disembodied apparitions and no apported objects in channeling. The medium simply sits and allows some entity to speak through him or her, becoming a channel for the entity’s communication. Depending on the channel, the entity may be from the past, the future, another planet or even another dimension. Mrs. J. Z. Knight, a California channel highly thought of by Shirley MacLaine, channels Ramtha, who conquered the world thirty-five thousand years ago. Ramtha was born on Atlantis. Mrs. Knight certainly doesn’t channel for free. A session of listening to Ramtha costs $400. The fee is $1,500 for a two-day seminar (Gardner 1987a). What sort of wisdom do the channels impart? It consists largely of New Age platitudes about getting in touch with yourself, loving yourself, and the lack of reality of reality.
PSYCHIC READINGS
Repeated exposes of fraud had a cumulative effect over the years, and spiritualism was largely discredited by the 1920s. Classic mediumistic spiritualism is, however, still with us, although it now has a much smaller following. Proponents support a number of spiritualist “camps” such as Camp Chesterfield in Chesterfield, Indiana, and Camp Silver Belle in Ephrata, Pennsylvania. The term “camp” here is somewhat misleading—a better term would be “resort,” as the camps have all the amenities of a resort. Just as youngsters might go to a tennis camp to improve their tennis game or to a computer camp to learn how to program computers, thousands of elderly people go to spiritualist camps to communicate with their dead relatives and friends. M. Lamar Keene was for years a leading medium at Camp Chesterfield. He revealed the inner workings of modern spiritualism in his 1976/1997 book (coauthored with Allen Spraggett),
Spiritualism has become big business, raking in millions of dollars annually from the lonely, the elderly, and the bereaved who believe that they are being put in touch with the spirits of their loved ones. As Keene (1976) makes clear, spiritualism is a lucrative racket. He reports that he and his partner took in between $10,000 and $20,000 “in one night of services” (p. 65) at their small spiritualist church in Tampa, Florida. Another time, “I collected one Sunday $15,000 in contributions, most of them cash, for our building fund” (p. 71). Of course, there never was any plan to build anything with the money—other than Keene’s personal bank account. Keene states that “one woman, who wasn’t particularly well-off, gave more than $40,000 to the church—to my partner and me— during the four years or so she attended” (p. 69). Sitters would leave money to Camp Chesterfield in their wills, one man leaving $100,000 and another estate more than $500,000.
Keene (1976/1997) reveals in detail the tricks of the medium’s trade, several of which are worth repeating here. One of Keene’s specialties was apporting lost objects during a seance, or having the spirits tell the sitter where a lost object would be found, even if the sitter wasn’t aware that the object was missing. Imagine sitting at a seance and having the college ring you lost weeks ago fall onto the table. Or having the spirits tell you that the earring you lost will be found at a particular place in the local shopping mall where, you are told, you lost it. You go to the specified location and find the earring. A miracle? Not quite. Here’s how it’s done.
The spiritualist hires an accomplice to deliver a bouquet of roses to someone, usually a widow, who is a sitter at the spiritualist’s seances. The ultimate object is to get the victim to increase the contributions to the spiritualist’s “church.” The flowers are lovely; the card with them indicates that they are from an anonymous admirer. Such a lovely and mysterious gift will thrill most people. At this point, the phony delivery man makes his move. By any of a number of ruses, he gains access to the victim’s home. One technique that almost always works is to ask permission to use the bathroom. Few people will refuse such a request, especially considering that the fellow has just brought such a pleasant surprise. While the victim puts the flowers in a vase, the accomplice quickly scans the bathroom and the bedroom—which is frequently located near the bathroom—looking for any small piece of jewelry, ideally one that is likely to be of more sentimental than monetary value. The item is pocketed and the accomplice leaves. Why not take something of monetary value? The victim is likely to report such a loss to the police, the last thing the spiritualist wants. The loss of an item of little monetary value, even if it has great sentimental value, is much less likely to be reported to the police. However, it is quite likely that the victim may ask the spirits for help in finding the object. Once the spiritualist has the object, a number of variations can be worked on this basic theme. In one, the object is apported at a later seance, to the victim’s amazement. In another, the object is hidden somewhere and the spirits tell the victim where to look for it. An especially effective technique is to have the accomplice simply hide the object somewhere in the house, behind a loose baseboard, for example. Later the spirits tell the victim where to look in his or her own house. The reader can probably think of other variations on this technique.
Once you know how it’s done, the whole thing seems extremely simple. But almost no one, unless they are familiar with the methods of spiritualists and similar con artists, will figure out on their own what happened. They are much more likely to attribute it to the powers of the spirits and the spiritualists. As a result, they may increase their donation to the spiritualist.
Another favorite spiritualist trick, used when facing large groups, is billet reading. The basic technique is familiar to anyone who has seen Johnny Carson’s “Amazing Carnak” routine. It’s called the “old one ahead” in the trade. The idea is to convince the congregation that the spirits are providing the spiritualist with information that the spiritualist would otherwise be unable to obtain. At the start of the spiritualist service (not a seance but a service similar to those in established churches), the people present are asked to write a question for the spirits on a card and seal it in an envelope. The sealed envelopes are then collected. Later in the service, the spiritualist holds them up one at a time and, without opening them, reads the question, which is presumably being communicated to him by the spirits. At this point, someone in the congregation will usually exclaim that that was his or her question. The spiritualist then answers the question, tears open the envelope to satisfy himself that the spirits communicated the correct question and answer, then picks up the next envelope and continues. Again, it’s a simple trick, once you know how.
Before the “reading” starts, the spiritualist opens one of the envelopes and memorizes that question. There are several ways of finding out what is in one envelope, even if the envelopes are in full view of the audience at all times (see Corinda 1968, for a detailed discussion of these techniques as used by legitimate stage magicians). Once the spiritualist has memorized the first question, the rest is easy. The spiritualist picks what the audience thinks is the first envelope (it’s really a second envelope), holds it up, recites from memory the first question, answers it, then rips open the envelope he’s holding. The audience thinks the spiritualist is simply verifying that the envelope really contained the question he just obtained from the spirits. In fact, the spiritualist has just opened the second envelope and is reading a second question. He then picks up a third envelope (the audience thinks it’s the second) and reads off the question that was in the previous envelope. A simple trick, but very effective if done well.
In addition to the use of stage magic techniques, spiritualists and psychics use other, more mundane techniques to convince their victims that they have extraordinary powers. For example, most spiritualists and psychics don’t just see anyone who walks in off the street; instead, new clients must make an appointment. This allows time for the accumulation of information. One way of obtaining information about a new client is through a private detective. A detective is especially likely to be used when the victim is wealthy enough to justify the expense involved. However, a great deal of information about an individual can be obtained through other, less expensive sources. For example, in many states, one’s driving record and driver’s license abstract are public information, available for a fee of a few dollars. These records may contain information on age, exact birth date, accident record, insurance company, driver’s license and policy number, and so forth. The individual’s address gives information about the neighborhood he lives in and, hence, his income level, ethnic background, and perhaps religious background. A slow drive past the house will reveal much—the type of house, the color, the number and type of cars in the driveway, the presence of children’s toys on the lawn. All this information, available essentially for free, can be fed back to the victim, who will likely be amazed that the psychic could know such details about his or her life. The victim will almost always accept the psychic’s knowledge of this information as proof of his or her powers.
Modern spiritualists and psychics keep detailed files on their victims. As might be expected, these files can be very valuable and are often passed on from one medium or psychic to another when one retires or dies.
Even if a psychic doesn’t use a private detective or have immediate access to driver’s license records and such, there is still a very powerful technique that will allow the psychic to convince people that the psychic knows
