Cultural Change and the Paranormal

In times of great cultural change, trickster and anti-structural manifestations are particularly apparent, and the supernatural is an important part of them. In 1956 University of Pennsylvania anthropologist Anthony F. C. Wallace published his classic paper “Revitalization Movements.” It is one of the most illuminating works on cultural transformation, and it has been widely cited. Wallace compiled a database of several hundred such movements from five continents and analyzed their patterns of development. For his analysis, “revitalization movement” meant “a deliberate, organized, conscious effort by members of a society to construct a more satisfying culture,”1 and he provided a number of examples to explain his meaning. Both Christianity and Islam originated in revitalization movements, and there have been thousands of others throughout history.

Wallace delineated the process saying: “The structure of the revitalization process, in cases where the full course is run, consists of five somewhat overlapping stages: 1. Steady State; 2. Period of Individual Stress; 3. Period of Cultural Distortion; 4. Period of Revitalization (in which occur the functions of mazeway reformulation, communication, organization, adaptation, cultural transformation, and routinization), and finally, 5. New Steady State.” This formulation is strikingly parallel to van Gennep’s three phase model of separation, transition (or limen), and incorporation, as presented in The Rites of Passage (1909). Wallace’s period of revitalization is essentially equivalent to the liminal phase of van Gennep.

Wallace defined his concept of the “mazeway” as a person’s “mental image of the society and its culture, as well as of his own body … it includes perceptions of both the maze of physical objects of the environment (internal and external, human and nonhuman) and also of the ways in which this maze can be manipulated … The mazeway is nature, society, culture, personality, and body image, as seen by one person.” In essence, it is a person’s picture of the structure of his or her existence. The metaphor of the mazeway is particularly apt for our consideration because a maze is simply a combination of passageways delimited by boundaries—rites of passage and boundaries being primary themes of this book.

Wallace chose an organismic analogy for human society, which he viewed as composed of, not only individuals and groups but also the very cells and organs of people’s bodies. He described his framework as “holistic” saying it assumed a “network” of intercommunication (years later the New Age movement used the same terms). He went on to explain that a stress on one level would stress all levels.

When society or some part of it is subjected to high stress, there will be an effort to ameliorate it. During the stress, not everyone attempts to change; reactionary forces try to maintain the status quo. In what could have been written by psychiatrist Ernest Hartmann 35 years later, Wallace comments: “Rigid persons apparently prefer to tolerate high levels of chronic stress rather than make systematic adaptive changes in the mazeway. More flexible persons try out various limited mazeway changes in their personal lives.”

Some of the characteristics of cultural distortion parallel those described for shaman initiates undergoing their individual transformations. Wallace notes that during these periods “Some persons turn to psychodynamically regressive innovations … [including] disregard of kinship and sexual mores … states of depression and self-reproach, and probably a variety of psychosomatic and neurotic disorders.”5 Such deterioration can potentially lead to the death of a society.

If the stress is not relieved by modifying discrete parts of the culture, a more radical change is needed. Such alterations can be abrupt. During the process, cultural mazeways are demolished and rebuilt.

The supernatural plays a crucial role, and Wallace states: “With a few exceptions, every religious revitalization movement with which I am acquainted has been originally conceived in one or several hallucinatory visions by a single individual. A supernatural being appears to the prophet-to-be.” Wallace acknowledges that many people believe that such visions are pathological hallucinations, but he says that “the religious vision experience per se is not psychopathological but rather the reverse, being a synthesizing and often therapeutic process performed under extreme stress by individuals already sick.” Wallace even acknowledges the similarity of revitalization to shamans’ transformations in rites of passage. (There are also many parallels to Henri Ellenberger’s concept of creative illness.) Wallace explains that the prophet generally “shows evidence of a radical inner change in personality soon after the vision experience: a remission of old and chronic physical complaints, a more active and purposeful way of life, greater confidence in interpersonal relations.” Such a person often develops charisma.

Wallace recognized the crucial role of paranormal phenomena, saying: “Followers defer to the charismatic leader not because of his status in an existing authority structure but because of a fascinating personal ‘power,’ often ascribed to supernatural sources and validated in successful performance, akin to the ‘mana’ or ‘orenda’ of ethnological literature.” Thus the leader derives power from outside the structure (i.e., via anti-structure) and gains legitimacy by paranormal manifestations. Wallace discussed supernatural encounters, focusing primarily on the leader’s, but he also mentioned that some of the other participants have “hysterical seizures” and ecstatic visions. He noted that “Like the prophet, many of the converts undergo a revitalizing personality transformation.”

Revitalization attempts are not always successful; in fact they can lead to destruction, sometimes hastened by the supernatural. Oracles, diviners, and spirits are not altogether reliable, and their advice occasionally has had particularly nasty consequences. Anthropologist Weston La Barre surveyed some of them in his book The Ghost Dance (1970). In the late 1800s the Dakota Sioux were being pushed to extinction, and they undertook a ghost dance to revive their culture. After a shaman instructed them to wear magic shirts to protect them from soldiers’ bullets, they went into battle. They fought valiantly, and with renewed confidence, but the shirts afforded no such protection, and the Sioux were massacred. The Xosa of South Africa provide another example. In 1856 spirits promised them that if they made sacrifices, the spirits would help them drive out the English. The Xosa then destroyed their animal herds and all their grain, and consequently nearly all of them starved to death. Their reliance on the spirits proved disastrous. These are just a couple of the many examples summarized by La Barre.

Revitalization occurs in periods of cultural liminality. The trickster constellation manifests during such times, as is clear from Wallace’s descriptions. The disregard of sexual mores, general disruption, and a highly visible role of the supernatural, including the sometimes unconscionably bad advice of the spirits, are all trickster characteristics.

The “increasing incidences of such things as alcoholism”12 indicates destructuring of consciousness.

Recent Examples In The World Today

Revitalization movements are not limited to ancient societies or primitive peoples. The Nation of Islam in the U.S. is an example today. It is not only a religious movement but also a political and social one. Its leaders unashamedly report paranormal experiences. A spiritual being appeared to Malcolm X while he was in jail; Louis Farra-khan reported being taken aboard a flying saucer. (This connection between political activism and the paranormal is seen more generally. A 1992 survey conducted by the Roper Organization discovered that people active in political and social causes are more likely than average to report paranormal experiences.)

Dramatic transformations are not limited to small, marginal groups. The collapse of communism and the dissolution of the former U.S.S.R. in the early 1990s were accompanied by an explosion of interest in the paranormal. There were numerous accounts of macro-PK, spiritual healing, diviners, and new religions, all to the alarm of some high status scientists. In fact Sergei Kapitza, president of the Physical Society of the U.S.S.R., lamented the conditions in an article for Scientific American entitled “Antiscience Trends in the U.S.S.R.” (1991). This burst of popularity of the paranormal was seen throughout Eastern Europe, and the whole region underwent exceptional change. This is a dramatic recent example of the association of anti-structure with the supernatural.

A similar revival of occult interests occurred in the People’s Republic of China after the repressive “Cultural Revolution” and pogroms of Mao. In the mid and late 1970s, there was a revitalization of many aspects of culture; curiosity in psi burgeoned, and many people reported amazing paranormal events.15

The same pattern, though less abrupt, was seen in the U.S. in the 1960s and 1970s. That era was marked by the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, the sexual revolution, manned space exploration (boundary crossing), the drug culture (emphasizing altered states of consciousness [ASCs]), and the growth of Eastern religions and meditation (more ASCs). This period of anti-structure also saw surging interest in the paranormal. Some of the same people who were involved with the anti-war movement later became active in paranormal and spiritual pursuits. Victor Turner recognized the liminal aspects of this period and specifically discussed the hippies.17 Ernest Hartmann noticed that: “the late 1960s was a period when certain thin-boundary characteristics were valued more highly than they usually are.”

In the last 20 years, one of the most publicized supernatural manifestations in the world was the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Medjugorje. Although Marian sightings are by no means uncommon, Medjugorje received extended international attention over a period of years. It was undoubtedly one of the most publicized sightings ever. It is no exaggeration to say that it reached public consciousness on a worldwide scale. I suggest that it is no coincidence that it occurred in then Yugoslavia, foreshadowing some of the most vicious, fractionating (dramatically destructuring) fighting seen in the world at that time.

UFOs and Cultural Stress

Several theorists have commented on UFOs in relation to cultural stress and transformation. Carl Jung discussed “transformations of the collective psyche” on the very first page of the “Introductory” section of Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies (1958). Carl Raschke, a religious scholar at the University of Denver wrote an essay: “UFOs: Ultraterrestrial Agents of Cultural Deconstruction” (1981), which succinctly stated his thesis with the title. He specifically cited the trickster in relation to UFOs, and noted that tricksters “perform the service of cognitive deconstruction.”

Martin Kottmeyer is arguably the premier UFO theorist in the U.S. (Though he is exceptionally knowledgeable and has published many articles, he is little known outside a small circle of specialists). In his article “UFO Flaps” (1995-96), he reviewed the political and social conditions during periods that had relatively high levels of reported UFO sightings. He concluded that the reports increased when there is a loss of national pride. For instance, a dramatic increase occurred after Sputnik was launched in 1957, and after anti-U.S. demonstrations in Vietnam in 1966 there was also an upsurge. Kottmeyer also discussed several other instances.

When I read his paper, I was struck by the congruences with my own ideas. Kottmeyer’s concept of “loss of pride” is very close to “loss of status,” a key issue in this book.20 But there is another important facet of his theoretical analysis—paranoia. UFOs are indisputably associated with paranoia, and I will discuss that in the chapter on. 21 paranoia.

The data make it easy to dismiss UFO reports as only psychological aberrations of individuals or groups under stress. But such explanations are too simplistic because psychological problems do not account for the well-documented physical aspects. Even skeptics of ufology seem to agree that with the Watergate scandal, 1973 was a time of national shame, and they admit that year also had an elevated level of UFO reports. October of 1973 saw the Coyne helicopter case in Ohio22 and the Eddie Doyle Webb case in Missouri,23 both are impressive, evidential cases with physical effects. Another loss of international status occurred with the Iran hostage crisis. Near its end, in December 1980, the Cash-Landrum case occurred in Texas. Three victims received severe radiation burns, and mysterious helicopters were seen by a number of witnesses. There is no reason to think that the mental states of the victims and witnesses can explain the phenomena. These cases cannot be dismissed as fictional myths, and the skeptics largely ignore them.

Summary

Transitions occur in all societies, from those of thousands of years ago to our own. Whether dramatic and full blown, or relatively mild and limited, cultural change and revitalization are complex processes, but they have commonalities. Aspects of liminality and anti-structure are seen in them. There is often a loss of faith in the established order. Those on the margins are likely to be the first to suffer from the problems of incipient change. Their protests can induce the establishment to try to further marginalize and discredit them. As a crisis progresses, corruption and deceit in the establishment leads to further distrust. Individuals abandon their old ways of doing things and look for new ones. Those under stress may drastically alter their lifestyles and accept a change in status. In the terminology of Anthony Wallace, mazeways are demolished and reconstructed. Of particular interest for this book is the fact that the paranormal and supernatural become prominent during times of transition. Charismatic leaders may arise who demonstrate paranormal powers, attracting followers, and challenging the legitimacy of the establishment.

Whether within individuals, small tribes, or large cultures, the same pattern is found. Wallace’s work on cultural revitalization substantially parallels van Gennep’s work on rites of passage and Turner’s explication of liminality. Disruption, loss of status, transition, deception, disregard of moral boundaries, and a prominent role for the supernatural are typical aspects of cultural change, and they are also all part of the trickster constellation.

Any comprehensive theory of the paranormal must explain its role in cultural transitions.

Part 4

Overview

This Part presents concrete, modern examples of the more abstract, theoretical ideas presented in earlier sections. The cases include: phony psychics, UFOs, magic tricks, hypnosis, fiction of the supernatural, modern-day witchcraft, government disinformation, the organization of parapsychology, and more. At first glance these subjects don’t seem related; they are in wildly different categories. But they all involve the paranormal, and they are illuminated by the trickster, liminality, and anti-structure.

Deception is pervasively associated with all branches of the paranormal, including UFOs, Bigfoot, and laboratory parapsychology. Thus the trickster assumes particular importance here.

Deception is highlighted in the first two chapters, and in the very last two. The first chapter reviews prominent psychics who have been caught in trickery. The second chapter discusses magic tricks, magicians, and their subculture. Magicians’ connection with the paranormal is far more complex than most people assume, and additionally, magicians have many liminal aspects. The next to the last chapter discusses government disinformation, and the final one covers hoaxes. Both are significant problems in the UFO field. They play a major part in shaping ufology, and the public’s perception of it.

One chapter is devoted to CSICOP and the debunkers. They are a force within academe and are aggressive agents for the rationalization and disenchantment of the world (in Weber’s senses). Their activities, beliefs, and institutions have striking contrasts with those of paranormal practitioners found in Spiritualism, modern-day witchcraft, and the New Age movement.

This Part is particularly concerned with institutions and how the paranormal is or is not accommodated by them, particularly those of government, industry, and academe. The term anti-structure is an important clue vis-à-vis the paranormal, and it is especially relevant to the paranormal’s relationship to institutions.

Briefly, strong manifestations of the paranormal are found in small groups; rarely are large organizations involved. Groups that achieve strong psychic functioning are marked by instability, and they resist institutionalizing. This pattern is seen in Spiritualism, modern-day witchcraft, and psychical research.

Large institutions do not neglect the supernatural. In fact there are sizeable industries devoted to it, but they portray it as fiction in books, movies, and television. Fictionalizing subtly discourages serious consideration of the paranormal.

CHAPTER 10

Prominent “Psychics”

In the last 150 years, the most widely known “psychics” have been as ambiguous as they were prominent, and some are still the subject of debate, despite being dead for over a century. As it happens, allegations of trickery follow nearly all of them, and a summary is presented in Table 3. The general public associates psychic phenomena with all these people, even those who were professional magicians (e.g., Davenport brothers, Kreskin, Dunninger). It is difficult to assess whether most of these characters had genuine abilities, but that is not a primary concern here. Rather, it is their substantial influence on the public’s perception of the paranormal that is of interest. They accentuate the ambiguity surrounding the paranormal. Questions arise not only about their psychic powers but also regarding their sexual orientations, sources of money, and marital statuses.

These are fascinating and colorful individuals, and book-length biographies have been written about them all. Many have undeniable charisma. They inspired devoted, unquestioning followers, and equally fanatic antagonists. Ironically, their enemies have sometimes been their most effective publicists, and the debunkers have often done the most to keep the psychics’ names alive.

Parapsychologists have an ambivalent relationship with these characters, and in most cases they generally shun them because of their bizarre beliefs, odd behaviors, and sometimes cult-like followings. Yet these individuals have had an impact on scientific research. Because of the massive publicity they received, along with the allegations of fraud, serious psychical research was tainted by association. Similar figures will continue to emerge; they will continue to play salient roles in shaping belief and skepticism regarding the paranormal. As such, we

need to understand them; they merit study regardless whether or not they ever produced convincing evidence of psi.

Performer

Reference with Report of Trickery

Fox Sisters *

Self-admitted, Earl Wesley Fornell (1964) Davenport Brothers #*

John Nevil Maskelyne (1910) Daniel Dunglas Home *

F. Merrifield (1903) Count Perovsky-Petrovo-Solovovo (1912, 1930) Helena Petrovna

Report of the Committee (1885) Blavatsky *

Vsevolod Sergyeevich Solovyoff (1892) Eusapia Palladino *

Self-admitted, Hereward Carrington (1909) Margery #*

William McDougall (1925 & 1926/1967) Arthur Ford

William V. Rauscher with Allen Spraggett (1975) Allen Spraggett with William V. Rauscher (1973) Joseph Dunninger #*

David Price (1985) Kreskin *

David Marks & Richard Kammann (1980) don Juan Matus

Richard de Mille (1976, 1980) Uri Geller #*

Self-admitted, Uri Geller (1975) Sathya Sai Baba

Venu K. Kodimela (1992) Table 3 Prominent “Psychics” and Allegations of Their Trickery

# Listed in The Encyclopedia of Magic and Magicians by T. A. Waters (1988).

* Listed in Who’s Who in Magic by Bart Whaley (1990).

The Fox sisters became prominent in 1848, when odd sounds were heard in the home of Mr. and Mrs. John Fox in Hydesville, New York. Their daughters, Kate and Margaret, then 12 and 13 years old,

discovered rapping sounds that gave messages from what purported to

be a deceased person. Visitors soon flocked to the farmhouse, and newspapers put the sisters on the front page; even Horace Greeley became involved. In short order, the spiritualist movement spread through the U.S. to Europe and beyond. The new religion gathered millions of followers, from all strata of society, and the Fox sisters became the most celebrated of mediums. However, near the end of their careers, during a period of alcoholism, Margaret claimed that as a young girl she had produced the raps by cracking her toe knuckles. She later retracted the confession, but whatever the truth of her statements, the sisters are forever tainted by charges of fraud.

Spiritualism has several trickster elements, its frequent association with deception being only one. Mediums, per their name, mediate between this world and the next, and it is no accident that trickster gods also often serve in that capacity. Spiritualism has other trickster and anti-structural properties, and later chapters will address them in more detail.

In 1855 Ira Erastus Davenport (1839-1877) and William Henry Harrison Davenport (1841-1911), two brothers from Buffalo, New York, began performing spiritualistic effects professionally on stage. They would enter a cabinet similar to a wardrobe, and their hands and feet were bound. After the lights were put out, instruments played within the cabinet, ghostly hands appeared outside of it, and sometimes the Davenports seemed to float over the heads of their audiences. Their personal lives were turbulent. William married a number of times (once secretly to Adah Isaacs Menken, a love-goddess of that era), and he had a severe problem with alcohol.3

There is little doubt that the brothers engaged in trickery, but their true beliefs about spiritualism are still puzzling. Joe Nickell, a CSICOP investigator, examined a scrapbook of the brothers, and from his analysis it is plausible to think that Ira Davenport actually believed in spiritualism. The brothers generated enormous publicity, entertained royalty, and biographies were written proclaiming their miraculous powers. Many others followed their lead, and conjurors quickly stirred up controversy and capitalized on it.

John Henry Anderson and Henri Robin, two prominent magicians, exposed the Davenports’ act in their own performances. John Nevil Maskelyne and Samri Baldwin began their careers doing exposés, later becoming eminent magicians themselves. Maskelyne went on to father a magical dynasty, and Samri Baldwin did handcuff escapes decades before Houdini. Early in his career, Harry Kellar traveled with the Davenports and went on to become the most famous magician of his era in the U.S. Thus the Davenports, who presented themselves as spiritualists, had an extraordinary, if unintended, effect on conjuring. Despite the magician detractors, or perhaps partly because of them, the Davenports were the most successful performing stage mediums of their day.5 They publicized spiritualism but also contributed to its ambiguity; people were left wondering: were the manifestations real or fake?

Daniel Dunglas Home (1833-1886) is called the medium who was never caught in fraud. The reports of his phenomena are amazing, and Eric Dingwall succinctly summarized Home’s life as “the problem of miracles in its most acute form.” Home elongated his body, levitated both himself and large tables, and materialized spirit hands. He could hold red-hot coals in his bare hands without any ill effect and even passed them to others, conferring his immunity on them. Sir William Crookes, the eminent British physicist who invented the Crookes tube and discovered the element thallium, investigated and endorsed him. Home attracted the attention of royalty throughout Europe and gave séances for Czar Alexander II, Napolean III, and Queen Sophia of Holland. He did not charge money for his séances, but he did accept gifts, some of which were lavish. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was much taken with him, but her husband Robert believed Home to be a fraud and wrote a poem about him: “Mr. Sludge, ‘The Medium’.” There were many ambiguities in his personal life, and Dingwall suggests that Home likely had some homosexual tendencies, but rarely, if ever, expressed them. It is true that absolute proof of trickery was never obtained against Home; however, there were several serious detailed allegations (see Table 3). Even today debunkers persist in trying to discredit him.7

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891), co-founder of the The-osophical Society, still retains her notoriety for her paranormal manifestations. Born a granddaughter of a Russian princess, Blavatsky began traveling the world at age 17, later claiming to have spent time in Tibet, though that has been questioned. Her life was frequently in turmoil. She deserted two husbands; several of her devoted disciples became bitter enemies, and at times she lived near poverty. Her sex life still provokes wild speculation. She claimed to be a virgin,8 though many say that she had given birth to a son.9 There were rumors that she was wildly promiscuous, a lesbian, a transvestite, and a hermaphrodite. The sexual scandals around her and her close followers are very amusing, and Marion Meade recounted some of them in her Madame Blavatsky: The Woman Behind the Myth (1980). Whatever the truth, there is no question that this part of her life was marked by ambiguity. Blavatsky’s psychic phenomena were exotic. Materializations and levitations were frequently reported. Her followers received apported letters, purportedly from “ascended masters,” though many suspect that HPB wrote them herself. The Society for Psychical Research sent Richard Hodgson to India to investigate, and he found so much trickery that he concluded that she should be considered one of the world’s greatest practical jokers. His report continues to be debated, even a century after it was written.

Though it is easy to dismiss HPB as a charlatan, she was far too fascinating for that. Her life story is amazing, and religion professor Robert Ellwood writes that she can be regarded as “a fraud and confidence artist, or a sage of sages, or a compulsive liar, or a rare psychic and intimate of supernormal entities, or a gluttonous and overbearing old tartar with a fishwife’s tongue.” HPB continues to be the subject of biographies, and at least two more appeared in the early 1990s.

HPB should not be considered a mere opportunist, capitalizing on the gullibility of those surrounding her. she sometimes privately admitted that she used tricks. Vselovod S. Solovyoff published a letter of hers (with her permission!) in which she admitted that she would lie about her mahatmas, though the interpretation is ambiguous, as she succeeded in muddying the issue. Her anti-structural characteristics can be seen in other ways. Political intrigue followed Blavatsky, and in India she was suspected of being a Russian agent, fomenting unrest. Whether this was true or not, among her successors in the Theosophical Society were Annie Besant, a central figure in the Indian independence movement, and C. W. Leadbeater, a sex pervert. HPB and her immediate followers were disruptive of the social order, and paranormal phenomena were an impetus in establishing the Theosophical Society.15

Robert S. Ellwood, Jr. provided an extended analysis of HPB in his book Alternative Altars: Unconventional and Eastern Spirituality in America (1979). He was an Episcopal clergyman, a member of the Theosophical Society of America, and professor in the department of religion at the University of Southern California (his wife, Gracia Fay Ellwood, has written on the paranormal). Drawing on the work of Victor Turner, Ellwood pointed out that Blavatsky was a liminal character and that her life identified with archetypal forms, particularly the trickster and shaman. His analysis is particularly valuable because it explicitly discussed liminality in conjunction with deception and the paranormal. Both HPB and her colleague Henry Steel Olcott assumed a voluntary loss of social status and became wanderers; in fact her entire life was marked by travel. Though she was the catalyst for founding the Theosophical Society in 1875, HPB and her teachings were not its sole focus. She lacked administrative ability and never held the top position in the society.

Eusapia Palladino (1854-1918), an Italian peasant woman, was one of the most celebrated physical mediums in the history of psychical research.16 She levitated tables, produced paranormal breezes and rapping sounds, and materialized spirit hands, among many other phenomena, and she submitted to extensive testing over a period of years. Palladino was impulsive and had little self-control, especially when in trance, and she warned researchers that she would cheat if given a chance. Despite her warnings, some investigators intentionally loosened controls, allowed her to cheat, and then dismissed her, proclaiming her a fraud. The British Victorian researchers considered her a coarse character and were often shocked by her overt eroticism and sexual remarks. She attracted wide attention, and the New York Times published a number of articles about Palladino during her visit to the U.S. for testing. Magicians were involved in that endeavor, and Howard Thurston, the most eminent conjuror of his day, endorsed her phenomena as genuine.17 Nevertheless, because of the allegations of fraud and attendant publicity, the case of Eusapia Palladino helped discredit psychical research in the eyes of many. Yet the controversy over Palladino continues still, and in the early 1990s the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research carried an extended debate on her.

Mina Crandon (1889-1941), also known as “Margery,” was the most famous physical medium of the 1920s. The wife of Boston surgeon Le Roi Crandon, 16 years her senior, she held séances that captured enormous public attention. Scientific American magazine had offered prizes totaling $5000 for demonstrations of certain psychic phenomena. Margery applied to be tested, and a prominent committee was appointed to assess her claims. She produced innumerable dramatic materializations, levitations, and movements of objects for the committee. Ectoplasm appeared to emerge from her bodily orifices, including her vagina, but subsequent examination of the photographs indicated that some of it was actually tissue cut from animal lung, and there was other evidence of fraud as well. Rumors circulated that some investigators were sexually involved with her, thus providing a motive for complicity in deception.

One of the members of the Scientific American committee was Harry Houdini, another trickster figure of archetypal proportions, and one who was obsessed with spiritualism. His assistant, James Collins, later admitted that under Houdini’s orders, he hid a folding ruler inside a testing cabinet, leading others to suspect that Margery had smuggled it in. Collins’ actions allowed Houdini to “honestly” deny planting it himself. The trickster is seen on both sides of the Margery affair.

The Margery case was the most divisive in the history of U.S. psychical research. Leaders of the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) became her partisans, but the most capable ASPR investigators, including Walter Franklin Prince and Harvard professor William McDougall, left and founded a rival society in Boston. As a young man J. B. Rhine attended one of Margery’s séances and was so disgusted by what he witnessed that he published an exposé describing the deceptions he saw. This was a turning point in his career, and the Margery affair led Rhine to chart a new course for parapsychology by restricting his work to the laboratory, using statistics and testing ordinary people. Thus Margery had a major, albeit indirect, impact on the course of psychical research for over half a century.

Arthur Ford (1897-1971) was a renowned medium, who in 1929 gained notoriety for cracking a secret code that Houdini had left with his wife Bess. According to Houdini’s plan, if a medium was able to ascertain the code’s meaning, it would indicate that Houdini was speaking from beyond the grave. In a dramatic séance, Ford communicated the meaning, and the case received enormous publicity. But there were cries of fraud, and magicians and spiritualists long debated whether Ford was truly successful.25 Almost 40 years later, he came to international attention again, when he conducted a televised séance with the prominent maverick Episcopal bishop, James Pike. He provided Pike with ostensible communication from his son who had committed suicide. After Ford’s death, William Rauscher, Ford’s literary legatee, and writer Allen Spraggett reviewed his private papers and found many old obituaries clipped from newspapers. These contained numerous small details that Ford had given in séances. After he made that discovery public, Rauscher received a letter from a Jay Abbott, who had been closely acquainted with both Ford and Bess Houdini. Abbott provided evidence of a romantic link between the two and indicated that the cracking of the Houdini code was deceitful. Rauscher is an Episcopal priest and a magician with a wide knowledge of fraudulent mediumship, and he was the driving force behind M. Lamar Keene’s exposé The Psychic Mafia (1977). Yet Rauscher remains convinced that Ford demonstrated genuine psychic ability in some instances.

In addition to deception, there were other trickster and antistructural aspects to Ford’s character. He had a long personal battle with alcoholism. His sex life raised speculation, and his biographers noted that “people were always falling in love with him, men as well as women.”26 Ford was the motivating factor for establishing Spiritual Frontiers Fellowship (SFF) in 1956, which grew to be a large organization of clergy and lay people that worked to bring respectability to psychic areas. Despite his influence, Ford always remained in the background, and the SFF never was focused on him.

Mentalists Joseph Dunninger (1892-1975) and Kreskin (b. 1935) are conjurors, yet many people believe them to be genuinely psychic, a belief they both encouraged. Among magicians, the two are known for their publicity skills. Dunninger was the foremost mentalist of his day, and he had a real knack for associating with people who enhanced his credibility. For instance, along with Houdini he published exposés of spiritualism, and later he was appointed Chairman of the Scientific

American Committee for the Investigation of Psychic Phenomena. Berthold E. Schwarz, a kindly but gullible psychiatrist and writer of books on the paranormal, frequently lauded Dunninger’s psychic abilities. His association with Houdini, Scientific American, and the praise from a psychiatrist undoubtedly convinced many that Dunninger’s act was based on psychic ability rather than trickery. His personal life was filled with ambiguity. He lived with Chrystal Spencer for many years, but during that time he promised to marry a Betty Devery. In 1944 Chrystal won a lawsuit and was declared his common-law wife. But she admitted that there were weeks when she did not know where he was or what he was doing, and she had to compete with his mother for his affection. Many other oddities of Dunninger’s life were revealed in Maurice Zolotow’s entertaining It Takes All Kinds (1952).

After Dunninger’s heyday, Kreskin (George Kresge, Jr.) became an internationally known mentalist, and his winning and persuasive manner is now widely acknowledged. He was so charming that even Prometheus Books, the publishing house of the debunking movement, published one of his books (though many skeptics were outraged by it). Kreskin is a somewhat solitary man. He has never married, keeps his distance from other conjurors, and is not seen at magicians’ conventions; however, he is rumored to furtively visit magic shops late at night, by special appointment. Both Dunninger and Kreskin fostered the belief that they are actually psychic. Their press material and the writings of Walter Gibson, who ghosted books for them, promoted their reputations as psychics. I’ve spoken to magicians who knew

Dunninger and Kreskin, and the general, though not universal, impression is that they both believed themselves to actually be psychic.

Don Juan Matus, a Yaqui sorcerer with supernatural powers, was introduced to the reading public by Carlos Castaneda in his The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. The University of California Press published that work in 1968 with a foreword by Walter Goldschmidt, chairman of the anthropology department of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), who had also served as president of the American Anthropological Association. In 1973, Castaneda was granted a Ph.D. from that department, with a dissertation essentially identical to his popular book Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan (1972). This was the beginning of a lucrative literary career, and Castaneda continued to produce a steady stream of books well into the 1990s. Some were bestsellers, and Publishers Weekly reported that by 1977 nearly four million copies of his books

had been sold.30

Don Juan Matus, Castaneda’s “teacher,” had telepathic and PK powers, and Castaneda described them along with amazing feats of other sorcerers. With the seal of approval of the UCLA anthropology department, many assumed the books to be factual accounts. But Castaneda largely invented them! Primarily through the efforts of psychologist Richard de Mille, overwhelming evidence was marshalled that Castaneda did much of his “fieldwork” in the UCLA library, and there is no good evidence don Juan ever existed. As such, he is the only fictional character listed in Table 3. Nevertheless, he may well be the most influential, and many people were introduced to paranormal ideas through Castaneda’s writings.

De Mille’s books, Castaneda’s Journey (1976) and The Don Juan Papers (1980), are nicely crafted and enormously entertaining, and they show a true sympathy for both the trickster and the paranormal.33 In fact the first chapter of his Castaneda’s Journey is titled “The Day of the Coyote,” and it opens with an epigraph from a poltergeist report from the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research. Even though Castaneda tried to erase his personal history, de Mille was able to reconstruct some of it, and his biographical analysis is useful and witty. Both of de Mille’s books have extended discussions of Castaneda as trickster, with intriguing insights into his personality. Castaneda never responded, and his mystique continues to this day.

This landmark hoax severely embarrassed the UCLA anthropology department, and it made it difficult for anthropology students everywhere to investigate paranormal topics because their professors feared being similarly tainted. This helped shield the paranormal from scientific investigation, and de Mille even commented that “I can’t help wondering how many prospective readers of serious psi literature may have been shunted off in another direction” by Castaneda.

Uri Geller (b. 1946) burst upon the psychic scene in the 1970s with his seeming power to bend keys and spoons with PK and also for his ESP. He was born in Israel, and when he was about 10 his parents divorced; after that he lived in a kibbutz and later went to Cyprus with his mother and stepfather. He returned to Israel and began performing on stage displaying his paranormal abilities, which even he admits were augmented by tricks. He came to the attention of paranormal researcher Andrija Puharich, who helped arrange for tests of his psychic abilities at Stanford Research Institute by Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ. Those results were reported in Nature and the Proceedings of the IEEE, major scientific journals of international standing (IEEE stands for the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers). Those papers sparked enormous controversy, and the fallout persists. Books have been written attacking and defending Geller, and there have been direct allegations of cheating. He has acquired enormous wealth, reputedly through mineral prospecting, and he now lives in a mansion that has a helicopter landing pad. A fictionalized movie has been made of his life.

Geller drew the attention and spite of magician James Randi, who in the last quarter of the twentieth century was the most prominent spokesman for the debunking movement. Both Geller and Randi have appeared on numerous TV shows, and Randi even wrote a book denouncing Geller. The conflict has continued for over 25 years, becoming so intense that the two battled in lawsuits around the world. Randi was forced out of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (which he helped found), because of the legal suits provoked by his statements.37

Sathya Sai Baba (b. 1926), a Hindu holy man with millions of followers around the world, is one of today’s best known miracle workers. He reputedly materializes precious metals and gems, is clairvoyant, has turned water into gasoline, and even raised the dead. But he has not allowed controlled tests of his abilities, and there is much evidence indicating trickery. Many of his materializations of small objects have been recorded on video, and magicians confirm that they certainly look like magic tricks, though the resolution and video quality were insufficient for definitive proof. A number of devotees have lived in close proximity with Sai Baba and later became disillusioned, some bitterly so. One was Meenakshi Srikanth who posted an article on the Internet in 1993 entitled “Sri Sathya Sai Baba: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” He reported that Sai Baba had sodomized a number of his students and that some were familiar with the magic tricks he used. Tal Brooke, another former devotee, also recounted Sai Baba’s homosexual advances on himself and others. Elements of the trickster constellation appear in the person of Sai Baba.

Summary

I know of no psychics more prominent than those listed in Table 3, and serious allegations of deception follow them all. There are few of comparable public visibility without such taint (e.g., Edgar Cayce, Jeane Dixon, Eileen Garrett, Ingo Swann). Even if one wishes to disregard the relatively weaker testimony, the overwhelming majority of the most widely known psychic performers have a reputation for trickery. This is simply a cultural fact.

These characters exemplify the patterns of liminality, antistructure, and the trickster. Deception and psi are not the only trickster qualities to manifest in these personalities. None were long-term employees in large bureaucratic institutions; they didn’t fit into the normal work-a-day world. They had odd life-styles; marital situations were nonstandard; they did not hold regular jobs; unusual sexuality was common, and several had problems with alcohol. Many were charismatic. These are liminal, anti-structural people.

These people have been exceptionally effective in drawing attention to themselves and stimulating discussion about their phenomena. At the same time, their antics and deceptions serve as an excuse for status-conscious scientists to ignore them and to marginalize their phenomena. This presents a paradox—for the paranormal, publicity fends off detailed examination.

CHAPTER 11