Digital Bits Skeptic

By Peter Booth
Article ID: 1235

 

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Mentalism is a form of performance magic that simulates the paranormal, most commonly mind-reading, predicting the future and psychokinesis.  Magicians get involved in skepticism because much of the time the so-called real psychics are doing very standard magic tricks.  But what makes the difference between appearing to be a magician and appearing to be the real deal?  Here I present a few rules for any half-decent magicians who would like to throw away their morals, break all the mirrors in their houses so they don’t have to look at themselves anymore, and most importantly, start making some real money by making the jump to pseudo-miracle worker.  Being a cold reader, for example, has an excellent profit margin!  Think of it this way:  you can charge the same prices per ticket as David Copperfield, or a world-famous rock band, and you don’t even have all that heavy stuff to carry around!  It’s just you on a stage.  That’s profit!

For many audience members, the worlds of entertainer and genuine psychic are separated only by the inclusion - or omission - of a straight-forward disclaimer.  As many mentalists will attest, some people only believe what you’re doing is real if you make an explicit statement that you’re not using tricks.  Others are the opposite and will believe it is all real unless you explicitly state you are doing tricks.  Some people will believe your ability is real, even after you’ve said you’re using trickery!  Once you’ve decided what disclaimer you are going to use, here are the four main rules of changing from magician to real psychic.

Rule 1: Have only one trick

This is the most important rule.  Diversity in the psychic trade will kill you.  Find one trick you can do quite well, and milk the hell out of it.  Do it to death.  Psychics with more than three tricks rarely make it big!  Consider the most famous names of psychic history:

The Fox Sisters:  These girls started the whole spirit summoning phenomenon in the mid-1800s, and their trick was simple.  They made ghost rapping noises by cracking their toes, and tying an apple to a string and banging it on the floor.  Their home in New York was swarmed by people wanting to speak to the spirits, and the girls would gladly repeat this trick for anyone who asked.

Henry Slade:  After the Fox sisters made spiritualism big and the craze made its way to Europe, Henry Slade provided physical evidence from beyond.  Slade’s trick involved two chalk board slates, the kind school kids used to write on.  The participant would be asked to think of a question for the spirits.  The slates would be placed together, some scratching sounds would be heard, the slates would be separated and a suitably vague magic-8-ball style answer would be written on the slates in chalk.  Though a well known magic trick nowadays, this made Slade a small fortune.  Slade was eventually arrested for fraud and tried at London’s Old Bailey, England’s central criminal court.  Bizarrely, Charles Darwin contributed a great deal of money towards Slade’s prosecution.  Even more bizarrely, Alfred Russell Wallace, the man who developed the theory of evolution alongside Darwin, appeared as a witness for Slade’s defense.

Uri Geller:  Spoon-bending, spoon-bending, and more spoon-bending. And occasionally he’d duplicate a sealed-up picture for you.

James Hydrick:  Hydrick shot to fame in the early 1980s with an eerie psychic ability to move pencils along a table with his mind.  He would then psycho-kinetically turn the pages of a phone book. It’s pretty clear to any beginning magician how he moved these items - he blew on them.  James Randi eventually busted Hydrick, exposing his one trick.  In fairness though, Hydrick could do this trick really, really well.

The Great Carlos:  The Great Carlos was a creation of James Randi, designed to test the credulous media.  Randi taught young artist Jose Alvarez the old pulse stopping trick to add some flavour to his claims of channeling a spirit named “Carlos”.  A simple ball squeezed under the arm stopped the flow of blood, and convinced whoever was taking Alvarez’s pulse his heart had stopped.  Again, Alvarez did this trick really, really well.

So pull out an old magic book, find a trick, and do that trick over and over again till someone believes it’s real.  When choosing a trick for you though, pay attention to the next rule…

Rule 2: Much, much less, is much, much more

“If it goes up, it’s a trick.  If it goes across, it’s real.” This is an old adage concerning psychic tricks.  Basically it means the more impressive a trick looks, the less convinced most people will be that it’s real.  For example, if a magician makes a crumpled ball of paper float up a metre in to the air, do somersaults and then float back down, there is obviously invisible thread or some other nefarious gimmick in use.  If however, a psychic stares at the crumpled up paper ball for two minutes, and then finally it moves three inches across the table, they must be using real psychic powers.  Now, this thinking is of course bad.  According to the laws of science as we know them, if Uri Geller makes a spoon bend one inch with psychic powers,  that is equally as impossible as making the Statue of Liberty disappear.  If James Hydrick had made the pencil move, then float, then dance a jig, not a single person would have believed him (hopefully I’m being very optimistic here).  This is based on a principal of magic called “the too perfect theory”.  It means deliberately weakening a trick to make it more believable.  For example, if a magician is going to predict three headlines that will appear in the next day’s newspaper, then seal the predictions in an envelope to be revealed after the events, they will almost always deliberately get one wrong.  Even if the trick allows them to get all three headlines correct, predicting only two of the three correctly makes them seem suitably psychic and amazing, whilst not crossing the boundary that screams a trick.  So remember, less is more when it comes to trying to appear psychic.

Rule 3: Have at least a couple of methods for pulling off your trick

Okay, so you’ve got your one trick and you’ve made sure it doesn’t stretch credibility too far.  This is the trick you’ll be taking around the world.  Eventually if you get famous enough someone will try and bust you on it.  So be ready to throw them off by changing paths.  Have one main way for doing your trick, the one that looks the best and is the most deceptive.  However, have a Plan B.  Usually when debunking a psychic, a skeptic will explain the method the psychic most often uses.  This is good for the psychic, because to use a gambling term, the skeptic is now “half-smart”, meaning they will be primed and ready to be fooled with a method different from the one they are so diligently looking for.  For example, when James Hydrick went on the That’s Incredible television show in 1981, the host was sure he had caught on to Hydrick’s method, and he had.  He knew Hydrick was blowing on the pencil.  So then Hydrick offered to do the trick again, with the host’s hand positioned over his mouth.  From there, Hydrick simply repositioned the pencil right on the edge of the table, and used the air from the movement of his hands as they passed over the pencil to move it.  Still a very simple method, but because it was not the one the host was looking for, Hydrick completely befuddled him, to the point that the show declared Hydrick genuine. They were awarded a bent spoon from James Randi.

When skeptics explain spoon bending, they’ll usually just explain one method.  This is perfect for someone like Uri Geller, because he has several methods, some weaker than others, some using misdirection and some using gimmicked spoons.  He fools people with any of these methods.  Slade had a couple techniques for making the writing appear on his slates.  To my knowledge, there are at least half a dozen methods for appearing to have stopped your pulse.  Steve Shaw is one of the magicians James Randi sent undercover to fool scientists. Shaw says, it’s better to teach someone they can be fooled rather than how the trick is done.  Until an audience learns this lesson, you can use people’s knowledge against them.

Rule number 4:  “It’s not about me, it’s about all of us!”

To make it big as a psychic, you have to give people the message that your abilities are within everyone, and you are just able to harness them a bit more.  This will be really tough for most magicians.  Most magicians are, dare I say it, quite insecure people, and would like to make it clear that any powers demonstrated belong to them and them alone, making them a very special person worthy of worship and admiration.  You can’t afford to do that in the psychic game.  You’ll get much further if you say anyone can do what you do (especially if you sell a pricey book telling them how).  And show some concern for your fellow charlatans!  You are supposed to be opening up a gateway for a warped belief system, sowing the seeds of vulnerability that others in your trade will then be able to exploit.  Pretending these powers are exclusive to you is very selfish to your fellow scam artists!  Remember, even if you’ve decided to read tarot cards for someone for twenty bucks, you’re setting that person up for a later visit to a medium who charges $700 per session when the victim has lost a loved one.  So help spread the takings!

These are the four main rules.  But be warned.  If you are a magician and present what you’re doing as real, not only will you be seen by other magicians as morally reprehensible, you will also be viewed as artistically lazy.  Magicians think performers choose to present their tricks as real because they are afraid they wouldn’t be entertaining or interesting enough otherwise.  Magician Penn Jillette explains:

If I say I have supernatural powers, I can read your mind, then you simply have about three choices.  You can assume that I’m insane.  You can assume that I’m a liar that’s trying to dupe you.  Or you can believe it.  And those are your only three choices.  There aren’t even really very many shades of that.  You just believe it or you don’t.  If I say I can’t read your mind but there’s ways that I can fake it, all of a sudden the bit is automatically political.  You’re automatically talking about propaganda.  You’re automatically talking about love.  You’re automatically talking about buying a used car.  So instead of just going “We went to see this nut who thought he had powers”, or “We went to see this evil guy who lied to us”, you have this whole rainbow of other choices.

However if you just want to make a quick buck and get a short-cut to fame, follow these four golden rules.  There won’t be any shortage of media knocking at your door and if in the end you get found out, then just pull out the old card reading, “I’ve always been an entertainer - I can’t help it if people believed I was real”.  If nothing else, there’ll always be a place for you next to other B-grade celebrities on really dodgy reality TV shows.

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