An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural Read online

  Performing cold reading by throwing out common names and hoping that someone will “link” with one of them, following up by guessing or simply asking the relationship of a name that has been selected out and “accepted” by a sitter, the medium is well on the way to convincing an unwary listener that he or she has contacted the dead.

  Here's the way it's done. Suppose that a sitter has accepted the name “Mary.” The medium can now say, “I want to put Mary close to you.” What does this really mean? It's really a question as to whether or not Mary is “close to” the sitter. In the worst-case scenario, where Mary is dead, is buried in another country, was never very fond of the sitter, and was not related to him, we might uncharitably fail to recognize how close that guess was. However, a clever medium can easily rescue this seemingly bad guess by saying, “Ah, but though Mary failed to tell you of her great affection for you while she was here, she has come through tonight to remedy all that.” Though it sounds hard to believe, sitters actually accept such excuses. They are more than willing to accept. And note that the reader did not say that Mary was close to the sitter; what he said was only a comment, though certainly one that begged a response.

  The cold reading routine includes a number of excellent methods for extracting information from the sitter without it appearing as if the medium has actually asked for it. Comments like “Why is this person laughing?” or “She's shaking her head as if to say no” will often elicit a response. As with the “Mary” comment earlier, some questions don't appear to be questions at all: “I get this person in spirit” or “Somehow, I feel Jim was related to you or lived near you” are examples. Even more useful are those modifiers that generalize or fuzz up the statement so that it has a greater chance of being successful or of evoking an answer. Phrases like “I think that . . .” or “I feel as if . . .” or “I want to say . . .” and many other try-ons are used for this purpose.

  Other useful techniques: The reader can say “Yes, of course,” and then repeat to the sitter a fact that has just been given him, as if he knew it all along. Or he can say “Of course! I got that very strongly!” when he is given a fact that he didn't get at all. When he hears something from the sitter that appears to “link” up, he might declare “Now we're putting it all together,” even though the sitter is the one who is making it work.

  The main facets of the system are

  1. Readers use such phrases as “I think . . .” (or “I don't think . . .”). This is a way of “trying on” a guess for acceptance.

  2. Readers simply ask for direct, factual information from the sitter which they say is a way to “help along” the process. The sitter is usually very willing to help.

  3. Readers often say that they cannot differentiate between past, present, and future events and relationships, so that there are many more possibilities for “hits.”

  4. Wide ranging of the sitter's imagination is not only expected by the mediums, but is encouraged. Sitters are told to be creative and try to make the reading fit.

  5. There is a willing, eager collusion between the medium and the sitter, even if largely unconscious on the part of the sitter.

  Cold reading isn't necessarily learned in a series of lessons. Though classes in “spiritual development” are sometimes offered by mediums and are understood, both by teacher and students, to have been designed to enhance their awareness of the survival-after-death philosophy, the lessons seem also to instruct the learners in how to extract certainties out of ambiguity. For example, trying to guess a word sealed in an envelope, students are encouraged to discover relationships between obscure ramblings and the word itself. A notion about walking down a road, for example, might be said to correctly relate to the concealed word “success” because “everyone seeks a path to success, and a path is a sort of road.” The words used are always general in nature (success, peace, happiness, sadness, longing, searching) rather than more definitive words like cat, hammer, Germany, or coffee.

  Most proficiency at cold reading is obtained by observing old masters of the trade and by trial and error. By looking over the reading that is recorded in Appendix I of this encyclopedia, an actual transcript from a tape recording of a thirty-minute professional reading wherein most of the procedures outlined here have been used, the reader can begin to understand the techniques. The methods of probing and backing up, laughing away failures and turning them into forgivable boo-boos, getting around long pauses in which the sitter fails to volunteer needed information, and blaming errors on the “poor spiritual wavelengths” all become clear with a little study.

  Collins, Doris

  (1918 - ) A U.K. clairvoyant/clairaudient also famed for her claimed healing powers. In a manner largely indistinguishable from that of her now-deceased colleague Doris Stokes, Ms. Collins uses techniques of cold reading to entertain her audiences, though in a markedly more commanding manner than Ms. Stokes ever managed. Most probably, Doris Collins is the U.K.'s best-known psychic performer.

  By means of cold reading, a proficient operator can readily convince a sitter that contact with a departed person has been firmly established. That's what it's really all about. The victims of the process are constantly encouraged to think of something that can “link” the very trite but tried-and-true phrases to any deceased (or living) person or past (or present) situation they can come up with or imagine. The vague language and the inevitable modifiers (possibly, maybe, perhaps) often offer many easy connections that can be arrived at.

  Columbus Poltergeist

  In early 1984, newspapers around the world reported that genuine poltergeist phenomena were being experienced in the presence of a fourteen-year-old girl in Columbus, Ohio, named Tina Resch. The Columbus Dispatch newspaper followed the titillating story for a week, during which flying telephones, loud percussive noises, swinging and falling lamps, and other events were troubling Tina's family.

  Upon investigation, it was discovered that the girl was an adopted child who wanted to discover her true parents, and she used the media attention to plead for that information. A video camera from a visiting TV crew that was inadvertently left running recorded Tina cheating by surreptitiously pulling over a lamp while unobserved. The other occurrences were shown to be inventions of the press or highly exaggerated descriptions of quite explainable events. Descriptions given by parapsychologist William Roll, who specializes in poltergeist investigations and had examined the situation in person, turned out to be of quite impossible sequences.

  The case of the Columbus Poltergeist faded away after a few months and is not now seriously discussed. In 1994 Tina Resch was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of her three-year-old daughter.

  Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal

  (CSICOP) A Buffalo-based organization consisting of professionals in various sciences, journalists, technicians, philosophers, and other specialists such as conjurors, founded in 1976. Its purpose is to examine claims made in support of paranormal powers, to prepare reports on these subjects, to convene conferences and meetings, to publish the Skeptical Inquirer as a journal, and to encourage research on the subjects.

  CSICOP is essentially a scientific group, has no religious ties, and has a strong advocacy of truth and investigation of paranormal, occult and supernatural reports. It began with funding from the American Humanist Association, then became totally autonomous. Numerous similar groups in twenty-seven states and in thirty-seven foreign countries (Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Costa Rica, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and Venezuela) have sprung up, but are distinctly independent of CSICOP.

  As might be expected, committed believers in the occult have chosen to distort the aims and purpose of CSICOP. For example, U.K. author Colin Wilson
has described the committee as “a society to combat belief in all forms of occultism,” thereby missing — perhaps purposely — the intent and value of the group.

  CSICOP and the Skeptical Inquirer can be contacted at P.O. Box 703, Buffalo, NY 14226-0703.

  Compass Trick

  This simple trick, in which a magnetic compass is caused to deflect from its normal north-south orientation, can be traced back in the literature to the seventeenth century, but is obviously much older. It probably was one of the tricks discovered at just about the time the device was first constructed, much prior to Marco Polo's return from Cathay in about 1300.

  The trick is accomplished by introducing almost any magnet or sufficiently massive magnetic metal (the metal need not be itself magnetized) into the proximity of the instrument. Conjurors have done this by concealing a magnet on the knee, in a shoe, or in the clothing and bringing it close to the compass. The hands are frequently waved about during such a demonstration, and since the movement of the needle does not correspond directly to such movements, the spectator is led to believe that a magnet is not being palmed. This is known in the trade as misdirection.

  Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur

  (1859-1930) (Note: the family name is Conan Doyle, not simply Doyle.) Knighted for his defense of Britain's activities in South Africa, Conan Doyle was the creator of the famous fictional detective character, Sherlock Holmes.

  Following the death of his son Kingsley in wartime, Sir Arthur became a firm believer in, and supporter of, spirit mediums. He was also a bit of a snob, and it was one reason for his credulity. Post-Victorian society, of which he was a leading product, had cataloged people according to class. Therefore, when he was confronted with the Cottingley fairies photos taken by two young girls, he reasoned that two adolescent females “from the artisan class” could not possibly deceive an aristocrat such as himself, and he convinced himself that the photos were genuine. That, for him, settled the matter. And Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was not accustomed to being told that he was wrong.

  His easy acceptance of such matters as fairies brings into question his declared faith in spirit mediums, especially because his endorsement was very instrumental in bringing legitimacy to their claims, and to spiritualism as a religion.

  The uneasy friendship between Sir Arthur and magician Harry Houdini, and their serious mutual respect, was strained when the writer ascribed to Houdini genuine psychic powers. It seemed inconceivable to him that the magician could do what he did without resort to genuine miracles. Houdini knew quite well that what he did was simple conjuring, that any person could thereby be fooled, and was astonished that Sir Arthur could not recognize or admit that fact.

  Sir Arthur traveled abroad preaching the claims of spiritualism, showing incredibly naive lantern slides of supposed miracles, including those of the Cottingley fairies. He faithfully continued to support spiritualism and all of its followers until his death in 1930, four years following that of Houdini.

  Confidence Man

  (also, con man) A swindler, cheat, charlatan. A dishonest person who by charm, earnestness, guile and seeming innocence, gains the confidence of his victims and cheats them out of money and goods, or obtains an endorsement or favorable position as a result of lies and general trickery. Usually, the victim is asked to become involved in a little cheating too, during the course of the action and is thus made to look like a fool and/or a deceiver when the game is discovered. The operator of a three-shell game would also come under this label, since the eventual victim here is made to feel that he knows more about the rules of the game than the operator, and thus cannot be deceived himself.

  Conjureting

  The claimed ability to call up demons and storms. Not a socially admired talent.

  Conjuring/conjuror

  The art of seeming to perform genuine magic is known as conjuring, and the artist is known as a conjuror. The art has a written history dating back to a manuscript known as the Westcar Papyrus, after its 1823 discoverer, Henry Westcar. That document is currently in the Berlin State Museum. Written 3,800 to 4,000 years ago, it relates events that are said to have occurred 500 years earlier in the reign of Pharaoh Khufu, more popularly known as Cheops, probably the builder of the Great Pyramid of Giza, near Cairo.

  The Westcar Papyrus recounts a series of tales told at the court of Cheops to the pharaoh by his sons. One story tells of Webaoner, a court magician/scholar faced with the problem of an adulterous wife who was sending expensive gifts to a townsman who had attracted her. Webaoner, it says, sculpted a small wax crocodile which then became seven cubits (twelve feet) long, dutifully swallowed the erring wife, and was once again a harmless wax model. Next is a story about a magician named Djadjaemonkh, who found a lost amulet by folding a lake!

  He placed one side of the water of the lake upon the other, and lying upon a potsherd he found the fish-shaped charm.

  The papyrus then relates that a magician known as Dedi was able to reattach the head of a goose that had been cut off. To demonstrate his skills for the pharaoh, a goose was brought and decapitated. The papyrus says:

  The goose was placed on the western side of the pillared court, and its head on the eastern side. Dedi said his magic words. The goose arose and waddled and so did its head. The one reached the other and the goose stood up and cackled. Next he caused a waterfowl to be brought, and the like was done with it. Then His Majesty caused that there be brought to him an ox, and its head was felled to the ground. Dedi said his magic words, and the ox stood up behind him with its tether fallen to the ground.

  The lake-folding and wax crocodile stories are certainly not accounts of conjuring but tales of sorcery. However, the bird's-head-off-and-back-on-again trick and the method for doing it are well known to conjurors, though not done quite as described here. Where the papyrus relates that the same feat was performed with an ox, it may be simply a bit of hyperbole — not entirely unheard of in descriptions of conjuring — and quite likely to creep into the story. It must be pointed out that this document was written by a scribe from secondhand reports nearly five hundred years after the events are supposed to have taken place.

  There is a continuous history of the conjuring art from the Westcar Papyrus down to the present day. Such superstars as Harry Houdini, John Nevil Maskelyne, Blackstone (père et fils), Joaquin Ayala, David Copperfield, and Siegfried & Roy have kept audiences enthralled with their skills. But conjuring is not magic and should not be mistaken for a supernatural performance, even when the conjuror chooses to misrepresent his abilities, as occasionally happens.

  The art of conjuring uses sleight of hand, special equipment, secret technology, carefully learned psychological methods, and various illusionary techniques to present to the spectator — for purposes of entertainment — the same effect that would be experienced if magic were actually possible.

  In the United States, the word “conjuring” is interchangeable with “magic,” and conjurors are referred to as “magicians.”

  Control

  See spirit guide.

  Cook, Florence Eliza

  (1856?-1904) Miss Cook was dismissed from a teaching job at age sixteen, then worked with several different professional spirit mediums who were later exposed as frauds, as she herself was when she took up the profession.

  Cook's spirit guide was known as Katie King (a character who was to reemerge a generation later as a guide to medium Eusapia Palladino), and Cook was able to produce full-size, full-form materializations of this character, who, strangely enough, in all photographs appears to be an exact double for Cook. Never were the medium herself and Katie both seen at one time. Also, if the materialized form was not really a spirit, the part of Katie King may have been created and played by Cook's look-alike sister, also named Katie.

  Sir William Crookes (which see) was closely associated with Cook and wrote copiously on her mediumship. Though he and other investigators employed overly intricate and cosmetically scientific systems to control Cook, and superficial
accounts of their research state that such instrumentation showed no sign of trickery, the actual records disagree with such reports. Cook actually failed to satisfy the controls, and yet her supporters glossed over major problems and ignored quite positive evidence of trickery. Her sister Katie failed entirely to pass controlled tests, even to the very loose standards of those who tested her.