the mediums continued to supply accurate, verifiable information at rates well above chance.

Schwartz’s experiments are only among the latest in more than a century of investigations into psychic phenomena. If hidden mechanisms and planted accomplices could explain all paranormal occurrences, interest in the field would have died out long ago.

Viewers who choose to be wary of palm readers and carnival fortune-tellers have learned a good lesson from "Psychic Secrets Revealed." I just hope they don’t draw the wider, mistaken conclusion that the entire realm of the paranormal consists of fraud.

After all, there’s one thing worse than being taken in by a fake psychic. It’s being in the presence of a genuine paranormal phenomenon – and thinking it’s a trick.

 

Essay: Some Thoughts on John Edward

NOTE: I used to have several older essays on the paranormal posted on my author site. When I recently updated the site, I removed all this material and decided to post it here. This essay was originally posted in 2002. I believe it was the first item on the paranormal I ever posted. 

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Some Thoughts on John Edward,
Crossing Over, and Talking to the Dead

 

I have become intrigued with John Edward. This is a strange thing for me to be saying. To see how strange it is, you should know that from about the age of twelve until I was in my late thirties, I was a confirmed atheist. Some might have called me a militant atheist. When I had to fill out a form that inquired about my religion (back in the days when they still included that question), I always wrote down ATHEIST in uncompromising, carefully printed letters. I remember reading an essay in a political magazine in which the writer started talking about heaven and hell, and I was floored. Did this guy really believe this stuff? How could an educated person writing for a national magazine entertain such a superstitious view?

In my late thirties, my outlook began to change, and I went from feeling scorn for religion to having a rather intellectualized respect for it. Some of the arguments that moved me are put forward in Patrick Glynn’s excellent book, God: The Evidence. But I was still pretty skeptical. I used to describe myself as being “just barely more than an agnostic” when it came to having any religious beliefs.

And now I am writing about John Edward, a “psychic medium” who claims to communicate with the dead. How in the world did this happen?

Well, for one thing, I spend part of each year in Arizona, and it was at the University of Arizona that Edward and some other mediums were tested by psychology professor Gary Schwartz. I read about these tests in Schwartz’s book The Afterlife Experiments and I found them intriguing. So one night I tuned in to Crossing Over on the Sci-Fi Channel – which, skeptics say, is exactly where it belongs.

Before we continue, let’s acknowledge a few caveats. Crossing Over is pretaped and heavily edited. Obviously the best readings are included, while the bad ones end up on the cutting room floor. Even the good readings are shortened, with at least some dead-end avenues of inquiry omitted. And in even the best readings, a great deal of what Edward says is sufficiently general or ambiguous to apply to many people. As skeptics point out, many audience members want desperately to believe that they are in communication with their loved ones, so they will accept any statement that even remotely fits their family circumstances. They will ignore or forget the "misses" and remember only the "hits." They will unconsciously supply details that the medium himself has not divulged.

New York Times writer Chris Ballard captured both the objections to Crossing Over and the reasons for its appeal in a piece that appeared in the Times’ July 29, 2001, edition. Here’s an excerpt.

Much of the information is fuzzy -- Edward may get only ''a J or a G'' sound for a name or see ''blackness in the chest,'' which may be lung cancer. But occasionally he says something startlingly specific, mentioning a peculiar family nickname like ''Miss Piggy'' or a long-forgotten keepsake. On this afternoon, such a moment occurs when Edward is relaying information to a young woman who has recently lost her father.

''Is there a joke between them with the celery or something?'' Edward asks her, looking puzzled.

She gasps, then laughs and corrects him. ''It's onions.''

''The chopping of it?''

''No, they have a nickname in Italy,'' she explains, smiling. ''It means like a running onion.''

''So if they show me the vegetable joke, you know what it means?''

She nods, grinning. Edward moves on. ''He's telling me to acknowledge the wedding, do you understand this?'' At this, the woman crumbles, breaking into tears and nodding in jerky time to the sobs.

It is an impressive display, like watching a gambler who keeps doubling down and keeps hitting, but it is also the best reading of the afternoon. Twice during the tapings, Edward spends upward of 20 minutes stuck on one person, shooting blanks but not accepting the negative responses -- "Do not not honor him!'' he says at one point, staring down a bewildered man. On other readings, his statements have a throw-it-all-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks flavor, and he clearly struggles to get a rhythm going, hitting well below 50 percent for the day. Later, when the edited version of the taping is produced (all episodes are edited for entertainment purposes), it includes only the onion woman and the second-best reading of the show.

So there is no way of evaluating Edward’s taped and edited performances by tallying hits and misses, because most of the misses have been cut out. This makes for better TV, of course, and it is doubtful if anyone would watch a show that included a high number of unsatisfying exchanges. Still, it makes things difficult for those of us who want to assess Edward’s ability objectively.

And yet, as the Times writer points out, there are those moments when “he says something startlingly specific, mentioning a peculiar family nickname like ‘Miss Piggy’ or a long-forgotten keepsake.” And to the extent that I can judge from the show, such moments are not quite as “occasional” as the Times would have us think. In the short time that I’ve watched Crossing Over, I’ve seen a large number of these impressive hits. What explains them?

The most common explanation offered by skeptics is that Edward is engaged in “cold reading” – a ruse in which a fake psychic plays off the reactions of his subject. A standard cold reading would go something like this:

Fake Psychic: Has your father passed?

Subject: Yes.

Fake Psychic: I see your father. Did he pass suddenly?

Subject: Not really.

Fake Psychic: Right, I’m seeing that it was drawn-out. Painful?

Subject: Yes.

Fake Psychic: He’s saying there was pain. But not at the end?

Subject: At the end, no.

Fake Psychic: He says it was peaceful at the end.

Here the fake psychic elicits responses from the subject and merely repeats what the subject has just said. Critical to this approach is the fake’s ability to quickly follow wherever the subject leads. Often the fake must rely on subtle cues unconsciously supplied by his subject – a nod, a shake of the head, a tightening of the shoulders – and instantly adjust course.

Now, one thing I’m sure of is that John Edward is not engaged in cold reading. To indicate why I say this, I’ll present some examples of Edward’s interactions with audience members.

Please be aware that while I’ve taken notes on the show, I have not made a transcript. Therefore all the exchanges that follow are paraphrases, not direct quotations, and are intended only to capture the flavor of the exchanges. And, as mentioned above, not every reading by Edward yields results that are this dramatic. I have selected some of the more noteworthy moments – the “startlingly specific” hits – from the shows I’ve watched.

With that in mind, see if the following exchanges can be explained by cold reading.

* * *

Edward: Did someone  here study with Bob Ross, the TV artist? ... I’m getting Bob Ross. I’m also seeing a picture of a tree, shrunken down. It was big, now it’s small.

Man: My mom took lessons from Bob Ross. One of her paintings was of a tree. It was too big for the album, so I had it reduced.

* * *

Edward: Someone in your family went to a farm and drank milk straight from the cow?

Man: That was me. When I was a kid.

* * *

Edward: When they marked her skin for the IV, she said it was the closest she’d ever get to having a tattoo?

Man: That’s what she said, exactly.

Edward: And you had to be sort of the “air traffic control” for her passing?

Man: The doc told us that I would be her air traffic controller. That’s the phrase he used.

* * *

Edward: Somebody dressed up as a tree?

Man: My dad dressed up as a Christmas tree.

* * *

Edward: They’re laughing, sort of teasing you about your leg, your knee.

Woman: I took a hayride, and I fell and twisted my knee a couple of months ago.

* * *

Edward: Was there a baby’s toy buried with him [an elderly man]?

Woman: A stuffed bunny. My daughter’s.

* * *

Edward: I’m getting the name Maynard.

Man: That’s my girlfriend’s last name. I don’t know how you got that. It’s an unusual name.

* * *

Edward isn’t eliciting information from the audience members in these instances. He’s presenting specific information that is verified only after he says it.

Sometimes the verification takes place much later.

* * *

Edward: Someone had a glass eye? Lost his sight when he was young?

Woman: I don’t know about that.

Edward: I’m seeing a glass eye. And maybe an eye patch.

Woman: I don’t know.

(Two weeks later, the woman reports having learned that her sister-in-law’s grandfather lost an eye when he was young and a wore a patch, then a glass eye.)

* * *

Edward: Something about buying sheets for the bed – not a bedspread, definitely sheets – but they didn’t fit.

Woman: I don’t know what that’s about.

Edward: It’s for your mom, I think. You should ask your mom about it.

(After the show, the woman calls her mother, who says that she bought a set of bed sheets for the deceased – one of her last gifts – but the sheets didn’t fit.)

* * *

In neither of these cases could Edward have used the subject’s reactions as cues, since the subjects didn’t know what he was talking about.

So maybe Edward is just a very good guesser? Take a look at a few more exchanges.

* * *

Edward: Was someone in your family a shepherd?

Woman: My dad used to joke about being a shepherd. He’d say that when he retired, he wanted to be a shepherd so he could say, “Get the flock outta here!”

* * *

Edward: I’m seeing a clam, a big clamshell, opening up.

Man: I work underwater. My friend [the deceased] used to say I went clamming. It’s not really clamming, but that’s what he called it.

* * *

Edward: Someone in the family would read coffee grinds – like, for predictions? Like reading tea leaves?

Woman: My grandmother did that.

Edward: With coffee grinds?

Woman: Yes.

* * *

Edward: Did someone bail someone else out of jail?

Man: My sister’s boyfriend. My dad had to bail him out. Oh, my God.

* * *

This goes beyond good guesswork. If you had been the subject, would references to a shepherd, a clamshell, reading coffee grounds, or bailing someone out of jail mean anything to you?

Skeptics say Edward knows that certain facts apply to many people and so can be safely assumed. This is called “warm reading.” For instance, most people who’ve lost a loved one have had a dream about that person, or wear or carry something belonging to or connected with the deceased, so guesses along these lines are likely to be scored as hits. But consider these exchanges.

* * *

Edward: He bought you jewelry – an anklet or something like that – on an island?

Woman: A bracelet. I’m wearing it now.

Edward: He bought it on an island?

Woman: Yes. The last trip we took together.

* * *

Edward: I see a tattoo of a cross, bleeding.

Woman: I have a tattoo like that [under her clothes; not visible].

Edward: Bleeding? Blood on it?

Woman: No.

Edward: I’m seeing blood.

Woman: I got it in memory of him.

Edward: There are three things around the cross?

Woman: Three angels, yes.

Edward: The tattoo – it matches? Like there are two, and they match?

Woman; My daughter and I got matching tattoos.

* * *

These are very specific facts – an item of jewelry purchased not just anywhere, but on an island; a pair of matching tattoos in memory of the departed.

Skeptics also say that there are only a half dozen ways that most people die – heart failure, cancer, auto accident, etc. – so Edward can quickly guess the cause of death.

As in these instances?

* * *

Edward: Someone was thrown off a horse? Thrown off a pony or a horse?

Man: My nephew died being thrown from a horse.

* * *

Edward: Two people passed with a sudden impact. Might have been shot ...

Woman: I had two friends in high school who were shot.

Edward: And you moved, around then?

Woman: No.

Edward: You didn’t? Because I’m seeing a Mayflower moving van.

Woman: They were shot on Mayflower Avenue.

* * *

How many people do you know who died from being thrown off a horse? Or who were shot to death, as a couple, on Mayflower Avenue?

To explain hits like these, skeptics say that Edward relies on a technique of yet another temperature – “hot reading.” This means using investigators to dig up info on audience members in advance, or eavesdropping on them while they stand in line or while they wait between breaks in the taping. Presumably hot reading explains the following exchanges:

* * *

Edward: There was a bird outside, and someone thought it would be a good idea to bring it inside and give it a bath? But it turned out not to be a good idea?

Woman: We had some baby ducks in the yard. We brought them in and put them in the bathtub. But they got too big. They bit my husband [the deceased].

* * *

Edward: You were playing around a hutch, there were German collectibles in it, and you knocked over a statue or a dish … It broke, but you glued it back together. Your mom found out, but you didn’t admit you’d done it.

Woman: It was a cup – we tried gluing it, but she saw it was broken. We never said a word, but she knew we’d done it.

* * *

Edward: Someone in the family worked with ice – like, packing up ice?

Woman: Our grandfather worked in an icehouse.

Edward: There was an attack on a woman – a violent attack.

Woman: He was accused of that.

Edward: A body on ice … Like, a murder, and the body was left on ice …

Woman (uneasy): There may have been.

* * *

Edward: There’s a connection with a dolphin. Swimming with dolphins?

Woman: We took a trip last year where we went swimming with dolphins.

Edward: There’s a bug. A bug in the bathroom.

Woman: There was a big bee in our house once –

Edward: That’s not it. This is a bug, a big bug in a bathtub, and someone pulls back the shower curtain and – eek!

Woman: I don’t know …

Edward: On your trip?

Woman and Daughter: Oh, the bug!

* * *

In the last example, notice that the two audience members did not even recall the bug episode until Edward linked it to the trip he’d already brought up. Notice also that Edward rejected the plausible suggestion of the “big bee in the house” and insisted on the bug in the bathroom. A cold reader wouldn’t do this. He follows his subject’s lead.

As for hot reading, what private investigator could dig up the bug story? And if the two women had been chatting about the bug incident while waiting on line or in the studio, how did they manage to forget it completely until they were reminded of it in detail?

Maybe, just maybe, a topnotch investigator could have learned about the mysterious icehouse incident. But no investigator could know about the baby ducks from years earlier, or the broken cup from fifty or sixty years ago. And it seems unlikely in the extreme that audience members would be talking about these obscure details before the show.

Sometimes issues are raised that the subjects clearly did not discuss among themselves.

* * *

Edward: I don’t know how to say this, but did you and your husband do something involving … handcuffs?

Woman (very embarrassed): Yes.

* * *

Edward: There was a neighbor’s dog … I don’t want to use the word torture, but you … abused this dog.

Man (shamefaced): Yes.

* * *

These people weren’t gabbing about handcuff games and animal abuse in a roomful of strangers.

Skeptics, perhaps in some desperation, suggest that all kinds of information are available on the Internet these days. Maybe that’s where Edward gets his inside knowledge.

But where on the Internet would Edward find the story of a boy drinking milk straight from the cow? The “air traffic control” comment? The stuffed bunny? The family joke, “Get the flock outta here”?

Yes, some people have “blog” sites where they record every detail of their lives. Most people don’t. The grandmothers who are frequent studio guests on Crossing Over don’t look like bloggers to me.

Having done some research on Internet snooping for my books The Shadow Hunter and Last Breath, I know that addresses, phone numbers, real estate holdings, and records of legal disputes and tax liens are readily available on the Web. Unscrupulous searchers can track down social security numbers and probably some (not all) medical records.

But a sister-in-law’s grandfather’s glass eye? A nephew thrown from a horse? A father who dressed up as a Christmas tree? A woman who took painting lessons from TV artist Bob Ross?

With all respect to the debunkers, I am too much of a skeptic myself to believe in the omniscience of private investigators or Web surfers who can unearth information of that kind.

The last line of defense for the skeptics is that the entire show is a fraud. The audience members – at least those who participate in readings – are shills, ringers. They are actors following a script. This would be believable if Edward were traveling from one small town to another, using the same shills over and over. On TV, he could not risk using the same actors more than once, so he would have to hire at least five or six actors per show. How many shows has he done? Fifty? One hundred? How many actors is that? Two-hundred-fifty? Five hundred? Can even one hundred people keep a secret this big?

Not likely. Nor is it likely that Edward’s various radio and TV appearances over the years, in which he’s done readings for callers on studio phone lines, were all faked. This would require a massive conspiracy involving hundreds, if not thousands, of actors, technicians, and radio and TV hosts. It would make the game show scandals of the 1950s look like child’s play.

But why won’t these mediums submit to scientific testing? ask some skeptics. Edward has. Remember those tests at the University of Arizona, with results detailed in Gary Schwartz’s book The Afterlife Experiments? Oh, but Schwartz is flaky, say the skeptics. Well, flaky or not, he appears to have run some well-designed experiments on Edward and other mediums, with persuasive results.

Now, it’s always possible that tomorrow an exposé will reveal Edward as a fraud who uses some brand of brilliant legerdemain to fool millions of viewers. In the absence of said exposé, however, the burden of proof is on the skeptics to explain the exchanges listed above – and many others you can observe for yourself on Crossing Over.

Though it astonishes me to say it, I have come to think this guy is for real. I think something genuinely spooky is happening. I cannot see any plausible prosaic explanation for the apparent faculty that John Edward possesses.

If I’m wrong, I’ll be happy to be shown where I’ve gone astray. In the meantime, I have to side with Hamlet against the debunkers – and against my former, skeptical self:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

 

Essay: R-101

NOTE: I used to have several older essays on the paranormal posted on my author site. When I recently updated the site, I removed all this material and decided to post it here. This essay was originally posted in 2002 and updated in 2003. 

---

R-101

On October 5, 1930, at 2:05 in the morning, the 777-foot British dirigible R-101 crashed in flames in the woods near the French town of Beauvais, en route to India. All of the passengers and most of the crew perished, and British airship production suffered a setback from which it never recovered.

Two days later, the London medium Eileen Garrett, while in a trance, began to convey messages purporting to come from Lt. H.C. Irwin, who had died aboard the R-101. In jerky, staccato utterances typical of his speech pattern in life, "Irwin" said, "The whole bulk of the dirigible was entirely and absolutely too much for her engine capacity. Engines too heavy. It was this that on five occasions made me scuttle back to safety ... Useful lift too small. Gross lift computed badly – inform control panel ... Explosion caused by friction in electric storm. Flying too low altitude and could never rise. Disposable lift could not be utilized ..."

So began one of the most fascinating and convincing episodes in the history of psychic research, an episode ably chronicled by John G. Fuller in his 1979 book, The Airmen Who Would Not Die. Fuller’s book, extensively documented and written in a crisp, novelistic style, is now out of print but is well worth tracking down.

The voice of "Irwin" continued, speaking almost faster than the stenographer present at the session could take it down:

Load too great for a long flight ... Cruising speed bad, and ship badly swinging. Severe tension on fabric, which is chafing. Starboard strakes started. Engines wrong – too heavy – cannot rise ... Never reached cruising altitude. Same in trials. Too short trials. No one knew the ship properly.

Airscrews too small. Fuel injection bad and air pump failed. Cooling system bad. Bore capacity bad. Next time with cylinders but bore of engine 1,100 cc’s, but that bore is not enough to raise too heavy load and support weight. It had been known to me on many occasions that the bore capacity was entirely inadequate to the volume of structure. This I had placed again and again before engineer, without being able to enlarge capacity of Diesel twin-valve ...

But the structure no good. That actually is the case, not gas did not allow mixture to get to engine – backfired. Fuel injection bad ... There was not sufficient feed. Leakage. Pressure and heat produced explosion ...

Weather bad for long flight. Fabric all water-logged and ship’s nose down. Impossible to rise. Cannot trim ... At inquiry to be held later, it will be found that the superstructure of the envelope contained no resilience, and had far too much weight in envelope ... The added middle section was entirely wrong. It made strong but took resilience away and entirely impossible. Too heavy and too much overweighted for the capacity of the engines ...

Over the next few months, Eileen Garrett continued to receive alleged communications from Irwin and other R-101 crewmembers. While the first séance took place in the presence of psychic researcher Harry Price, the remaining ones involved a different sitter, Maj. Oliver Villiers, himself a friend of Irwin and an export in aviation (though not in the field of dirigible design).

Collectively the transcripts of these seances contain some of the most compelling evidence ever assembled for communication with the dead. Included in the messages received by Eileen Garrett are technical details about the R-101’s design and construction, recollections of test flights, discussions of political pressures and unrealistic deadlines that plagued the project, and a description of the crash itself and its causes. The personalities of the dead airmen also came through in recognizable detail. In one instance Villiers asked the communicating entity to identify itself, at which point the voice replied, "Use your damned intelligence!" – a catch phrase used by Sefton Brancker, who had died in the crash.

Indeed, the personalities of the men emerged so clearly that Villiers, who had several sessions with Garrett, eventually fell into conversing with his old friends as if they were in the room with him.

Garrett’s seances, held in broad daylight in a room designed by Harry Price to be a sealed, deceit-proof environment, yielded so much detailed, factual information that Villiers was moved to present the transcripts to Sir John Simon, in charge of the government’s investigation into the crash. This was a bold decision on Villiers’ part, one that could have jeopardized his career if Simon had looked unkindly on the idea of combing through the transcripts of seances for clues. Yet Simon handled the material respectfully and followed up on leads suggested by the communications.

Working independently of Villiers, Harry Price had the transcript of his single session with Garrett analyzed by Will Charlton, supply officer at Cardington, where the R-101 was built and tested. Charlton’s meticulous analysis revealed that the majority of the information was accurate.

"Irwin" said: "The whole bulk of the dirigible was entirely and absolutely too much for her engine capacity ... Engines too heavy ... Useful lift too small ... Gross lift computed badly." All of these comments were correct.

"Flying too low altitude and could never rise ... Disposable lift could not be utilized ... Load too great for long flight." Many witnesses observed that the R-101 was flying low. The ship dumped half its ballast just to escape from the mooring tower, and heavy rain that night would have added more weight to the vessel.

"Weather bad for long flight ... Fabric all waterlogged and ship’s nose is down ... Impossible to rise ... Cannot trim ... Almost scraped the roofs at Achy." The trip took place in a driving rainstorm with high winds. The R-101 was seen flying with its nose angled downward. Charlton noted, "Achy is a small village, 12 ½ miles north of Beauvais, and would be on the R-101’s route."

Much of the information was outside the province of any layman.

"Irwin" said: "Starboard strakes started." The word "strakes" was a technical term known only to experts.

"Airscrews too small." Charlton felt that this was likely to be correct, and noted that the airscrews used on the R-101 were smaller than those originally planned.

"Next time with cylinders but bore of engine 1,100 cc’s ..." Charlton noted that this would be correct if the term "cubic inches" was substituted for "cubic centimeters" ("cc’s").

"... the bore capacity was entirely inadequate to the volume of structure." Charlton noted: "This language is technically correct and might have been Irwin’s opinion [emphasis in original]. It is an opinion that could only be expressed by an expert in the subject ..."

"... it will be found that the superstructure of the envelope contained no resilience and had far too much weight." Charlton found this accurate, saying, "It was the most rigid airship that had ever been constructed."

"The added middle section was entirely wrong. It made strong, but took resilience away and entirely impossible. Too heavy and too much overweighted for the capacity of the engines." The R-101 had been expanded to 777 feet by the additional of a new "middle section" only a few months before the flight. This addition greatly complicated the craft’s handling and may well have contributed to the crash.

In some instances, the information was unknown to anyone who had not been part of the Cardington team.

The "Irwin" voice: "This exorbitant scheme of carbon and hydrogen is entirely and absolutely wrong." This appears to be a reference to upcoming experiments involving a mixture of oil fuel ("carbon") and hydrogen. These experiments, in the planning stage at Cardington shortly before the R-101’s crash, were not reported in the press; only project team members, like Irwin, knew about them.

"Too short trials ... No one knew the ship properly." The abbreviated test period was a concern of those working at Cardington, but was unknown to the public at the time of the séance.

"It was this that made me on five occasions have to scuttle back to safety." True – Irwin had cut short several test flights because the ship was too heavy. The press had not been told of these failures.

The Villiers transcripts, which were not seen by Charlton, offered an equal wealth of technical detail, as well as personal observations. Among these was the claim by a voice representing itself as another crewmember, Lt. Cdr. Atherstone, that he had kept a secret diary recording his worries about the R-101 program. When official inquiries were made of his widow regarding this diary, she insisted she had never heard of it. But years later, in 1967, Mrs. Atherstone produced the newly recovered diary, which was found to contain exactly the kinds of private worries mentioned by the "Atherstone" voice nearly four decades earlier.

In the face of this considerable accumulation of evidence for the genuineness of the Price and Villiers communications, it would seem that a powerful case for the continuation of life after death had been made. Indeed, many of those who participated (sometimes reluctantly) in the seances or in subsequent analysis of the transcripts came to this conclusion – among them, William Wood, a pilot and outspoken atheist who wrote for the magazine The Freethinker, and who startled his readership by declaring his belief in an afterlife after studying the messages.

And yet, in the field of psychic phenomena, nothing is ever cut and dried. There are always objections to be lodged, skeptical arguments to be advanced. The R-101 case is no different. A good summary of these objections is found in the book Psychic Detectives, by Jenny Randles and Peter Hough.

Critics [say the authors] claimed that the matter was not so clear cut. It emerged that Will Charlton was not an ‘expert’, but someone in charge of stores and supplies at Cardington. He was also a spiritualist. One of those challenging Charlton’s views was Archie Jarman, whom Fuller credited as knowing more about the subject than any other living person ...

While Jarman was compiling a report on the R101 affair in the early 1960s, he consulted his own experts: Wing Commander Cave-Brown-Cave, who had been closely involved in the airship’s construction, and Wing Commander Booth, who had captained the R100 [a different airship] on its Montreal flight. Booth said, ‘I have read the description of the Price-Irwin sequence with great care and am of the opinion that the messages received do not assist in any way in determining why the airship R101 crashed.’

As for the Villiers sequence, Booth commented: ‘I am in complete disagreement with almost every paragraph ... the conversations are completely out of character, the atmosphere at Cardington is completely wrong, and the technical and handling explanation could not possibly have been messages from anyone with airship experience.’ ... From what was supposedly said during the seances, the officers knew they were setting off on a suicidal mission before the airship had left England. Writer Edward Horton argues that if this was really the case – and there was no indication of this before the seances – all Irwin had to do was turn the airship around and, with the wind behind them, limp back to Cardington.

Superficially this seems like a convincing rebuttal of the R-101 case. But in fact many of the arguments summarized by Randles and Hough are spurious. Let’s look at them one by one.

"Will Charlton was not an ‘expert.’"

While Charlton was not an engineer himself, he did know all the engineers who had built and tested the airship. He shared the transcripts with them, obtaining their input in addition to his own.

Charlton "was also a spiritualist."

He was not a spiritualist at the time he reviewed the transcripts. Later on, after becoming convinced that the dead airmen had made contact through Garrett, he became a spiritualist.

"One of those challenging Charlton’s views was Archie Jarman."

This does not seem to be accurate. It is true that Jarman did not find the Villiers transcripts useful, because Villiers had jotted down incomplete notes and later supplemented them by memory. Jarman felt that this method opened up too many possibilities for unconscious distortion or embellishment of the material. (He may have been too hard on Villiers, who was known for his prodigious and retentive memory, a faculty still intact when John Fuller interviewed him at the age of 91.) In any case, Jarman assessed the Price transcript (the one reviewed by Charlton) quite differently. Because these notes had been taken down verbatim by a trained stenographer, he judged them to be a reliable record of the séances – and he felt they did provide important evidence about the fate of the R-101b that could not be obtained through normal means.

"Booth said: ‘... I am of the opinion that the messages received do not assist in any way in determining why the airship R101 crashed.’"

Booth’s statement, as reported, is puzzling, because whatever anyone thinks of the messages’ provenance, they surely do provide a viable theory (at least) of the R-101’s crash. The scenario is as follows:

1) The airship was overloaded and underpowered, hence unable to achieve sufficient altitude ("The whole bulk of the dirigible was absolutely and entirely too much for her engine capacity ... Useful lift too small ... Flying too low altitude and could never rise ... Never reached cruising altitude," said the "Irwin" voice).

2) High winds caused the chafing of the gas-bag compartments, one of which eventually ruptured ("Severe tension on the fabric which is chafing," said "Irwin.").

3) The rupture of this bag allowed the wind to penetrate the vessel, subjecting it to further strain as it twisted against itself.

4) This twisting caused structural damage.

5) The airship, having lost structural integrity, lost altitude. Because it was flying low to begin with, it didn’t have far to fall, and there was no time to execute emergency maneuvers like dropping the ballast.

6) At this point, one or more explosions occurred. They were set off by

1. a) the release of static electricity from the hull when the ship hit the ground ("explosion caused by friction in electric storm");
2. b) the backfiring of an overtaxed motor ("... backfired. Fuel injection bad."); or
3. c) electrical shorts produced by structural damage ("Pressure and heat produced explosion.").

Quite possibly two or even all three of these causes were responsible.

7) The explosions set fire to the huge amount of the volatile hydrogen gas inside the craft, quickly reducing the R-101 to cinders.

This scenario not only is plausible, but closely matches the official results obtained by a government inquiry into the crash. How Booth could say that the transcripts were of no value in explaining the disaster is therefore something of a mystery.

"Booth commented: ‘...the conversations are completely out of character, the atmosphere at Cardington is completely wrong ...’"

Yet Charlton and Villiers, who worked at Cardington and knew the crewmembers, assessed the conversations quite differently. And there does not seem to be any doubt that "the atmosphere at Cardington" was one of political infighting, impossible deadlines, and desperate shortcuts, just as the messages suggest.

"Booth commented: ‘... and the technical and handling explanation could not possibly have come from anyone with airship experience.’"

But equally knowledgeable aviation experts like Lord Dowding, Commander-in-Chief of the (British) Fighter Command in World War II, and Sir Victor Goddard, former commander of the Royal New Zealand Air Force, were favorably impressed with the technical accuracy and evidential value of the transcripts.

"From what was supposedly said during the seances, the officers knew they were setting off on a suicidal mission before the airship had left England. Writer Edward Horton argues that if this was really the case – and there was no indication of this before the seances ..."

Actually, more than one crewmember expressed reservations about the flight. On the day of the flight, Brancker told Villiers, "I have had several talks with Scott and Colmore [other crewmen]. They’ve become more and more uneasy at the prospect of this journey to India. In their opinion, the ship is not really airworthy." Another witness also reported that Brancker was unusually nervous that day. The Atherstone diary, mentioned above, confirms that the R-101 crew were well aware of the risks of the flight.

If "the officers knew they were setting off on a suicidal mission ... all Irwin had to do was turn the airship around and, with the wind behind them, limp back to Cardington."

This objection was answered in the seances themselves, when it was explained that, for political purposes, it was thought necessary to start the much-ballyhooed trip to India by crossing the English Channel. The airship could then be docked in France, and the cancellation of the rest of the trip could be blamed on bad weather. This compromise was a way of saving face, both for the British government, which had invested two million pounds sterling in the project, and for the R-101 program itself, which was dependent on political goodwill for continued funding.

The scheme, while desperate, was not necessarily "suicidal." In fact, the airship did make its way across the Channel before suffering irreparable damage. Had the forecast of twenty- to thirty-knot winds proved accurate, the R-101 probably would have docked safely in France. Unfortunately, the winds blew at forty to fifty knots, conditions the crew could not have anticipated when starting out.

If the bulk of these objections are spurious, do we then have an incontrovertible case of after-death communication? Regretfully, I have to say no. While I find the R-101 case extremely powerful, I would not classify it as airtight. There are still legitimate areas of doubt. Here are a few things to consider.

First, although John Fuller did an excellent job in researching and writing The Airmen Who Would Not Die, his credibility is not unimpeachable. He had earlier written The Interrupted Journey, a bestseller about the alleged UFO abduction of Betty and Barney Hill. The Hill case has been well addressed by skeptics and, in my opinion, offers little if any evidence of an extraterrestrial encounter.* If Fuller could be favorably impressed by the Hills’ dubious claims, perhaps his journalistic hardheadedness is open to question in the R-101 case, as well.

(* Among other objections, skeptics point out that the bulk of the Hills' testimony was recovered under hypnosis, an unreliable method that often produces false memories. Other alleged memories of the abduction surfaced in Betty Hill's dreams, which she related to her husband, perhaps influencing his recollection. The story changed over time; in Mrs. Hill's dreams, the aliens appeared human, but years later, under hypnosis, she remembered them as having bulbous heads, wraparound eyes, and lipless mouths. In her early hypnosis sessions, Mrs. Hill said that one alien spoke English with an accent; later she said that he communicated without speaking, via telepathy. Many details of the encounter are reminiscent of 1950s and '60s science-fiction dramas, and Barney Hill's description of the aliens closely matches an extraterrestrial depicted in an episode of The Outer Limits that aired a couple of weeks before the hypnosis sessions began.)

Second, some technical details conveyed in the seances were wrong. These errors perhaps can be accounted for by miscommunication or mistakes in transcription, but they should not be glossed over. Villiers distinctly heard mention of "altimeter springs" on two occasions, but the R-101’s altimeters had no springs. "Irwin" mentioned a gas indicator rising and falling throughout the flight, but Booth says that there was no such gauge onboard.

Third, we have to remember that both the Price session and the Villiers sessions involved the same medium, Eileen Garrett. This is not too surprising, since Garrett was the most famous medium in England, and considered the most powerful by those who believed in her abilities. Still, while no taint of fraud was ever attached to Garrett in her long career, it is fair to say that the communications would have been more impressive if two, three, or even more mediums had been involved. Cross-correspondences among various mediums provide the strongest evidence of genuine paranormal phenomena but, except for some marginal communications reported by other mediums, are lacking in this case.

Finally, there is the fact that the R-101 program had been heavily covered in the press. It is conceivable that some of the technical details and other information conveyed by Garrett were known to her, if only subconsciously. Militating against this idea is the fact that Garrett was hardly a technical whiz. She never owned a car or even learned to drive, and, according to Jarman, who knew her well, she was entirely uninformed about mechanical principles. Even so, is it possible that Garrett pulled the necessary facts out of her own subconscious or, via telepathy, out of the minds of the sitters participating in the sessions? This hypothesis would not explain all the data that came through, but might cover some of it.

The bottom line is that no single case can establish the validity of a phenomenon like mediumship. What is impressive, as John Fuller and many others have pointed out, is the cumulative weight of hundreds, even thousands, of well-documented communications that have been received over more than a century of research. Even acquiring an overview of this mass of material is a large job, but a rewarding one. Those who would like to begin can find no better place to start than in the rainswept woods outside Beauvais, early in the morning of October 5, 1930, when the R-101 met its fiery end.

----------------

October 15, 2003: Recently, while searching the Web, I noticed a few references to a 1984 book called Psychic Paradoxes by John Booth. It was said to provide "fresh, penetrating insights" into paranormal phenomena. But what really caught my eye was this promotional claim: "Booth's eye-opening, first-time explanations for the baffling R101 tragedy seance [and other mysteries] are revealed."

An explanation for R-101? This I had to read. On the Web, I tracked down a secondhand copy of the out-of-print book, supposedly in "fine" condition, and ordered it. I admit I had some trepidations about spending $15 on this item. Psychic Paradoxes was published by Prometheus Books, a small publishing house founded by rationalist philosopher Paul Kurtz, who also was instrumental in founding CSICOP, the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, a zealously skeptical organization. Prometheus Books is known for putting out a large number of anti-paranormal and anti-religious tracts, many of which seem to be hastily written and indifferently edited. Nevertheless, Psychic Paradoxes might be different. I owed it to myself, and to my millions -- okay, dozens -- of fans, to find out.

The book arrived about ten days later. It was not in "fine" condition. It looked as if someone had left it out in the rain and then peed on it. But it was readable. I turned to the index, and found that the R-101 tragedy was economically covered in just four pages. Booth spends the first couple of pages recounting the events in minimal detail. He then presents the groundbreaking theory which will explain it all.

Eileen Garrett, he tells us, was

a woman of abiding curiosity. Copies of the aircraft blueprints could have been slipped to the psychic long before the tragedy. Her friendships in high places were numerous. Security was not tight in that period of euphoric peace. The entire nation was fascinated by the construction of this new marvel of the airways.

We are aware that she had followed its building. In his book Eileen Garrett and the World Beyond the Senses, Allan Angoff ... reveals that 'she had predicted (the R101 tragedy) long before the dirigible crashed in France.' Others who had studied its construction carefully, perceived dangerous potential flaws.

The medium was a brilliant woman. Her subsequent career as a psychic researcher, publisher and administrator, both in Britain and the United States prove this. She could deduce accurately the probable sequence of fatal events by piecing together newspaper reports, checking back over her earlier investigations and perhaps even discussing the matter in seeming innocence with a valued technician friend from the airdrome.

Preliminary trial flights of an airship, short ones, reveal defects that assist postmortem verdicts. Garrett's confidante [sic], perhaps noting later how she had picked his brain, would hardly dare to reveal the true source of some seance information. His own employment and standing would be jeopardized and a friend's reputation disintegrate.

The rest of Booth's treatment of the R-101 mystery consists of a brief discussion of a fake autobiography of Howard Hughes written by Clifford Irving, and the well-known Piltdown Man hoax. These cases prove that people can be fooled.

Now, when I read this, I have to confess that I became very excited. I felt I had just received a revelation of startling import and potentially life-changing implications -- namely, that I should never, ever again buy anything published by Prometheus Books.

I also realized that Booth had proved his case conclusively in at least one respect. It is possible for people to be fooled. Case in point: I had been fooled into purchasing Psychic Paradoxes.

It's probably a waste of precious computer pixels to spend much time rebutting this remarkably dumb argument. A few points might be noted.

1. Eileen Garrett had indeed heard of the R-101 program before the crash. Everyone in Britain had heard of it. It attracted as much public interest as America's Apollo program of the 1960s. But the technical details of the airship's construction were never published, and the average person knew no more about the fine points of dirigibles than the average American in the 1960s knew about rocketships.
2. Garrett did indeed claim to have foreseen the crash. She made no secret of this, and it was mentioned in John Fuller's book and many other places. No one has ever made much of it. Psychics are always getting (or claiming to get) premonitions.
3. Garrett did have "friendships in high places." She was a member of London's literary arts community. Numbered among her friends were such luminaries as James Joyce and George Bernard Shaw. There is no reason to think that she ever hung out with aeronautical engineers, or that there was any overlap between the literary and theatrical circle in which she moved and the tightknit fraternity of engineering experts working on a secret government project.
4. Garrett was undeniably "a brilliant woman." And she was certainly successful as a psychic researcher, publisher, and administrator. None of these talents would qualify her for the job of "piecing together newspaper reports [and] checking back over her earlier investigations" (what investigations?) to deduce anything about the mechanical failure of an airship. Garrett's brilliance did not lie in the area of mechanics or engineering. She never even learned how to drive a car, and her ignorance of all things mechanical was well-known.
5. Could Garrett have had "a valued technician friend from the airdrome" who served as a secret confidant? Well, this claim is certainly impossible to disprove -- since if the relationship was secret, then by definition it was never found out. Is there any evidence that she had such a relationship? No. Was the possibility ever raised at the time? Yes. Her statements about the crash were sufficiently specific to arouse the suspicion of the government, which send agents to investigate Garrett. No link between her and the R-101 project or any of its participants was uncovered.

But maybe the investigators just weren't good enough, or Garrett was too clever for them. She would have to have been very clever indeed. Presumably, according to Booth's "theory," she was smart enough to anticipate that the dirigible would crash in the near future. She decided she could use this event to enhance her reputation as a psychic. To pull off her scheme, she had to befriend a technician working on the top-secret project and obtain classified information from him, even including blueprints! She then had to use her formidable intelligence to anticipate how the crash would occur - employing a chain of deductive reasoning that was apparently beyond the capabilities of the engineers themselves. She also had to learn all the relevant technical jargon so that she could recite it in her seances. Moreover, she had to be so fluent in her use of this jargon and so knowledgeable about the underlying concepts that she could engage in extended, highly technical dialogues with an aeronautics expert. She accomplished this feat despite the fact that at no time in her life, before or since, did she show any interest in or knowledge of mechanics. She also had to learn so much about the deceased crew members' mannerisms, vocal inflections, and turns of phrase that she could impersonate them well enough to fool someone who had known them in life.

All this is plausible, Booth suggests, because, after all, people were fooled by Clifford Irving and by the Piltdown Man.

If anyone from Prometheus Books is reading this, could I please get my $15 back?

 

Sources

John G. Fuller, The Airmen Who Would Not Die, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1979

Jenny Randles & Peter Hough, Psychic Detectives: The Mysterious Use of Paranormal Phenomena in Solving True Crimes, Reader’s Digest Association, 2001

John Booth, Psychic Paradoxes, Prometheus Books, 1984