On the Road and Coming to a City Near YOU

“If there ever were a case that screams exactly what the harm is in letting psychics go unchallenged, this is it. Not only are kids and their parents getting sucked into believing things with no solid evidence, but targeting children with documented psychological problems and giving them bogus solutions precludes them getting professional medical therapy and assistance they obviously could use. Even worse, televising the entire process normalizes the idea for the audience, which might include other troubled kids and parents who decide to try the same “solutions” with even less-scrupulous paranormal experts who aren’t being held to even the low standard of honesty television documentation imposes.”

Teaching Your Troubled Kids to Scam

 

 

 

 

 

 

So now Chipper is on the road touting his new book “Growing up Psychic.” It should be titled “Growing Up Crooked.”

Several of the L.A. IIG crew showed up for his “show” on April 3rd at The Millennium Biltmore in Los Angeles.* In our hastily assembled show of disgust, we nonetheless managed to let Chip know that he wouldn’t go unchallenged. There were security guards aplenty and I could see from Chip’s first furtive glances around the outside of the entrance to his show room that he clearly was not flaunting the kind of happy delirium normally associated with someone opening a national book tour. He’s on edge folks. And who wouldn’t be if you knew you were scamming the public? Dressed in a long-sleeved white pullover and his trademark loosely open draped red scarf, he seemed to be suggesting the guise of a Catholic priest with his vestments. Sorry, I wasn’t buying it Chip. I had about all I could stand listening to Chip’s warm-up of showing a folksy slide show of his family. I ended up being personally escorted from the building by two burly security guards after confronting one of Chip’s minions who unwisely pointed a video camera on me. In what was obviously a surprise to this devotee, I love being on camera and without going into the details of what was said, suffice it to say it was deemed “causing a disturbance” by the goon squad.  I soon found myself outside on the street feeling like a criminal. I really don’t like feeling this way.  It got me a bit down until I realized (as I have in past activist situations) that we often live in a world where the lunatics are unfortunately running the asylum.  The old phrase, “you have to think like a criminal to catch a criminal” may have to be modified in today’s jacked-up world to something like: “you may have to be seen as a criminal to make the public aware of the real criminals.”

One of the things we learned is that Chipper has now taken the art of cold reading to a new low. Instead of risking a chance of missing or coming off vague like his contemporaries Edward, Browne and VanPraagh, Chip eshews the age-old calling out of of initials or fuzzy visions and cuts right to the chase:  He tells the audience at the get go:

“…I’m not going to guess, so I want each of you I give a reading to, please tell me the name of the departed person you want to get in touch with, what they died from and what you want to know from them.”

Brilliant. I have to hand it to him. This is something new and fresh in the con artist world that rivals Geller or Madoff in its brazen simplicity. Chip Coffey has now descended to a level of abject laziness in direct proportion to the public’s gullibility.  Can it get any easier?

What really got me was the rah rah mentality that started this pageant of deception. Chip comes on stage as if it’s a high school football rally and at the L.A. show, introduced some guy from a local ghost hunter show who happily skipped up to the stage to huge applause. It’s as if these exploiters of comic book nonsense are saying;  “Hey, we like dead people! And talking to them!  Ghosts are everywhere! Talking and hanging with dead people is all the rage! Cool! Isn’t this fun!”

It’s unbelievable that this is the world we live in. Is this the 12the century or 2012?

So, Chip’s coming your way. Here’s the list of shows:

April 6 – San Francisco, California

April 19 – Las Vegas, Nevada

April 20 – Phoenix, Arizona

April 22 – Dallas, Texas

April 23 – Austin, Texas

April 25 – Houston, Texas

April 26 – New Orleans, Louisiana

May 14 – Atlanta, Georgia

May 16 – Coral Gables, Florida

May 18 – St. Pete Beach, Florida

May 21 – Greenville, South Carolina

May 22 – Charlotte, North Carolina

May 24 – Louisville, Kentucky

If you feel like I do about these people, PLEASE  DO SOMETHING! Anything to keep them off center will do. Remember: You probably won’t easily change the minds of  any believers.  After all, it’s their money and right to support whoever they want -  it’s the psychic and his or her handlers we want to send our message to. The Psychic Bingo Card strategy works if you can get them into the hands of the crowd before the show starts.  See my previous blog: “Edward to Edward” June 23, 2011 for the card template and tips on how that worked with John Edward.

The message to the psychic, his agent and his coterie should be clear:

WE ARE OUT THERE AND YOU WILL BE CHALLENGED.

Keep up the pressure and let the hotel and venue owners understand you will be letting the press know they support child abuse by giving people like Coffey a soapbox.  Contact local IIG groups for tips and suggestions on how to rattle the losers who ply this sick trade.

It’s just not right Chip, no matter how much money you make.

 

 

* In what someone with a more fanciful imagination might have considered a metaphorical premonition of things to come: That night while sitting at a table in Pershing Square Plaza across the street from The Biltmore, I sat aghast watching a constant parade of six to twelve audacious black rats cavorting in and out from one metal tree grate hole to another – completely fearless…

Would you buy a used car from this person?

It is intriguing to note that even though the Brits have severely limiting libel laws that constrict their ability to go after psychics, Simon Singh and mentalist Paul Zenon have been fighting the good fight with Sally Morgan in a number of ways that we here in America could learn a great deal from.

Problem is: finding a news reporter, personality or highly visible person to get up off their comfy chairs in the media and do it. To me , this is a disgraceful situation. Take a look here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/mar/06/sally-morgan-best-loved-psychic) and read for yourself the sort of actions we should be doing. We have more media, more access to technology, more personalities, more lawyers and probably more psychics than any other country in the world. So why aren’t we able to sway America our way and get some traction here? And by our way I mean the honest and rational way that turns to science, not the Kardashians? I don’t have the answer, but perhaps it has to do with the fact that there are so many of everything in America it’s impossible to whack one down before another one pops up. Still, that’s not a good enough excuse. We have seen JREF issue their challenges in a new barrage of news items and CFI has recently followed suit with their own challenges to the likes of John Edward, Browne and Van Praagh.

Simon Singh

However, it’s one thing to challenge someone in an occasional newspaper editorial or on television, it’s another to actually go out and do something like Drew McAdam did for The Edinburgh Evening News. In the last year, we have seen a personality no less grandiose than Anderson Cooper (and his mother) tout the veracity of John Edward! Unthinkable but true. So-called mediums like Edward continue on and on without any serious challenge to their methods or signs of slowing down. Now we can see it all played out in HDTV bigger, better and clearer than ever before – but we are for the most part blind to the content. If I know how they do their cheap stunts and miracles, why doesn’t  Mr. Cooper? Isn’t The View interested in the real view? What’s wrong with this Big Picture? I’ve beaten this dead horse long enough here at skepticblog and paid some dues in the process, and while it is true the liars and cheats that operate in these markets will never be without an excuse, (read Sally’s rant here: (http://www.sallymorgan.tv/sallys-response-to-edinburgh-allegations/#more-2666 ) I seriously cannot understand why the skeptical movement, with all its lawyers and creative critical thinkers, don’t do more to create media attention in these obviously crooked times.

PSYCHIC BLUES is now up at Amazon for pre-order!

Buy three copies!

You will need three: two to give to local psychics and one to keep.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1936239272/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_d2_g14_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=04VC276NTNV7VVJR2TC5&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846

Everything you want to know about today’s psychic rackets – and a few things you may not want to know…

Don't Let the Tarot-rists Win!

I just finished a delightful podcast with the latest dynamic duo in the podcast world: Ross Blocher and Carrie Poppy. These two IIG members have banded together to create a whimsical 45 minute show that manages to trump all the rest of the skeptical podcasts by being both highly entertaining and dedicated to avoiding all mention of the dreaded “S” word: SKEPTIC. Their byline is “We show up so you don’t have to.” Their casual approach to looking into all things wooish is working for them. Forget de-bunking. Those days are over.  Ross and Carrie want to have fun with all the wackiness we encounter in the paranormal world and like The Odds Must Be Crazy www.theoddsmustbecrazy.com website that I mentioned in my last post, using humor and good taste to coax the inquiring minds that shun the dickish approach to thinking rationally, Oh No, Ross and Carrie!” www.ohnopodcast.com treats all subjects with an open mind, paving the way for wider exposure and a surer footing in The Big Pictur

Carrie Poppy

While sipping hot tea (a pre-requiste for the show’s stars) and sitting in front of the fireplace in what Carrie described as my “blissfully creepy” living room, we discussed a bit of my background in magic(k) and what brought me to the slippery precipace of woodom, where I had to once and for all make the leap from playing both sides of the psychic/skeptic track and settle into what is now a much more manageable position as an writer and investigator of all things weird. I’m somewhat used to being interviewed and after having played the role of a medium and psychic entertainer, I have learned how to parry with both skeptics and believers who may attempt to maneuver me to come over to their side, or worse; get me on the defensive.

I’m happy to say, this didn’t happen with Ross and Carrie. Both are warm-hearted individuals and that’s what comes across in their podcasts. Both also know me from my work in the IIG so they didn’t push my guilt buttons either way. I’m still quite happy to do readings of any sort.  In fact I enjoy it more than ever. Time has taught me many things and as I told Ross and Carrie, the more you interact with people by talking with them in the context of the “psychic” persona, the better you get in learning how to understand human nature. This is why when paying to sit with an old gypsy woman for advice, it’s not so amazing that at once she seems to know the most uncanny things about you: she’s basically an old wise woman who has probably talked to thousands of lonely and confused people. There’s nothing supernatural about that, unless you count our society’s reticence to communicate anything but surface bullshit in our day to day interactions as something supernatural. We are not used to opening up to anyone except perhaps our spouses or therapists – and even that is frequently difficult. A total stranger, especially when given the “spiritual advisor” placard above their door, is usually much easier (and cheaper) to deal with than either of the former. The key is that most experienced readers will LISTEN when nobody else has either the time or inclination to do so.

Believe me, when you talk to dozens of sitters everyday or do a gig where you speak non-stop for four or five hours without a break – you learn the skill of listening. You have to! Your vocal chords need the rest!  I have found that while my mind and the thinking process involved with giving a good reading becomes more lucid and free-flowing as the hours drag on, my body begins to show signs of stress – especially my throat!  I learned fast to let the sitter rattle off whatever is on their mind if possible, nodding wisely and mirroring back whatever you can glean, adding in a splash or two of some wise platitude that has been gathered from years of reading and testing out what gets the best reaction. Psychic readers of any stripe are superior story tellers –  and not much else. Anything supernatural comes from the sitters expectations and their natural proclivity towards the psychic’s best friend: confirmation bias.

In the Lair of Mystery

Please give a listen to Ross and Carrie’s show.  This is a positive direction skepticism and rational thinking should be taking. Take a few minutes to listen to my show and learn about the psychology and secrets of the psychic while getting a verbal preview of my book “PSYCHIC BLUES” that will be hitting the stands in April.

And if I may be so bold;  If you are interested in knowing the truth about the psychic racket, (and make no  mistake – it is a racket) I suggest three books that should be on every skeptic’s book shelf:

1) “The Psychic Mafia ” by LaMar Keene

2) “Nightmare Alley” by William Lindsay Gresham

3) “Psychic Blues” by Mark Edward (due out in April 2012)

My Own Designs for Contemporary Tarot Cards

* You can join the Facebook fanpage for up-dates and alerts on PSYCHIC BLUES publication at:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Psychic-Blues/281703748518095

Treading Another Dark Path

In an effort to get more people pointed in the direction of skeptical thinking without scaring them away by seeming too rationally challenging, The Independent Investigation Group West members have put up a new “gateway” site that’s all about those wacky weird happenstances we call coincidence.

 www.theoddsmustbecrazy.com is the brainchild of fellow IIG Steering Committee members Wendy Hughes and Jarrett Kaufman. This site grabs people where they need to be grabbed: that area in our brains that likely got many of us who are already involved in the skeptic movement to say, “…what are the odds?” way back when we didn’t know any better. When a strange occurrence happened we might not have had an answer for, where did we go? What did we think? For many of us in those larval skeptic crossover days, the friends we told about what to us was a fantastic moment probably shrugged and said, “Yeah, …that’s weird” and left it at that. This kind of tacit acceptance didn’t offer much of an alternative. The woo reasoning we may have made up in our own minds to deal with what sometimes seemed divine or cosmically charged information may not have taken us to greener pastures. Without  direction, a lot of us might have spent years navigating through endless self motivation siminars – or worse, found ourselves trapped in a woo cult.  

Now inquiring minds have a place to go to hang out, share and archive their most wild experiences. Once there, they will hopefully get the drift on other “wormholes” that will lead to the main IIG website and other like-minded places.  My own entry from a past skepticblog post “The Nine of Spades” is there and I have just posted an experience that happened on a recient weekend. We can’t always explain exactly what’s going on with such adventures, but with TOMBC we can readily show that such experiences happen to everybody at one time or another and that, in fact, if they didn’t happen, that would be the strangest reality of all. Here’s mine from last weekend, I call it:

The Bradbury Befuddlement
This last weekend was Christmas, a time when I usually sit around doing nothing but feeling blue. This time was different. My girl Susan was coming to visit and the only real plans we had were to go and see “The Artist.” That being planned, the rest of the days off were set for winging it and hanging out when and where we felt like going. On Thursday morning, I mentioned to Susan that I wanted to remember to call my friend Ray Bradbury and wish him a happy holiday. Next day on Friday, we drove into downtown L.A. to see the Weegee exhibition at MOCA. Leaving at around noon, we made our way downtown and began the process of looking for a cheap place to park. We finally randomly settled on a spot across the street from Grand Central Market on Hill Street. This classic melting pot of L.A. has always one of my favorite places to wander around and watch the bustling activity, grab a quick bite and best of all; it lies conveniently a few blocks around the corner from the more expensive MOCA district where it has been since 1917. Being a photographer by profession, Susan snaps away at anything that sparks her fertile creative mind and after partaking of a latte and croissant, we found ourselves outside on the busy east side of South Broadway. I chanced to glance across the street and remembered (for the first time in twenty or thirty years) the wonderfully bizarre interior of The Bradbury Building.

Second Floor Landing From "Demon with the Glass hand" (1964)

I had been there a few times in my past and had a connection with the place. Being a fan of the 60’s television series “The Outer Limits” and having had the privilege of a friendship with the series’ producer Joseph Stefano, I knew a bit about the strange workings of science fiction writers and how they had used the building as a location not only in the seminal black and white episode of “The Outer Limits: The Demon with the Glass Hand,” (1964) but also countless other productions including “D.O.A.” (1950), “Chinatown” (1974),“Blade Runner” (1982) and “Wolf” (1994). To many it’s known as “The Most Famous Building in Science Fiction.” It has an odd background. Some might even call it a “paranormal” one. Wiki says:

“A local architect, Sumner Hunt, was first hired to complete a design for the building, but (the originally commissioned Lewis L.)Bradbury dismissed Hunt’s plans as inadequate to the grandeur of his vision. He then hired George Wyman, one of Hunt’s draftsmen, to design the building. Wyman at first refused the offer, but then supposedly had a ghostly talk with his brother Mark Wyman (who had died six years previously), while using a planchette board (Ouija) with his wife. The ghost’s message supposedly said “Mark Wyman / take the / Bradbury building / and you will be / successful” with the word “successful” written upside down. After the episode, Wyman took the job, and is now regarded as the architect of the Bradbury Building. Wyman’s grandson, the science fiction publisher Forrest J. Ackerman, owned the original document containing the message until his death. Coincidentally, Ackerman was a close friend of science fiction author Ray Bradbury.”

Suffice it to say that this building, its history and general noir demeanor are to say the least: bizarre. I hadn’t made any conscious linking between Ray Bradbury and the Bradbury building as we crossed the street and entered the cavernous lobby. That could have been interpreted by some as a coincidence, albeit a rather weak one. No, hang on – it gets weirder. We lingered for a half hour or so and took some nice shadowy photos, particularly shooting from one stairway landing that overlooks the lobby from the second floor. We left the building enchanted with the visual charm of the beautiful wrought iron and stone work and quite invigorated by the experience.
The next day was Saturday, Christmas Eve. We decided we would go and see a matinee of “The Artist.” The film itself is a silent film and shot in black-and-white that captures the era when silent films began to morph into “talkies” (1927-1932) and how the main characters deal with the rocky transition. An excellent film made even better by what happened next.

In stunned amazement, we both sat in awe as a five minute scene un-folded in front of our eyes shot virtually on the exact spot we had been standing on the second floor landing in the Bradbury Building just 24 hours before. What are the odds? Spooky…

 Stuff happens.

Please tell your friends about The Odds Must Be Crazy, especially those fence-sitters who have a ton of these kinds of stories rattling around in their heads. Finding “kindred spirits” and discovering you are not alone in some X-Files universe is an important step in identifying what is real and what is not in the crazy mixed up world we live in. New up-dates at TOMBC include a constant flow of new stories and heavy linking into the social network world. A better comment system went in recently that allows people to tie in their social presence and communicate more effectively. The TOMBC site is hoping to roll out more guest articles from various experts across the world as they pick up steam. It’s a start at breaking that stubborn “de- bunker” tag many of us have been saddled with for far too long.

The Odds Must Be Crazy is a web site dedicated to collecting, sharing, and celebrating stories of the unlikely, inconceivable, and statistically improbable. They accept submissions from anyone and update regularly with new stories designed to revel in the absurdity of what happens in our world when enough random events occur to produce those special, rare combinations that appear to be anything but random. Check them out and submit your story for them to share.

Which has the Capacity for More Evil? The Creature on the Right or Left?

Haven’t we all had enough of this by now? First we had rabbit’s feet, then Power Balance bracelets came along, now yet another scam. This one gets the media attention on the merit of a dead poodle.

What is wrong with us?

Article quoted from Nina Golgowski:

 Woman blames family’s misfortune on Princess the Poodle who was ‘possessed by the devil’

A New York woman claims her home got more than it agreed to when they brought an adopted toy poodle into their home that was demon possessed. Olga Horvat, a certified Lumia Science Color Therapist and writer of a book Paranormal Pooch writes that her pure-bred dog Princess brought with her a string of bad luck on her home and family.”We had her for four months — May through September in 2006 — and she didn’t want to eat, sleep and she couldn’t be trained to learn simple commands,’ Mrs Horvat told the Huffington Post’s Weird News.’ She was happy, but something was manipulating her,’ Mrs Horvat added. Detailing her efforts to help both her family and her small, fluffy white dog, she asserts in her book, according to the Post’s read, it was not her dog’s fault so they all needed to find help.Her husband next found himself in a serious car accident, nearly lost his job and then fell to a sudden and rare illness almost losing his life, according to her website, RoyalDogsGallery.com. The odds seemed stacked against them ever since Princess entered their household, judging by their timeline, and their woes appeared to be only growing worse. By the time her daughter was nearly expelled from her third-grade classroom for inappropriately touching the arm of a Muslim friend with a glove – according to Mrs Horvat because a voice in her daughter’s head directed her to – her family’s trauma was listless. Perhaps fortunately for Mrs Horvat’s family however, though unfortunate for her dog, Princess died four months after they obtained the poodle.

According to Mrs Horvat to the Post, she fell down the stairs at the home of a friend, dying.

Yet the amount of trauma that entered their family’s life in that short amount of time, was enough to write a book which received a written introduction by Joshua P. Warren, author of Pet Ghosts.

The Center for Inquiry, however, which is dedicated to promoting critical inquiry and human enrichment, says Mrs Horvat’s situation needs more hard evidence. The only people who get possessed by demons — and subsequently cured — are those who believe it’s possible,’ Jim Underdown of the center spoke with the Post.

‘You never hear about it happening to atheists,’ Mr Underdown added.

But in the five years since Princess died, Mrs Horvat has dedicated herself to learning more about their situation and how it could have been prevented or better handled.

 

Charmer: Energy Shields start at $197 for people and $189 for pets, harmonizing bad energy

In her results, she is selling energy shield pendants for both animals and humans at $197 for the human and $189 for the pet. The Energy Shield is a device that will support and balance your body’s own magnetic field, while protecting you from the negative energy generated by many aspects of our environment,’ her website describes the small metal objects which resemble tiny water-tight canisters for holding addresses or other slips of paper – with the addition of ‘Energy Shield’ written around it. In addition her pendants, she says that dogs with pointy, opposed to floppy ears, she has learned, are more prone to demon infiltration, ‘because the spirit can get in there easier,’ she explained.

On scientific arguments against the pendants not working, collected by the Post, Mrs Horvat says that none of her customers who purchased them have complained about demon possessions after.

She adds in her defense that she doesn’t bother trying to convince skeptics.

‘They’re not going to change their minds until they’re put in a situation like I was,’ Mrs Horvat said.

 

Little Princess fell down the stairs huh? How many dogs in average health do you know who could acutally fall down a flight of stairs? And this woman gets a book deal? Have we gone mad?

 

 

 

 

 

A Moment or Supreme Terror

If you get a chance to see myself and Brian Dunning (and the ghostly Susan Gerbic) on the recent episode of “Weird or What?” that is all about “Life after Death,” you will see convincing evidence for how easy it is to convince people that a seance is real. William Shatner is hilarious as the bemused and tongue in cheek host, making at least this episode tilted towards a skeptical viewpoint. Using infrared photography, the television audience sees what to each sitter in the desired total blackness of the traditional seance room never suspected. For those in the circle, the fear is real. For the viewers, the famous Scole Experiments are shown to be what they really were: a badly reported series of un-controlled magic effects that took place in the medium’s own home. Where were the skeptics? Happy Halloween!

And the Darkness Falls... Boom!

The Handy-Dandy Medium Reading

Thanks to a brilliant idea from Christopher Brown from “Meet the Skeptics!” and Travis Roy of Granite State Skeptics, here’s the latest project we have been working on. I invite everyone to use this. I shot “The Handy-Dandy All-In-One Do-It-Yourself Medium Reading” (Lesson One) with the help of Susan Gerbic and Stirling Gerbic- Forsyth which pretty much covers every bullshit dodge and cold-reading phrase we could think of in six minutes. Of course there are many more, but for the sake of brevity, we put down as many as we thought generally employed by the grief vampires out there bilking the public. Once converted into a  QR code (see it at top) it can be printed on small inconspicuous cards or larger flyers and posters.  When scanned it will lead the curious  to the “Handy” video here.

Whoever takes the time to do this as they wait in line,  before getting to their seat or while waiting for the show to start at a performance of a John Edward type (or any other appropriate venue where cold reading bullshit is being pitched) they will now have Lesson One to consider.

Spread this around.

Guerrilla Skepticism: Ask Me About It

My latest podcast with “Meet the Skeptics!” is here.

IN OTHER NEWS:

Can you find the link between Guerrilla Skepticism and this video?

Happy Hunting!

John Edward Bingo Cards

There’s not much I can say to add to the brilliant ploy that The Granite State Skeptics devised and put to work last Tuesday night. I applaud them heartily for their efforts.

The article at  http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/923692-196/skeptics-psychics-show-no-salve-for-grief.html speaks for itself, both for the efficacy of DOING SOMETHING and the frustrating realization that many in John Edward’s (no relation) audience refused to accept the advice of more level-headed individuals who were there to help them in the truest sense of the word.

Not surprisingly the attached article does not interview anyone who was swayed by the skeptics.

As my friend Jim Newman form IIG wrote:

“Perhaps there weren’t any, perhaps they couldn’t find any or perhaps they found some but didn’t include them in the article.”

Ultimately it doesn’t matter. It’s the thought that counts. When a newspaper like Nashua Telegraph decides to give skeptics a voice, (even a small one) it’s a sign that people are starting to think.

That Other Edward

The actions taken by Travis Roy and his crew shows bravery in the face of a frequently hostile segment of society that doesn’t have a clue. If Edward’s audiences think paying $120.00 a seat to be conned provides comfort to them, they are certainly welcome to do so. It’s their money, their time and their hearts. But with that special Bingo Card in hand (and if they stuck it in their pocket or purse on the way out) I have to believe there’s s good chance that after the spotlights have dimmed down and they are in the privacy of their own home, quite a few will have reconsidered their stance on talking with dead people and have some serious doubts about making the same mistake twice. It may be too late for them, but word of mouth and the realization that you have been burned goes a long way to educate the public in the longer run.

This is GUERRILLA SKEPTICISM with a capital G.

Have you had enough of this fatuous medium rigamorole yet?