CHAPTER 1
PSYCHICS AND MEDIUMS
SOME BELIEVE THAT MYSTICS CAN HELP PEOPLE COMMUNICATE WITH DEPARTED LOVED ONES, FIND LOST PETS, SEE INTO THE MINDS OF OTHERS, AND MORE. ARE THEY ONTO SOMETHING?
Crystals are said to have a special energy that connects them to the spiritual realm.
SEERS OF THE BIBLE
THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS ARE RIFE WITH PROPHETS, THOUGH BELIEVERS ARE WARNED TO BE WARY OF FALSE ONES.
A painting of the Prophet Isaiah, c. 1525.
Seers, psychics, and prophets make regular appearances in the Bible, and when the characters in question are legitimate, the Good Book embraces them. Yet the text is quite clear about the dangers of consulting false prophets. In the Old Testament, for example, Moses warns against divination, interpreting omens, and contacting the dead “for all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord.” The problem with such actions, believers say, is that false prophets cannot speak for the Lord, even if they pretend to. Instead, they seek their information from human spirits and other lesser entities who might even be Satan in disguise. From a strictly practical perspective, these false prophets also threaten a religion’s authority and can erode its power.
The Perils of False Prophets
The case of Saul, the first King of Israel, provides an excellent example of the woe that can befall someone who consults a psychic. Saul tries to decide what to do about the encroaching Philistine army, but his mentor, the prophet Samuel, has died and Saul no longer has a trusted counselor. Desperate for advice, Saul disguises himself and visits a medium known as the Witch of Endor, instructing her to summon Samuel’s ghost. Samuel appears but is angry that Saul has disobeyed God and spoken with a witch. He predicts that the King and his sons will die the next day—which they do, in a battle with the Philistines.
Ghost of Samuel Called Before Saul by the Witch of Endor (1668), by Salvator Rosa.
The Word of the Lord
At the same time, the Bible is rife with true prophets who receive and spread the word of God. Depending on who is counting, there are close to 50 of them, including a few women, such as Miriam, sister of Moses, who prophesied while still a child that her as yet unborn brother would lead the Jews to freedom from Egypt. According to believers, the ultimate test for a true prophet is that the things he or she foretells actually come to pass.
A true prophet also acts in the best interest of the Lord, not out of self-interest. So the prophesies of the Bible tend to be similar in message. Most convey some version of the following messages:
• Stop sinning and worshiping false idols
• The Messiah is coming
• The Messiah is returning
• The End Times are on their way.
As for those who argue that certain Biblical prophesies have not come to pass, believers have only one word to add: yet.
MESSAGES FROM THE MAJORS
The books referred to as the Major Prophets of the Old Testament are those of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel-not because they are more important than the other sections, but because they're so long. Each of them includes numerous prophesies.
PROPHET: Isaiah
WHO WAS HE?: Son of an elite Jewish family
PREDICTED: Birth of Jesus
BOOK/VERSE: Isaiah 7:14
THE MESSAGE FROM GOD: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”
NOTES: Only the first part of the Book of Isaiah is believed to have been written by Isaiah himself.
PROPHET: Jeremiah
WHO WAS HE?: Son of a Jewish priest
PREDICTED: Fall of Jerusalem
BOOK/VERSE: Jeremiah 21:10
THE MESSAGE FROM GOD: “[This city] shall be given into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall burn it with fire.”
NOTES: Jeremiah sternly warned against false prophets with more optimistic predictions.
PROPHET: Ezekiel
WHO WAS HE?: Descendant of the prophet Aaron
PREDICTED: The Jews’ return to Israel
BOOK/VERSE: Ezekiel 36:24
THE MESSAGE FROM GOD: “For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land.”
NOTES: Ezekiel and Jeremiah were contemporaries.
PROPHET: Daniel
WHO WAS HE?: Either a pseudonym for later scholars, or a Jewish noble exiled in Babylon, depending on interpretation
PREDICTED: Continuing miseries in Israel for 70 more weeks
BOOK/VERSE: Daniel 9:24
THE MESSAGE FROM GOD: “Seventy weeks are determined upon thy… holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins.”
NOTES: The “70 weeks” is interpreted to mean 490 years.
No one has been raptured up to heaven yet, but some believers continue to hope.
WILL THERE BE A RAPTURE?
Christian believers say it’s not a question of “if” the rapture will come, but “when.”
In the first book of Thessalonians in the New Testament, the apostle Paul writes a letter in which he describes a profound forthcoming event. The Lord, he writes, will descend from heaven and His followers “shall be caught up … in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” According to some branches of Christianity, this literal departure of the chosen from Earth to Heaven, known as the Rapture, is certain to take place. But when? The exact date has lately been predicted to be in 1992, 1994, and twice in 2011. So far, no Rapture. But apparently these errors, too, are prophesied in the Bible. “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only”: Matthew 24:36.
THE POETIC PROPHET
NOSTRADAMUS IS SAID TO HAVE PREDICTED EVERYTHING FROM THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON TO THE KILLING OF JFK.
French royal coat of arms.
Who could have predicted that unassuming Michel de Nostredame, born in 1503 in a small village in southern France, would become one of the most famous seers to ever live?
Better known by the Latinized name Nostradamus, this Frenchman, influential to this day, began his career as a learned man of letters who studied medicine at several universities. He first applied his education to healing the sick and established himself as an apothecary. As the deadly bubonic plague swept through Europe, Nostradamus gained notoriety for his novel approach to treating the disease. Instead of advising popular but dangerous treatments such as bloodletting, he encouraged patients to practice good hygiene, to avoid infected cadavers, and to take a vitamin C–rich pill he made from rosehips. Eventually, Nostradamus moved beyond medicine and began publishing books that offered general advice and forecasts for the coming year. He became known for writing mostly in four-line verses called quatrains, and won a devoted following, even though many of his predictions proved false.
Royal Pain
When Nostradamus suggested in one prophesy that harm might come to the royal family, he caught the attention of the queen, Catherine de’ Medici. He was called to join her court in 1555, and asked to draw up horoscopes for her children and to provide advice and counsel based on his special insights. At least one of Nostradamus’s early predictions proved startlingly true for Catherine’s husband, Henry II.
Nostradamus wrote:
The young lion will overcome the older one,
On the field of combat in a single battle;
He will pierce his eyes through a golden cage,
Two wounds made one, then he dies a cruel death.
In July 1559, King Henry II was killed after a jousting tournament. His opponent, Gabriel Comte de Montgomery, was the young captain of the Scottish Guard regiment in Henry’s armed forces. During the fight, Montgomery’s lance struck Henry’s face shield with such force that a shard of the lance penetrated his head. A second shard bore through his eye. The wound became infected, and Henry suffered for ten days before he died.
Nostradamus
A Rhyme Every Time
Today, Nostradamus is best known for the prophecies he made about what would happen long after his own death, in 1566. Many of the predictions were based on classical Roman and Greek works and medieval writings about the end of the world, as well as on obscure works of Nostradamus’s own era, according to historians and literary experts. Some believe his verses foretold the Great Fire of London in 1666, the fall of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815, the dropping of the atomic bomb in 1945, the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, and many other seismic events. Others dismiss such notions, pointing out that the wording of many of the quatrains are too general and vague to link them to such specific developments.
BREAKING THE CODE
Here are some of the prophesies made by Nostradamus and the major world events they are said to have predicted.
1696
The Prophecy: Long before such events, Those of the East, by virtue of the (Crescent) moon, In the 17th century will make great conquests. They will nearly subjugate a corner of Russia.
The Historic Event: Some believe “East” could refer to the Ottoman Turks, “conquests” to the Balkans, and “Russia” to the land between the Caspian and Black seas. The reference would correlate with Peter the Great wresting control of the Russian port of Azov from the Ottoman Turks.
1789
The Prophecy: Before the war comes, The great wall will fall, The King will be executed, his death coming too soon will be lamented. (The guards) will swim in blood, Near the River Seine the soil will be bloodied.
The Historic Event: Here, “great wall” could refer to the famous French prison, the Bastille, the “king” to Louis XVI, and the “River Seine” to Paris. Some believe this poem foreshadowed the French Revolution, which was notoriously bloody.
1856
The Prophecy: The lost thing is discovered, hidden for many centuries. Pasteur will be celebrated almost as a God-like figure. This is when the moon completes her great cycle, But by others’ slanders he shall be dishonored.
The Historic Event: What could be hidden for many centuries? Some believe the reference is to bacteria, discovered by French microbiologist Louis Pasteur. His significant contributions to science and medicine included pasteurization and vaccination, but jealous colleagues ridiculed his work.
1940s
The Prophecy: Beasts ferocious with hunger will swim across the rivers, greater part of the army will be against Hister. The great one will cause him to be dragged in a cage of iron, when the German infant observes no law.
The Historic Event: Is this a reference to Adolph Hitler and World War II? Some have understood “Hister” to mean Hitler and the “German Infant” as the Third Reich. During the war, Germany fought on two fronts, losing both.
DID NOSTRADAMUS FORESEE 9/11?
In one of his poems, Nostradamus wrote that “from the sky will come the great King of Terror, / bringing back to life the Great King of the Mongols.” Some see references to Osama bin Laden in both of these lines.
In another verse, Nostradamus wrote: Earthshaking fire from the center of the Earth / Will cause tremors around the New City. / Two great rocks will war for a long time, / Then Arethusa will redden a new river.
The “New City” would be New York City, the “two great rocks” the Twin Towers, and the river that was “redden[ed],” the Hudson.
MOVED BY THE SPIRITS
OOZING ECTOPLASM, RAPPING GHOSTS, AND PSYCHIC FORCES. WELCOME TO 19TH-CENTURY AMERICA.
It was conveniently claimed that ectoplasm could be produced only under low light conditions or else the substance would disintegrate.
The mid-19th century was an intellectually fertile yet emotionally trying time in the United States. While new religions, utopian experiments, and strong abolitionist and feminist movements flourished, infant mortality was high. The average lifespan was a brief 50 years, and staggering casualties from the Civil War had plunged the nation into deep, shared grief.
Spiritualism, the belief that spirits of the dead were able to communicate with the living, seemed to offer some hope. For many Americans, the movement appeared to meld aspects of religion with hard evidence of a life beyond. Just as Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution had sparked an almost religious faith in science, the spiritualist movement energized a population looking for answers.
Psychic mediums “proved” their abilities to communicate with spirits through levitation—a table seeming to rise on its own, for example—or the phenomenon of apports—objects appearing out of thin air. Some mediums reportedly expressed “ectoplasm” from their bodies—a light-colored substance that could take on the physical features of humans in the form of ghostly faces.
The Fox Sisters
The term spiritualism was first used in 1848, when Maggie and Kate Fox, two young sisters, claimed to hear rapping noises inside their family’s farmhouse in Hydesville, New York.
The girls insisted that the sounds were made by the spirit of a man who had been murdered there before the family moved in. Soon, other spirits began making themselves heard and crowds gathered to watch Maggie and Kate perform. The two became a sensation, touring the world and charging enormous sums to perform in theatres and to privately assist people in communicating with their dearly departed. The Fox sisters fanned the flames that ignited the powerful Spiritualist Movement, which lasted through the early decades of the 20th century.
The Fox sisters.
In 1888, Maggie confessed before a live audience that the sisters themselves had produced the raps. She demonstrated by cracking her toe joints to reproduce the sounds.
Ardent spiritualists refused to accept Maggie’s confession and she later recanted.
In 1904, a human skeleton was revealed behind a basement wall in the farmhouse where more than 50 years earlier, the young Fox sisters had claimed the spirit of a murdered peddler created mysterious rapping sounds.
Epidemic Delusion
By the late 1880s the spiritualist movement’s credibility flagged. Many set about debunking the mediums’ claims, including William Benjamin Carpenter, an invertebrate zoologist and physiologist, who described spiritualism as an “epidemic delusion.”
Not all of the “ghostbusters” pointed to trickery, however. The well-known chemist and physicist William Crookes postulated that mediums unconsciously stored up psychic forces that were released during trances.
Mary Todd Lincoln, in a photo by William H. Mumier
MRS. LINCOLN: GRIEVING SPIRITUALIST
Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of President Abraham Lincoln, was an avowed spiritualist who often invited mediums to the White House to try to reach her two deceased sons, Willie and Eddie. Though her husband was skeptical, he also attended the séances.
“Willie lives,” Mary wrote in 1863. “He comes to me every night and stands at the foot of the bed with the same sweet adorable smile he always had…. Little Eddie is sometimes with him…. You cannot dream of the comfort this gives me.”
After the president’s death, Mary Lincoln posed for a photograph in her mourning clothes, hiding her identity from the photographer, William H. Mumler. In the resulting photo, the ghostly presence of a figure resembling Lincoln is seen standing behind her. Coincidentally, Mumler’s wife was a medium.
“Spirit photography” was extremely popular and lucrative in the 19th century. However, every spirit photographer who was investigated was revealed to be a fraud, including Mumler —though Mary held on to her belief in the photo.
MEDIUMS WITH MESSAGES
Today, only a smattering of adherents and spiritualist communities still exist, but in the late 1880s there were upward of ten million believers.
Scottish medium Daniel Dunglas Home was a 19th-century superstar, famous for levitating and speaking with the dead.
Spiritualist Henry Slade frequently appeared throughout Europe and North America; he was regularly exposed as a fraud. By his death in 1905, he had been thoroughly discredited.
THEY SEE! MODERN PSYCHICS
PSYCHICS AND MEDIUMS CLAIM TO PEER INTO THE FUTURE AND GRASP REALMS MOST OF US CAN HARDLY IMAGINE.
Some clairvoyants say they can use crystal balls to obtain meaningful information.
The words psychic and medium can call up images of costumed fortune-tellers with crystal balls, tea leaves, and levitating tables. Yet many different types of psychics exist, and believers feel certain that such mystics can help them communicate with departed loved ones, find lost pets, see into the minds of others, and more, while skeptics dismiss psychics as mere entertainers or scam artists.
Psychic techniques and specialties range from séances to dream interpretation, which are used to read the present, probe the past, or predict the future.
WHO KNEW?
According to a 2005 Gallup poll, 31 percent of Americans believe in psychic communication and 26 percent believe in clairvoyance.
IN RECENT MEMORY
Some contemporary psychics have been accused of exploiting followers for their own gain; others have focused on revealing hoaxes; while many say they truly believe they are in contact with supernatural entities. Here’s a look.
1985 American ESTHER HICKS starts channeling a being called Abraham. She also translates Abraham’s philosophy, which she refers to as the “law of attraction.” This is the concept that thoughts attract related actions and events: good thoughts attract beneficial events, and vice versa.
1987 THE NEW AGE MOVEMENT reaches a high point at the Harmonic Convergence, a synchronized worldwide meditation session centered in Sedona, Arizona.
1991 Launch of the PSYCHIC FRIENDS NETWORK, a U.S. company that connects the viewers of its television infomercials with psychics via a 1-900 telephone number. The rate: $3.99 a minute.
1992 THE SKEPTICS SOCIETY publishes the first edition of Skeptic, a quarterly academic journal that prints scientific research debunking psychic and paranormal phenomena.
1998 American television medium JOHN EDWARD rises to prominence with the publication of his first book, One Last Time. This led to the premiere of his popular Sci-Fi Channel television show, Crossing Over with John Edward, in 1999.
1999 Americans TERRY AND LINDA JAMISON, “the Psychic Twins,” predict there will be terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and U.S. federal buildings in 2002. (They are off by one year.)
2000 JAMES UNDERDOWN, executive director of the anti-paranormal Center for Inquiry, founds the Independent Investigations Group. Its purpose is to investigate psychic and pseudoscientific claims through scientific tests that reveal psychic power to be a sham.
2002 Animal Planet’s television show THE PET PSYCHIC premieres, starring British intuitive Sonya Fitzpatrick. She facilitates communication between audience members and their living or deceased dogs, cats, and other animals.
2005 The television series MEDIUM premieres on NBC, based on the life of Allison Dubois. She claims to be a psychic detective who works in tandem with law enforcement agencies on cases, including that of the so-called Baseline Rapist in Phoenix, Arizona.
2013 Colombian astrologer RODRIGO RODRIGUEZ ARDILA predicts the death of Lady Gaga will come soon. He had previously correctly predicted the deaths of Whitney Houston, Amy Winehouse, and Michael Jackson.
TECHNIQUE GLOSSARY
An individual psychic might call him- or herself any of the following:
• CHANNELER: Communicates messages from spirits who temporarily inhabit their body in order to speak or write.
• CLAIRVOYANT: Sees objects, people, and events of the past, present, or future that cannot be perceived via conventional perception.
• DIVINER: Reads objects, such as dripping wax or the shapes and lines of hands, to interpret situations, answer questions, and give advice.
• DREAM INTERPRETER: Decodes symbolism in dreams to reveal their meanings, often premonitions or foreknowledge of the future.
• EMPATH: Picks up on invisible vibrations emanating from people and/or animals to experience their emotions.
• MEDIUM: Communicates with the spirits of the dead on behalf of the living.
HARRY HOUDINI VICTORIAN GHOSTBUSTER
IN THE EARLY 1900S, THE FAMOUS ESCAPE ARTIST BEGAN TO DEBUNK SPIRITUALISTS WHO SAID THEY COULD COMMUNICATE WITH THE DEAD.
Harry Houdini was a master of magic and illusion. He was born Ehrich Weiss, in 1874.
Harry Houdini was a Hungarian-American magician and illusionist, known during his life—and perhaps even now—as the world’s greatest escape artist. He was also deeply interested in spiritualism, demonstrating both profound ambivalence and intense fascination toward it. As an illusionist, he performed all over the world, freeing himself from straitjackets while under water or dangling from buildings and squirming out of handcuffs while inside locked caskets. For decades, the question of whether or not spiritualism was as much of an illusion as his feats compelled him to investigate the phenomenon.
Houdini’s boyhood fascination with magic and his curiosity about the afterlife and the belief that the dead could communicate with the living led him to spiritualism. “I am not a skeptic,” he said during a 1926 radio address. “I am willing to believe and my mind is wide open.” He amassed a large and unique library on spiritualism and wrote his own book entitled A Magician Among the Spirits.
Séance Busting!
It was after World War I when Houdini did an about-face, becoming a hardcore skeptic. He’d attended thousands of séances and could duplicate the activities he’d experienced in the darkened parlors: tables floating on their own, objects appearing from nowhere, ghostly faces emerging from darkness.
It enraged him that mediums took advantage of grief-stricken families who had lost loved ones during World War I by claiming to carry messages from the other side. He made it his mission to go after the fakes, referring to it as his “adventure.”
Houdini began attending séances in disguise, accompanied by reporters and police officers. At key moments he would leap up from his chair, reveal his identity, and expose the fraud. He began to debunk psychics and mediums during touring shows, offering $10,000 to anyone who could demonstrate spiritualist powers that he was unable to re-create.
Elegant séances attracted wealthy patrons—and sometimes, predatory mediums.
Houdini sits at a Margery box, which he designed to reveal fraudulent mediums by limiting their range of motion.
Mina Crandon, also known as Margery, with ectoplasm presumably draped over her face.
WHO KNEW?
Ectoplasm supposedly allowed spirits to interact with the living.
It Takes a Flimflammer
Perhaps Houdini’s best-known effort at debunking involved the medium Mina Crandon, known as Margery. In the 1920s, Scientific American magazine offered a $2,500 prize to any medium who could produce a verifiable psychic event. Mina nearly won, until Houdini himself journeyed to her home in Boston, where he observed her and denounced her as a fraud. Houdini described mediums as “vultures who prey on the bereaved.” For Houdini, exposing trickery became a personal crusade, and it was one to which he was well suited. As he told a Los Angeles Times interviewer, “It takes a flimflammer to catch a flimflammer.”
The writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle feuded with Houdini.
THE FINAL WORD
The story of Houdini and spiritualism continued after his death, but perhaps not the way either he or spiritualists imagined.
• Following Houdini’s death in 1926, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published an article claiming that Houdini had used supernatural powers to achieve many of his stunts. He accused Houdini of intentionally blocking the powers of mediums he was debunking.
• According to Houdini’s obituary in the New York Times, the master illusionist asserted that “there is and can be no such thing as suspension of natural laws; that everything done by fakir, medium, clairvoyant, horologist, palmist can be explained in terms of physics, chemistry, and psychology manipulated with agility.”
• Houdini was not a believer, yet he told his wife that if there was an afterlife, he would contact her from beyond the grave. He never did.
OUIJA ADVICE FROM THE OTHER SIDE
THE BOARD IS MARKETED AS A HARMLESS PASTTIME, BUT MANY BELIEVE IT ALLOWS PLAYERS TO COMMUNICATE WITH SPIRITS.
The Ouija board has been a spooky part of American adolescence for more than a century.
In addition to providing a healthy income for thousands of mediums who claimed to communicate with the dead, 19th-century spiritualism offered merchandising opportunities. In 1891, a Pittsburgh shop placed the first newspaper ad for a unique item that would catch on like wildfire, “a mysterious device that answers questions about the past, present, and future with marvelous accuracy”: the Ouija board.
Marketed by the Kennard Novelty Company as a game, the Ouija board brought the medium’s tool of automatic writing into the comfort and privacy of people’s homes. The board is still popular today and is one of the best-selling novelties ever created—outperforming even Monopoly—with tens of millions produced since its introduction.
How to Play
The design of the Ouija board, now produced by Parker Brothers, remains unchanged, featuring the letters of the alphabet and the words yes, no, and goodbye. A teardrop-shaped device known as a planchette is used to navigate the board. Just ask a question and the planchette will guide you—on its own—to the answer.
An Investigative Tool
While advertised as amusement and recreation, the board was taken seriously by those who hoped to verify links between the known and unknown, the material with the immaterial.
Others, like British physiologist William Benjamin Carpenter, sought to poke holes in such theories. In 1852, Carpenter published a report on the “ideomotor effect”—the body’s reflexive subconscious reaction to an idea. In other words, people could be moving the planchette toward the answer they want. Carpenter suggested this principle might be at work in other spiritualist phenomena as well, including table-tilting during séances.
Marie Louise de la Ramée
THE NAME GAME
According to one tale, the board itself generated the term Ouija when asked its name. However, others say Helen Peters, sister-in-law of the Ouija board’s designer, wore a locket with a woman’s image and the name “Ouija” above it. Peters admired a popular author and feminist called Ouida, the pen name of Marie Louise de la Ramée (1839–1908); “Ouija” may have been a misreading of Ouida.
WHO IS ON THE OTHER SIDE?
Zozo, Ouija’s evil spirit, might not be who you were looking for.
Of all the anecdotal experiences reported by Ouija users, none conjures more fear than encounters with a dark entity named Zozo. Thousands have reported similar details since the board debuted in the late 19th century: Once conjured, Zozo rages with profanity and makes death threats.
Cautionary tales about this so-called demon are shared between Ouija practitioners on paranormal websites. Psychic investigator John Zaffis has been investigating firsthand Zozo accounts for more than 40 years and has said he does not believe Zozo is a demon. Instead, Zaffis sees him as a negative deity such as those found in prebiblical mythologies.
Many feel that the most logical explanation of the Ouija phenomenon—and of encounters with Zozo—is the power of suggestion. Those who are exposed to the stories are more likely to “encounter” Zozo via their own involuntary manipulations of the board.
OUIJA ON THE SCREEN
The Ouija board has figured in everything from low-budget horror movies to Hollywood blockbusters —and even cartoons.
• The Uninvited (1944) Ray Milland’s character buys an old English house where a makeshift Ouija board is used in an impromptu séance.
• Awakenings (1990) Robin Williams, as the physician Oliver Sacks, uses a Ouija board to communicate with a catatonic patient played by Robert DeNiro.
• What Lies Beneath (2000) Michelle Pfeiffer and Diana Scarwid wield a KMart Ouija board in a bathroom séance; otherworldly havoc ensues.
NEW AGE HEALER
EDGAR CAYCE, WHO HELPED DEVELOP MODERN HOLISTIC MEDICINE, SAID HE COULD PREDICT WORLD EVENTS.
Edgar Cayce in 1943
“Clarify your personal spiritual ideal (’core value’). Identify your four or five most prominent talents, abilities, and strengths. Choose how to word your mission statement: This describes the special gift you have to offer the world around you.” —Edgar Cayce
Edgar Cayce (1877–1945) was one of the best-known, controversial, and written-about psychics of the 20th century. He gave thousands of private readings to individuals, claimed to see spirits, diagnosed and healed illnesses, and predicted future events—often successfully. Cayce never took payment for his services, considering his powers to be gifts from God that he should use to serve humanity.
Raised on a farm in Kentucky, Cayce began to exhibit psychic abilities during childhood. He claimed to be able to memorize a book by sleeping on top of it, and in his early twenties he discovered that he could put himself into a trance by lying on his back and folding his hands over his chest. This trick earned him the nickname “The Sleeping Prophet.”
Cayce the Healer
Cayce gained renown in the early 20th century for diagnosing and treating debilitating physical conditions. He is said to have rid his wife of a potentially fatal case of tuberculosis and to have once treated President Woodrow Wilson for a heart murmur. In 1928, Cayce opened the Hospital of Enlightenment, a healing center in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where he utilized many of the tools now common in New Age movement, including astrology and healing crystals. In 1910, the New York Times wrote about Cayce’s remarkable medical knowledge and his skill as a diagnostician, while emphasizing that he’d had no training whatsoever in the field of medicine. Other skeptics pointed out there was no data documenting how successful—or not—Cayce’s treatments were.
Predicting World Events
Cayce is believed to have predicted significant world events, including the stock market crash of 1929, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and the social upheavals of the 1960s. Not all of his predictions have come to pass, but enough of them have to impress believers and skeptics alike.
Cayce undermined his credibility with public commentary about the Lost Continent of Atlantis, a mythical island that he believed once floated in the Atlantic Ocean. Supposedly inhabited by an advanced race, Atlantis was first conceived of by Plato, the Ancient Greek philosopher. Cayce insisted that many subjects of his psychic readings were reincarnations of ancient Atlanteans and that Atlantis was destroyed in a cataclysmic event 10,000 years ago. He predicted that it would rise from beneath the ocean during the 1960s.
All of Edgar Cayce’s psychic readings were captured by a stenographer and are cataloged at the Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E.) in Virginia Beach, the organization Cayce founded in 1931.
The original Cayce medical facility, the Hospital of Enlightenment in Virginia Beach, Virginia
THE HEALING DIET
The “Father of Holistic Medicine” recommended alternative diets and remedies combined with mental and spiritual work.
The Basic Cayce Diet still has enthusiastic adherents today. Mandating an 80/20 balance between acid and alkaline foods (the distinction is Cayce’s), the diet recommends avoiding combining certain foods at meals and excludes lentils, asparagus tips, buttermilk, yogurt, plums, olives, cranberries, and several other items.
A Cayce prescription: “Maintaining an attitude of desiring and expecting to be healed is essential.”
WHAT ARE THE AKASHIC RECORDS?
A cosmic compendium of all human knowledge.
For believers, the Akashic Records include everything that has ever been done, said, felt, or thought by everyone that has ever lived or will live. They do not exist in the physical universe, but can be “read” by those who can mystically perceive them.
Cayce claimed that he psychically tapped into the Akashic records as a primary source of information. He credited the records with providing his information about the lost continent of Atlantis as well as mysteries in the present and future.
Today, the Akashic records are frequently referenced by many types of psychic practitioners in a number of different schools of New Age thought.
Cayce sits on the couch where many of his readings took place.
WHO KNEW?
The term Akashic derives from the Sanskrit word meaning “sky” or “space.”
PSYCHIC DETECTIVES
NEW AGE GUESSWORK MEETS OLD-FASHIONED POLICE WORK AND THE RESULTS ARE INCONCLUSIVE.
Clairvoyant Peter Hurkos studying the bloodstained living room where Sharon Tate and others were found murdered.
WHO KNEW?
Clairvoyant Peter Hurkos claimed he had named Charles Manson as the ringleader of a band of three men, but the police said remarks by Manson family member Susan Atkins led them to the murderers.
In 1997, when Fordham University student Patrick McNeill disappeared and a search by New York City police came up empty, McNeill’s family asked the NYPD to consult psychic detective Dorothy Allison. She delivered a hodgepodge of clues, including “White’s Restaurant,” “laundromat,” and ’’he’s in the river.’’ Detectives did find a white restaurant in McNeill’s neighborhood, but were unimpressed by the laundromat tip, since the area had dozens of laundries. Even after McNeill’s body was found in the East River, police were dismissive. “She did predict that he was in the river. But that was my guess, too,’’ said the chief detective on the case.
John List, who was accused of murdering his family.
Psychic detectives claim to be able to solve crimes using their alleged gifts as clairvoyants, mediums, telepaths, and diviners. Sometimes they turn to psychometry—handling a missing person’s possessions—or visit locations related to the case. Solicited or not, these investigators often declare their predictions to the media, to anguished loved ones, and to law enforcement agencies.
Peter Hurkos, for example, a Dutch clairvoyant, was called on by friends of Roman Polanski in 1969 when Polanski’s wife and four others were brutally murdered in the filmmaker’s Los Angeles home. Hurkos walked through the house touching things and later told police that three men had committed the crime while tripping on LSD. He described a Satanic ritual and a string of debauched parties. After cult leader Charles Manson was arrested for ordering the murders, Hurkos’ theories were proved wrong. The victims had been asleep when the killers broke in, and there had been no wild parties. The murderers were three women and a man, not three men as Hurkos insisted.
Typically, psychic detectives make vague statements such as, “I see a shallow grave” or “the perpetrator is male,” both likely, since murderers seldom bury bodies properly and most homicides are committed by men.
Such predictions simply reflect a basic understanding of human behavior, say crime experts. Take the case of John List, a New Jersey accountant who disappeared after allegedly murdering his family in 1971. Psychic detective Elizabeth Lerner posited that List was alive and that Baltimore or Virginia figured into the picture. It turned out List had remarried in Baltimore and was living with his new wife in Virginia. But those could have been good guesses: It would make sense for a murderer to move far from the crime and start a new life.
Today, a handful of police departments officially permit the use of such advisors. The FBI and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children maintain that psychic detectives have never actually cracked a case.
Jack the Ripper etching.
IN SEARCH OF JACK THE RIPPER
In 1888, London was panicked by a series of brutal slayings, which were attributed to a killer dubbed Jack the Ripper. The perpetrator left no evidence at the scenes, and Scotland Yard had nothing to go on in its investigation of as many as 17 victims.
In the 125-plus years since, psychic detectives have offered insight into the case. Channeler Pamela Ball published a book entitled Jack the Ripper: A Psychic Investigation in 1998, in which she described “seeing” several men in connection with the murders. Ball reported that the spirits, asked if Jack the Ripper would ever be identified, answered “no.” The case of Jack the Ripper remains open.
MEET THE SLEUTHS
DOROTHY ALLISON (1924-1999). Allison claimed to have worked with police on over 5,000 cases, locating 250 bodies and solving hundreds of crimes. In 1974, she took credit for pinpointing the California location where kidnapped newspaper heiress Patty Hearst was being held captive.
SYLVIA BROWNE (1936-2013). One of the most notorious psychic detectives of recent times, Browne made several false predictions in sensational cases. In 2004, she announced that kidnapping victim Amanda Berry was dead. Berry was found alive in 2013.
ALLISON DUBOIS (B. 1972). DuBois, a self-identified medium, telepath, and “psychic profiler,” says she has put people on death row, although no evidence supports her claim. The TV drama Medium was based on her disputed stories of working closely with police, attorneys, and the Texas Rangers.
PET POWER
CAN HUMANS AND ANIMALS BYPASS LANGUAGE BARRIERS WITH TELEPATHIC COMMUNICATION?
For centuries, cats’ uncanny abilities have made some humans uneasy. Black cats have long been associated with witches.
Humans have long been amazed by tales of lost dogs who travel hundreds of miles to return to their families, and cats who somehow know when their human companions are about to fall ill. Some pets seem to intuit when their humans are in distress, and have summoned neighbors or yowled for aid. Both domesticated and wild animals have warned people away from accidents and disasters. Are man’s best friend and other creatures psychic?
Many people believe they are, and claim that animals have a number of special powers: precognition, or knowing the future; clairvoyance, or the ability to sense remote events; telepathy, or the power to send or receive mental messages; mediumship, or the ability to contact the dead and to see ghosts; and psi trailing, or the talent of finding someone who is lost.
Paging Dr. Doolittle
Pet psychics, who say they are able to communicate with beasts, from parakeets to racehorses, attribute pets’ special powers to animal superiority. In their view, animals understand existence more deeply than humans, and as a result have more fully developed psychic powers. Skeptics attribute the so-called paranormal gifts to coincidence or yet-to-be-understood biological attributes.
Pet psychics, also known as animal intuitives, claim to have extrasensory powers that they use in communicating with various critters. When a pet owner wants to converse with Fido or Kitty, the intuitive acts as an interpreter. Some say they “speak” with the creatures via telepathy and clairvoyance, while others claim to connect with an animal’s electromagnetic energy. Pet psychics maintain that any animal, domesticated or exotic, can connect with human beings, including birds, rabbits, mice, snakes, turtles, and even komodo dragons.
Humans want to feel they have a bond with their pets that goes beyond playing fetch and snuggling up.
Bad Kitty
When a pet is naughty, withdrawn, aggressive, or has other behavioral issues, a pet psychic is sometimes called in to penetrate the animal’s thoughts and feelings and share them with the human companion. In the case of a lost pet, a psychic can be brought in to advise a family where to search.
Some are asked to diagnose health problems and transmit healing energy to sick or injured pets. On occasion, pet psychics are consulted by owners who want to know if a gravely ill pet wishes to be euthanized, or are hired to help contact a dead pet.
The Boeing 747 where Tabitha hid out.
THE CASE OF THE FLYING CAT
In 1994, a cat named Tabitha made headlines when she disappeared while flying from New York to Los Angeles with her companion, Carol Ann Timmel. Tabitha was lost for 12 days as a squad of searchers combed the plane to no avail. Finally, Timmel turned to pet psychic Christa Carl, who asked the New York Post to print a photograph of Tabitha’s sister Pandora. If readers gazed into Pandora’s eyes, Tabitha would be located, Carl claimed. Timmel soon found her cat exactly where the psychic said she was: in the drop ceiling of the 747. Carl claimed she had helped Tabitha address an issue from a past life and used visualization to “show her how to come out.” Or maybe Tabitha’s loud meowing that day revealed her whereabouts.
BELIEVING CATS AND DOGS
Supernatural, or superhuman? Most scientists assert that animals’ remarkable sensitivity to humans and the world around them can be explained by biology, physics, and psychology.
Animals’ senses allow them to detect things that humans can’t. When they “predict” a storm, they may be using their sensitivity to barometric pressure. When they detect illness or imminent death, they may be picking up on distinctive scents. When they “foresee” an earthquake, they may be sensing subtle vibrations or subterranean gases.
When a lost pet finds its way home from hundreds of miles away, it may simply be using the same homing abilities common in birds, salmon, and sea turtles. For some animal species, this skill is based on a sensitivity to the earth’s magnetic field. For others, it comes from an awareness of the positioning of the stars and sun.
Sonya Fitzpatrick
READING ROVER
One of the world’s most famous pet psychics is Sonya Fitzpatrick, an author, the star of the short-lived Animal Planet television show Pet Psychic, and host of Animal Intuition, a popular call-in radio program. Fitzpatrick claims to help people contact pets who have “crossed the rainbow bridge to heaven” and to read the minds of their living pets. Believers say she has helped them find out everything from why their parrot has stopped speaking to how their poodle prefers to be groomed.
