Kreskin - The Amazing World of Kreskin

Millions who have watched Kreskin’s thought
perception or suggestibility feats on his own tele-

vision show—or as a guest of Johnny Carson,
Mike Douglas or Merv Griffin—have asked:
How does he do it?
The Amazing World of Kreskin, based on his
own personal experiences, answers this and many
other questions.
Thought perception? Kreskin tells graphically
how he perceives a thought; how it arrives, tele-
pathically, in his mind. His ability ranges from
the “reading” of a social security number in a
lady’s purse at two hundred feet, to the chilling
experience of extricating a man imprisoned in a
safe by mentally perceiving the combination.
In these fascinating experiments, his subjects
have been “the man-off the street” as well as the
famous. He once telepathically communicated
with TV star Carol Burnett over a 3000-mile
distance.
Kreskin contends that most people are prone
to suggestibility, even to participating in riots.
He tells what is known of the conditioning, how
he manipulates the human mind, and the some-
times startling results.
No less startling is his contention that the
sleeplike trance of “hypnosis” does not exist. “It
is a well-meant fraud,” he claims. After “hypno-
tizing” an estimated 35,000 people he discov-
(continued on back flap)
Book Club
Edition
Random House a New York
Copyright © 1973 by Kreskin
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American
Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by
Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in
Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Manufactured in the United States of America
To
Mom and Dad, and Marien
to whom, twenty years ago,
I promised I'd dedicate my
first book
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AUTHORS NOTE
As a performer, a “mentalist,” for lack of a better self-

description, I spend several hours daily in concert halls, be-
fore college audiences, or in front of TV cameras, exploring
the scientific field of parapsychology.
To amuse, intrigue, cause wonder, I “suggest” to people that
they have been transported to the Arctic. Suddenly they
shiver, without the nonsense of a “hypnotic trance.” I tell them
that they are moon people and they begin to converse in
“moon talk,” drawing on an incredible pool of hidden imagina-
tion. Nonverbally, I direct them to a single name in a phone
book. Out of thousands, they select it correctly. Through a
kind of telepathy, I am often successful at thought perception.
I do not claim to know the “how” and “why” of these re-
sponses. But apparently I’m in rather truthful company be-
cause most reputable parapsychologists admit that beyond
theory they do not have the slightest idea of the true nature
of extrasensory perception. Nor can they explain the unstable
psychic phenomena termed psi which supposedly keys ESP.
While I’m always in awe of the mental tools with which I
y
THE AMAZING WORLD OF KRESKIN
work, I’m not in awe of the field itself. Why should we be

reverent or mystical about something that is a part of every-
one? From that standpoint, the phenomena begs for explora-
tion. Further, all of us are living laboratories of the mind, so
research cannot be limited to a handful of psychologists and
psychiatrists.
Unlike medical or university laboratory test subjects un-
dergoing experimentation in sharply defined areas, my ESP
volunteers are audiences of several hundreds up to thousands
—all “off the streets.” They react normally and spontaneously
without the more or less controlled conditions of experimental
parapsychology. I think it is a plus.
Yet I have learned and relearned one constant: We know so
very little of the workings and true capabilities of the human
mind. No week, month or year has gone by that I haven’t been
bafHled by the responses, challenged by the unknown.
For years, as both a stage and occasional clinical “hypnotist,”
I was under the grand delusion that I was putting people to
sleep, elaborately entrancing them according to a formula that
dates back to Dr. Franz Anton Mesmer. Actually, I think I was
“hypnotizing” myself. Then I discovered I could do exactly
the same thing with the subject wide awake by use of a de-
veloped form of suggestibility.
As of now, I do not think that “hypnosis,” with its sleeplike
trance, exists. It is somewhat a well-meant fraud. I don’t be-
lieve that the “sleep trance” has ever existed except as a co-
operative and acted imaginative response from the subject.
Cleverly guided into a role, Sleeping Beauty is very much
awake, peering mentally with shrewd eyes.
In the pages that follow, covering my experiences in en-
tertainment ESP as well as “hypnosis,” with a few negative
reactions to mediums, seers and the like, I would prefer to
offer an exact scientific explanation of what occurs when I
perceive a thought or suggest a sky full of flying saucers. Un-
fortunately, I can only reveal how I attempt to do it, and how
it works for me.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
We may not know the answers for another century. Perhaps
we'll never really know, but we should try to find out. Hope-
fully, ESP will one day be reversed to mean phenomena
scientifically explained.
Many hours of taped memories, hundreds of questions went
into this book. Probing constantly was writer Theodore Taylor,
who took on the task of organizing the material and placing it
into manuscript form. On show business hours, we worked in
dressing rooms and hotels in Las Vegas and California before
and after performances. I remember one midnight taping ses-
sion in a waiting room at Los Angeles International Airport.
Nearby a suspected hijacker was being frisked by security
guards. It seemed so strange to be talking about poltergeists
and mediums at that moment.
KRESKIN
Easton, Pa.
March 1973
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CONTENTS
Author's Note
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PART |
ESP as Entertainment
13
PART Il
The Power of Suggestion

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[1]
The unknown is always there. Where do you stop?

Not long ago, during a concert before students and
faculty at Rutgers University, a young lady stood up in
the front row after I'd revealed a thought. She’d been
concentrating on a single subject and Id received it.
“Someone here is thinking of her boyfriend,” I remem-
ber saying.
She was a pretty blonde, about nineteen or twenty.
Moving closer to her, I said, “Think of his name, please.
Concentrate on it very hard.” This is the usual phraseol-
ogy for thought-perception demonstrations, as simple
and direct as I can make it.
Facial muscles and eyes soon indicated that she was
concentrating deeply. In a moment I gave her the name.
15
“Think of his address, please,” I then said.

She concentrated a moment longer and I perceived that
thought, naming the correct street, street number and town.
The audience, thankfully, was hushed, making it easier for
us to communicate. Quiet sharpens the signals.
“His phone number,” I requested.
The pretty blonde again concentrated and I was able to call
out the digits.
By this time I realized that she was a near-perfect subject
and could not resist probing on. “Do you have any brothers or
sisters?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Think of their names, please.”
This took a bit longer but I finally named each one—two
brothers and two sisters. The names came in distinctly. I re-
ceived them almost visually—a common occurrence.
“Now their birth dates, please. Think of their birth dates by
name. If you can’t remember the exact date, the month will
be okay.”
Again, she concentrated and I picked up the information,
spieling it off.
Suddenly I was aware that the young lady was becoming
hysterical. We’d now been in this half verbal, half mental com-
munication for six or seven minutes, more time than I'd ever
devoted to a single thought-perception routine in any public
concert.
Oddly enough, I found myself beginning to shake too. I'd
opened up her mind as well as my own. We were mentally
locked onto each other. I stopped immediately. Yet, without
this nervous reaction from the uneasiness of crossing into a cur-
rent twilight territory, a definitely mutual reaction, I’m certain
we could have gone on for two hours. However, I vowed then
and there to limit, for the time being, such adventuring to a
few single thoughts. No person is prepared for an extended
mental exchange when it does happen. It is eerie only because
it is not customary.
Thinking about it later, I realized that the communication
16
ESP AS ENTERTAINMENT
had almost approached the mechanical. Standing about eight
feet away from her, I had hardly been aware of her physical
presence. The information was received but not evaluated,
then relayed to the audience. They, too, at least for me, ceased
to exist. As the minutes went by, the tuning became finer; each
thought was clear and distinct. For seven minutes we were
invisibly and strangely linked.
I am not a “psychic.”
I'm not a mind reader, because that implies I could totally
penetrate the processes of the human brain and receive chains
of thoughts. On many occasions I can perceive a single thought
or a series of single, simple thoughts if the subject is properly
tuned to me. I think this silent communication is within the
capability of many people, once trained and self-sensitized.
Above all, I’m not a “medium.”
I do not give readings of any type. I cannot converse with
spirits. I don’t and can’t predict the future, and I am not sure
that anyone can. I fly by commercial jet and not by astral pro-
jection. I do not subscribe to the occult. Decidedly, I have
enough trouble living in this universe without putting an in-
truding foot into another ghostly world. Regretfully, ’m not
gifted with any supernatural power.
Perhaps some of what I do fits into the category of “psychic,”
so-called, under certain conditions. But I think that my partic-
ular forms of mental communication, as adapted for the stage,
are probably hypersensitive or hypernormal rather than extra-
sensitive. In the manner of a concert pianist who has spent
much of his life at the keyboard, the communication, a very
earthly one so far as I'm concerned, has been developed
through years of painstaking practice.
Using only imagination I can “see” a white rabbit on that
table over there. Now he moves, turns, looks. This is not
psychic. It is within the capability of almost anyone who is
willing to sharpen and sensitize imagination.
For my purpose the brain, container for the mind, is con-
siderably more receptive to training than a leg muscle. If the
leg muscles can be coordinated to run a hundred-yard dash
17
in less than ten seconds, it is reasonable to expect that the most
perfected human machinery of all can be trained to go far
beyond the commonly accepted senses.
A great deal that occurs in parapsychology is no doubt re-
lated to senses in terms we've never been able to compart-
mentalize. They've been blurred into the term extrasensory
perception, popularized by the renowned pioneer Dr. Joseph
B. Rhine, formerly of Duke University. But ESP is an abortive
contradiction, suggesting we have the ability to perceive be-
yond our senses. Really, how is that possible? Perhaps we
should just expand our range of senses, blindly, to seven or
eight? Who’s to know that eighteen.or twenty-two don’t exist?
A previous pioneer, Dr. Sigmund Freud, once theorized
that our psychic abilities were diminishing. All of our senses
have suffered because of the technical revolution. Assaulted
by machinery, traffic, aircraft and screaming rock guitars, we
are losing fine-hearing. It follows that if we all became mute
tomorrow it is quite possible we'd develop another sense. Sur-
vival might force the oddity of telepathy into the normal and
everyday. The “sense,” certainly, is already there. It isn’t para-
normal.
True, I’ve produced manifestations, or effects, that might be
attached to the somewhat questionable “psychic senses” area,
and again I confess I don’t understand many of them. Ob-
viously something happens to me and suddenly I’m talking
about things that I should not, in the conscious awareness,
know. At the same time, I don’t believe this is “psychic,” as
we commonly accept the word. Likely, the awareness is trig-
gered because of the aforementioned trained sensitivity.
Much the same thing occurs in almost every normal person.
Random thoughts come to mind “out of the blue.” Words are
spoken not related to the immediate surrounding or events or
other persons present. The unconscious, without direction, has
been developing thoughts and they surface. It happens to
everyone.
But beyond these common occurrences, I do pick up infor-
mation through a kind of telepathy. By deep concentration,
18
“tuning in,” I seek out and then “receive” a single thought,
provided the “sender” is concentrating to an almost equal
depth, Some debunkers have claimed it is an ability to “mus-
cle read” a subject’s face, to decipher clues given unconsciously
by the subject. This may well be a factor of ESP, as natural as
an eye blink, but I am not aware of it. The reaction on the sub-
ject’s face may unconsciously increase my perception of the
thought, but it does not reveal the thought unless an absolute
“yes” or “no” answer is involved. Anyone can usually read a
positive or negative simply by studying eye register.
More than all this, if I perceive a social security number
secreted in a purse at two hundred feet in a darkened theater,
muscle reaction is of little help in determining the numbers
and their sequence. The only source is the subject’s concentra-
tion. His or her face, at that distance, is but a small shadowy
object.
What I do in my concerts, as I prefer to call them, is create
an extremely sensitive rapport with my audience, consciously
and unconsciously. Ideally, my subjects are as much in tune
with me as I am with them. They are capable of sending in-
formation by telepathy or receiving it by a combination of
reverse telepathy and suggestibility, which is exactly what it
implies.
So far as I can understand it, the mental equipment in my
presentations is something outside of me, as well as within. I
do not mean that I “detach” my mind. In suggestibility, I at-
tempt to project it as strongly as possible—use it as a lever, a
force. It is, in truth, spotlighted, beaming invisibly. Yet success
in this communication is completely dependent on the moods
and personalities of the subjects, their willingness to open their
imaginations and “receive.” I am helpless if they refuse.
When I walk out onstage, it is unlikely that I will be cap-
tured by any particular thought. Some nights, though, I am
arrested by something that someone, usually self-primed, is
trying to communicate. I no more than reach stage center
when an almost electric demand is in the air. Fortunately, it
doesn’t happen too often. I'd rather develop the thought-
19
perception phase through normal audience conditioning—the
blend of basic theater, showmanship and psychology. How-
ever, my equipment is not the machinery of a tuned piano,
nor can it be manipulated like a magical prop. And I can never
absolutely predict how my subjects will respond.
In using ESP as a form of communication, I receive informa-
tion in images rather than in symbols or distinct sounds. As
an aid, I also practice automatic writing and have practiced it
since childhood. It is difficult to describe precisely, but my
hand writes semiconsciously or often without guided conscious
thought. The hand is a direct extension of a portion of the
mind which is receiving and then sending signals; another por-
tion may be dealing with another subject, usually related. A
common, less refined variation of this is the businessman who
is listening on the phone, dealing with one subject while his
hand is scribbling on the pad about something else.
So while talking to an audience, I’m constantly writing, al-
though I’m not really aware of the pencil movement. The ma-
terial is usually ahead of what I’m trying to say to the audience
or receive from them.
As the automatic writing proceeds, and certain thoughts be-
gin to come in clearly, a subject is developed and targeted. I
then attempt to perceive through imagery. I almost see a
picture, the thought, though not clearly; I hear information,
which I don’t really hear, in an auditory sense. The latter is
sometimes called clairaudience, stealing from clairvoyance, ex-
cept that I think it is just my own way of handling the informa-
tion hypersensitively.
With eyes wide open I perceive the images as I'm looking
out over the audience. In the case of reading someone’s social
security number, which seems to be a favorite because of
simplicity and familiarity, I see it more easily over a darkened
part of the theater. This area, far from the footlights, be-
comes a blackboard. The subject is dim, scarcely more than a
voice.
I prefer to have the subjects in a darkened area, although it
makes little difference. The lenses of my glasses resemble pop
20
bottle bottoms. I'm helpless without them. Usually, much in
the manner of a lecturing professor, I remove them entirely
when perceiving thoughts. Holding them, however, does seem
to aid in. concentration. I have a theory that near-sightedness
aids in ESP.
But the glasses are not transistorized bugging devices. I
have no second set of hidden eyes, no mirror built into my
ring, no periscope in my belt buckle, no assistant concealed in
the ceiling and transmitting to me through a miniature radio—
all of which have been advanced as “how-to” techniques.
After a Johnny Carson Tonight show, one critic, quite se-
riously, said he suspected I planted tiny mikes in numerous
audience seats and then listened backstage to pick up key in-
formation as the audience chatted pre-show. What strikes me
so funny about this is the picture of myself crawling around
the floor at Studio B in Burbank prior to show time, stringing
wires and cutting holes in upholstery. Such an NBC “Water-
gate” would be more hilarious than the show itself, and Carson
would be better off photographing that rigging than what I do
later.
On a more fundamental basis, I don’t have the talents to see
through the cloth of a lady’s purse or through the leather of a
man’s wallet, wherein usually lies the small card on which the
social security number is imprinted. So the only possible
method is to read it with and through the mind of the co-
operating sitting or standing subject. On receiving his or her
signal, I project the numbers, visualizing them almost instantly.
“The number is 225-12-6018.”
I do not always look at what the pencil has written on my
note pad. 225-12-6018, I am not always confident it will be
correct. Most of the time, though, the written number will
match the verbal projection.
From personal curiosity alone, I’ve sought answers to these
abilities. It is annoying not to know exactly how it all works.
Among others, one psychologist, Dr. Harold Hansen, advised,
“Perhaps it’s better that you don’t know everything that’s hap-
pening. It’s probable that at times you're harnessing something
21
more than you'd be able to harness if you were conscious of
the mechanics.” Hardly a satisfying answer for either layman
or expert, yet most answers in parapsychology are seldom
satisfying.
But Dr. Rhine established this hazard long ago in experi-
ments with ESP cards at Duke. Mechanics did interfere with
perception tests involving his famous cards, marked with five
different symbols. First used in the early thirties, the cards
are still the prime extrasensory test vehicles.
In a practical way, if I stop to analyze myself during a per-
formance and ask myself, “Now, how the devil is this done?,”
I'll abruptly lose the subject’s thoughts. It is only after the per-
formance, well after, that J can afford to ponder the processes
that might have taken place. Even so, I find it hard to describe
them satisfactorily.
Reading this, you have a thought in mind. It is neither col-
ored green or blue, nor triangular or round or square in shape,
size or form. In physical feeling, it is probably no different
from the thoughts you had twenty minutes ago. It is simply a
thought, and in terms of physical reaction, not distinguishable
from any other thought. An emotional thought, one of wild
anger or one of deep love, does appear to have a different
texture and, I suppose, “feeling.” But attempt to describe that
exact texture or shape or form as a separate entity! It’s rather
difficult.
The best I can do in answering questions is to say that the
perceived thought, traveling invisibly, arrives in the same form
as any other thought. I accept the perceived thought; it is sud-
denly there, and I act upon it, without any particular evalua-
tion. In view of the fact that we are all using the same basic
equipment, the thought, whether it is prompted by verbal or
sensual contact or perceived, would cause some surprise if it
arrived in a different package.
However, I firmly believe that public demonstrations of
thought perception should not be considered as absolute proof
of the scientific possibilities of ESP. Demonstrations sucli as
22
mine should be considered as examples of the particular skills
of the performer.
My own mood counts. I take a walk at least a mile long be-

fore every TV show or concert to shut out distracting thoughts
around me; to build up deep introspection. I also attempt to
bring myself to the point where I can discard any negative
factors regarding the performance; rule out any chances of
failure. Basically, I apply what Dr. Norman Vincent Peale
described as the “power of positive thinking,” which may well
be mankind’s ultimate mental tool.
[2 ]
During the 1890’s—the early period of the British Society for

Psychical Research, forerunner of the present American group
—a word used to explain certain thought perceptions was
hyperaesthesia, whereby an individual became sensitive to
the slightest details in physical surroundings, the slightest
changes in smell or other sensory functions. However, long
before the word was formalized, the mesmerists, the first
Svengalis, had been testing for sensitivity. They would give a
subject a handkerchief, and if he was sufficiently sensitized he
could find the owner by sniffing the person’s hand, compar-
ing it with the aroma of the fabric.
Another very old mesmeric experiment was to give a blank
card to a subject and tell him that a picture of a loved one was
on the card. The other side of the card would be marked so
that it could be located after shuffling. The cards were then
placed in front of the subject and his job was to select the card
on which the “picture” had appeared, although it was only in
his mind. Yet the subject was very often able to select that one
specific blank card. His sensitivity had enabled him to pick
out some special minute characteristic of the card, perhaps a
y
23
flaw, and make the identification. The “picture” of the loved
one which wasn’t there had nothing to do with the “hit.”
Some people have a natural capacity to pick out the tiniest
details of any object, animate or inanimate. Others develop
this capability as a skill, taking it to very sophisticated levels.
A card sharp is one such “sensitive.” He certainly does not buy
decks of marked cards. There are only about fourteen Ameri-
can printed and marked “back” designs, and the professionals
know the imprints of each maker. The sharp takes an ordinary
deck and makes his own marks as he goes along. By the third
hand, through pressures of his fingernail or hidden devices, he
makes indentations, visually perceptible only to him. It is a
developed sensitivity, catastrophic to the opponents in any
poker game.
For entirely different purposes, solely for “tuning” and per-
ception, I utilize all of these examples of old-fashioned hyper-
aesthesia. Each sense is sharpened to the highest possible
degree. During a performance I am usually so highly sensi-
tized that I can hear a needle drop in the theater or night club.
I wasn’t really aware of it until some years ago in the Embers
Club in Indianapolis, when I suddenly blurted, “What was
that?” I thought I'd heard an object fall. Perhaps a glass.
After the show was over, Bob Kaytes, the Embers’ maitre
d’, came up to say, “What you heard wasn’t in the club. A
waitress in the cocktail lounge dropped a tray and a glass
broke.” The cocktail lounge was behind a partition and the
noise could not easily have penetrated into the club itself. For
one thing, both rooms were soundproofed.
I began to wonder if I’d actually heard the glass break or if I
had got a paranormal impression and thought I heard the
noise. At any rate, I couldn’t see the lounge from the stage, so
it wasn’t visual. For the next week I had Bob, or some other
member of the staff, drop a tiny object within the club. Fi-
nally, it decreased to a needle. Now realizing for the first time
that I'd sensitized my hearing to this range, it was easy to pick
out the tiny click within the normal sounds of breathing, chair
scraping, murmurings, ice-cube clinkings and ashtray noises.
24
Since then I’ve increased the range to the point that I can
usually hear a needle drop on a hard surface in a 3,000-seat
auditorium, and I can often pinpoint the location. However, I
must be aware that it will drop within a certain time period
and alert myself to listen for it.
Certain types of sound, though, can be disastrous, especially
if they’re steady. Recently a gentleman at the Las Vegas Hilton
kept clicking two chips in his pocket. From the stage, to my
ears, they sounded like cymbals crashing. I finally stopped the
performance and asked him to put the chips to better use at
the craps table.
Operating under this degree of sensitivity, I usually feel ex-
hausted, totally drained, after a concert. It takes a short while
to recover. And I find it necessary to eat five meals a day sim-
ply to resupply energy. From roughly 155 of them, I usually
lose two or three precious pounds per performance. Of course,
complete mental concentration in a compacted time burns
more energy than normal physical exertion in triple the same
time.
I'm certainly not advocating ESP for weight control. Di-
recting the stomach to push away from the table is simpler.
Besides, ESP cannot be employed to cure anything, so far as
is known.
[3]
I’ve often been asked why I use illusion, completely unre-

lated to parapsychology, to begin mentalism concerts. I per-
form card effects (I prefer “effect” to “trick” because of the
mental effort involved) or join wedding rings from the audi-
ence into an unbreakable chain or insert a fifty-cent piece into
a soda bottle. The latter effect, which I find great fun, is some-
thing I devised fifteen years ago. After requesting someone
in the audience to lend me a quarter or a half dollar, I ask him
to mark the coin for later identification..
Then, bringing him
25
up to the stage, I have him hold a soda bottle parallel to the
floor, facing the audience, with one hand on the neck and the
other near the base of the bottle. I then take the coin, cupped
in the palm of my hand, and slam it into the base of the bottle.
The audience can hear it enter and see it enter. It rolls around
inside. After carrying the bottle out into the audience as evi-
dence that the effect has worked, my volunteer returns to the
stage and we smash the bottle to extract the coin. I’ve never
been able to get it out any other way.
Admittedly, this is an act of the magi, not a mentalist. But,
for one thing, I love the world of magic. I began as a child
magician and will play and work at conjuring until I die.
Cards are as much a part of my life as shoes. Just to keep the
fingers nimble, I still work three or four hours daily with them,
on jets or in hotel rooms. I enjoy the challenge of defying the
eye, and mainly for my own satisfaction, am constantly trying
to devise new effects. I’ve studied Houdini, Thurston and
Blackstone endlessly to understand how they accomplished
certain illusions, and this trio was never particularly concerned
with any ESP manifestation. Houdini loathed psychics and
mediums.
The real importance of the magic “intro” lies in the condi-
tioning of the audience for what is to come. It took hundreds
of performances to find the right combinations of conditioners
prior to entering the suggestibility or ESP phases of the con-
certs. The ESP factor alone needs a good mental foundation
to be successful.
Rapport with the audience is built up through verbal con-
tact, and to a lesser extent, body movement. The latter is not
studied but does coordinate with patter to command atten-
tion. I attempt to keep all eyes on me. I then go about creating
a climate for suggestible responses, literally playing it by ear
and “feel” until I can sense that the audience is ready for com-
munication and response. The main task is to instill faith, es-
tablish a “faith-prestige” relationship early. It may take fifteen
or twenty minutes but the audience is seldom aware that the
program is rapidly changing from establishment of rapport
26
and the conditioning of conjuring to an area far removed
from magic. When volunteers come up onstage, they are un-
knowingly ready for response.
As much as possible, particularly in concerts, I attempt to
involve the audience. The participation is a substantial part
of the “faith-prestige” relationship; it is also plain unadul-
terated good showmanship.
I might say, “Do you know that you can turn a person into a
lie detector? Really! We'll do it tonight and then you can try
it the next time you have a party. It’s a great party game. So
I need twelve volunteers.”
Were off and running.
I give each of the twelve persons a card, and then instruct
them to select one subject to play the “guilty” person. Back-
stage that person will take ownership of a pocket-sized ob-
ject. He will also write “Guilty” on a card; the other eleven
subjects will write “Innocent” on theirs. It is impossible for the
“guilty” person not to give himself away, and the majority of
the audience will be able to read him.
Indeed, this is part of the standard police polygraph test.
That insidious but helpful machine is a throwback to the old
witch doctor who could actually read guilt. In itself it is a fear-
some thing, often causing suspects to reveal themselves be-
fore being hooked to it. With its unfeeling electronic sensors,
it preys on the human mind; unsympathetic, unforgiving, it is
scornful, for the most part, of the mere actor, the liar.
While the subjects are backstage with their game plans, I
instruct the audience to “read” the faces of each subject care-
fully, to study the body for signs of rigidity, to attempt to catch
the slightest holding of breath or blink of eye.
My players then return to the stage and I tell them to answer
a flat “no” to any question I might ask, no matter what it is. I
instruct them to act normally in every way, not to tip them-
selves with the slightest gesture. They are holding the cards
face turned toward their chests.
I usually start from the left and ask each one, “Are you
guilty?”
27
“No.”
“Do you have the item?”
“No.”
“Are you trying to hide your guilt from me?”
“No.”
Sooner or later the person who has the object will answer
the three negatives, but even the audience will be able to read
the rigidity, the stress. He will reveal himself, usually by over-
reacting, fighting so hard not to be pinned down. The other
eleven stand out in their posture of innocence.
I say, “Please turn your card.”
“Guilty” is inscribed upon it, as well as on the face and body.
Actually, two things have occurred by now. The audience
has been entertained in an interesting way; they have also, by
participation, been subtly conditioned for further explorations
in games concerning the mind.
As with any human interaction, no performance is the same
because no audience is the same, no mood or night the same.
Rainy nights are always good, for reasons beyond my compre-
hension. One guess is that there is a “locked-in” feeling. Oddly
enough, television is an excellent platform for ESP experi-
ences. The lights, cameras, the confined areas of the stage and
audience, the closed doors—all tend to provide a fenced-in
atmosphere.
The magic phase of my program comprises perhaps five to
ten percent, always at the beginning, while clear-cut suggesti-
bility is around fifty percent, with ESP, mainly thought per-
ception, as the remainder. If 'm having difficulty establishing
rapport, the ESP portion, always a challenge, might drop to
fifteen percent. If we're in tune, with comparatively free com-
munication, as there was with the girl at Rutgers, it can climb
to sixty percent.
Interestingly enough, when I first experimented with ESP—
though I didn’t know it by that name—in my childhood magic
shows, I sometimes found I could get a response by saying,
“Think of something.” More often than not I drew a blank and
would laugh it off, whip out a deck of cards, materialize a
28
bouquet of flowers or go into the “hypnotic” phase of the
program. So I was able to find my way as an entertainer, and
as the years went byI learned that I had to condition myself,
as well as the audience.
As a simple example of the suggestibility phase, one of my
favorites is to have someone from the audience pick a tele-
phone book at random from a large pile of directories, open
it to a specific page and put his finger on a specific name. It is
then my role to announce that name. However, it is a name
that I have already selected by checking the phone books. I
have it in my pocket, written out before the volunteer ever
walks onstage.
How is this done? How is the subject mentally commanded
to target that specific name out of hundreds of thousands?
Throughout the roughly two minutes, I acknowledge that I
have some control of the subject’s mind as each step is ac-
complished, I am sending positive, unmistakable mental
signals. To explain as best I can, I create an intensive com-
munication with the subject, causing him to respond involun-
tarily to my sent thought, ordering him to the correct
directory, the correct page. It is a type of telepathy in reverse.
The last sequence is realized by asking the subject to rotate his
hand around the phone-book page, tightening the circle
with each rotation. This isn’t really necessary but adds to
drama and audience suspense. While the subject is doing this,
I stand with my back to him, mentally visualizing the circle
and where his hand will stop, or should stop. If successful, it
will be at the name selected prior to show time. The subject
circles it firmly with a pencil.
Some ten feet away, unable to see the directory, the subject
or the tiny circle that he has made, I call out his selection.
And then wait for the affirmation and the welcome sound of
applause.
Of course, he didn’t select it at all. He was directed, guided,
commanded, suggested into the one specific line of type. He is
never aware that this nonverbal control has been exercised.
29
Luckily, there has been about ninety-eight percent success
with this particular experiment.
A more difficult version of this is done with a watch. Stand-
ing back to back, and at a distance from the subject, I instruct
him to spin the hands of his watch to a specific time. Simul-
taneously I spin my watch hands and we will both, if success-
ful, arrive at the same reading on the watch. In this effect, I
am synchronizing to where I have directed him to stop. Due
to rapidity of movement and the size of watch hands, success
here drops to around fifty percent.
However, both experiments indicate the requirements for
intense rapport and nonverbal communication. Neither effect
can be accomplished without it. ©
The means of communication often overlap, or often
combine. When I have two members of the audience come up
onstage to burn four out of five small paper bags, one of which
contains a hundred-dollar bill, I use both thought projection
and suggestibility. I direct them not to select the bag contain-
ing the money. While telling them verbally to choose two bags
each and strike a match to them, I am ordering them mentally
to please by-pass the money bag. I make the nonverbal direc-
tion exceedingly clear, since it is my own hundred-dollar bill
that is in danger of being crisped.
When I send four members of the audience to a supermarket
with instructions to purchase four items each and place them
together in a large box, I do not suggest what they should buy,
verbally or mentally. However, on their return, as they con-
centrate deeply on the items each purchased, I use straight
thought perception to identify who purchased what.
A variation of this is to retain the items in bags and then
make the identification as to what has been purchased.
Recently a woman mentally described her purchase as “large
one one end, small on the other, and white in color.” It had to
be an ice cream cone, I thought. She pulled out a turnip.
During the same show, another woman kept mentally describ-
ing her bagged item and I finally drew a straight line with a
circle on each end on the blackboard. I was puzzled by what I
30
was receiving from her, but relieved when she extracted a
“Q-Tip.” I'd also written it down.
[4]
Unlike psychometrist Peter Hurkos, I took no falls from a

ladder, nor was I ever dropped on my head. Neither has any
member of my family, as far back as we can trace, ever been
professionally involved in magic, “hypnosis,” thought percep-
tion or any psychic field. My Aunt Anna Piukutowski leaned
toward it, certainly, but only as a hobby. As far as we know, no
one in the Polish-Italian-American family of Kresge ever con-
cerned himself with ESP.
I was born George, Jr., in Montclair, New Jersey, on
January 12, 1935, which makes me a Capricorn, for what it is
worth. My father is retired, formerly employed as a buffer by a
battery company, and my mother, Lucy, is a housewife. My
younger brother, Joe, is tall like my father; quiet and steady,
also like my father; and he is a police officer in Caldwell, New
Jersey, my hometown. It was, and is, a close and happy family.
I still spend much of my available time with them.
From my mother I inherited a brisk walk and quick
movements. I wish that I had truly inherited her laugh. It cuts
gloom. As a kid, sitting way down front in the local movie, I'd
always know when she'd joined the audience. Her laugh would
be unmistakably first and last. She seldom missed a comedy.
But the laughter would turn to silence whenever I began ex-
perimenting with magic. Deeply religious, she had a misun-
derstanding and a fear of the mystical field. She never really
approved of what I was doing in the early days.
I vaguely remember the incident that sent me into show
business at about the age of five. My father took me along on a
visit to friends and relatives in his hometown of Bethlehem,
Pennsylvania. Neither of us can recall the exact house or the
name of the people, but sometime during the stay I was
31
handed a comic book, probably to keep me occupied. A teen-
ager, I think, gave me the new book which contained five or
six pages of Mandrake the Magician. Vividly colored, electric-
ity sparking from his fingertips and eyes, gesturing hypnoti-
cally, casting spells, crackling with excitement, Mandrake held
my attention that day and for many days afterward. I came
away with the book, looking at it again and again on the train
home. My father does remember that much.
Over the next years I began collecting every Mandrake
comic I could find, spending all my allowance at the news-
stand. Added, soon, were Action Comics and Marvel Comics.
In the back of Marvel was Zatara, a magician who was some-
what similar to Mandrake, using mystical powers to solve
crimes. While Mandrake gestured hypnotically, Zatara would
change an opponent’s gun into a flower. When he wanted
something to happen, he’d say it backwards. “Ogpu” meant
“go up.” Then he'd fly through the air. There was also Ibis the
Invincible, an Egyptian who had died six thousand years ago.
Reincarnated, he used a magic wand called “the Ibis stick.”
I lost myself in Mandrake and Zatara and Ibis. And, of course,
I carved my own “Ibis stick.”
Soon I began working with decks of cards and sleight of
hand. While other kids were struggling on roller skates in front
of our apartment house, which was located on the main street
of Caldwell, I was learning the quick shuffle, trying to fan
cards, manipulating them, popping them out of a sleeve. After
seeing movie routines, I also learned how to juggle.
Then came “Huckle Buckle Beanstalk.” To those who don’t
recognize it by that knee-pants name, it’s the ancient game of
“Hot ’n’ Cold.” A player leaves the room and the rest of the
class hides a bean bag. The player returns and begins to look
for the bag, with the class shouting “Getting hotter” or
“Getting colder.” I was then in the fourth grade. Wouldn’t it
be great, I told my parents, if the object could be found with-
out all the directions, just by having the “hiders” think about
where it was? With the blessing of childhood, I didn’t know
the rules—what could be done, what couldn't. I tried it with
32
my parents and had no success, naturally. They lost interest.
But then I persuaded Joe to try it. I literally forced him to
practice with me for about four months. By the end of that
time I could find almost any object in our small, cluttered
room without him saying “hot” or “cold.” I had no idea what I
was doing, nor how much I was reading his facial expressions
(a lot, probably) as I neared the object, but now I realize I
was blindly beginning to train myself in sensitivity and ESP.
The same year, I recall, I was given permission to study the
entire psychology section, adult books, in the Caldwell public
library. Not understanding one fiftieth of what I was reading, I
stuck with them, eagerly awaiting the next book. All the while
I remained faithful to Mandrake and kept collecting him,
sometimes dreamt of him. By then Id also heard of Houdini
and the Great Thurston. Next to Mandrake, created by Lee
Falk, they were my childhood heroes. Christmas of that year
my parents gave me a book on Thurston.
It was quite a year. I'd learned how to pull a table cloth
from beneath a set of dishes without breaking them, a juggler
routine, and had demonstrated the trick in class and at
assembly. About a week later Mr. Johnson, the principal,
called me into the office to request that I never repeat it, much
less give instructions. Dishes were being broken all over
Caldwell.
But it wasn’t long before I was doing a half-hour private
show every Friday night at my grandparents’, the Cantellos,
who lived about a quarter of a mile away. My Aunt Ruth
Cantello, my mother’s sister, would wait at the kitchen table
for me, and then summon my grandparents for the perform-
ance. I tried to display a new effect each week. They'd applaud
and Id bow.
Caldwell was then a rather rural community, trolley line to
Newark running down the center of Bloomfield Avenue,
flanked by huge old leafy trees. Spring and summer were
delightful. With the quality of a quiet, small American town,
there was plenty of running room, and fields in which to play
cowboys and cops-and-robbers.
33
We were centrally located, to say the least. The Catholic

church, where I never missed a Sunday mass, was directly
across the street from our apartment. Behind us was the police
station; to the left was the public library; on the other side, the
only newspaper in town. On one corner was a Shell gas station,
still there, now run by a close friend of mine. Bells tolled, the
trolley ran; everyone knew everyone else. Christmas, Easter,
the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving were sensational.
Life, as I recall it now, was mostly warm and loving, and I
really didn’t know the difference between “middle class” and
any other class. Sunday was reserved for dinner at Grand-
mother Cantello’s, with spaghetti the main course. I spent a lot
of time in that old house, often eating weekday meals there. I
listened to Aunt Ruth play the piano and eventually learned
by ear, then took lessons. Grandfather Cantello’s was our
second home and I’d always march in the annual Italian-
American day parade with him.
I don’t think my father has read more than a dozen books in
his lifetime but he’d often take me to bookstores in the area,
sometimes going on into New York. We'd look at all the books
on entertainers, especially on magicians. On these trips my
father often talked about entertainers he'd seen and told
stories about them that he’d heard. Later my mother took me
to Manhattan for Arthur Godfrey broadcasts. She had a daily
radio kitchen “romance” with Godfrey. Although it wasn’t
really intentional on their part, my parents constantly oriented
me toward the stage.
But it was probably a story about America’s first famous
modern magician, Harry Kellar, that sent me headlong into
conjuring. The incident had taken place around the turn of the
century in St. George’s Hall, in London, home of the world’s
best magic. An elaborate magician named David Devant, best
of his day, performed nightly in St. George’s, using effects
primarily created by master technician Nevil Maskelyne. The
team operated the theater, devoted entirely to magic.
Kellar had heard that Devant was practicing a form of
levitation devised by Maskelyne, and took a steamer to
34
Europe, hoping to add the effect to his already acclaimed
American show. Few magicians have been able to resist at-
tempting some form of body flotation.
Kellar was stunned, as mystified as the rest of the audience,
when a lady was seen to float up gradually from a couch
onstage. Apparently in a “trance,” she moved away from the
background of the scenery toward the center of the stage. To
heighten the illusion, Devant passed a steel hoop around her
body.
Night after night Kellar returned to his seat in St. George's
to study the effect. Inevitably, he went backstage to offer
Maskelyne a tremendous sum for the secret of his levitation
technique. Maskelyne, of course, turned him down. A few
nights later the frustrated Kellar jumped out of his seat and
went to the front of the audience, then up on the stage, de-
termined to discover the mechanics the British magician was
employing. After an angry scene he was ushered off.
But he did bring back to New York a man named Valedon
who had been an assistant to both David Devant and
Maskelyne. In two years Kellar had his own levitation effect
and it was far more sophisticated than the incredible act that
took place in St. George’s Hall. He worked on a fully lit stage
and climbed a ladder to pass the hoop around the subject.
What struck me, reading about this at the age of nine, was the
lengths to which Kellar had gone in order to create a few
minutes of amazement and entertainment. He’d traveled an
ocean and managed to spirit away the right-hand man of
Devant and Maskelyne.
Eventually Kellar taught the illusion to Howard Thurston
but there were personality clashes between them, and Kellar
willed that it be sold to Harry Blackstone, another illustrious
name in conjury, for the sum of one dollar (Harry Blackstone,
Jr., still has the bill of sale). However, it was the Great
Thurston, who died a year after I was born, who carried the
levitation illusion to near ultimate. The most elaborate of all
American magicians, Thurston invited people up onstage to
search for wires and examine the girl as she floated. He
35
magnanimously gave the steel hoop to an audience member,
defying him to find any supports. He capped the routine with
incomparable showmanship by permitting a member of the
audience to touch Sleeping Beauty’s ring, swearing that any
wish would come true. Thurston’s two- or three-hour perform-
ances were spellbinding, according to my research.
Then I began to study Houdini, who had changed his real
name, Ehrich Weiss, after the great French magician Houdin.
Harry Houdini was a rabbi’s son who at the age of nine was a
wire-act performer with Jack Hoeffler’s circus. He was an
escape artist, athlete, pioneering pilot and parachutist, not a
formal magician. I could never get over the fact that he was
afraid to drive a car. The daredevil said he was “too nervous.”
Although he was obsessed with exposés of trickery and illusion,
Houdini still envied magicians. His act lasted only about
twenty minutes and he had little else up his considerable
sleeve. The brevity of his act was one reason why he took on
all comers. He reaped publicity.
When one Rahmen Bey came to New York to do a “buried
alive” act in a coffin onstage, surviving with very little air,
Houdini quickly let it be known that he would expose the
Indian “impostor.” Poor Bey was reportedly baffled. A short
time later Houdini was lowered into the pool of a New York
hotel in a similar coffin and stayed submerged for almost an
hour and a half, beating Bey’s time by fifteen minutes.
Houdini then claimed that his accomplishment resulted from
his “natural state,” but since Rahmen Bey had been in a
“trance,” he was an impostor. Both men, of course, had
learned to lower their metabolic rate, relax their nervous
systems and not consume air. They were in exactly the same
condition and not entranced. But the Houdini legend con-
tinues, as well it should. No one has come close to duplicating
his feats.
What I learned from Houdini was that he often spent
eighteen hours, on days that he didn’t perform, perfecting his
escape routines. I began to understand the time and effort
36
necessary to go beyond simple card effects and disappearing
coins.
Born too late for the golden age of magic, I tried to relive it
through books. I saw Harry Blackstone perform on only two
occasions and wouldn’t have been more dazzled on the first
occasion had Devant and Kellar been up there, too. A
handkerchief, borrowed from the audience, danced all over the
stage. Blackstone was smiling, master of it all. A lovely
memory.
The last good American magician that I saw at work was a
man named Dante. He had white hair and a white goatee, and
a devilish gleam in his eyes. Indeed, he looked like Mephis-
topheles. He could materialize burros.
[5]
With my father, or sometimes with both our parents, Joe and

I often went to Bethlehem, the rugged steel town just across
the Jersey border, two hours away. My father’s relatives lived
in an apartment house there, occupying three of the four units.
Remarkably, those not deceased still live in the same place, a
big square stucco building at the foot of a high hill. Upstairs,
on the left side, lived Aunt Helen and Uncle Butch Segata, a
foreman at the steel mill; downstairs on the right-hand side
lived Aunt Anna and her husband, John Piukutowski; over
them, their son, Eddie, and daughter-in-law, Marien. As far
back as I can remember, four of the family gathered each day
for a game of 500-rummy. They'd shout up and down the stairs
to get a game going. But as a child, I could never quite
understand the peculiar Polish humor. The minute our family
walked through the door, the Bethlehem relatives would yell,
“Hey, when yuh goin’ home?” There was much laughter in that
apartment house.
Marien devoted a lot of time to me. She'd never gone to
college but had read many books. She'd talk about mystery
37
and things that couldn’t be explained, and about fascinating
people. She was interested in show business.
Aunt Anna was also of great influence. She was short, wore
her hair in a bun, European style. Gold-rimmed glasses were
perched on her nose. She had a quiet, rattling laugh that I can
still hear. Ill much of the time, she couldn’t get around very
well, which was one reason for the daily rummy sessions.
One of my earliest memories of Aunt Anna was seeing her
experimenting with a form of automatic writing. She would
touch a pencil lightly to a piece of paper on a table. After a
while the pencil would being to move nervously. I couldn't
have been more than six when I watched the jerky movements
and Aunt Anna with a faraway look on her face.
I also remember that she once predicted that a friend of
hers, one she hadn’t seen or heard from in a long time, would
soon pay her a visit. It was during an ouija-board session with
my Aunt Helen. Five minutes later a telegram announced the
impending visit of the friend. I was terribly impressed.
Aunt Anna often played with the ouija board and I was
often opposite her, later having the nerve to tell her just how it
worked, which she dismissed. Once I very seriously informed
her that it was an “unconscious response,” a bit of brilliance
extracted from my borrowed library books, interpreted one
hundred percent wrong. Anna apparently took all this in stride
and gladly lent herself to hours of experimentation. Eventually
I did help her overcome insomnia through suggestion. I trained
her to fall asleep within thirty seconds after reading a slip of
paper I'd given her.
When I was in my teens, one of the best comic books ever
published began to appear in the magazine section of the
Caldwell drugstore a few blocks away. Super Magician Comics
was not about Mandrake or Ibis, but about real magicians
solving crimes around the world by using their illusions.
Blackstone was one of them. I still have the books and cherish
them.
But even before Super Magician came to town, I had de-
cided to become a professional conjurer. I had put together an
38
act; some of the effects were rather elaborate but all were
home-built. Aunt Ruth Cantello had made me atail coat, com-
plete with inner pockets. I had tried out my act at school or at
the Cantellos’ or down in Bethlehem where Aunt Helen or Aunt
Anna would lure as many as sixty people, usually all Polish,
into the stucco apartment house for a show.
So, at ten, I began performing professionally in New Jersey,
New York and Pennsylvania, billed as the “world’s youngest
hypnotist,” an advertisement that was more come-on than
truth. My “hypnotic subjects,” children from the audience,
were seldom cooperative. I was fumbling and awkward.
My first true “hypnotic” subject was Aunt Anna. We did a
show in Bethlehem, my first before an entire adult audience,
and I had her “under” in two or three minutes. I remember she
was holding a pencil. I told her it was a rose. She sniffed it.
Then I told her it was an onion. She made a face and tossed it
away. Then I ended the demonstration by telling her that she
was stuck to the chair and wouldn’t be able to get up. We got
great laughs and applause as she struggled to separate from
the seat.
Family played an important role in the beginning, They
gathered the audiences, Over in Allentown, relatives named
Prorok took care of that area. In Bethlehem it worked well
until too many people began showing up in the apartment
house, two hundred on one occasion; then the relatives began
fighting over who would sponsor the show. Finally we moved
it to St. Michael’s Hall, a Polish meeting place up on the hill. I
performed there for a dozen straight summers.
For school performances or birthday parties, the going rate
was ten or twelve dollars for a two-hour show. I pumped most
of it back into props or buying effects that I couldn’t build. For
church performances, and I did many of them, the hat was
passed with varying success—fifteen dollars the first time.
The numbers began to show some polish. I remember I tried
out an effect in Helen Galloway’s sixth-grade class. It was
called “the Rice Bowl,” a Chinese effect. China has always
produced good magicians, but they’ve been slow in developing
39
new effects. Until the early forties they had six basic effects, all
passed down from generation to generation.
Bringing two large cereal bowls to class, I filled one to the
top with rice, and then covered it with the other bowl. Shaking
them, I opened them again and both bowls were overflowing
with rice, spilling to the table and onto the floor. The next step
was to place them together again, and on separation one would
be filled with water, symbolic of China’s rice and water.
I improved on the effect by filling the bowls with rice but
then pulling a large bouquet of flowers instead of water from
the emptied one, followed by an almost endless streamer of
paper that cascaded to the floor, piling around my knees. Then
I'd stop and bend over to pick it all up. Just then the streamer
would begin to wriggle and Id reach into it, pulling out my
pet rabbit, Houdin.
Meanwhile, I was trying to do all sorts of things with
“hypnotism,” trying to mind read, collecting anything about
magic or psychic experiences instead of stamps or baseball
cards. Some members on my father’s side of the family became
alarmed at one point. I suddenly acquired a small reputation
for having an “evil eye” and being able to cast a spell. ’'m not
sure I didn’t enjoy the status, though it was kept pretty quiet.
One time I went into Baron’s store in Bethlehem and bought
something. After I left one of my relatives came in. The store
owner complained of a headache which had started just about
the time I’d entered. That mushroomed into a similar incident,
and soon, in some quarters of the Polish side of the family, I
was George the Evil-Eyed. The Polish name for it is porabiti.
I lived it down, but to this day some of my relatives still give
me strange looks.
Schoolwork was never a problem, although I wasn’t a
straight-A student, and Helen Galloway, now the principal of
the same school, encouraged me at a time when belief in any-
thing remotely psychic brought about a dead-fish reaction.
She told me to ignore those who thought I was “odd” because
I played mind games, and to keep on exploring. There was
also a seventh-grade teacher, Miss Stafford, a large, dramatic
40
woman who continued where Helen Galloway left off. One
question would provoke an hour’s discussion. She was fas-
cinated with the possibility of thought perception.
Of course, magic performances continued while I was in
high school, sometimes three dates a week. I performed for
Boy Scout troops, Girl Scout groups, civic clubs, churches,
schools—any organization willing to guarantee fifteen or
twenty dollars a show. Booking myself, I ran ads in various
papers, sent out mailers and prepared my own press releases.
I'd outgrown the homemade tail coat, and the Bethlehem
relatives, having forgiven my “evil eye,” had contributed a
secondhand tuxedo.
Although Joe and I always had a sibling rivalry and fought
often, he was my effects guinea pig, lending himself to some
pretty wild routines. One twilight my mother almost dropped
her bag of groceries on opening the front door. Joe was
levitated three or four feet off the living-room floor, sitting
in a yoga position.
My mother was startled on more than one occasion. Thurs-
ton had a floating-ball illusion, sending a steel sphere around
the stage and then out over the audience. Blackstone had his
version. I finally worked out the mechanics of the illusion but
employed a light bulb, keeping it lit and floating it around.
The day I perfected it my mother happened into the dim room
where I was floating the bulb, passing it back and forth
through a hoop. She let out an “Eek!”
Some of my many chemistry and science experiments also
created momentary upsets. I remember that an attempt to
manufacture dense fog in the kitchen didn’t go over too well.
But each of the efforts, successes or failures, added something
to the performances.
If the shows were thirty minutes, ’'d work alone; if they
were two hours, Joe would come along as an assistant. Look-
ing back, I imagine they were staged as professionally as pos-
sible. To open a typical program, I'd walk out in my tuxedo,
coming through the curtains carrying a cane, bowing and
smiling, aping Blackstone. I'd hold the cane in front of me
41
and change it to a silk handkerchief, shake the handkerchief
and produce a bouquet of flowers. Then the curtain would
open and Id step back to the various effects tables or cabinets
onstage.
One of my favorites was “the Miser’s Dream,” an effect often
used by adult magicians. I renamed it “the Storm of Coins.”
Walking to the simple table in the center of the stage, I'd
tap it with a wand, tossing the wand to Joe, and then produce
a half dollar from my fingertips, dropping it into a pail. Rapid-
fire, 'd pop about ten more, and then move offstage and into
the audience, pulling coins from ear lobes and noses. Back
onstage, I’d clatter thirty or forty ‘coins into the pail, then cap
the routine by changing money. Up-ending the pail, a hundred
one-dollar bills would flutter out.
Turning to cards, I'd spring a deck from one hand to the
other, shuffle it dramatically and then throw the cards singly
into the air. They’d disappear. Tossing the rest of that deck
into a top hat, I’d pop another one and begin fanning them,
about twenty cards in each fan, finally doing a vanishing effect
with three or four decks.
Moving quickly to more complicated illusions, I'd have
someone from the audience select a card from a deck and then
place it in a container given to me by a former magician
named Reed who worked at the Bright Star Battery company
with my father. Exposing the container so that the audience
could see it, ’'d burn the card and then walk to a picture frame
on the other end of the stage, flinging a scarf over the frame.
Returning swiftly to the container, I’d lift the lid off and whip
out a half-dozen scarves. Back at the picture frame, I’d yank
the scarf and expose the previously “burned” card. Striding
back to the table, ['d pick up a box which had no lid or
front; it was empty except for a small amount of webwork.
Throwing it up, I'd catch it to reveal my rabbit nestled inside.
Usually I'd follow that effect by draping a large cloth over
my shoulder, and turning back, I would produce another
bouquet of flowers, all different colors. I'd freeze, doatelltale
42
pause, tipping off the audience that something else would hap-
pen. Then I'd produce a large bow! of water; it always brought
the house down.
After that, I'd do a spiritualistic thing: cause a ball to float
around my shoulder and in front of me. Holding up a scarf,
stretching it tight horizontally, I'd send the ball back and forth
over the edge. Later on, before intermission, Joe would come
out with an alarm clock and a black cloth. With the usual ex-
aggerated gestures, I'd set the alarm and have it go off, quickly
wrap the clock in the cloth and toss it all into the air. At apex,
the alarm bell would stop and the cloth would fall back to the
stage minus the clock.
On most shows I learned something about timing and audi-
ence communication. I began to sense the “squirmpoint.” Soon
I could almost feel the excitement or boredom, and would
know when an illusion was not obtaining the results.
If the show was some distance away my father would drive
us, then stand in the back of the auditorium and listen to com-
ments. No one knew who he was, and I learned a great deal
from his eavesdropping. I picked up showmanship pointers.
Most entertainers could do no better than have a friend stand
in the back of the room or in the lobby and just listen. After
the shows we'd head back for Caldwell. My father would pass
on whatever information he'd heard and then lapse into si-
lence. We'd drive through town after town in the misty early
hours of the morning. Joe often fell asleep in the back seat,
which was usually crammed with equipment. He was curled
around cabinets used for effects. Pll remember those rides as
long as I live.
What a solid opportunity those nights offered for ground-
ing in theater and showmanship! I can recall a very rainy night
when I was a junior in high school and gave a two-hour show
to raise money for the class. I was beginning a memory dem-
onstration when one of the stand lights behind the curtain
exploded. The curtain lining began to burn and white smoke
enveloped me at stage center. Not aware of the fire, the audi-
43
ence assumed that the bang of the lamp and the smoke were
some type of magical effect. I somehow remained calm and
kept going with the memory demonstration while several of
the stage crew extinguished the curtain and unplugged the
sparking lamp. But that type of presence is unknowingly de-
veloped by repeated appearances before live audiences. One
day you wake up and have it. You really don’t know how you
got it.
During this same period I discovered that I was more in-
terested in audience reaction than in what I was doing onstage.
It was satisfying to have the illusions work, but of greater
satisfaction was the communication from beyond the foot-
lights, the sensing of excitement, the submission to mystery. I
began to realize what audience rapport meant and what it
required.
In my mid-teens I was beginning to experiment constantly
with ESP, attempting to perceive thoughts and plant them.
My subjects were mostly fellow students. At times they would
be aware of it. It reached a point, however, when I had to use
caution in exercising what was becoming an acquired ability,
improving yearly, in order to keep a circle of friends.
By seventeen, in my last year of high school, I was able to
identify, almost immediately, any phone caller who was a per-
sonal friend. It was done automatically, without thought. I
was “receiving” through hypersensitivity and telepathy. The
phone would ring and Id say, “Hi, Nancy,” before Nancy
Throckmorton could open her mouth. I did the same thing
with Shirley Rollins, another girl friend, and several guys who
were close.
Or Td reveal thoughts at lunch break: “You're worried
about that test, aren’t you?” Or if the guy got a D-minus on
his test and was thinking about it, I'd say, “You got a D-minus,
didn’t you?” I didn’t realize how unnerving it was. Word got
around that George Kresge was a little spooky. I untrained
myself of the habit.
Earning one hundred and fifty to two hundred dollars a
44
week now, seventy-five dollars a show, I had no thoughts of
further education. I already considered myself a professional
and had even worked a night club by the time I graduated
from high school. My only thought was to now extend my play
dates throughout the East and to the Midwest. My parents
had resigned themselves to the fact that I would end my
schooling in Caldwell. Then Mrs. Mary Geimer, who taught
English at Caldwell High, urged me to enter college. I said
that I couldn't very well do that and still keep bookings
throughout the country.
“Do it part time,” she said. “Just take two courses.”
“Where?”
“At Seton Hall University.”
Tt was only a half-hour from my home, famed for its basket-
ball team. With no more prodding than that, I enrolled in
Seton Hall, with a major in psychology and a minor in
Catholic philosophy.
At the same time I set about going professional all the way.
I needed a stage name because I felt Kresge had little ring or
flair; it also recalled the dime store and I didn’t want that com-
parison in reviews. I thought about using my father’s Polish
name of Gorcza. Along with many other Poles, he’d changed
his name, fearing prejudice. Yet Goreza seemed a little heavy.
Finally, from Harry Kellar I took the “k’; from the French
magician Houdin, the “in,” and added them to the beginning
of my family name. Thus the stage name of Kreskin, eventu-
ally my legal name, came about.
I began to play dates in many Eastern states and the Mid-
west, going as far as Illinois, catching my Seton Hall classes
when I could. For a while no month went by when I didn’t
agonize between my major and the excitement of performing.
There was also the religious issue. 'm a good Catholic, I think,
and at the time my “hypnosis” work was at some odds with
the Church. There was controversy within the Church about
the controlling of the will of a human being. Great stress was
placed on the necessity of having freedom of will. Earlier I'd
45
considered becoming a priest. Catholic philosophy deeply in-
grained in me, I struggled with the question for several years,
then reached my own decision: I was not controlling will.
“Hypnosis” is not capable of it.
My routine now featured “hypnosis.” I sent a mailer to six
or seven hundred colleges and slowly began to travel the col-
lege circuit. I also worked night clubs, private parties, conven-
tions. Yet, because of my age, twenty then, it was sometimes
hard for me to realize I was a pro. After a fraternal-
organization reunion performance, I met an executive from
All-State Insurance Company. He asked, “What do you
charge?” I told him my usual fee was seventy-five dollars for
an hour program; one hundred dollars for an hour anda half;
for a two-hour show, one hundred and twenty-five dollars. He
said, “When my company calls you, tell them four hundred
dollars.”
I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I played many dates for
All-State but never charged more than one hundred and fifty
dollars.
I finally broke this hang-up in 1956. Barbara Hamilton, a
girl I knew, called to book me into St. Lawrence University in
Canton, New York. She told me that they always had a “hyp-
notist” appear. She named one. “How much does he get?” I
asked. The answer was five hundred dollars. “I want the same,”
I said bluntly. ’'d now been “hypnotizing” for more than ten
years, and believed I had a better show than Performer X.
The university refused, but the next year I played there for a
single show at my new price. At last I had reached what I
thought was “big time.” I felt much older than twenty, yet
knew I wasn’t. It all had come about so slowly that it seemed
there had been no changes since those nights riding with my
father and Joe. There had been many, in fact, and my work
was imperceptibly changing from magic to ESP.
Meanwhile, I was a serious student of psychology whenever
I could get a few days in a row to attend Seton Hall. The uni-
versity, particularly Professor Frank Murphy, made allowances
46
for the time factor but not the course credits. It took me nine
and a half years to graduate.
My thesis was entirely practical. I spent months in research
on the use of suggestion to improve bowling scores. One
bowler I worked with raised her average by twenty-seven
points, so it wasn’t a total loss. I’m still not certain why I se-
lected this subject instead of a more clinical area. One reason,
I'm sure, is that I could evaluate the results by “points” rather
than by theory.
[6]
One man is often responsible for the difference between a

performer wallowing around on the bottom, begging for
chances and eventually giving up, or going to the top of what-
ever he does best. I found that man in the unlikely person of
Louis Reda, an office-equipment dealer from the small town
of Easton, Pennsylvania. He sells typewriters and desks during
the times he isn’t booking me, checking contracts or attending
to the details of concerts in Boston one night, Sioux Falls the
next. In ten years’ association, we’ve never had a contract. It’s
unorthodox, almost a family affair. His wife, Timmi, does my
banking across from their office.
Lou first turned me over to a pair of typical talent agents.
They were mostly verbal, which is typical too. Lou then
stepped in, and without experience but with considerable
shrewdness and bald honesty, began to plot a course. Since I
wasn’t well known, Lou decided we should try for the talk
shows on TV. We drove to New York and went to the Les
Crane people at ABC. I did some card effects, but the Crane
staff didn’t show much interest. We returned to Easton, slightly
dejected, but decided to try again, this time with the new
Merv Griffin Show.
On that venture, for some odd reason, neither Lou nor I
47
fully appreciated the fact that it was a legal holiday in New
York. We found the Griffin offices practically deserted. But
lights were on in one cubbyhole. The occupant was Tom
O'Malley, a member of Griffin’s staff. He seemed amused that
we'd picked a holiday to go job hunting, and agreed to listen.
He wanted to know what I did.
“Is there anyone else around?” I asked, pulling out a deck
of cards. “A secretary,” O'Malley answered.
“Would you please call her and ask her to think of any card
in the deck?”
O'Malley shrugged and picked up the phone. I placed a
card from the pack beside the phone.
In a moment the girl responded and O’Malley peered down
at the card, face up, on his desk. I'd hit it.
He said, “Ill be damned,” and looked at Lou and me. “I
may get in touch with you,” he added.
A few days later we went back to the Les Crane Show, and
again there seemed to be mixed interest. While we were there,
a call came from Tom O’Malley, who’d once been associated
with the zany Candid Camera program, I learned later. He
was accustomed to wild things.
Lou took the call, talked for a minute, then hung up, saying
to me, “Let’s go.” We started to exit.
The Crane people, rather puzzled, asked, “Where are you
going?” We hadn’t finished talking to them.
Lou answered, hardly concealing his delight, “To the Merv
Griffin Show. We're on in two hours.”
Next we went to Philadelphia to see some of the Mike
Douglas Show staff members. They required auditions for
everyone not known to them, but we told Roger Ayles and
Larry Rosen that no meaningful audition could be held for
an ESP experiment. It would require an audience. They
gambled and I went on the Douglas show within two weeks.
Eighty-odd Douglas appearances later, I’m still impressed with
the Ayles-Rosen decision to take a chance on a mentalist who
dropped in from nowhere, in tow of an office-equipment sales-
man.
48
Lat
Any performer is terrified of failure before an audience.

Anyone in my field is particularly terrified of it because of the
skepticism and constant challenging of the house. A juggler
misses an Indian club and everyone shrugs it off, but it is some-
thing else with a mentalist. The word itself rightfully chal-
lenges an audience. The ball park is the human mind and
anyone can play. Occasionally, at the beginning of a program,
I can feel the skepticism. Yet, after skepticism is overcome, the
audience will go the other way and root for success.
If I fail in a theater or night club, I will repeat the experi-
ment. Time allows this luxury. Television, however, affords
few mistakes. And, too, failure before a thousand people is
bad enough; before a million it’s a personal and professional
nightmare. I had my nightmare with a large Mosler safe.
When asubject is locked in a safe onstage, with knowledge
of the combination, concentrating on the sequence of numbers,
I receive them in separated units—the usual composition of a
combination—rather than in blocks. No image is projected in
this case. Of course, the speed with which I receive them and
then unlock the safe depends entirely on the person inside.
Usually, after a few seconds in that hot darkness, they begin
communicating. I can feel the urgency.
I first did this routine on my own syndicated TV show in
Ottawa, borrowing a large safe from the Chubb, Mosler,
Taylor Company, plus an expert. Initially I wanted to go the
limit: have no other person on earth know the combination
except the man imprisoned inside, and no safety factors. My
proposed subject, Herman Steebs, was willing. He said he’d
seen me work before and had no doubt that I could release
him. Since he was a quiet, calm man, I had the feeling that he
would not panic and consume larger amounts of air.
However, I then began to seriously consider the natural “air
49
time” within the safe, estimated at roughly fifteen minutes, as
well as the fact that I might have misjudged the subject and
that he might faint or have a heart attack. The other pos-
sibility, of course, was that I'd keel over. We finally decided
to impose two safety factors: a mechanic would be standing
by with a high-powered drill, and Steebs would give the com-
bination to the police station, sealed in an envelope. We'd
then hook a “red phone” to the main station, enabling an in-
stant call for help if we needed it. I admit the latter was
planned as suspense showmanship rather than a rigid safety
factor. However, as these things —ae go, we did need
to make a call.
Cameras rolling, Steebs got into the safe and the door
clanged shut. I spun the tumbler to lock it. Steebs heard my
rap on the safe and began communicating the units of the
combination. I noticed immediately that he seemed icy calm
though in a hunched position in absolute darkness within
three-inch steel walls. In my mind I could see him and felt
tremendous admiration. Consuming little air, he was not pan-
icking» He was clicking off the numbers with precision.
I bent over and began following him. Right. Left. BACK.
Right again. Back again. Two more units and he ended it. I
expected to hear the click, pull the door dramatically, and
expose him as a human sardine. Nothing. No click. I started
the sequence of numbers again. Steebs was still sending
strongly.
I spun the numbers out a second time, making certain I hit
every mark. No click.
Meanwhile, in the control booth, a member of my staff
heard another man from the safe company say, “He has it
wrong.” Under pressure, Steebs had divulged the units to this
associate. I suppose the company was skeptical.
I tried a third time, then a fourth and fifth. Finally I stood
up, my mouth getting a little dry. We were now about six
minutes into the experiment. Remarkably, Steebs was remain-
50
ing calm and Isent strongly, telling him that everything was
all right. Far from it.
The other gentleman came out of the control booth and
tried the tumbler, using the exact units that I had received. He
had no success. It was now evident that there was a malfunc-
tion in the locking device and we summoned the mechanic.
As he began work on the safe door, I picked up the red phone
to call for additional help. Some eight minutes had been con-
sumed—past the halfway mark of available air. The police
switchboard was busy.
As I stood back, no longer the star of the show—the man
with the drill had taken over that role—I wondered why in
heaven’s name Id ever tried the silly routine. But I’ve never
been so grateful, nor humble, standing before the talents of
a man with a drill.
In a few minutes the door of the safe was literally disman-
tled, and Steebs crawled out. He showed some signs of chagrin
that it hadn’t worked, and was slightly flushed from the heat
within the safe. Otherwise, he was in good shape—great per-
formance on his part. A post-mortem revealed that he had
sent the correct combination, and that I had received it. Ex-
amination of the tumbler showed that it had been jarred in
moving the safe from the stage to the platform. The safety
factor we'd all forgotten was to have Mr. Steebs check the steel
box after it had been put in position.
One of my rules for the TV program is to always show the
failures as well as the successes. We had kept the cameras run-
ning throughout the entire period, eleven minutes or so, but
it did not seem fair to the safe expert or to myself to call this a
failure. ESP had worked, the tumbler had not. So we decided
to shelve the footage and do it again. Five weeks later we were
successful within six minutes. This time no person on earth
knew the combination except Steebs, and we didn’t have to
use the red phone.
There are also occasions when failure is only a hand move-
ment away. Using twenty-two directories, I did the telephone-
52
book demonstration with singer Pearl Bailey on the Mike
Douglas Show. Writing a name on notepaper, I shoved it into
an envelope and passed it to Douglas; then I directed Miss
Bailey to open one of the directories, instructing her verbally
to choose any book she liked. Nonverbally, by telepathic sug-
gestion alone, I ordered her to choose Albuquerque, which
she did.
Holding the phone book over one arm, I began thumbing
pages until she said “Stop.” I glanced and saw that she'd
stopped on the page I had in mind. Thus far, it was working.
On the right-hand page was the name Id written out and
given to Douglas. Actually, there were two names of that iden-
tical spelling, in small type, separated by no more than a
crochet-needle tip.
I then asked Pearl to close her eyes and circle her fingertip
over both pages and “come down anywhere you want.” At the
same time I was pinpointing, by mental suggestion, the specific
name. Her reactions until then had been so spontaneous and
correct that I felt nothing could go wrong. Her finger jabbed
down, very hard, and I turned ashen as I realized that she’d
hit the left page. There was no such name on that page. But
then her hand bounced and slid over to the right-hand page,
finger ending exactly on the name Douglas held in the enve-
lope.
Obviously the mental impressions she'd received were
strong enough to overcome my lack of judgment in suggesting
that she use the area of both pages to select the crucial name.
However, before cameras at a time like this, you are not
analytical—just paralyzed.
During the first commercial break on that same show, Pearl
mentioned to Douglas and myself that she planned to write
her life story but had never taken the time, and that a pub-
lisher was interested. On another commercial break she unex-
plainably rose and walked out into the studio audience of
about a hundred and fifty people. Stepping over legs, she
52
placed her hands on one man’s shoulders, saying, “Man, oh,
man, I don’t know why I’m doing this.”
It turned out that her publisher had sent his representative
to the Douglas show, hopeful of talking with her. Out of the
entire audience, she'd picked the one person who had some-
thing important to discuss with her. Because she is a show-
business person, an extrovert, impulsive and spontaneous,
she’d responded to his thoughts. It is an excellent example of
everyday, nontheatrical ESP.
[8]
As any current performer well knows, television consumes

material at a pace that leaves you breathless, and there is a
constant search for new routines or conversion of old rou-
tines. In my case, the twist is to find a mental application.
For instance, I sometimes duplicate the drawing of a guest
artist or cartoonist who is hidden from me bya screen, picking
up the mental image. This is done with the artist working some
eight or ten feet away at an easel with a sketch pad, his back
to the audience. In a similar position, I also have a sketch pad.
I mentally “see” his pencil or charcoal as he begins to draw
lines, provided he is concentrating deeply on what he is draw-
ing. My own sketch, a very rough approximation because I
have no talent as an artist, is delayed by thirty seconds or so.
I mentally and crudely copy as best I can.
The applications are practically endless and it’s fun to come
up with new ones. On one TV show the guest star was to be
Betsy Palmer, who happens to be a marvelous cook as well as
a fine actress and panelist. I requested that she bake a cake
and bury a personal object in it. The cake would then be
placed in one of twelve identical “bakery” boxes. With the
help of her concentration I was to select the right box and
then identify the object buried beneath the frosting.
53
For some reason on that particular day I could not select
the target box, although Betsy, as usual, was coming though
in definite terms. I simply couldn’t read her in this phase. At
last she pointed to the problem container and then began con-
centrating on the object within the cake. I soon got the im-
pression that “crying” was attached to it, then found my way
to finally describe it as a baby tooth. Betsy cut the cake, and
the tooth, which had belonged to her daughter, causing some
weeping on its loss, was again extracted.
I seek out credible experiments which are interesting, I
hope, as well as visual. On another show I had actor Robert
Horton, a star of Wagon Train and other TV dramas, take a
Polaroid shot of a member of the audience and leave it in the
camera, undeveloped. Horton’s instructions were to snap the
picture while the person was entering the studio. My job was
to identify the person by perceiving Bob’s thoughts; final
proof being the developed picture.
At one point in the program Horton sat on the stage, camera
in his lap, and concentrated on the person. I decided his sub-
ject had been female, as I was receiving a description of a per-
son in a “red dress.” I went out into the audience and asked
a number of ladies in red dresses to please stand. I touched
one lady in red several times but got negative responses from
Horton. As I stood before a girl, my back to Horton, I got an
extremely positive response. I said, “Your picture is in Mr.
Horton’s camera.” Bob pulled the tab on the Polaroid and
while we waited for the development I asked the young lady
to concentrate on her name. I was able to get it, and then
Horton presented her with a candid shot of herself walking
into the studio in Ottawa.
I constantly try to come up with something that will have
ESP applications, yet be mainly visual and, hopefully, excit-
ing. At one production meeting, producer Dick Reid said, “Do
you think you could do something physical? Really dramatic.
Life or death.”
Flippantly I said, “Maybe I could hang myself.”
54
Everyone laughed.
However, I began to think about it, and being a Houdini
buff, decided it wasn’t such a bad idea after all. I liked the
idea of life depending on a simple mental direction.
We talked about it and then sketched it out. Finally we
choreographed it to have five nooses on a scaffold of which
one would be connected with a rope only stapled to the top
crosspiece. I selected number 4 as the innocent noose. The
other nooses would be firmly secured and entirely lethal. If I
was correctly guided to the stapled rope it would pull free
when I jumped. If the directions were false, I would have a
very sore neck, if not a broken one.
Reid then lined up Tom Tryon, actor turned best-selling
author with his chilling The Other, as the telepathic guide
to life or death.
We constructed the scaffolding and got an expert to fashion
the five nooses. Next, the crew filled four bags with 155
pounds (my weight) of sand, and painted markers with the
numbers 1 to 5.
When I first saw the scaffolding with the five nooses hang-
ing down, I felt a great temptation to call the whole thing
off, Instead, I phoned my doctor to fly up to Canada for the
show. Dr. Robert Stein wasn’t of much comfort when he ex-
amined the nooses and said, “If you don’t get the right one,
youll fall two feet. That’s enough to snap your neck unless
you're relaxed.” Relaxed?
The nooses were set with eight inches of slack so that the
sandbags would jerk realistically.
Tryon arrived that night and I told him he was to select one
of the numbered markers by impulse, by obeying whatever
thought came into his mind. Not to reason—just to pick! We
would have no verbal communication once the routine started
until he commanded me to jump. My role was to make cer-
tain he picked the harmless noose. They all looked the same.
Several hours later cameras began rolling and we eventually
came to the “Hangman’s Noose” slot in the program. The scaf-
55
folding was wheeled out and chairs placed beneath the five
nooses. It was dramatic-looking, to say the least. .
I was then tightly blindfolded and began mental communi-
cation with Tryon, ordering him to select the number 4
marker, none other. He made his choice, but I did not know
what number he was holding. At this time his directions to
the crew were silent. He was pointing to the other chairs to
have them occupied with the sandbag dummies. They were
quickly tied to the nooses.
Tryon then led me to chair number 4, which I mounted.
I still did not know that it was the correct chair beneath the
stapled noose. The crew slipped the noose around my neck
and tightened it.
Tryon then directed the crew to kick out one of the chairs.
I felt the thump of the sandbag and heard the chair clatter
simultaneously. The whole scaffolding shuddered as the rope
jerked 155 pounds.
Another chair was kicked out. That sickening thud
and scaffold jarring came again. Then the third sandbag fell
and I could scarcely breathe. If I was standing on the wrong
Chairs.
Two were left.
I heard him say, “Kreskin.”
I jumped and the rope pulled out easily. Even then, I got
a slight rope burn from the noose.
Happily, I had both feet on the stage when they kicked the
last chair away. I now have the feeling that if given a choice,
I'd prefer a gas chamber. There is something about standing
there with a noose around your throat that defies adequate
description.
Perception of numbers is perhaps the easiest ESP effect to

attain because a mathematical logic is inherent; communica-
tion is limited to an arrangement of digits. They are com-
paratively easy to send, require no great thought process for
56
the subject and are therefore less difficult to receive. Numbers,
after all, are among the first things we learn as children.
Complications are apt to set in quickly once the 1-2-3’s and
A-B-C’s are left behind. Even so, the simple beginnings are
preferable. At a Vegas Hilton show I kept receiving a set of
initials and finally the subject arose. He appeared to be a gen-
tleman in his late fifties. I was able to identify the initials and
it opened his mind. I then worked my way to identify that
they belonged to his son. He was still receptive, and I went
deeper with him. He sent strongly.
“Your son is in the military,” I said. “Is it the Army?”
“Yes.”
He did not want to stop. I said, “You want him to be a
general.”
The man smiled. “He’s on the promotion list.”
And we ended it.
But the gentleman had come through clearly on each step
beyond the three-letter beginning, although I hadn’t been able
to read which branch of the military his son served. “Army”
was a guess.
Audience participation routines are apt to be loaded with
surprises and my particular brand invites ulcers. During a
concert for U.S. Steel in Chicago’s McCormick Hall, a man
suddenly stood up and wanted to ask a question. I was an-
noyed. He'd interrupted a train of thought. There is a definite
factor of control in a mentalism performance, and he had
“targeted” in, which was my role.
I fought back the annoyance mainly because he was plung-
ing ahead before I could interrupt. He said he was a doctor
and had diagnosed an illness that afternoon. Could I tell him
what the diagnosis was? Plainly, he was testing me. It was a
cold challenge. Had he not been a doctor, I probably would
have found a way to seat him politely. The fact that he was a
physician, a psychiatrist for all I knew, would have cast doubt
on the rest of the performance. I decided to try.
“I don’t have a medical background, so please think of the
57
letters, not the word,” I said, crossing all sorts of fingers. Un-
doubtedly, it would be one of those long Latin names that I
couldn’t have pronounced, much less spelled.
He concentrated and I received them, one by one, writing
down twenty-one letters on the blackboard. I was incorrect
on one, but considerably relieved that I’d accepted his chal-
lenge. The show soared.
Both the intruding doctor and the Army officer’s father were
excellent subjects but some people cannot respond, though
they might like to, in setting up communication for either
thought perception or suggestibility. They are concerned
about opening up “mental closets.” Another barrier is that they
will have to concentrate with a total stranger. I appreciate the
reluctance. But this inability is not as common as one might
think. Maybe one person in twenty, an exceedingly low fig-
ure, is unable to respond to even the slightest degree.
Certain personality factors seem to enter into the “shut
mind” person. The bullheaded, narrow-minded person always
has trouble; the creative person is often the perfect subject.
In suggestibility, a safer area than thought perception, almost
everyone can respond to some degree. Some cannot respond
on the stage but will freely follow suggestion in private.
Others respond better in groups because of the security in
numbers. In both categories, for obvious reasons, children are
the best subjects. They aren't set in their ways; their imagina-
tion is more open.
In these communications I think that the subject is only
aware of a slight effort, though he may be concentrating very
hard. But it is not like pumping a bicycle up a hill. Attention
has been gained; he or she is conditioned. The subject is grad-
ually harnessed to the point where there is full participation
—automatic response without great awareness.
Almost nightly, things do occur that aren’t programmed at

all. I will receive a message that isn’t really intended but is
strong enough to carry. In the Playboy Club in Baltimore, I
58
broke a train of thought with: “Someone is looking for the rest
of a twenty-dollar bill.” One of the Bunnies almost dropped
her tray.
Later I found out that she’d just come from the kitchen and
had seen half of a twenty-dollar bill lying on the floor. Who
wouldn’t be intrigued or have their thoughts completely
arrested? As she came back into the club she was naturally
puzzled, occupied with the whereabouts of that other half.
Everything but one subject had been cleared from her mind.
To me, “psyched up,” mentally listening for any signal, it
couldn’t have been stronger if she’d shouted it.
At the Westbury Music Fair, on New York’s Long Island, I
found myself bombarded by a thought of “hair.” Someone
seemed to be concentrating on “treating hair” or “fixing” it. I
mentioned the subject and then immediately went into some
detail. I noticed that a girl who was seated near the front got
up and hurriedly left the theater. Obviously there was a con-
nection. Several hours later I was introduced to her. She was
secretary to Lee Gruber, owner of the theater, and had been
discussing, with a friend seated next to her, plans to open a
beauty salon. They'd talked for about ten minutes pre-show
and her thoughts had carried over into my opening minutes.
She certainly hadn’t expected me to perceive them, which is
why she'd become startled and bolted out.
In another, very different circumstance I cut short a per-
formance at the Embers Club in Indianapolis because I was
receiving something very troubling from a lady in the audi-
ence. I didn’t attempt to go into the problem, or what I
thought the problem might be, because I'm not a minister or
doctor. I did manage to pick her out at a table—or I made a
guess that she was the person. She kept staring at me with
anxiety. So I cut the show by about twenty minutes and left
the spotlight.
Locating Bob Kaytes, I asked him to have his wife strike
up a conversation with the woman and attempt to bring her
backstage. After a few minutes they arrived in my dressing
59
room, and in another few minutes my hunch was confirmed.
She admitted that she was planning suicide. People who are
thinking of it are usually seeking help but can’t put it into
words. The Kayteses arranged for assistance.
[9]
Hopeful of spontaneity, praying for something offbeat to

happen, aside from personal problems, I never know exactly
what I’m going to do or how the experiment will turn out.
During one Johnny Carson show, with singer Jack Jones
and comedienne Marilyn Michaels appearing as guests, I de-
cided to switch the format. I was scheduled to do a “chalk
writing” demonstration—cause a piece of chalk between two
slates to write a telepathically received name—and had writ-
ten out some one hundred and fifty names on the backs of
calling cards—Flip Wilson, Peter Nero, Henry Mancini and
others. Jones and Miss Michaels were to select a card, con-
centrate on that particular name, and my role was to perceive
it, then cause the chalk to write the name. Wed planned to
do four or five names.
However, glancing at the clock, I realized we were running
late and could not cover more than one or two names. I de-
cided it would be more dramatic to have Miss Michaels think
of a name, any name, and then proceed with the balance of
the test.
I took the two black slates, which had been wiped clean,
and gave them to the guests. After soaking a piece of chalk
in a glass of water, to make certain ['d get an impression, I
inserted the chalk between the slates. They were then tightly
bound with elastic. While Jones and Miss Michaels held them
parallel over the floor, I told Marilyn to think of someone she
knew that no one else in the studio audience would be likely
60
to know. In particular, it would be someone I could not pos-
sibly know.
Marilyn soon nodded and informed Jones of the name. They
began to concentrate.
I experienced considerable difficulty because the name was
very complex. “Mentally spell it, please,” I requested. Finally
getting what I thought to be the name, I proceeded to the
third sequence of the effect, which was to manipulate the
chalk, make it write, even though I was seven or eight feet
away from the slates.
As Jones removed the elastic and opened the two slates,
I was relieved to see that the chalk had rolled and the name
“Oishe” was spelled out. Again, I’d had that fear of failure
when a TV camera is focused in close.
Marilyn was visibly shaken, almost hysterical. The program
shifted to a commercial, so she could gather herself together.
Moishe Oishe, her uncle, a famous cantor, had been dead
since the forties. Only Marilyn, within the studio, could have
been thinking about him.
This impromptu demonstration was an example of energy
force, but not psychokinesis, in which objects are moved by
sheer mental will force. The chalk writing is an effect, and I
label it as such.
Another example of this occurred on the Merv Griffin
Show. Before I’m accused of name-dropping, I cite these ex-
amples because they were performed in full public view, with
known and reputable persons involved, in this case a dozen
or so people, Griffin to technicians, in close observation.
The participants were vocalist Della Reese and the husband-
wife team of Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson. I selected Anne
and Della as the subjects, asking Della to tear out some ciga-
rette papers from a roll-your-own folder, then press them
into tiny balls. After she’d arranged them on the coffee table,
I instructed her to pick up one of them and place it in the
palm of her hand, then close the palm tightly.
Turning to Anne Jackson, I asked her to concentrate on
61
some famous person in American history, and that the person
be deceased. I often make the latter request to avoid names
in current news.
In a moment I received her impression and said, “Anne,
you seem to be picturing this person sitting down.” I told her
several times that he appeared to be confined in something.
She nodded, startled.
Then I received the total image. “The person youre pictur-
ing is in late life and ill. He’s Franklin D. Roosevelt.”
With that registered, I told Della to unroll the tiny ball of
paper she was holding and to dust cigarette ashes over it. That
took a few seconds. Then she shrieked, and the camera moved
in for a close-up of “FDR” formed in ashes on the crumpled
paper.
At this point, I can understand a reader reaction of “Hold
it, by limiting the famous person to the deceased, you narrow
your field; you could have tricked or pre-treated the paper.”
Possibly, but that would mean tricking papers for perhaps
fifty thousand deceased persons from Washington and Patrick
Henry and John Paul Jones to Eisenhower and John Kennedy.
I'd have to lug a truckload of cigarette papers from perform-
ance to performance. And on any given day or night a sub-
ject would pop an odd-ball “Jesse James’s brother Frank” on
me, for which I hadn’t prepared a paper. Truthfully, I can’t
think of a more complicated way to accomplish five minutes
of entertainment.
Yet I've found that I cannot resist this type of “before your
very eyes” effect. ’'m as much a fan of them as anyone in a
simon-pure audience. When I see a new one, I gasp and re-
act with the same “How was that done?”
In the thirties there was a very creative effects inventor
named Samuel C. Hooker. He wasn’t a professional magician
but was perhaps the first true scholar of sorcery. He conceived
an effect in which cards would rise, on command, from a drink-
ing glass or goblet. Initially magicians scoffed at it but then
he invited fifteen or twenty to his home, suggesting that they
62.
bring their own decks of cards. Not only did Dr. Hooker per-
mit them to shuffle their own decks but confidently told them
to mark certain cards by writing their names on them. Placing
the deck in a drinking glass, he ordered specific cards to rise,
then capped it by having the owner’s “name” card pop up.
For his encore Dr. Hooker placed the glass beneath a bell jar
so that nothing could be attached to the deck. Walking away,
he “spoke” to one or more cards and up they came.
After researching this feat for years I finally got it to work,
then put an ESP twist on it. I ask three different people in
the audience to think of a card each from one deck but to re-
main silent as to the selection. They are requested to con-
centrate on their card.
I hand another deck to a lady down front, a volunteer, and
then escort her to the stage. She deposits that deck into the
goblet which is on a table. I then leave the stage and join the
audience.
As I receive the impression from the first person, the card
he or she has in mind rises. The second subject is requested
to concentrate deeply. I ask the volunteer on stage to please
squeeze the goblet. The second card rises.
At this point I return to the stage and enclose the goblet in
a bell jar, thanks to Dr. Hooker’s pioneering. I request the
third person to concentrate, then walk away about twenty
paces, finally turning indignantly to shout, “Rise, card.”
I think I get a bigger bang out of it than the audience when
the card pops up.
All of these demonstrations are attempts to show energy

forces at work, though none of them are accomplished by
purely psychological means. Legitimate scientific principles
involving physical movement are used. For instance, the ciga-
rette papers are never tricked or pre-treated. I’ve offered them
for chemical analysis. Of the three demonstrations, the chalk
writing is by far the most complicated. It is a controlled situa-
63
tion, similar to the card levitation and the ash effect, but much
more elaborate. .
I have to laugh when someone targets the water as the key
to the chalk effect. The water is simply to ensure an impres-
sion of the chalk. It becomes saturated and sticky after it is
dropped into the glass. I can’t gamble on hard chalk to write
one hundred percent of the time.
As the slates are held parallel over the floor by the two par-
ticipants, there is a natural tendency for hand movement.
No human hand can hold an object perfectly still; there is al-
ways a slight nervous reaction. I take complete advantage of
this mobile state to guide their-writing—“Oishe” in this in-
stance. I cause the chalk to write the thought that is in their
minds by control of their hands. The two participants never
physically touch the chalk. It is a mixture of thought percep-
tion, suggestibility and natural physical force.
These particular demonstrations are plainly labeled as ef-
fects and removed, in a way, from the straight parapsychology
portions of the shows or concerts. An entertainer must be, or
should be, versatile. I attempt to be.
Table tilting or table moving is supposedly straight out of
the séance setting and medium’s bag of tricks, or some people
claim that it is a psychokinetic manifestation. Unfortunately,
perhaps for me, I’ve never seen what I would consider to be
absolute proof of movement of an inanimate, brainless object
by mental force alone. It may occur, but I just haven’t been
around when it has happened. More than that, I’ve tried very
hard to move ashtrays and wastebaskets and even feathers
by sheer mental will force. So far, I’ve not been able to move
anything by so-called pure psychokinetic force. Yet I’ve tilted
and moved tables on my own show, the David Frost Show,
and on Johnny Carson’s stage. No psychokinesis, or telekinesis
or teleportation, as it is also termed, is involved.
I usually employ one or more card tables, light but strong.
The hands of the four subjects at each table are placed firmly
on the top, palms down, with the right little finger touching
64
the left little finger of the person to the right, the reverse with
the opposite hand. In that way, there is magnetic and dynamic
contact between all four persons. On signal, the tables often
move so violently that the sitters have to stand up; the tables
actually travel. One fell into an orchestra pit; another went
through the rear curtain backdrop with all four participants
racing with it. In Dallas, at the University of Texas, I remem-
ber that the card table supplied me was flimsy and kept col-
lapsing. It can be a very funny routine—ten tables dancing
almost simultaneously, forty people with open mouths. Yet it
is a legitimate phenomenon.
On the Carson show, the table rammed Johnny’s desk; on
the Frost show, two of the four tables flipped over. Frost be-
came so interested in the dancing tables that he stopped the
flow of other guests to question the participants. One girl said
she felt “moving water on the table top.” A man said that it
seemed as if “electricity was in the table.” Others said that
their hands seemed to “go numb.”
Table tilting is based on the dynamic responses of the nerv-
ous system to thought and is not remotely supernatural or
mediumistic. The effect is akin to the action of the ouija board
and in the family of automatic writing, not even a distant
cousin to psychokinesis. The table tilts or moves as the result
of automatic responses in our nervous systems triggered by
mental concentration. Eight hands build up stresses to accom-
plish this strange phenomenon. Each person knows what he
wants to happen; each concentrates physically. It was once
described to me as a “chemical neuromuscular” response,
requiring physical contact which is the separation point for
so-called psychokinesis.
The Phoenix, a magician’s magazine of the forties, relates
_a story of eight magicians who questioned the phenomenon,
believing that table tilting was a fake. (It can be phony, but
there is no reason for it.) They gathered in New York City
and sat at a heavy oaken table for an hour. The whole table
went over.
65
For party fun, any four people can tilt tables all over the
place. Best results demand firm contact of the palms on the
card-table surface: physical contact with the partners, little
fingers touching, and then some patience. First tries may take
thirty minutes. I speed up the process with my subjects
through suggestibility.
Similarly, automatic writing is often draped in the phony
garments of the occult and placed in séance rooms. To bring
it into true light the reader of this book may practice auto-
matic writing. It requires sitting down for five minutes a day
for a few weeks with a pencil in the writing hand, be it right
or left. Let the pencil rest lightly gn a piece of paper and clear
the mind by thinking of something far removed. Attempt to
make it unaware of the pencil or pad—daydream if possible.
It may not work the first few days simply because not all peo-
ple can “clear their minds” without some conditioning. Do not
try to make the mind a “blank.” It cannot be done. But sooner
or later the pencil will move, and automatically.
At first the pencil may only make simple lines or zigzags.
Continued sessions, however, will produce letters. They will
run together, since the pencil is not lifted. Additional sessions
will eventually bring words, responses from the unconscious
telegraphed to the paper without guided thought. On rare
occasions the transcription will be reversed, necessitating a
mirror, It is a strange phenomenon and the people who
“mirror-write” seem to do it consistently.
In contrast to this legitimate area of mental-dynamic energy

I have, for effect, “levitated” objects in recent years, after
abandoning magic. Not long ago I requested two female
volunteers to place their hands on a rather heavy French table,
along with mine. We appeared to “levitate” the table across
the stage and down into the audience. There were no wires or
hooks, and it was not a trick table. I requested the audience
to examine it. However, it was a physical, not psychological,
technique.
66
Though I now create visual illusions as much for
self-amusement as for the stage, some take years to perfect.
I work on them at odd times, finding it fun. “Ball and Gob-
let,” dating back to my wind-up years as a magician, is in that
category—it took fifteen years. Visually, the concept is simple
but the mechanics are complex. I constructed an ob-
long wooden box with the front side open and exposed if a
small draw curtain was not pulled. Placing a sponge rubber
ball against the left wall of the box, I put an ordinary cham-
pagne goblet upright against the opposite wall. The goal was
to persuade the ball to travel across the floor of the box and
hop up into the goblet.
Since 1957 I'd had more failures than successes with it but
in 1972 I finally made a public test at the Phillipsburg Catho-
lic High School in New Jersey. Prior to that morning perform-
ance I practiced in my manager’s home from about 1 A.M. to
6 a.M., final rehearsal of some two hundred. Three or four
times I made the ball move a few inches. Once I found it in-
explicably at the back, lodged up between the cabinet wall
and the goblet. However, I persuaded it to hop into the glass
four times and decided I was ready to try it before the high
school seniors. The ball performed.
Having “tried out” in Phillipsburg, I packed the cabinet and
flew to Ottawa. Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder, authors
of a fascinating book entitled Psychic Discoveries behind the
Iron Curtain, were to be special guests on that particular tap-
ing, so I decided to use them as witnesses and assistants. Re-
questing them to examine the cabinet, which was placed on
a sheet of glass between two chairs, I also asked them to check
the ball to eliminate the possibility of an electronic device
being hidden within, and to search for wires or other physical
attachments. After a moment they seemed satisfied.
I was standing about ten feet away. Sheila drew the small
curtain on the cabinet and I counted to five, at which time
she pulled the curtain again. I noticed that the ball had liter-
67
ally crawled about three inches, then stopped; the goblet was
empty.
If an effect doesn’t work on TV, I usually move on to some-
thing else due to the time factor. But on this occasion I
couldn’t bring myself to abandon years of effort in five sec-
onds. I asked producer Dick Reid if we could try again and
keep the cameras rolling. He agreed. This time the ball
behaved.
Later Miss Ostrander said, “Come on, Kres, how'd you do
it?”
Someone standing nearby said, “The curtain did it.”
I stepped back. One of the oldest ploys in magic is to en-
trap the witness by providing a logical explanation for the
effect or illusion, then shatter the explanation. (Thurston and
Blackstone were masters at it.) I proceeded to dismantle the
entire cabinet in five seconds, demonstrating the total absence
of gimmickry.
Others have gone to their graves with certain effects and I
hope to go to mine with a few. I don’t refuse information sim-
ply to annoy people, but having spent time perfecting several
special physical entertainment techniques, such as linking of
finger rings from the audience, I'll go to a point in discussing
them and then stop. Where illusion and effects are concerned,
I'd rather leave an audience steeped in mystery. Also, there
is a guardianship that stems from early conjuring, an over-
whelming desire to provoke that irresistible “Aah” from the
audience. It’s heady.
One of Houdini’s greatest escape tricks was “the Chinese
Water Torture Cabinet.” He was hung upside down, in stocks,
in a cabinet containing water. It resembled a coffin, upended,
with a glass front. Plunged down into it, he could only survive
on the air that was in his lungs. The curtains were closed and
a moment later he appeared onstage, dripping and bowing.
Along with others, I studied this effect for years. Finally I dis-
covered the methodology he used to escape the Puritan stocks
and then open the outer padlock on the coffin. Eventually I
68
was able to obtain a copy of the original plans of the cabinet.
Only two or three sets exist, to my knowledge, and I treasure
mine. Many of Houdini’s effects defied solution long after his
death. Thankfully, his assistants refused to reveal the meth-
ods. In time I'll probably do a variation of the Chinese Water
Torture Cabinet, keying it to an ESP application.
Leaving most performers gasping, television devours both
talent and material nightly, constantly forcing new applica-
tions. Even night clubs and college circuits place great de-
mands on material. The entertainer who repeats himself year
after year soon faces a diminishing audience, although the
public usually demands his specialties or trademarks. The only
solution is yearly development of additional effects, twists on
past applications.
Polishing touches are now being put on a new one in which
a member of the audience will extract a coin from his pocket
and concentrate on the date. If I perceive it correctly, it will
appear on the bottom of a soot-coated tin lid held by a volun-
teer on stage; another volunteer will pass a candle flame back
and forth under the lid to register the date. It is, admittedly,
a variation of the “cigarette paper” effect, combining thought
perception with a visual denouement. Few effects are entirely
new. But by 1975 I hope I will have discarded it for some-
thing more unique.
[ 10]
When communication is without sound, darkness seems to

present an added barrier. I have perceived thoughts with the
audience and stage completely blacked out, but for reasons
unknown, perhaps psychological, the communication is always
easier when the sender can see me. It may be the security of
visual contact. We aren’t moles by nature.
I first tried thought perception while blindfolded on the
69
Mike Douglas Show. It was a new and not altogether pleas-
ant sensation. I was telepathically directed by comedienne
Moms Mabley to follow a circuitous route toward a bal-
loon held by someone in the audience, a version of “Pin the
Tail on the Donkey.” I managed to puncture the balloon on
the first try but en route almost fell over a camera. Moms
forgot to warn me. I was moving rather quickly.
T’ve also been successful at going out into an audience blind-
folded to select twins seated separately while the parents were
concentrating onstage. Although I’ve never tried it, I think this
guidance would be much more difficult if the parents were
blindfolded too, and simply gave me row and seat references.
I do not think that telepathy can work readily with an un-
seen total stranger—perhaps someone in the adjoining hotel
room. It would be a major breakthrough if ’'m proved wrong.
But I'm inclined to believe that a brief moment to establish
rapport is necessary. It could be accomplished on the phone
or with a few seconds of both visual and verbal contact.
As an example of this, I did an interview on the John Win-
gate Show over New York's radio station WOR. During the
interview an engineer left the booth and came into the
studio, and we chatted for a moment. Returning to the booth,
he wrote a word on aslip of paper, then began concentrating
on it. In my mike position, I could neither see nor hear him,
yet was able to pick up the word in about thirty seconds. We'd
had that brief moment of rapport.
I cannot, nor do I try to, perceive the thoughts of anyone
upon meeting them, nor do I attempt to do it in everyday con-
tact. For many reasons I limit any effort at thought perception
to performances. A person’s thoughts should be inviolate un-
less he wishes to divulge them. More than that, I’m not in-
terested.
Thought perception in auditoriums, theaters or night clubs

is obviously simpler, but more open to skepticism, than long-
range thought reading where the subject cannot be seen but
70
can be heard. Skepticism within the confines of a room results
from the possibility of reading facial expressions or the
possible use of stooges. Either way, the latter would be a
risky undertaking.
I'd been fascinated with the possibilities of long-range men-
tal telepathy since first reading of writer Harold Sherman’s
attempt to contact Sir Hubert Wilkins telepathically in the
Arctic. The 1937 tests were believed to have failed until one
night when Sherman couldn’t concentrate because he saw
flames. He did not know the location of the flames. Later it
was revealed that at the same relative moment the explorer
was too busy to “receive.” He was helping to extinguish a
fire. It could have been coincidence. The odds are much
greater that it was not coincidence.
One of my first attempts at individual long-range thought
perception was conducted on the Mike Douglas Show in Oc-
tober 1969. We decided to test this ESP concept as dramat-
ically as possible, and in full audience view, over a 3,000-mile
range. Mike was given a phone number by his staff and dialed
it. Since the show was on tape, the person called would not
be able to monitor it, see Douglas or myself. We were in the
KYW-TV studio in Philadelphia.
The phone rang in Los Angeles and a female voice said
“Hello.” At first I didn’t recognize the voice and neither did
Douglas. But soon Mike became aware that Carol Burnett
was on the other end. She’d been informed that I would at-
tempt to read her thoughts and that the only setting, in both
places, would be a glass of water, a pad and a pencil.
Not at all certain it would work over this range of distance,
I divided the test into three parts. First, I told her to look into
the glass of water and think of any three- or four-digit num-
ber. In Philadelphia, I studied the surface of my water glass,
hoping for the image of the numbers. (The water, acting as
a mirror, was for my benefit, not hers.) In a moment I received
the sequence and wrote it on a slate, which was immediately
covered with masking tape so that Douglas could not see it.
eu
Additionally, I did not want to stand accused of altering fig-
ures before the end of the test.
I then asked her to think of a word, any word, and concen-
trate deeply on it. After a few seconds I received the word,
seeing the image on the water, and wrote it on another slate,
which was also quickly covered.
For the last step I said, “Carol, I don’t know the room youre
in, but look around it, think of some object in the room, any-
where in the room.”
There was a pause, which should have told me something,
but it didn’t register. Then I heard her voice: “Yes, Kres,
I’m thinking of something.” :
I received it and wrote it down.
Then Douglas pulled the first tape and Carol, from Los An-
geles, repeated the three-digit number, 921. I'd hit and
breathed a sigh of relief.
She called off the word, “baby,” and the second tape was
pulled. I'd gotten that one, too.
I asked, over the phone, what the object was, and she an-
swered, “Well, I’m not at home, I'm in my agent’s office and
I'm looking at a painting on the wall. That’s what I was think-
ing of.”
The Douglas staff pulled the third tape and Id written:
Bronze statue.
Puzzled as well as disappointed, I admitted I'd made a mis-
take. Yet I was certain that the image I'd received on the water
surface—an image there but not there, mirrored from my mind
—was a bronze statue.
Suddenly Carol yelped, one of those well-known, delightful
Burnett yelps: “Kreskin, when you told me to think of some-
thing I changed my mind. The first thing I thought of was this
bronze paperweight I’m holding. It’s a small statue. But then
I thought of the painting.”
Now I understood the pause.
While I knew that short-range telepathy worked, within a
room or building, or over a distance of a few miles within the
72
city, I was now satisfied that it could travel thousands of
miles between a “sender” and a “receiver” after telephonic
rapport was established. It could deal in specifics if the con-
tact was sharp. Carol Burnett, of course, was an excellent
choice for the experiment. She was accustomed to concen-
tration and receptive to the idea that it would work. Although
wed never met, we had seen each other on TV. The few min-
utes of conversation provided the required rapport. The test
also convinced me, at last, that distance does not always de-
crease mental reception, unlike radio and video communica-
tion.
Even earlier than the Burnett test, groping on my own, Id
used a mass and rather scientific approach to long-range telep-
athy, acting as the “sender” rather than the “receiver.” The
concept was simple enough: I would sit in my office on West
Fifty-seventh Street in New York for fourteen nights and con-
centrate on one subject each night, hopeful that X number
of people could read my single thought. I was assuming some
rapport might be possible on the basis that volunteers, though
strangers, would have previously seen me and heard my voice
on TV.
I decided on two hundred as a workable number but was
astonished when thirty-eight hundred people, world-wide,
volunteered for the test. They wrote in from Canada, England,
Germany and Italy, as well as the United States. Representing
a wide segment, fortunately, from show people to postmen,
housewives and students, they included several astronauts and
many professional categories. Three-quarters were women.
There was no way of knowing whom to reject, so I accepted
all of them. The test period was set between Sunday, March
17, and Saturday, March 30, 1968.
I instructed my secretary to select one hundred objects.
Each item, placed in a sealed envelope, would be deposited
in a shopping bag. There were no limitations except that the
items would have to be small enough to be inserted into the
envelopes. Some of her topics were found in newspapers. With
73
her eyes closed, she put a knife randomly on dictionary pages
and then copied the word that the blade hit. The scope, of
course, was inexhaustible. Meanwhile we notified the volun-
teers that the test would run from 7 to 7:05, Eastern standard
time, on each night, and that I would have no knowledge of
the topic until I reached into the “grab bag” and ripped the
envelope open. I would then sit at my desk for five minutes,
thinking only of the object in my hand.
On the first night, Sunday, March 17, I reached for an enve-
lope, opened it and extracted a Band-Aid. Wrapping it around
my finger, I not only mentally identified the object, but gave
a description of it. Attempting the,deepest possible concentra-
tion, I repeated it over and over. I also attempted to “photo-
graph” it in my mind and then send that picture in the manner
that a wirephoto is sent.
Within two weeks after the first test, I discovered that I'd
have to hire a staff to evaluate the results properly. Mail del-
uged the office as roughly ninety-five percent of the volunteers
responded, not waiting until the completion of the fourteen
nights,
The targets transmitted were:
1. March 17—Band-Aid.
2. March 18—Newspaper clipping of actress Elizabeth
Taylor, who had flown into New York from Europe. She was
dressed in white fur, holding a white pocketbook, standing
near the aircraft.
3. March 19—Garter strap and button, in white cloth.
4. March 20—Lock of hair.
. March 21—Cotton swab, stick with cotton on both
6. March 22—“Press Only” badge.

7. March 23—News-clip photo of oceanographic lab.
8. March 24—Woman’s beige-and-white leather belt.
g. March 25—Magazine cutout of portrait of Picasso’s son.
10. March 26—Red golf tee.
74
11. March 27—Cutout of Miller High Life beer ad.
12. March 28—(A) News clip of prisoner in yard after
prison riot. (B) Silver bottle top from nonfat milk.
13. March 29—I slept during testing period, hopeful of
drawing a blank.
14. March 30—Ad clip of woman brushing teeth while hold-
ing an aspirin for a headache.
Two hundred of the “receivers” had almost direct hits on

each night. Twenty-five had three or more hits; seventy-five
had two hits. Over one hundred had one correct hit. Five per-
cent of all participants had significant or “near misses.” Al-
though these percentages might seem small in relation to the
roughly three thousand participants, I think they are remark-
able. I would have been pleased with fifty direct hits.
We found that the largest percentage of success with a sin-
gle target was the news picture of Elizabeth Taylor, dressed
in white ermine, holding a white pocketbook and a white muff.
Oddly enough, no one named her. However, a number said
they “saw a picture of a famous actress or a famous lady.” Sev-
eral said she was “dressed in total white standing by an air-
plane.” This was almost the identical description I was trying
to send that night. I did name her, hopeful that a few people
would receive it. Apparently it is much more difficult to “re-
ceive” a name than to receive a mental picture.
On March 20, many people thought of a “pine tree” when
the target was a “lock of hair.” There is a symbolic similarity—
a topping or spread of material. On March 26, a number of
returns named the Eiffel Tower. In analyzing this impression
(though I may be reaching), I feel it worth noting that the
Eiffel Tower does resemble an inverted golf tee, the target for
that evening’s test. A small percentage sent various and con-
fused images the night that I slept.
A total of twenty-eight cities in the United States and
Canada were involved in the test, and five European cities.
Philadelphia had the highest overall score. Washington, D.C.,
75
had no success at all. I have no idea how to evaluate these
results aside from the obvious fact that there were more “sen-
sitive” volunteers in the City of Brotherly Love than in the
city of politics.
It was the first such test, to my knowledge, on a national
and international scale, and I think it was successful. Six
months was required to correlate the percentages. Among
other indications, we found that women scored higher than
men. This doesn’t necessarily indicate that women are more
sensitive to ESP. More tests would have to be made with
equal proportions of male and female subjects. However, I've
generally found that females are inclined to be less openly
skeptical of ESP. Males may not express their opinions to the
same degree.
The next great adventure in this area is outer-space telepa-
thy. Astronaut Edgar Mitchell attempted to make that
bridge during the moon shot of Apollo 14, January and Feb-
ruary 1971. Unfortunately there wasn’t enough time for care-
ful preparation, and Mitchell’s other duties understandably
prevented anything more than a sketchy test. He “sent” twice
on the outward flight and made another two attempts on the
return, The results were disappointing. Even so, Mitchell
opened the door to new American experiments in ESP.
Once more, Russia is ahead of the United States in this area,
having already experimented for a number of years. Advances
have been claimed. Outer-space ESP has been attempted, and
they've gone in the other direction, placing a “receiver” four
stories beneath the earth with the “sender” on the surface at-
tempting to control thinking, response and behavior.
For a nation that has not permitted public discussion of
even psychoanalysis and that has cast Dr. Freud as a danger-
ous influence, it is both interesting and somewhat frightening
to observe the Soviet Union’s current insatiable efforts in para-
psychology and related fields.
In researching their book on current efforts in Russia,
Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder noted an emphasis on
76
the “sender” rather than the “receiver,” which is the reverse
of the American interest. The Russians, they told me, appear
to be looking for people who can project ideas into the minds
of others. They are also apparently showing a great deal of
interest in psychokinesis.
When the authors appeared on my program, I showed their
Russian film clips of a woman who sat at a table “causing” but-
tons, matchsticks and other objects to move by mental force.
Her hands were at least a foot from the objects, her feet visi-
ble and motionless under the table. She also moved, on cam-
era, a compass dial by holding her hands over it. Prior to this
sequence, she was examined to make certain that no tiny mag-
nets had been hidden beneath the fingernails. Evaluation of
film is always difficult, but this footage was totally unconvinc-
ing. I do not doubt that natural and physical magnetism can
move a compass dial under certain circumstances. However,
the Russian footage looked and “felt” staged.
The authors said that the Russian scientists they interviewed
repeatedly beseeched them to tell their American colleagues
to use ESP only for peaceful purposes. Much as Id prefer to
think otherwise, I’m strongly of the opinion that the Soviets
doth protest too much.
Not surprisingly, Josef Stalin banned all research into ESP.
Yet, surreptitiously, long ago, he used Wolf Messing, the fa-
mous Russian mentalist, as a consultant. Stalin obviously be-
lieved in the scientific applications of parapsychology, but his
own devious mentality saw fit to save it for future machina-
tions.
Messing had fled from the Nazi invasion of Poland after
Hitler put a price tag of two hundred thousand Deutsche
marks on his head. His reputation was such that when he
reached Russia, Stalin wanted proof of his ability. He report-
edly told Messing to rob the Bank of Moscow of one hundred
thousand rubles, using his power of suggestion or “hypnosis,”
or whatever he wanted to term the talent. Accordingly, Mes-
sing wrote a note on school scratch paper and visited the bank.
77
Approaching a cashier, he took the note from his attaché
case and passed it over the counter. Messing also claims to
have “willed” the cashier to disburse the money. However it
was done, Messing went back to the Kremlin, mission accom-
plished, along with a few of Stalin’s officials who had wit-
nessed the “robbery.” He then returned the package of rubles
to the cashier, who promptly suffered a heart attack. The story,
true or not, added to the legend of the great Wolf Messing,
who is still alive, still entertaining, at last report.
To the general world at least, the parapsychology efforts in
Russia surfaced in a benign way in the sixties when it became
clear that her Olympic weight lifters and gymnasts had been
trained in autosuggestion. Both of these endeavors, basically
involving individual prowess, are excellent platforms for im-
provement by autosuggestion. Now the prospect is that Russia
may be leading the world in a field potentially more impor-
tant than the Olympics.
In 1960 the late Dr. Leonid Vasiliev, one of the Soviet Un-
ion’s foremost parapsychologists, established a special labora-
tory for telepathy research at the University of Leningrad.
That same year Dr. Vasiliev startled a distinguished group of
Russian scientists by blithely discussing “mental radio.” ESP
was coming out from under Red Square wraps.
In 1962 Dr. Vasiliev was finally permitted to publish his
book Experiments in Mental Suggestion, detailing work that
dated back to 1932. Sometime during the early thirties, about
the time that Dr. Rhine began his work at Duke, Vasiliev,
then at the St. Petersburg Brain Institute, was “given orders
to find a solution to telepathy.” The belief was that a physical
explanation to telepathy existed, and an attempt would be
made to take it out of the supernormal. Remaining in that
foggy area, it posed a threat to dialectic materialism. If the
Russians have indeed found a “solution to telepathy,” which
is doubtful, they haven’t shared it. But another step in the
early sixties was the founding of a Commission for the Study
of Mental Suggestion at the St. Petersburg Brain Institute.
78
A considerable time before his death, Dr. Vasiliev said, “Dis-
covery of the energy held in the ESP phenomena will be com-
parable to the discovery of atomic energy.”
[11]
My reasoning factors often become my enemies.

If I begin to evaluate a situation critically, apply logic and
reason to it, I find I'm in danger of destroying what informa-
tion I'm receiving from my subject, or my guides. The infor-
mation, or image, must come impulsively and spontaneously.
It must be accepted in that manner and not examined.
In Indianapolis, I was trying to find an object hidden some-
where within a twenty-five-story building. My guides, Gov-
ernor Edgar D. Whitcomb and two high city officials, were by
my side constantly—thinking only of where they’d hidden the
paper decal. To avoid suspicion I request more than one
guide, hoping for three or four well-known people. Thus, a
“telepathy” committee is usually formed.
For thirty-five minutes, in this case, I was completely sty-
mied. I was almost on the verge of nervous exhaustion, ready
to quit. It was all the more embarrassing, since United Press
International and a local TV crew were covering the test. I
kept saying to Governor Whitcomb’s committee, “For God’s
sake, tell me mentally what floor it’s on.” The signals I was
getting were ridiculous, or so I thought.
I got off the elevator on floor after floor. Nothing on the
third, nothing on the fourth, zero on the eighth. Finally, we
reached the twenty-fourth floor, then the twenty-fifth. I was
soaked with perspiration.
Then I realized what had happened. Once again, through
trying to reason, I'd become my own archenemy. I had set up
a mental barrier which made it impossible for me to perceive
their thoughts. I had kept saying to them, insisting, “Think of
79
what floor it is on.” I'd become more angry with each mo-
ment.
Maybe it wasn’t on any floor!
I raced back into the elevator and there was the paper de-
cal, cleverly hidden behind the inspection sign on the eleva-
tor wall.
For another similar test in the same city, a sheriff handed
me a cigarette lighter. I was to locate the owner, one of six
hundred thousand inhabitants within city limits. Climbing into
a limousine, I began the search while the sheriff concentrated
on the location of the owner. I was permitted to talk to the
driver, directing him from thoughts received from the law
officer. ;
At one point I stopped the car and got out, the sheriff and
TV crew following. Receiving distinct, positive information, I
walked about a mile, finally turning into a bank. When I ap-
proached an elderly teller he gave me such a blank, almost
hostile look that my reasoning told me I was wrong.
Positive now that the owner of the lighter was in the bank,
I studied other employees, even customers, but was drawn
back to the teller each time as the sheriff, whom I could not
see, kept mentally insisting that I'd found the right man. It
was the simple “hot” and “cold” of the childhood game
“Huckle Buckle Beanstalk.”
Finally I went up. “Sir,” I said, “either this is yours or I’ve
blown the test.”
It seemed an eternity until the teller broke into a smile.
“It’s mine.”
To locate him had taken forty-eight minutes. At least
twenty minutes, including the one-mile walk, could have been
cut had I accepted, without question or reasoning, the sher-
iffs explicit directions to the bank and his unequivocal mental
commands toward the hostile-looking teller.
As part of each concert, to combat skepticism and the ac-

cusation that my subjects are paid confederates, I request
80
that my pay check be hidden. I make the claim that I'll find
it or the sponsors will have the benefit of a free performance,
so I do have an incentive to find it.
To date, among other odd places, my check has been stuffed
into a turkey at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel; nestled in a bras-
siere; frozen in an ice tray; taped to a board ripped up from
the stage and replaced; tucked beneath a man’s upper plate
in an audience of eight thousand at Northwestern University.
The hiding and guiding committees resort to deviousness
beyond belief. College students can think of hiding places that
would defeat the FBI. They defy all logic and produce mi-
graines. I ask for it. But it is, after all, hard-earned money and
I prefer to find it.
Once, in a Methodist church in Caldwell, I suddenly
stopped in an aisle and blurted out, “Gun,” seeming to be
drawn toward a man sitting a few spaces over in one pew. I
requested that he take off his coat and then saw the gun in
a shoulder holster. He was a plain-clothes detective, I later
learned. The check was in an empty bullet chamber, rolled
to pencil size.
Private parties, which I do occasionally, often give birth to
particularly elaborate hiding schemes. The hosts have weeks
to think about secreting the fee. At one, in Rieglesville, Penn-
sylvania, I kept going back into the library and pulling out an
expensive leather-bound book, thumbing through it and put-
ting it back. The check was in that specific book according
to the mental message I was getting from my hostess. Finally
I understood that she wanted me to rip the binding of the
book, an act completely against my nature. However, I obeyed
the thought and out peeked the check. She’d gone to the trou-
ble of having a shoemaker open the binding, insert the check
and then carefully restitch the spine.
Depending on the situation, size and nature of the group,
and the length of the performance, I occasionally challenge
the committee to provide a thought-perception action test,
any sequence of three or four physical actions, prior to the
81
“hidden check” routine. Logically, the test will key the find-
ing of the check. Wolf Messing has been using similar action
sequences for some years.
In one such test I remember a sudden urge to remove a
pack of cards from the stage table. I thumbed through them,
following the mental directions. I found myself holding the ace
of spades and dropping the balance of the deck to the floor.
I awaited the next signal and tore the ace of spades in half.
It did not seem sufficient, so I tore each piece again. I was as
mystified as the audience when a third signal told me to toss
one of the pieces in front of me, turn, toss another, turn again,
toss another. A final turn and toss.
The committee chairman then stepped up to inform me I
was ready to proceed with the check finding. ['d passed the
test of tossing the four corners of the ace of spades north,
east, south and west. My check would be in a westerly
direction.
ESP action tests tend to be difficult simply because of the
almost endless possibilities within any given room or group
of people. I can’t recall that any two tests have been of the
same nature.
David McCallum, the Scottish actor, one of the stars of TV’s
Man From U.N.C.L.E., went backstage on my TV show to pre-
pare such a test. Assisted by three audience members, he
wrote out three action steps and placed them in separate en-
velopes. Returning to the stage area, one committee member
began concentrating on the first test.
Soon I found myself walking up to different men in the
audience in response to the concentration. It took me a mo-
ment to realize that the signal had something to do with ties.
There was a negative whenever I stopped in front of a tieless
man. Or there was no signal. Finally I understood that I was
to take a tie off. I accomplished that and waited.
McCallum then opened the other two envelopes and began
to concentrate. I found myself moving along the front row and
then stop by a woman. It did not make sense (the tests are
82
seldom very logical) but I laced the tie around her ankle and
secured it. My final direction seemed to be a request to bring
the lady to the stage. I complied.
The three actions matched the committee’s slips of paper.
More than any other ESP experiment, the action tests indicate
the need to carry out the perceived thought without evalua-
tion. This is particularly true in seeking the location of the
performance fee.
People sometimes ask, “When you come into the auditorium
to find the check, what is going on inside you? On the con-
scious level, do you try to do anything you can analyze and
explain later? Does a picture of the hiding place flash
through your mind? What really happens?”
This advanced form of “Huckle Buckle Beanstalk” requires,
once again, that I detach myself from the immediate en-
vironment, concentrating only on the thoughts and directions
of my guides, who are also the “hiders.” I even lose them as
people, not aware if they are male or female. I concentrate
on reading every direction, every clue, and sensitize myself
to hear or see any supportive factors beyond the perceived
thought. In this experiment, I’ve found, the guide is desper-
ately trying to penetrate. It can be likened to a highly stimu-
lated game of charades when the leader is practically standing
on his ear to get his point across. It is much easier, for me,
when one or two guides function, as in the McCallum test. A
whole committee tends to fill the communication with confu-
sion.
So far, in thousands of attempts, I’ve only failed once. Dur-
ing an early-evening performance in the East, I had about
twenty people sitting in a semicircle facing the audience. I
was beginning a demonstration in suggestibility. My glasses
were off and I was bending over a woman, standing behind
her, talking to the audience. She raised her arm to fix her hair
and accidentally hit my hand, jabbing the stem of my glasses
into my left eye. I thought the blindness was momentary un-
til someone yelled. Blood was streaming down my cheek.
83
After the performance was canceled, a doctor’s quick ex-
amination revealed no permanent damage. It would heal
within a week or so. I went on to New York that night because
I had an engagement at an all-night private Park Avenue
party. I managed to fumble through the ESP and suggesti-
bility phases and began the search for my check at about
5 A.M. but soon forfeited. The eye was throbbing; I was now
loaded with painkillers and couldn’t concentrate.
A reporter once said, “That’s an exciting game, isn’t it? Play-
ing hide-and-go-seek with your own money.”
All I could think of was “Yes.”
[ 12]
I suppose that anyone who calls himself a mentalist invites

participation in strange affairs. Occasionally, wherever I am,
the phone will ring and I find myself involved in a matter com-
pletely unrelated to show business. Some are interesting;
others ‘I prefer to duck. There are also those in which I can
be of no help.
A few times I’ve been requested to assist in locating miss-
ing persons by thought perception. As much as Id like to help,
I have to decline. I don’t think it is possible unless the person
who is lost is “sending” a call for help, and is also wise enough
to pinpoint the location and have a sensitive “receiver” tuning
in. A perceptive parent would be more likely to receive such
information by telepathy than any expert. The idea of a psy-
chic locating a lost child in the wilderness is fine for fiction
but mostly pathetic in a real situation. However, there are
mental techniques which can work in other cases.
Shortly after the Sharon Tate murders in 1969 in Califor-
nia’s exclusive Bel-Air section, the infamous Charles Manson
“family” case, I received a phone call from Robert Houghton,
chief of detectives of the Los Angeles police department. In
84
the hours immediately following the grisly deaths, it appeared
that some type of cult might have been involved. At least, the
slayings looked to be ritualistic, so the police had begun prob-
ing into all cult possibilities, hoping to develop leads. One
logical avenue was to ask the aid of occultists. Several psy-
chics and mediums talked to Houghton and gave him certain
judgments.
I explained that I was not a psychic but would be willing
to listen and talk and make any contribution I could. Hough-
ton told me what the Hollywood psychics had said. It was
pretty flimsy and speculative, in my opinion. Later their rea-
soning, from the occult point of view, was proven completely
wrong.
Then, as now, my only possible contribution would have
been to work with a witness, someone who had actually seen
the crime take place but could not recall certain details due
to trauma, or someone who had seen the participants leaving
the scene but could not describe the persons or the automo-
bile because of trauma, My role would have been to attempt
to draw out information or clarify it, using modifications of
the same techniques I use onstage.
In fact, major law-enforcement agencies could well use at
least one expert interrogator trained in techniques to stimu-
late recall. It might save time and money, and possibly con-
tribute to justice.
As a minor example, while appearing in Dallas I received a
request from a friend, a lawyer, with a wealthy but slightly
eccentric and bothersome lady client whose household staff,
the butler and the maid, was under suspicion of jewelry theft.
Two very expensive earrings and a bracelet were missing but
had not been reported to the police because of a tax situa-
tion. I pointed out that I couldn’t work with anyone unless he
cooperated, and that if the butler or the maid was guilty they
wouldn’t lend themselves to incrimination. I might detect a
lie if I talked to them but preferred not to because I could be
wrong. However, I agreed to visit the client.
85
We went back over the night, a very muddled period, dur-
ing which the jewelry had disappeared. The lady had been
drinking heavily at a party. She finally remembered taking off
the earrings and bracelet after coming home. Piecing together
every move that she could recall, we finally located the jew-
elry behind a vanity in her dressing room. I think she wanted
to blame her staff instead of too many Scotch-and-sodas.
Another case involved personal injury. An insurance com-
pany was refusing to pay a claim after an accident near Mont-
clair, New Jersey, maintaining driver negligence. The lady was
not able to recall exactly what had happened before her car
went out of control. We had three or four sessions to work
back to the moment of the crash, finally pinning down a pile
of wet leaves on a curve as the point of loss of control. In pre-
vious testimony she had not mentioned the leaves, and other
skid marks had confused the path of the car on the slick
surface.
Perhaps the most interesting consultation came out of an
FBI request after a bank robbery in Passaic, New Jersey. A
witness had been in front of the bank during the getaway.
She had seen the robbers, the car and probably the license
plate, but could give no descriptions. Naturally, she’d been
terrified at the time. The FBI brought her to my office.
After talking to her for a few minutes I turned off most of
the lights. I had her gaze at the darkened wall, and then asked
her to picture some simple objects. As she relaxed and began
to accept the fact that she might be able to recall much more
of the scene, I had her reconstruct the getaway moments.
Soon she began to add movement and sound to her descrip-
tions, which she had failed to do under her previous taped
questioning. At that point I felt that her imagination had been
triggered. She then added a few other details and was finally
able to “see” the car and describe it, but not the license plate.
“You've been to comedy movies where the film is backed
up, haven't you?” I remember saying. “Everything comes for-
ward to you on the screen.”
86
“Yes.”
“Okay, keep looking at the wall and back that car up.”
When it came close enough in her mental re-creation of the
scene, she did “read off” the license number, very precisely,
and it assisted the FBI in breaking the case.
There was no psychic phenomenon swirling here. The
trauma of that afternoon had blocked her unconscious. She
had temporarily rejected both the car and the license plate.
All she needed was a guide back to the circumstances.
[ 13]
A strong belief in ESP appears to be a major factor in its

everyday use. The nonbeliever is likely to shrug off even a
decisive feeling. He simply cannot accept the idea that he
has received a compelling mental direction.
At four o'clock on Sunday afternoon, November 12, 1972,
one very strong believer, Mrs. Leticia Shindo, of Scottsdale,
Arizona, was suddenly struck with the possibility that an ail-
ing friend, Jim Grover, who lived sixty miles away, was in
trouble. He did not have a telephone.
“I had a premonition,” she said later. “I had vibrations
around myself. I think in my mind that Mr. Grover
needs help.”
A few minutes later she told her sixteen-year-old son,
George, of the premonition. “That’s funny,” he replied. “I just
had the same feeling about Mr. Grover.” The fifty-eight-year-
old bachelor lived in a desolate area near Florence, site of the
Arizona State Prison.
Responding to the premonition, not questioning it, Mrs.
Shindo and George, accompanied by his seventeen-year-old
friend, drove to Grover’s small house, reaching it just before
six o'clock. They found that the front door was locked, a meas-
ure seldom taken by Grover. Few people ever came near the
87
house. Using an emergency key that Grover had given her,
Mrs. Shindo opened the door and they went in cautiously. Sec-
onds later a tall man holding a gun stepped into the front
room.
“What’s happened to Mr. Grover?” Mrs. Shindo asked.
“Nothing, lady, nothing,” the man answered.
But Mrs. Shindo’s “premonition” had not been false. When
she looked into the kitchen she saw the ill, fatigued Grover
sitting in a chair, held captive by another man, later identi-
fied as Charles Schmid, the infamous “Pied Piper of Tucson.”
Both men were convicted murderers and had escaped the pre-
vious day from the nearby state prison. Schmid had brutally
killed three children, and Raymond Hudgens had been con-
victed of killing his estranged wife and her parents. A massive
manhunt, stretching into California, was under way.
Offering herself and the boys as additional hostages, Mrs.
Shindo agreed to drive the killers to Tempe, Arizona, where
they were finally captured. None of the hostages was harmed.
There is little doubt that mental communication was es-
tablished that day between Grover, also a strong believer in
ESP, and Mrs. Shindo. He was “sending” a call for help.
It is quite likely that hundreds, if not thousands, of com-
munications similar to those established between Mrs. Shindo
and Grover take place daily. Few ever involve escaped kill-
ers and consequently are not reported. Those involving death,
accidental or natural, are seldom revealed unless the key per-
sons are prominent or the circumstances unusual.
But scientific evidence of two-way telepathic communica-
tion is mounting as researchers bank experiences related by
the general public. It does not appear to be as common as the
spontaneous one-way flashes, but there is indication that it
could be developed, particularly among close friends or loved
ones.
Rolland Smith, now a CBS-TV news commentator in New
York, told me of a dangerous flight that he made in Vietnam
during a time when his wife, back in Indiana, was expecting
88
a baby. On takeoff he had discovered that the military plane
was loaded with ammunition. They were flying over an
area held by the Vietcong, known to be heavily fortified with
antiaircraft guns and rockets, Smith said he'd never before
prayed so hard. Suddenly he had a vision of his wife giving
birth and asked his cameraman to note the time.
A week later, arriving safely back in Indianapolis, he started
to tell his wife of the vision, but she interrupted to say that
she had seen him in an aircraft, experiencing great fear, at
about the same moment the baby was born. A check revealed
that the times coincided almost to the minute recorded by the
hospital as the time of birth.
Several summers ago I awakened from a troubled night’s
sleep to face a day which included a flight. I was booked to
open that evening in a hotel at Lake Placid, New York. I
blamed the restless night on high heat, and also blamed heat
for my negative mood. I couldn't get myself together. I
wasted time, delayed packing, and finally had to apologize
to my family for being churlish. I was terribly depressed but
didn’t know why, aside from the humidity.
Going to the airport, I detoured through Newark instead
of my usual fast route via the Garden State Parkway. I had no
reason to do it and soon found myself tied up in city traffic.
What should have been a quick, easy freeway drive to Newark
Airport had turned into stop-and-go. By the time Id cleared
the midtown clutter it was nearing ten o'clock, flight time,
and I broke speed limits all the way to the parking lot.
Checking in, nerves shot, soaked to the skin, I was told by
the girl at the desk “to run for it.” But by the time I got to the
gate, the aircraft door was closed and the plane was begin-
ning to taxi. I walked back to the desk and the same girl
arranged for me to take a helicopter to La Guardia and then
catch another plane.
I inquired about my luggage. It didn’t seem to be around.
The girl answered vaguely, “Oh, yes,” but appeared to do
nothing. I blamed it on the ninety-degree heat. She’d already
89
tagged it, wherever it was, and I assumed it had gone on to
Lake Placid.
When I landed at Lake Placid after a rough flight from La
Guardia, I suddenly became obsessed with my missing lug-
gage. I watched as the old-fashioned cart emptied the aircraft,
but I couldn’t spot my bags. The small Lake Placid airport
promised to check with Newark and send out a tracer.
In the afternoon I shopped in the village for a dark suit,
shirt and tie, hopeful that by morning the airline would find
the missing bags. Twenty minutes before I went onstage that
night, the airline called to inform me that my bags had been
shifted in Albany to the original flight from Newark. Well,
when would they arrive? My annoyance ceased when the
voice informed me that the original flight had crashed en route
to Lake Placid in a cow pasture. I hadn’t been listening to
the radio.
In trying to analyze this as premonition, I went back to
the sleepless night, to the depressed mood, to procrastination
in packing, to taking a detour that I had never taken before,
to missing the plane by less than sixty seconds, finally to the
look of complete detachment on the face of the girl at the
airline desk. Or I “read it” that way. Perhaps they were all
signposts, with the Newark detour as the crucial indicator.
From such incidents, and many others that are in my files,
I’m convinced that the unconscious mind is as sensitive, and
on some occasions more sensitive, than the conscious mind. In
telepathic situations, it obviously has a longer range. In ap-
parent incidents of premonition, it often defies any current
understanding.
I'm also fully convinced that if we all sensitized our minds,
developed the natural powers that are there, we could avoid
many hazards. There is every reason to believe that we do
have a “radar” that we seldom turn on. And premonition
seems to be a definite part of ESP.
About 1850, Mark Twain dreamed of seeing his brother
Henry lying in a metal coffin, dressed in one of Twain’s own
go
suits, holding a bouquet of flowers in his hands. The center
flower was a red rose. The coffin rested between two chairs.
Two days after this dream a boat exploded on the Missis-
sippi and Henry Clemens was killed. Hurrying home, Twain
found his brother lying in a metal casket, dressed in a suit he
owned, clasping a bouquet of flowers. The center flower was
a red rose. Had Twain arrived a few minutes later the coffin
would have been placed between two chairs. They had al-
ready been drawn up.
Similar incidents may have happened to any number of
John Does but would never have reached public print.
Harry Kellar, like most magicians, was a die-hard skeptic
where psychic phenomena were concerned. Yet when he came
face to face with premonition, he was as vulnerable as any
nonprofessional. Staying overnight with a friend, he awoke to
find the man depressed and troubled, Over breakfast, the
friend confided that he’d had a dream. He’d seen a devastat-
ing train wreck; many people had been killed. Kellar was
scheduled to depart that afternoon by rail. The magician
thought about it for a while and then submitted to the dream
premonition. He postponed his trip for twenty-four hours.
Lucky that he did. The friend’s dream came true that evening.
There is definite indication that people are capable of re-
ceiving telepathic messages while asleep, possibly even while
dreaming. Occupied with the dream, the mind may not be
too receptive to outside interruptions. But it is another of the
unknowns, and a strong signal could possibly break through
the dream. Being physical as well as psychical, the brain does
appear to rest but it is doubtful that it is totally asleep. It re-
mains partially active, receptive to messages from within a
room or house: an unusual noise, a baby’s cry, a creaking
door, thunder. Or on occasion, perhaps, messages from a dis-
tance, long or short.
Arthur Godfrey tells of an incident that occurred when he
was in the Coast Guard. One night at sea he thought he
awakened and saw his father floating away from him. Or per-
Ol
haps, he said, within the distortion of his mind, he was still
asleep. He thought, however, that his eyes were open at the
time he had the vision. (That, too, is possible. We can dream
with our eyes open.) In the morning Godfrey received a mes-
sage that his father had passed away. He radioed back and
requested the exact time of his father’s death. It matched,
within a few minutes, the time that Godfrey had noted as
the apparent wake-up time.
A few years ago a reporter for the Newark Star-Ledger re-
lated a somewhat similar case that took place in Elizabeth,
New Jersey. A wire story had been filed from Europe with the
scant detail that a young serviceman, taking a flight from Ger-
many to surprise his parents, had been killed when the plane
crashed on takeoff. Thinking that the Army had already noti-
fied next of kin, the reporter went to the house and found the
mother in hysterics. She said, “You don’t need to tell me.”
She'd awakened a few hours earlier and had seen her son in
flames. The Army did not get around to notification until the
next day.
Reported daily, weekly, such incidents are common and
add solid foundation to the need for extensive research in
sleep and dream telepathy. Such study has recently been car-
ried out at the Maimonides Medical Center’s Dream Labora-
tory in Brooklyn, New York, under the direction of Dr. Stanley
Krippner. It was long overdue and has provided much added
knowledge to the simple human experience of dreaming.
Visually, as well as with sensors, Dr. Krippner has observed
sleeping subjects while they were in the dream state. By at-
taching the electroencephalogram (EEG) and other sensitive
instruments, Krippner has been able to study nervous activity,
including the REM factor—rapid eye movement—which is
the first indication of the dream state. The eyes move and re-
act normally, even though the subject is asleep. If the imagi-
nation sends a car toward the dreaming subject, the pupils
will expand; they will contract if an object recedes into the
92
distance. If the subject is dreaming with eyes open, bright
light will cause the iris to close; dim light will open it.
In telepathic experiments, Krippner found that sometimes
he could have an awake “sender,” sitting nearby the sleeping
subject, establish communication. He would hand the sender
an envelope which contained an emotionally dynamic topic,
usually a newsprint photo. As an example, I remember that
he used one from the John Kennedy funeral. The sender then
concentrated on the scene, attempting to project his thoughts
—the mind picture—to the hopefully receptive sleeper. When
the dream state began, the message was continued. After a
while the subject was awakened and asked to describe the
dream.
In some cases, particularly when a message as dramatic as
the Kennedy funeral was used, the subjects “incorporated” the
picture into the dream or dreams. The only possible source
was the sender seated nearby.
One significance of Dr. Krippner’s exceptional work is an
indication that our minds have the capability of receiving
information and temporarily storing it while the body is dor-
mant. In attempting to sort it all out, it is difficult to distinguish
the shadings of difference between telepathy, premonition and
even clairvoyance, with the subject awake or asleep. They all
seem to be under the same general dome, but there is over-
lapping which compounds the simple truth that the entire phe-
nomenon is basically unexplained. This leads to wide distrust
if not disbelief in all the manifestations.
However, for every notable skeptic, past and present, there
have been notable believers. Mark Twain coined the term
“mental telegraphy” when his letters crossed letters from
friends in which they discussed topics he'd already covered
in his. None other than Albert Einstein wrote the introduc-
ticn for the German edition of Upton Sinclair’s Mental Radio.
The subject was telepathy.
The ever conservative American Association for the Ad-
vancement of Science did not welcome ESP until 1971 when
93
it finally accepted the subject as a legitimate area for scien-
tific research, but its approval, primarily engineered by the
anthropologist Dr. Margaret Mead, was a major breakthrough.
Those involved in serious research were at last encouraged
and awarded some respect. In a measure Dr. Rhine, scoffed
at for a quarter of a century, was finally vindicated.
[ 14]
Déja vu, the French term for the illusion of having en-
countered something before when it is actually being ex-
perienced for the first time, is another of those psychical
mysteries that has been around for centuries and is still not
resolved. It has happened to everyone: you walk into a room
and get a feeling that you have been in it before; you have
a conversation and there is a strange familiarity about it as if
the words have already been said with someone else; you meet
a person and have the strange feeling you've met him be-
fore, hut know you can’t have.
Among other claims, déja vu has been used in support of
reincarnation and again gained momentary credence when
“Bridey Murphy” bobbed up in the mid-fifties, following the
same path of similar reincarnated ladies and gentlemen in the
early part of the century. Without reincarnation to confuse
the subject, déja vu is apparently a natural phenomenon. It
is sometimes lumped with the occult because it is not under-
stood. Wherever its home should be, it is not in ESP.
One theory is that upon entering a room, a person sees X
number of details, the brain recording them instantly though
unconsciously. A moment later he sees them consciously, be-
coming fully aware of them, and feels a strange familiarity
about them, even the possibility that he has seen them before.
That theory doesn’t quite work for me. The average person
well knows what he has seen several seconds before. As time
94
goes on, he will see more but not usually in a frame of
familiarity as if he had been in the room previously. He will
normally see the room exactly as it is.
The theory of déja vu that I tend to accept involves “un-
conscious memories.” A room is entered and the eyes go to a
crack in the wall, or a couch is in a position similar to one
of past experience. Perhaps the color is the same or close. Sun-
light might have faded it, similar to one from past experience.
It does not bring back an entire experience but there is enough
of it to churn dormant memories.
If it was a positive example, a room from childhood re-
entered, not an illusion, why not absolute recognition? Why
only a vague familiarity? Most déja-vu experiences are vague
and blurred.
Déja vu appears to be somewhat in the same psychic-
phenomenon area as glossolalia, or speaking in foreign
tongues. Some religious cults practice a form of it, claiming
that it is “talk with God,” but the words that flow out seem
more gibberish than language. I've taped them and remain
bewildered by them.
However, there are investigated, recorded cases where a
person, years into life, suddenly began speaking fluent Latin,
Greek or other languages. The mystery of one lady who un-
explainably began spouting Greek was traced to childhood,
the usual origin. Her mother was a cleaner in a Greek Ortho-
dox church and rectory. The child was often around when the
priests conversed or said prayers aloud. Under a traumatic
condition in late life she went “back” to the rectory, again
churning dormant memories.
Memories of dramatic incidents can be brought back, when
the subject is wide awake or in a so-called trance. If the imag-
ination is sufficiently stimulated, and an association is estab-
lished, the patient may remember details and even act some
of them out. But he is not “regressed” in the absolute sense of
the word.
Some doctors still believe there is a therapeutic value in the
95
regression process. However, research by Dr. T. X. Barber,
of the Medfield Institute, Boston, and others, indicates that
when a person is “sent back” to a particular day, or a part of
his life, he'll do an excellent job of inventing what can’t be
remembered. Incidents developed by regression were re-
searched. Some were partially true; others were complete
fabrication.
And “Bridey Murphy” was among the better fabrications
of this century. With amateur hypnotist Morey Bernstein as
her guide, Ruth Simmons, or Virginia Ty, not only went back
to the age of three months in this lifetime but then tunneled
centuries into another. She danced jigs, reportedly, and talked
in an Irish brogue, all to the ecstasy of the reincarnationists.
Then Life magazine exposed that as a child she had lived in
an Irish neighborhood in Chicago. With or without that ex-
posure, for what it meant, Bridey didn’t go into enough detail
of her previous life to substantiate the slightest possibility that
she’d ever existed in the land of leprechauns.
Meanwhile Mr. Bernstein made a modest sum from his best
seller and the subsequent Paramount motion picture, which
took even more liberties. The subject of reincarnation remains
irresistible to a portion of the public, and Bridey will no doubt
return under other names.
Beating Bridey to the literary punch was “Patience Worth,”
other-world entity for a Mrs. Florence Lenore Curran, in 1913.
Patience, it was claimed, was an English girl who had lived
during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, and through the auto-
matic writing of Mrs. Curran turned out several books and
some poetry. Purists will say that this is not really a case of
reincarnation, but I don’t know where else to put it.
The credo of the Theosophical Society, founded in 1875, is
based on reincarnation. H. G, Wells mechanized the whole in-
teresting process in his book The Time Machine, published in
1901.
Actually, the old poltergeist, a first-rate entertainer, is of
much more amusement than any reincarnated folk. The Ger-
96
man word means “noisy ghost,” and he has a colorful, active
juvenile history. A silent ghost is of no use to anyone. Without
footsteps or rapping, hurling objects about, he is rather a
waste, Being invisible, supposedly, the only way he can at-
tract attention, like a spoiled child, is to make a nuisance of
himself. So the poltergeist, in his most material form, slams
doors, throws plates across the room and in general raises
Cain.
There is one constant about the mischievous poltergeist: he
rarely seems to haunt a house unless children are present. In
his Haunted Houses, author Hereward Carrington noted that
most “poltergeisted dwellings” had at least one child in the
pre-teen or early-teen stage.
Of course there are barns and abandoned houses and old
factories and moors and glens and mountains, bridges, too,
said to be inhabited by ghosts, but these seem to be a different
species, if one accepts their existence.. Notably, they are not
violent. Perhaps they are weary ghosts.
One of the more recent spectacular American poltergeist
inhabitations took place in the James H. Hermann home on
Long Island, in New York. The quiet, conservative Catholic
family was being disturbed by violent noises and tossed ob-
jects. It was a typical example of the German wraith, first
recorded at Bingen-am-Rhein in a.p. 355, last appearing in
Bremen in 1965, and in Rosenheim in Bavaria in 1967.
A few scientists and psychic investigators, including the very
knowledgeable Dr. J. G. Pratt, formerly on Dr. Rhine’s staff
at Duke, visited the house. While Pratt was there, a door
opened and a globe flew across the room. In a month’s time,
Pratt noted sixty-seven unexplained incidents. Several magi-
cians, experts at making things “fly,” requested permission to
visit the house but the family preferred to remain “quiet,”
~ though they hosted Edward R. Murrow for Person to Person
and Life magazine.
The Long Island inhabitation did not break the tradition.
O7
The Hermann’s teen-age son, James, was present, somewhere

in the house, each time the poltergeist performed.
As usual, the scientists and psychics came up with the same
theories: (1) The house was occupied by a ghost or spirit that
was never laid to rest because of a dramatic incident involving
his death. Unsettled, unwanted, he demonstrated with hyper-
activity. (2) The teen-ager was releasing an energy force,
RSPK, or “recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis,” which caused
the disturbances. (3) The adolescent was having a marvelous
time with his prankish tricks.
I'm usually inclined to accept No. 3, but acknowledge the
possibility of psychokinesis being involved with the teen-ager
unaware of his actions. To the relief of everyone, the polter-
geist seems to depart when public attention subsides and the
teen-ager grows up.
[ 15]
Some parapsychologists are concerned about the current

popularity and even commercialization of ESP, of which I'm
certainly guilty, but I think it is generally healthy, reflecting
public interest. Such interest may be transformed into sup-
port for further research and development. Popular writing on
the subject, though it is seldom qualified as speculation, does
not necessarily do lasting damage except to the egos of a self-
appointed few in academe.
Aside from my own show, which is entertainment-
demonstration-participation, television has made a few other
stabs at ESP. The Sixth Sense, a dramatic series, was canceled
because of low ratings. It was not very realistic and I suspect
the writers never took time to really explore the field for
dramatic possibilities, or the producers had a preconceived
notion of what ESP was all about, entangling it with the occult.
98
Much earlier, Vincent Price emceed a short-lived show with
pretested subjects doing Rhine-type demonstrations.
Until the day we measurably expand our knowledge of ex-
trasensory perception, we should utilize what little is known
of it, using it without fear and without attaching mysticism to
the phenomenon. For this reason, mainly, in the early seven-
ties I put together two games involving ESP principles.
They're simple enough for children to play, yet are designed
to satisfy adult complexities.
I can already hear the gasps of conservative psychologists,
but I think it is healthy to approach the subject, at this point,
as a game to be played and solved, slicing away as much of
the scientific jargon as possible, invading the areas staked out,
claimed and inflated by a tiny group of theorists who seem to
be motivated as much by self-preservation as by research
goals,
Why should the natural workings of the human mind be
discussed in hushed tones or described in terms that few of
us can spell, much less understand? Why not use games to ex-
plore possibilities?
I had a hunch that the public might react favorably to
“mind” games. Then Lou Reda, who is not above being brash
at times, went to Max Hess, owner of the Hess Department
Store in Allentown. He asked Max to introduce the “ESP”
game. Hess agreed but was startled when Reda said that the
debut should take place in New York rather than in Allen-
town. Hess eventually sponsored it at the Americana Hotel
in New York, drawing more than a hundred press members.
Over two million copies were sold in less than a year. The
public was obviously interested.
Whatever the feelings of the parapsychology researcher,
public interest is not apt to wane as long as questions are un-
answered. Additionally, people are discovering that despite
the tremendous advances in science, technology and the com-
forts of living, man’s problems are more numerous, not less.
Consequently there is wider searching, and when man
99
searches he’s likely to turn toward a more inward or spiritual
plane, even though ESP may in essence be physical.
Healthier still, in my opinion, is the vast interest of young
people. Seeking to get away from the crushing technological
plane, the outward indifference of much of society, many are
deeply interested, or even involved in at least one aspect of
the field with open-minded, analytical approaches.
Touring the college circuits week after week, I’ve seen
strong indications of realization that drugs are the one fool-
proof way to destroy society, that the young people can seek
inward awareness through meditation and introspection, using
the mental approach without Dr. Leary’s killing chemical ap-
proach. That aspect alone justifies public support.
The study of ESP has gone through two stages: the collec-
tion of data on spontaneous phenomena, such as the Shindo
case, gathered from every source, and the experimental labora-
tory. Without design and intent, certainly, the latter stage has
tended to stifle advancement of research, the exact opposite of
its goal. The precise requirements of pure science—proof along
each step of the ladder, and the traditional rigidity of the lab
—work against chances of success.
In ‘this field especially, science must not stay within four
walls with a litter of mechanical devices, because the emo-
tional factor, a key ingredient, is often left at the door. Emo-
tions are suppressed and some of the significant data, such as
deathlike images and accidental situations, involve emotional
ties. Additionally, ESP responses, from my own experience,
are easier to come by in a freewheeling atmosphere. Box the
mind and it tends to stay boxed.
Of necessity, Dr. Rhine’s early experiments were in the lab.
His ESP cards were hardly complex. Only the data were com-
plex and rocked the academic world, not unexpectedly. The
former botanist was attacked shrilly by some, with hard cal-
culation by others. His tests eventually withstood both philo-
sophical and analytical barrages. ESP was coming of age and
was awarded a degree of respectability.
100
The twenty-five cards displayed one of five symbols—a
cross, a circle, a star, a square or two small parallel wavy lines.
I first tried them in my early teens and if I was at all uncertain
about the existence of psychic phenomena, Dr. Rhine’s cards
stilled any doubts.
The idea was, and still is, for one person to identify, by
thought perception, the symbol of a card picked up, and con-
centrated on, by another person. There is visual separation, so
facial expressions cannot be read. Mathematics, or even gam-
bler’s odds, rule that five hits could be discounted as roulette-
wheel probables. Over that percentage is the claimed area of
extrasensory perception. In Rhine’s published research of tests
with two assistants, separated by buildings, 558 hits were re-
corded out of a possibility of 1,850 chances. Mathematics
challenged the findings but could not conclusively defeat
them.
Later sophistication of tests with the ESP cards led Rhine
to believe that some individuals had the capability of perceiv-
ing the order of the stacked cards without seeing them, even
predicting their sequence following a shufile. I have tried the
latter test a number of times but have not been successful at
it. However, I don't doubt that it is possible, and Rhine’s
statistics indicate the possibility beyond the mathematical
probable.
From his entire battery of tests, Rhine concluded that there
was a possibility of clairvoyance and precognition, as well as
the high probability of thought perception.
A beginner’s version of the Rhine tests to measure ESP sen-
sitivity, primarily telepathy sensitivity, can be accomplished
with an ordinary deck of playing cards. The tester removes
one red card and one black card to even the number to fifty,
then the cards are shuffled. A large book is opened and placed
on the table as a screen between the tester and the subject,
who has been provided with a sheet of paper, numbered to
fifty.
On a signal of “ready” the tester concentrates about ten
101
seconds on the color of the card he is holding up, blocked from
the subject’s view by the book. The subject then writes “red”
or “black,” depending on the signal he receives from the tester.
Each new card is preceded by the “ready” signal. After the
fifty cards have been run out, each placed face down in order
of appearance, score can be counted by corresponding the
deck with the subject’s numbered sheet. Any score of thirty-
five hits or higher indicates that more than pure chance was
involved. It is not an exacting test but may provide ESP-
sensitivity information if several runs of the cards indicate con-
sistent scores of thirty-five or over.
Acceptance by science, in general, and the general public,
could come about when parapsychologists are able to gather
enough data in each area to conelusively prove that psi, that
tangible intangible key to ESP, does indeed exist. The bur-
den of this is seeking out not only those people thought to
have ESP capabilities beyond the average, but correlating a
wide range of experiences. With psi as reliable as a thistle,
with a lunatic fringe involved in the field, and quackery ram-
pant, it’s a formidable but not hopeless task.
Most known “psychics” have been tested in various labs by
experts or by the Society for Psychical Research in London,
or its cousin in New York, the American Society for Psychical
Research, and varied results were obtained. Summary of all
the testing seems to be a hardly startling affirmation: yes, they
are psychic. Bedeviling the experts is always the “why” and
“how.”
On two occasions I submitted to lab tests. Each time, within
minutes, I felt a sharp decrease in whatever ESP capability I
have. I believe it is a personal flaw, stemming from the non-
lab nature of my work. Perhaps I should have been profes-
sional enough to overcome the mechanics or the lack of
spontaneity, but I found it impossible. I struggled through
the tests, knowing that I had a partial block. However, I will
always gladly submit to testing on my home ground of the
stage, doing what I normally do. In that role, within a few
102
minutes, I’m not aware I'm being tested; my responses are
normal and natural.
Astronauts or cosmonauts would probably be ideal labora-
tory test subjects. They have been conditioned to accept lab
procedures and function naturally and normally while under-
going the most complicated scientific probings known to man.
Doctrine and mechanics might not affect their psychic re-
sponses.
To me, one of the most intriguing, perhaps the most excit-

ing, area of psychic phenomena has to do with field forces that
are said to exist around all of us, extending beyond our physi-
cal bodies but related to them. These same psi fields are be-
lieved to exist around any living tissue, and even around
certain “dead” tissue, linking us by fields to animal, vegetable
and mineral.
Aura, as applied to parapsychology, means an emanation
from bodies, animate or inanimate, supposedly caused by
mental or physical magnetic forces. Our awareness of aura, in
certain cases, is termed “field consciousness.” According to
this theory, we are conscious of a field force of some type that
appears to be paranormal. Current work by physicists, not
psychologists, may someday explain what these forces are, and
how they work. Meanwhile, it is difficult to discount their
existence.
In support of these theories, most people have encountered
a field force at one time or another, in one way or another,
attributing it to a “strange feeling.” The force could have been
purely psychic or physical and magnetic. The range of these
forces and their categories remain practically unknown.
A think-tank in California was recently awarded a fifty-
thousand-dollar federal grant for research into the field of con-
sciousness of the philodendron, apparently a very sensitive
plant. On the face of it, this would seem to be a senseless piece
of research, but the ultimate goal is to decide whether or not
103
the beautiful green-leafed Araceae can be of help in detecting
aerial hijackers.
That some plants may have a “thought capacity” has been
projected by polygraph expert Cleve Backster. Some years ago
he attached two galvanic skin-response electrodes to the
leaves of a philodendron in his office with the idea of burning
a leaf for possible reaction on the lie detector. The plant re-
acted before he could strike the match. It perceived his
thought and understood what might be a hostile gesture. In-
credibly, the polygraph needle jumped.
Later tests included two philodendrons witnessing the
“stomping death” of a third. Subsequently, when the “mur-
derer” entered the room, the two surviving plants registered
frantically on the polygraph.
To those who shake their heads at Backster’s scientific find-
ings, the question of the “green thumb” has to be posed. Why
does one gardener have lush plants and foliage, while his
neighbor next door, with the same earth, same light exposure,
same fertilizer, grows a garden of weeds? Technique enters,
but there are gardeners who “talk to their plants.” Who is to
say that there is not a sensitive response?
In storm prediction, the sensitivity of certain wildlife is
found to be the equal of or better than the U.S. Weather
Bureau. And how does a dog sense the demise of his master
in a hospital five miles away, beginning to wail at almost the
instant of death?
Research in ESP and psi will likely go far beyond the hu-
man mind. The theory that we are all part of our environ-
ment, daily carrying on an undiscovered relationship with it,
is not so far-fetched. Neither is the theory that psychic phe-
nomena are simply a part of the total nature of man.
104
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[1]
Suggestion, for my specific purposes of entertainment,

is the presentation of an idea to an individual, or group
of individuals. It may or may not have a rationality to it.
If it is accepted, it is accepted uncritically. If the person
or persons do not respond to it, it is rationally dissolved.
I say to a subject, “You're getting cold.” Reason would
tell him that there is absolutely no rational or physical
cause for feeling chill. Yet, because of conditioning and
uncritical response, he reacts. As my conviction grows,
his chill grows.
If an individual sits with his eyes closed and is convinc-
ingly told that a heated half dollar is being placed on
his forehead, sensors will show that his temperature rises
slightly. Yet he knows that no one is sticking a red-hot
coin between the eyes. It is but another example of our
complete vulnerability to suggestion.
107
These, however, are natural responses. If you become en-
grossed in a book about the Arctic, if the descriptions of a
howling wind and of vast fields of ice and snow are excep-
tional, you may well react. You may also find that your body
temperature has been slightly lowered. By the same token, if
someone enters a room saying, “My, it’s hot in here,” you sud-
denly become aware of heat that hadn’t bothered you a mo-
ment before. Suggestion at work!
A timeless elementary psychology test is to select one
hapless student prior to the next class, and have a few selected
students tell him he doesn’t look too well. Or ask him
worriedly, “How do you feel, Jack?” Periodic reminders of his
state of health, which happens to be superb, brings doubts.
Soon he thinks he doesn’t feel well.
Chain response can be triggered without any verbal prompt-
ing. During the two world wars, Army and Navy processing
centers daily reported incidents of fainting on the inoculation
lines. Two or three at a time, strapping men would flop over
before the needle was inserted, responding to the suggestive
sight of the syringe up the line.
Most humans are defenseless against suggestion in vary-
ing degrees. “Looks like you're putting ona little weight” can
send people dashing to the scales even though they haven't
gained a pound in a year. “Is your hair getting thin?” prompts
a trip to the mirror. At dinner, one person can ruin an other-
wise perfectly good meal by suggesting, “This soup tastes a
little bitter, doesn’t it? I hope the can was okay.” The can was
fine, but good-bye soup.
It is simple but baffling suggestion at work.
Through autosuggestion, with calm, tranquil imagery, I can

lower my pulse rate to fifteen or eighteen beats a minute
against the normal seventy-two. By holding that imagery, and
for myself, by adding a total bluelike quality in a setting of
green trees, I can easily maintain this languid metabolic rate.
I don’t say to myself, “My pulse is going down. I’m relaxing.
I feel drowsy.” That’s the worn patter of impotent “self-
108
THE POWER OF SUGGESTION
hypnosis,” as meaningless as reading tea leaves. Should any-
one desire that input, it should be recognized as a crutch.
It’s worth no more than that.
If I change the imagery to red and bring running horses in,
my pulse beat will rise rapidly. That is autosuggestion in its
purest form. For some time the Russians have been using a
similar method to train soldiers to minimize pain. The pain
becomes a sensation of pressure or is divided up over different
parts of the body.
Autosuggestion, or self-suggestion, is exactly what it implies
—an internal communication with and between the mind and
any part of the body, or the body as a whole. It is believed that
we speak to ourselves, as infants, long before we learn to
speak to others. If we are not mentally ill, no day goes by when
we don’t talk to ourselves, either verbally or mentally. Auto-
suggestion, then, is a directed, channeled form of internal com-
munication with the mind as central control. It is normal and
not paranormal.
With what little we have learned of it, and are learning,
autosuggestion is an old-fashioned term already, and oversim-
plified. But no one has been able to come up with a better
definition. Perhaps we should stay with it lest we be stuck
with one of those staggering lab concoctions. But as a mind
source power, it is almost totally unexplored and untapped,
capable of masking or alleviating pain, reducing tensions
without use of drugs, and possibly achieving potentials beyond
our present comprehension. The manifestations are not “hyp-
notic.” They are completely normal and natural.
Conviction is the key.
Suggestion has of course always been the keystone of “hyp-

nosis.” But beyond this manufactured sleep state, it is the
natural daily persuasion used in every human contact. At
home, in the office, at school; at play and work, at love-making,
it is as much a part of our lives as “yes” and “no” responses.
In his book Our Magic, published in 1911, effects creator
Nevil Maskelyne wrote: “Having induced a marked condition
109
of mental receptivity, we cannot expect our subjects to con-
ceive ideas other than those we create, either directly or by
suggestion.” Neither a “hypnotist” nor a clinical psychologist,
Maskelyne was accurately analyzing techniques of mystifying
audiences. At the same time, in a few simple words, he de-
scribed the foundation for suggestibility.
The power of suggestion, or as the Russians now term it, the
science of suggestology, has every indication that it can be-
come a completely normal communication of the future, even
though, in its ESP form, it will be nonverbal and telepathic.
Moving beyond the word “suggestion,” the science of sug-
gestology or suggestibility, in highest refinement, is based on
the human ability to accept an idea and respond to it almost
automatically, whether it is verbal or nonverbal. It is a normal
response in most humans, often those who are highly individ-
ual, creative and often artistic. On responding, they will be
totally awake—laughing, talking, normal in every sense.
Most people respond easily to suggestion. As a simple
“homemade” experiment, tell a friend, very casually, “There’s
a red spot on your arm. Does it itch?”
First he'll look for the spot. Then he'll likely answer defen-
sively, “Youre crazy. There’s no spot on my arm.”
Keep looking down at his arm. “Oh?”
Your friend is now apt to be staring at the imaginary spot.
He may begin to doubt his own eyes, even though he'll protest
youre insane. If you glance away he may furtively scratch it.
If you persist, reminding him of the external surface of his
body, of which he is seldom conscious, he might begin to itch
all over.
A more subtle experiment is to catch someone who is whis-
tling while engrossed in work. Do not attract his attention, but
begin whistling another tune very softly. After a moment, in-
crease the volume. Usually, he will shift to your tune without
being aware he’s done so. Later he'll probably declare, as part
of an unconscious defense mechanism, that your tune was
what he was whistling in the first place. He is a victim of your
suggestion.
110
In terms of autosuggestion, become aware of the skin for a
few minutes. Think of the possibility that your own arm might
itch, perhaps the underpart of the other arm, and the area
behind your knee. If you work at it, you can be tingling from
head to toe in a minute. You'll have to reprogram yourself by
thinking about something else.
As another example of suggestion, certain TV or radio com-
mercials are mildly irritating. By calculation on Madison
Avenue, they narrow your attention. You may try to ignore
them. Can you?
Try not to think of the word “moonbeam” every time you
see the word NIGHT pop up in the next paragraph.
Every time you see NIGHT you will find yourself thinking
of the word “MOONBEAM.”
So you can attempt to ignore the commercial but then the
words simply impress themselves on an unconscious level.
NIGHT. Or you can consciously react to the annoyance by
making up your mind that you don’t like the commercial and
won't purchase the product. Ironically, the advertiser may be
satisfied with your response. NIGHT. They have made some
impression on you. Most likely, you'll forget the specific inci-
dent on a conscious level. Yet a few days later when you are
shopping, you find yourself confronted with myriad brands of
the product you'd like to purchase. NIGHT. You think to your-
self, “They're probably all equally good, so I'll grab this one.”
Chances are extremely high that the brand you pick unthink-
ingly is the one that antagonized you a week earlier. NIGHT.
You would have been better off remembering the earlier
stimuli. But it hits you in a busy moment and life is too full of
everyday happenings to bother with small things. NIGHT.
If you found yourself thinking “moonbeam” on reading
NIGHT, the power of suggestion worked. Even if you fought
against it, sternly rejecting the idea that some silly words on
paper would force you to respond, it still worked. To reject it,
you had to think of it. Additionally, the unconscious accepted
it whether you liked it or not.
For me, professionally, suggestion functions with one per-
111
son, ten or two hundred, and there isn’t a “hypnotic” trance
nor a candle flicker of mysticism in the whole house. Using
only suggestion, tapping nothing but waiting imagination, I’ve
had subjects seeing flying saucers or shivering in polar cold
within two minutes, and audiences of six hundred dancing
Irish jigs. I doubt that the few who saw the spinning saucers,
got goosebumps or did the Donegal stomp were abnormal,
although some might have been supersensitive to suggestion,
as pliable as child’s clay. They can be lumped with those very
fortunate people (if there are any) who have seen the
Hindu rope trick.
In this, the most splendid form of imagery, the fakir sup-
posedly throws a rope into the air and his assistant climbs to
the top and disappears. The fakir, knife in teeth, climbs up
after him and vanishes. It becomes a “full setting,” in the beau-
tiful parlance of a Houdini or Great Thurston. Suddenly parts
of the assistant’s body begin to fall from the air—a head, a
leg, an arm. The fakir climbs back down to pick up pieces of
the body, tossing them into a trunk. He finally closes it, utters
some mumbo-jumbo, and then opens it. Out hops the smiling
assistant. Blackstone did it on the stage in a modified form,
and Thurston had his version of it.
Suggestibility has long been a theory in the case of the fakir’s
spell, and enchanting craftsmanship did it for Messrs. Black-
stone and Thurston. Magic audiences enter with a dare in their
eyes but quickly succumb to the childlike need within us all.
When a lady is sawed in half, bits of cloth flying through the
air, the sound of the blade whirring through meat and bone,
the elements are overwhelmingly suggestive. And the audi-
ence has already been conditioned, unconsciously, by simply
relating to the word magic, Although the majority of the adults
know fora fact that no lady is being sliced, they will still
wince; many will close their eyes. Their imagination, so power-
ful that it cannot be thwarted, has been triggered. They can
almost feel that shining blade as it grinds through bone.
The late Charles Carter, investigating secrets of Oriental
sorcery in the early thirties, wrote: “Certain it is that in the
112
hills of Simla, the atmosphere is extremely rarefied; deep in-
halations of pure oxygen affect the brain and so produce
hallucinations easily influenced by adroit operators.” Certain,
also, is that hallucination itself is real magic and mystery be-
yond the wildest dreams of a Great Carter or Thurston.
It has been claimed that a photographer once snapped the
rope trick, positive that he had at last caught the astounding
and legendary feat. However, when the picture was devel-
oped, the fakir and his assistant were still standing on earth,
and the rope was curled around the fakir’s arm. Nobody was
climbing; nothing had happened. It was all in the photog-
rapher’s imagination. The topper to this story is that no one,
to my knowledge, has ever seen that particular photograph nor
identified the photographer by name. More than that, the
probability of an entire mass of people repeatedly hallucinat-
ing, day to day, week to week, must be questioned. The rope
trick remains a fairy tale, a “Jack and the Beanstalk,” at least
to me, until proven otherwise.
However, imagery born of suggestibility is momentarily as
powerful and true, in the mind, as hemp tied firmly in the air.
It isn’t even necessary to take a trip to Simla or draughts of
rarefied air. Harvey, a play about a huge imaginary rabbit,
was a Broadway hit for years. The rabbit never appeared on
stage, but the leading character, first played by Frank Fay,
talked with him as if he existed. Some people in the audience
became so involved that they forgot they weren't supposed to
see Harvey. Their imagination did the rest. Fay reported that
he was asked, quite seriously, “Wherever did you get a rabbit
that big?”
[2]
With imagination as the key, with the power of suggestion

as the tool, I stage and guide charades, intensifying them to
the point where the subject discards his everyday role. The
113
drifting daydream is put on like a cloak. It all becomes real.
The mind, being very capable of a daydream, is also capable
of “going to the moon.” It does not require someone with
psychic powers to come up on the wavelengths.
Not long ago, in a night-club setting, I suggested the role of
“moon people” to a pair of college students. I did not “hyp-
notize” them. I simply got their attention and after a moment
of conditioning, manipulated their imaginations. In a few
minutes, they were talking animatedly. I guided them to dis-
cuss how they lived out there, or up there.
In situations like this, what comes out in the cross talk be-
tween two “moon people” is of course gibberish to everyone
else, a fascinating phenomenon in itself. One, though, acts as
interpreter and explains what goes on aboard that poetic
satellite. That person imagines that he or she can interpret the
gibberish. Sometimes it seems earnest enough to be real. It is
pure invention. In other shows I often ask the interpreter to
inquire of the “moon man” how many sexes exist on that cheery
ball. Invariably, and unexplainably, the answer will be four.
I haven't the faintest idea why, or what triggers that precise
number.
Suddenly, in this particular show, I saw the “moon person”
turn to the interpreter and ask a question in gibberish. The
other people on the stage began laughing, then the audience
burst into laughter. Because I had been more interested in
audience reaction than what was occurring on stage at this
point, the crowd was ahead of me.
Puzzled, I looked at them and in turning back to the sub-
jects, saw the interpreter pointing toward a stairway which
was off to the side of the club. He answered in gibberish, drop-
ping his role of interpreter and becoming a concerned friend.
The moon inhabitant then left his chair and began to walk
toward the stairway.
It dawned on me that he’d asked directions to the men’s
room.
The audience quieted down as they saw the subject leave
the stage and head for the steps. They looked back at me. I
114
was dumbstruck. It had never happened before. So far as I
knew, there was no way to communicate something of this
sort in bleee-be-da-ba-g aga-boob. Yet it had been done.
It also occurred to me that in going downstairs the subject
might well meet someone who would speak to him in a
friendly tone. His possible reply in “moon” gibberish, booo-
agggga-goo, could bring about gent’s-room bewilderment, even
a hard punch in the nose.
I ran after him, caught him and reprogrammed him, letting
him proceed to his urgent mission as other than a “moon man.”
The fact that nature sent him toward the W.C. is entirely
explainable because he wasn’t in any sleeping “trance” nor in
a special physical or mental condition. But his ability to com-
municate his need in “satellite” language is beyond my knowl]-
edge to this date. Undoubtedly, given the right circumstances,
it will happen again.
This type of phenomenon, I believe, evolves straight from
psychodrama. If a group of closely knit people play charades
for about an hour, suggestibility usually increases to the point
that when a scene or idea is projected by the person doing the
pantomime, he or she will function automatically, submerg-
ing into the role and expanding it without great thought.
I have observed charades that have been close to telepathy,
although the players were completely unaware of having
crossed over into another form of communication.
[3]
One of the masters of suggestibility is Arthur Godfrey.

Though his audiences on radio and TV have been in the mil-
lions, Godfrey often sounds as if he were talking to a single
person. Some of his commercials have been classics. No other
entertainer has been as skilled in the use of audio communica-
tion. His tapes are an education in salesmanship alone and I
115
owe much to his techniques and to his personal encourage-
ment.
For different goals, though involving salesmanship, too,
evangelist Billy Graham is a master at “holding” an audience.
There is a cadence in his voice, a build toward dramatic
peaks, and his appearance is compelling. Had he decided to
enter politics instead of evangelism, the possibility of Wash-
ington residence would not be remote. I once claimed, on the
air, that Graham was a “master hypnotist,” using the term in
reference to his abilities to verbally “hold” a crowd. A ruffled
member of Graham’s staff called me to complain. However,
Graham himself had, years before, admitted his knowledge of
audience control on Art Linkletter’s CBS House Party.
Another widely known and skilled practitioner is Bishop
Fulton J. Sheen. It is evident that he has a thorough under-
standing of the suggestibility phenomenon. His eyes, the
structure of his face, the firm yet soothing quality of his voice,
and his expert timing combine to produce a “holding” effect
on audiences, whether live or TV. In the case of both Billy
Graham and Bishop Sheen, their abilities are used for the bet-
terment of mankind.
My own techniques are somewhat different, tailored for
amusement, and directed toward immediate “hold” on an
audience to afford participation. I’m hardly a compelling
figure and, unfortunately, lack Bishop Sheen’s hypnotic eyes.
I've been told that I look something like Mr. Spock, from the
planet Vulcan, of the TV series Star Trek. I find that flattering.
Vulcan sounds as if it might be an interesting place to live on,
and such a background would undoubtedly add to mentaliz-
ing, but I have to do it the hard verbal or telepathic way.
At one point in my concerts I discuss my beliefs that there
is no special state of “hypnosis,” no need for fabricating a
sleeplike trance. I confess that I once not only practiced what
I believed to be so-called “hypnosis,” but ardently fostered the
trance concept. I tell the audience that my references to “hyp-
nosis,” both historically and as I practiced it, are in the frame-
116
work of the past. This is also why I use quotation marks when
dealing with the subject.
I then attempt to explain what is known of suggestibility,
in which no trance is involved, and how we are all extremely
prone to it. In this sense, we are imaginatively carried away
with the actors and story of a good film, involving ourselves in
it, losing the fact that it is fabricated on a chemical strip. We
grip the seat and feel a surge of adrenaline during the chase in
The French Connection. We are lost in it, responding to it,
and we're far from “hypnotized.” In somewhat the same way,
I cause individuals to respond to suggestion without the in-
duction of a trance.
At that point I invite volunteers from the audience for dem-
onstrations of suggestibility. While most “hypnotists” will in-
vite a dozen or so, hoping to find one or two who will be extra
responsive, I’ve discovered the opposite is warranted. It isn’t
unusual for me to have ninety people onstage when I only ask
for twenty-five or thirty chairs to be filled. The conditioning
has already taken place. In fact, I think that by asking for a
large number I fulfill the apparent encouragement factor of
“safety in numbers.” Filling the thirty chairs, I request that the
others remain standing rather than send them back to their
seats. Contrary to a long-held “hypnosis” belief, subjects do not
have to feel relaxed to respond to suggestion.
It doesn’t seem readily possible that in a matter of fleeting
seconds a person onstage can cause strangers to forget their
names, verbally lock their hands or clamp their eyelids shut.
Tll ask a man to step forward. “Are you wide awake?”
“Yes,” he'll answer.
“Are you in a trance?”
“No.”
Then I pause and change tone to subtly emphasize some-
thing I want to plant. I say, “You know, we can forget things
in everyday life quite easily.” I pass my hand across the front
of his face.
He knows there is some significance to what I said, some-
117
thing unusual about the hand gesture, but he doesn’t know
what it is. The “plant” succeeds.
“Do you go to school?”
“Where do you live?”

“Peoria Heights.”
I pause again, for perhaps three or four seconds, and then
ask, in a meaningful way, spacing the words, “By the way,
what is your name?”
He cannot remember it. He is keying back to the significant
plant; he has been waiting for the question and has obeyed
the suggestion. He is not “asleep-awake.” He is wide awake.
In a theater in Pittsburgh, I worked this particular demon-
stration with an audience volunteer. He stood frowning, per-
plexed. I turned my back and the audience saw him reach
into his coat pocket for his wallet, hoping to read his name off
credit cards. I turned again quickly. “Your hand is locked in
that pocket. You can’t remove it.” The hand was, for a mo-
ment, paralyzed by the motor responses. But this gentleman
was not in a trance. Yet he was responding uncritically to
an irrational suggestion.
As far as it is possible, I induce the responsive condition by
natural references. Prior to setting up the “polar” atmosphere,
I may say, “Wow, it’s chilly in here.” I fake a shiver. “I’m al-
most freezing. We've got a problem with the air conditioning
tonight. But bear with us. We've called for a technician.”
A few minutes later, having planted the “cold” idea, I'll pro-
ceed to attack the waiting response of the subjects with the
hard suggestion that it is indeed freezing. Often, one or two
will go to the curtains and gather folds about them.
Exactly what prompts response to an obviously irrational
suggestion is not known. My own theory, admittedly a guess,
is that the response is simply a normal extension of the every-
day examples coupled with the sudden harnessing of imagina-
tion. The response stops instantly unless the imagination. is
118
geared. Once stimulated, it knows few boundaries, Expertly
guided, suggestion-imagination is a miraculous mental vehicle.
Imagination, triggered by suggestion, is quite capable of
controlling physical direction. The simplest test is to have a
subject stand in front of me. I tell him to close his eyes and
imagine that he is standing at the edge of a high building;
street and traffic are twenty floors below. After a moment he'll
begin to sway normally and naturally. I can then suggest that
he fall backwards to me to safety. Invariably, if he is respond-
ing imaginatively to the idea that he is inches from the ledge,
a sickening plunge beneath him, the suggestion will tilt him
back into my arms. Every adult and most children have, at
one time or another, looked down froma great height. It takes
very little to freshen that vivid memory if the eyes are closed.
This was one of the early Vasiliev suggestibility experiments.
However, environmental hazards easily trigger imagination.
If a board five feet long and two feet wide is placed on the
floor, a subject will usually walk it without concern, moving
confidently, keeping his balance. Place the same board be-
tween two buildings and the subject may refuse to walk it. If
he does agree, there is a possibility that he'll fall. Yet the
physical characteristics of the board have not changed. There
has been a change in attitude prompted by an imaginative
stimulation. While it is not an absolute rule, it appears that
when imagination and the will are in conflict, as demonstrated
by the board test, imagination will usually win.
I've taken this type of test to a more sophisticated degree
on several occasions. On a Johnny Carson show I marked a
card within a deck of cards and then handed the pack to an-
other guest, asking TV personality Virginia Graham to please
stand and close her eyes. A staff member stood behind her. I
proceeded to call off the cards and when the marked card
was reached, Miss Graham toppled on mental order. She was
not aware, at the moment, why she’d fallen backwards. Sug-
gestion had been mentally implanted. The demonstration is
on NBC tape for those who are skeptical. Dr. Vasiliev con-
ducted similar experiments.
119
I once walked up to a standing subject and requested that
he stiffen his leg. Moving away, I told him that he could not
bend it. He lumbered and limped all over the stage. I released
him, and he immediately said, “Now I can bend it.”
I nodded. “That’s very true, but the condition has been
transferred to your left leg.” He took a step forward and found
that one rigid.
Playing a date on the Italian cruise ship Victoria, on a voy-
age to the Caribbean, I made one subject take off her shoes
and then replace them on the opposite feet. I requested her
to stand up and walk.
“Are you certain you have your shoes on the right way?”
“Yes, I'm certain.” :
“Do they feel all right?”
“They feel fine.”
All the while, she was practically falling down.
Suggestibility rips through inhibitions and occasionally

makes me wonder if all of us do not have “parrotlike” abilities
that we suppress—photographic and audio impressions that
are stored in our memory banks, never brought to life until the
charade is stimulated. One night at the Embers I questioned
a subject about his TV-watching habits. He said that he always
watched Gunsmoke. I replied, “In a few minutes you'll be
Chester.” Soon he was walking through the audience calling
for “Mr. Dillon” in the distinctive accent of Dennis Weaver.
He even walked like Weaver. He apparently was enjoying the
brief period as Matt Dillon’s deputy because he stopped at
several tables to sign autographs. I examined them later. They
were signed “Chester.”
The ability to not only take on characterization but create
it constantly surfaces. In at least one phase of all my concerts
I attempt to bring out creativity. At Kutztown State Teachers
College in Pennsylvania, last fall, I told a subject that within
a few minutes he would rise from his chair and request my
microphone because a very important cause was on his mind:
he wanted to raise funds to feed the “starving bloodhounds
120
of Upper Srednikan in the White Hills of Russia.” He listened
intently while I explained that they lived on a diet of Lim-
burger cheese and Chanel No. 5. I impressed upon him that it
was a terribly serious mission.
The audience awaited his readiness to make the speech
while I went on with another routine. About four minutes
later he arose and took my mike. No one laughed. I think the
audience wondered if a person could seriously sustain what
was a ludicrous subject and carry it off without self-
consciousness. A seasoned performer, a comedian, could do it.
This subject was a student. But very often, inhibitions and
self-consciousness are lost in the group setting. The student
had been a part of the large group onstage, identifying with
them, and fortifying from them. Knowing what the auditorium
reaction would eventually be, I had instructed him to stamp
his foot if the audience did annoy him. He began to make the
speech, his face deadly serious, his voice carrying earnest con-
viction. It was utterly ridiculous as well as hilarious. The audi-
ence began to laugh. He stamped his foot and they roared.
In the spring I'd done the same routine while entertaining
a dentists’ convention. My subject, a young man, pleaded emo-
tionally for the dogs, exposing what might have been a per-
sonal issue—that dentists were making huge sums of money
nowadays and could well afford to share some with the dogs
of Upper Srednikan. He borrowed a hat and began going
through the audience, which was now in stitches.
Deep conviction at work, sprung by suggestibility, is rather
awesome to witness, sometimes provoking disturbing reflec-
tions. At St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, I told
a group of about eight football players that the dean of stu-
dents, a man named Kirkpatrick, would enter the auditorium
and come up onstage, but that this “Kirkpatrick” was really
an impostor and should not be allowed to remain inside.
About five minutes later the real Dean Kirkpatrick came down
the aisle, and although they knew him well, they forcibly re-
moved him. It was well below zero outside and he entered
a second time. The subjects headed for him again. I ended it.
121
Visual response is but another phase of the suggestibility
phenomenon. On occasion I'll carry what looks like a dozen
pairs of eyeglasses onstage, and in setting up the demonstra-
tion, point out that these particular “glasses” will cause great
distortion, so that the subjects will see one another as though
looking into “fun-house” mirrors at carnivals. After I place the
“glasses” on their foreheads, asking them please not to touch
them, the subjects look at one another and begin to break up.
It is interesting to observe how they handle this suggestion.
Some claim the others have the heads of giraffes, eyes like
headlights or noses like bananas. They are remembering what
they have seen in similar true distortions. On completing the
test, I stick a finger through the frames, showing both the sub-
jects and the audience that there are no lenses.
Another version of sight response is to hand two subjects,
seated closely, a single magazine, usually an issue of the
pictorial type. I tell one subject that the pictures on the left-
hand page are sad or poignant; and that the ones on the
right-hand page are very funny. The other subject is given
opposite instructions. The contrast, as each studies the same
page, is startling. At Lycoming College in Williamsport,
Pennsylvania, this test ended in an argument between the two
readers, the more aggressive one ripping a page out.
Sound response to suggestibility is equally interesting. If a
piano happens to be onstage, I often tell the subjects that I will
play something by Chopin, perhaps the Etude, Opus 10, No. 3,
the theme song from the film The Magnificent Obsession which
I happen to like, but that as they hear it they will react with
disgust. The rendition will be off key, full of discords. How-
ever, if I play “Chopsticks” it will sound classic, rendered
beautifully.
I begin to play. Chopin causes some subjects to place their
hands over their ears, others to groan. One girl, probably a
classics lover, actually lowered the piano lid on my fingers.
When I segue into “Chopsticks” the subjects sit back, en-
thralled.
Of all the senses, taste and smell are the easiest to distort. I
122
don’t do it often, for obvious reasons, but have handed an
onion to a subject with his eyes closed, telling him that it is an
apple.
“Good apple, huh?”
“Great.”
The discovery is not so great. This test, however, will not
work, or has not worked for me, if the subject has visual
register coupled with a violent dislike of raw onions. Response
cannot be forced against the knowing will.
Sometimes I end the suggestibility portion of the concert by
telling the group onstage that one particular chair will burst
into flames on signal. At a Knights of Columbus benefit in
Union, New Jersey, a man dashed backstage for a fire ex-
tinguisher. At another concert a lady grabbed a pitcher of
water off a table and tossed it, splashing the front row and
dousing some expensive furs. I safeguard it now by ending the
phase in another manner if water is available onstage.
[4]
On a summer’s night long ago, at the Brant’s Beach Yacht

Club in New Jersey, I told the subjects onstage that they would
see flying saucers. A portion of the sky was visible. I was
performing on the screened-in yacht-club porch. Soon a
number of the subjects saw unidentified flying objects skirting
the heavens. Several ran to phones and were convincing
enough to call out both the police and fire departments. The
aftermath was rather embarrassing. Explanations of this sort
of thing to police tend to be awkward.
At any rate, much later I could truthfully answer Dr. Jay
Allan Hynek, professor of astronomy at Northwestern Univer-
sity, when he contacted me about this area of the suggestibility
phenomenon. He was scheduled to speak on UFO’s before a
science convention and had certain questions about the pos-
sibility of suggestion weighing heavily in some flying-saucer
123
sightings. Highly regarded in his field, Dr. Hynek was involved
in tracking Sputnik, the first Soviet space satellite, for the
United States government, and has since devoted much time
to UFO research.
The astronomer has a theory that if UFO’s have approached
this planet they might possibly be coming through from an-
other galaxy, not within our universe, and that these intelli-
gences are “passing through,” perhaps accidentally, perhaps
exploring. His theory was previously advanced by the National
Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, a large pri-
vate group of prominent aviation figures. The committee in-
cludes aircraft pilots as well as space scientists.
Accepting the fact that a certain percentage of sightings by
reputable people of sound mind, mostly experienced pilots,
cannot be explained, Dr. Hynek believes that the large
majority of sightings are completely false and doubts that any
UFO has ever landed on the “earth planet.” In this, he agrees
with the Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, the
report of an Air Force-sponsored commission headed by Dr.
Edward U. Condon, professor of physics at the University of
Colorado.
Findings of the careful Condon commission indicated that
the overwhelming majority of reported sightings could be
explained by visual distortions of completely normal aerial
activity—aircraft and weather balloons to test atmospheric
conditions. Illusion was given its due; fantasy and pure in-
vention figured into the tens of thousands of flying-saucer
incidents. Predictably, the Condon report was ignored by a
host of UFO buffs and the “nut” fringe of the occult. Nothing
could be more tailor-made for the occultists than Martians in
silver suits scooting about in saucers and port-holed shining
metallic sausages from Saturn.
Hynek was interested in the contagion of sightings, possibly
prompted by self-suggestion or guided suggestibility, as oc-
curred in the famous Orson Welles radio program of the
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1930's. He was also interested in the interaction of groups
under such conditions.
I agreed that a small percentage of the sightings might
possibly be explained, or could be identified, in psychological
terms, and offered to “stage” a sighting for his observation. He
came up to TV station CJOH in Ottawa, where I tape my
syndicated show, on a selected night.
Conditioning fourteen subjects, I told them that when we
went to “black” for the commercial, they would return to the
audience, dress warmly and then proceed outside the studio.
Cameras had been set up outdoors, one of which would
monitor the demonstration for the studio audience. I assured
the subjects that when I came out and dropped a handkerchief,
they would see three flying objects. Assisting in the test was
news director Max Keeping from CJOH. His job was to inter-
view the subjects, on camera, before and during the “sighting.”
Along with Hynek and the studio audience, I watched the
subjects as we went to black for the commercial break. They
dutifully returned to their seats, collected coats and gloves and
then filed out into the night where Keeping was waiting. He
began to question them about UFO's, and most expressed
great skepticism.
I watched for a moment and then went outdoors to join
them, Dr. Hynek following. The night was clear, icy cold. Stars
were out. Mingling with them near the reporter, I pulled out
the handkerchief, wiped my forehead with it and then dropped
it In a few seconds the fourteen subjects were sighting three
flying saucers, pointing up and discussing them with Keeping.
Skepticism had vanished.
One man rushed back into the studio, asking permission to
use the phone to report UFO’s. Studio personnel, briefed on
what was occurring, refused his request. He returned outside,
bitterly denouncing the studio employees for their apathy.
I then said, in a loud voice, that it appeared to me that one
of the saucers was descending and that it would probably
hover over the station within a few minutes. Two of the
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subjects began running across the snowy field toward the
highway. I yelled, “Release,” and they turned back; the other
twelve subjects responded to the same signal.
Keeping began asking them about the saucers. Uniformly,
the subjects either laughed at him or questioned his sanity. No
one had seen “flying saucers.”
Dr. Hynek was very interested to know exactly what they
had seen. We all returned inside, out of subfreezing weather,
and I suggested that the fourteen subjects back into their
imaginative mental discovery. They responded in considerable
detail including descriptions of shapes and designs of the
UFO’s. The colors varied; some saw yellow saucers and some
saw green. Notably, no subject saw more than three saucers,
the exact number I had suggested.
Later that night the astronomer concluded that suggestibility
had played a much larger role in UFO sightings, where more
than one person was involved, than previously thought. People
had hallucinated saucers or huge metal cigars. It was not a
distortion of reality but a sighting of “nothing.” What triggered
the hallucination? The answer to that would be as complex as
any Martian visitor.
In the case of the fourteen subjects in Ottawa, they
responded in the heat of the experiment and afterward, but in
a comparatively short time they would have realized what had
happened, as with all cases of suggestibility. The psychodrama
keyed by suggestion is never permanent.
Individuals who continue to report “private” incidents with
UFO’s, as though selected by that other intelligence as contact
person for the “earth planet,” have to be suspect. There is no
physical evidence to back up their sightings. The attention
given to them or the commitment made to themselves on the
initial sighting probably forces them on. Nonetheless, they are
quite capable of contagion within a group, as is the person who
genuinely hallucinates and genuinely believes he has spotted
a spaceship from another galaxy.
126
[5]
Other than Adolf Hitler’s madness, one of the first and most
dramatic examples of mass suggestibility in modern times is
Orson Welles’s Mercury Theater radio presentation “The War
of the Worlds,” first performed on October 30, 1938, over the
CBS network. Only on radio could “The War of the Worlds”
have created such mass hysteria; only the genius of a Welles,
relating the fictional landing of a Martian spaceship in New
Jersey, could have made it work. The realism of his script and
presentation, combined with sound effects, played directly into
ready and willing imaginations.
The people who actually began to believe that the United
States had been invaded from another planet were not naive or
particularly gullible. Those who had no doubts at all, con-
vinced that bulbous, sulfuric heads were among us, simply
possessed a greater degree of imagination. They included
college professors and newspapermen. Obviously, people who
tuned in late were more receptive. Listening to the tapes, a few
minutes into the show I got the feeling that it was a live news
broadcast—which, for the sake of realism, was Welles’s intent.
The “you are there” technique is an image stimulant.
To reconstruct briefly Welles’s control of human imagina-
tion that night—and I doubt he had any idea of the frontier he
had crossed or the silent machinery of suggestibility that he
activated—there was a readiness for acceptance. It had been a
dull run of weeks and months, and historically, incidents of
this sort usually take place in times of doldrums. Besides, a
certain amount of unplanned conditioning had occurred.
Imaginations and natural curiosity had been whetted over the
years by articles in newspapers and such magazines as Popular
Mechanics and Popular Science, by elaborate and imaginative
drawings of spaceships and Martians, by “Buck Rogers” and
127
pulp science fiction. The moon and other planets were visible,
possibly inhabited by creatures. A key element by this time
was that man was flying. He could even fly from continent to
continent, witness Charles Lindbergh. Beyond that—who
knew? Projection, then as now, was not difficult.
So when afictitious reporter, mike in hand, approached the
spaceship in New Jersey to give an on-the-spot description,
broadcast remote from where it was all happening, the ele-
ments of suggestibility were lined up like psychic cars in a
midnight train. Any gaps could be filled, even expanded, by
average and normal imagination.
As the reporter got closer and closer, describing the intense
heat, gasping and finally losing his voice, no wonder a portion
of the audience swallowed Martians and swallowed hard.
Suddenly there was dead silence, and then Welles, at master
control back at the station, said, “Come in, come in, where are
your”
That capped it.
One listener, later interviewed by the New York Daily News,
had climbed to the roof of a low building and described events
that were taking place across the river to an awed crowd
gathered below. “I see the lights increasing and some more
have landed.”
He cannot be faulted. He was not an idiot, nor was he
gullible. In his mind he “saw” those lights. He saw more
spaceships landing. Without doubt, he was stimulated by the
crowd below because he began to serve a role in the entire
psychodrama. Suggestively speaking, his imagination was
reinforced by the crowd and consequently he saw more of the
events in New Jersey, from his Manhattan rooftop, as he went
along.
That Welles did not really know the possible consequences
of stepping across onto an unknown plain comparatively larger
than earth itself was demonstrated both that evening and later.
I remember awakening one early schoolday in the forties and
listening to Prescott Robinson, on New Yorks WOR, an-
nounce that “The War of the Worlds” had been re-created the
128
previous night in Venezuela. At broadcast’s end the listeners
were informed it was only fiction. Their fright and then rage
ended with the burning of the station and the death of two
announcers,
Another and different example of group suggestibility comes
from my own home. I was a small child when I first heard my
father’s story of “the Headless Man,” and since he has not
changed a word of it, not even an inflection, in thirty years, I
take it to be true. The truth lies in what he thought he saw.
With two teen-age friends, my father went to visit a relative
in a nearby town in Pennsylvania. They walked the distance of
about twelve miles, since they didn’t have a car or horse.
During the afternoon they were warned to leave well before
dark, otherwise they might meet “the Headless Man” on the
bridge en route home. This warning had been issued on other
visits, but my father had never heeded it. Neither had he ever
crossed the bridge at night.
The boys laughed it off and it was almost dark when they
started for home. By the time they reached the bridge it was
total night. Walking abreast, the two friends to my father’s left,
they were talking about other things, but it is obvious they
were mindful, unconsciously, of what they might encounter.
My father then became aware of a sound or vibration to his
right and looked. Keeping precise pace with them was a man
dressed in black and seemingly devoid of a head. My father
glanced to his left and saw that his friends were running across
the bridge, having already spotted the night walker. My father
ran too.
He maintains that he did see “the Headless Man,” and his
friends, one of them still living, firmly backs him up. I don’t
deny that they “saw” something, but the picture, in my
opinion, was sent from the unconscious, similar to my own
reception of an image over a darkened theater, or on the sur-
face of a glass of water.
Unless a farmer was playing a prank, my father and his
friends had suffered momentary group hallucination. It is a not
uncommon, though sometimes frightening, phenomenon.
129
[6]
People are suggestible in different settings. A scientist may

not be suggestible in an auditorium, but may be very receptive
when he is alone, or in close rapport with a single person. An
actress, on the other hand, capable of great flights of imagina-
tion, can be carried away in the midst of thousands.
Emotions, of course, play a part. They lend to suggestibility.
The emotional “Sieg heil’s” at SS rallies in Germany were like
waves mounting in a storm, pushed by the winds of suggestion,
crashing higher and higher. The skilled controller can manipu-
late them as if they were musical instruments.
Exactly what part suggestibility played in unleashing Hitler’s
madness cannot be easily determined. However, the estimate
is considerable. Beyond his ability as a spellbinding speaker,
he apparently understood the power of suggestion and how to
use it to sway millions, bringing them to the roaring “Sieg
heils.” Too, he knew something of “hypnotic” techniques,
having sat in on more than two hundred demonstrations. The
average person, unless interested in the field or making a
clinical study, would not attend more than a dozen sessions in
a lifetime. Hitler’s early tutor was a German expert named
Eric Jan Hanussen, who was reportedly liquidated in 1934.
Hanussen was an intriguing man with a long criminal
record. He was a noted entertainer, columnist, soothsayer,
“clairvoyant,” opera producer, song writer, and counselor to
some of the Nazi social élite.
In the months before Hitler took power, Hanussen’s astrol-
ogy column repeatedly predicted “the Coming of the Messiah,”
though he didn’t name the housepainter as Germany’s new
Saviour. Once Hitler emerged, Hanussen began to predict
events of the Nazi party in various cities, days or even hours
before they would occur. Those accurate prophecies are not
too surprising, since he was privy to many secrets and his
130
predictions appear to have followed a careful plan. Soon they
proved fatal to the seer. Because of his knowledge, influence
and prestige, Hanussen was a target on June 30, 1934, in a
quiet country setting. Other executions of “dangerous people”
were carried out that same night in Berlin and Bavaria.
Hanussen had served his purpose.
Although I don’t understand German, a certain “attention-
holding” cadence can be established in listening to tapes of
Hitler’s voice. In films of his speeches, either by day or night,
objects that reflect light can be seen behind him. I doubt that
they were there by accident. As the speeches mount, lights
catch them. They flash. Hitler was the central controller, using
mass suggestibility that eventually made armies roll across
Europe. It is tragic that many of the dynamic figures of history
have been dictator types and that many have employed the
techniques of mass suggestibility, coming by it naturally or
guided by experts. A current model in world politics, almost
paralleling Hitler in persuasion, is Cuba’s Fidel Castro.
After a Manhattan concert, in which I described Castro’s
techniques as “extremely suggestible,” capable of holding
people in a verbal palm, a New York Times reporter, a Cuban,
came backstage to say, “I know exactly what you mean. I
listened to him one day in the square in Havana and didn’t
realize until he had finished that I had been standing there
almost five hours and was completely soaked from rain.”
That night I’d had subjects onstage for an hour and ten
minutes but they thought they'd only been up there for five
minutes. They were not in a trance. They'd been awake, as the
Times reporter was, as Hitler’s audiences were, as Welles’s
radio listeners were. The time distortion, the acceptance of lies
and Martians, was the result of being trapped in an imagina-
tive response.
The response can easily be turned physical. During the
period of the great religious revivals that began in the United
States around 1804, many participants, particularly in Tennes-
see and Kentucky, fell to the ground, apparently senseless,
while listening to the preacher. Another form of the epidemic
131
hysteria was the “jerking exercise,” which began with the arms
and then extended to the neck and shoulders. A third variety
that appeared at the revivals was a “whirling exercise” in which
the carried-away sinners whirled like tops. It would begin with
one or two participants and then spread throughout the open-
air meetings. Response to suggestion is at the bottom of the
religious manifestations of the Holy Rollers, the Shakers and
the New Lights.
In 1922 a mass hysterical response occurred at a high school
in North Carolina. Cadets were parading on a hot spring
afternoon and four keeled over. Several girls then fainted in the
grandstand, Before the suggested reaction ran its bizarre
course, an estimated sixty people had toppled.
In the broad aspect, involving both mental and physical

responses with all its potential for good, guided suggestibility
or suggestology has the potential for incomparable, paralyzing
evil when used to sway masses.
The Chicago riots at the 1968 Democratic convention did
not just happen. Neither did the riots at Kent State University.
They were guided by central control of agitators expertly using
the power of suggestion. The crowds, after a point, were un-
knowingly responding in a hypersuggestible manner. They
were wide awake, functioning normally in every sense except
that of a rational mind.
Most of the high school and college students in both places
will at first angrily deny any psychic influence, simply because
they were not aware of the careful and gradual mind condi-
tioning that had taken place prior to the riots. Nor were they
particularly aware of the inciting key words being used by the
roughly two dozen organizers or controllers, most of them men
in their fifties.
During the four days of Chicago some rather old but still
sophisticated conditioning techniques were employed, al-
though they were outwardly the picture of innocence, youthful
exuberance and pleasure. Mixed in with the rock music,
dancing and some use of narcotic stimulants were key inflam-
132
matory phrases—mind plants that would bloom at the proper
moments, Mass movement, heat, noise and racing pulses need
little but the power of suggestion, in any setting, to produce
mob reactions.
Dancing has long been used as a conditioner. The war
dances of the American Indian were not intended to calm the
braves. They were drummed out for the more efficient use of
the tomahawk. African tribal dances are often purely “sugges-
tive,” in more than a sexual sense. Long ago they were used to
“psyche up” the warriors prior to battle, to build morale and a
single-minded purpose. Football pep rallies have much the
same purpose.
Some of the marches in Chicago were subtle conditioners,
notable for the chanting of key suggestive phrases such as,
chiefly, “Get the pigs.” Other marches, in contrast, were sub-
dued and nonsuggestive, probably indicating that no ultramili-
tant controller was in the line.
Similar to dancing, marches provide a mass body, generating
a unified instrument which can be, if purposely programmed,
used for mind control. Introduction of a symbolic chant tends
to bind the mass. The “Ho-Ho-Ho Chi Minh” of the Chicago
streets, an import from German student demonstrations, was
symbolic rather than suggestive.
As to phrasing, in any type of conquest, football or war or
riots, there may not be enough time for critical thought, so
numbers or symbolic words are substituted to ignite a “sponta-
neous” reaction. In the case of some disturbances, current and
years back, reaction was not “spontaneous” at all as it affected
the subjects, or properly, the victims. It was programmed.
Once the conditioning is accomplished and the mob ignited,
the job of the professional controller is to sustain the riot
action by continued use of the power of suggestion, moving in
to toss more verbal napalm where the emotional fires are dying
out. Central control is necessary. Without it, few riots will last
longer than several hours. Like an explosion, they tend to
splash to the outer part of the human circle, diminishing in
intensity.
133
As part of a study of mass psychology, narrowing eventually
to mob control, done as a personal interest, I interviewed
numerous students who were involved at Kent State. I also
talked to a number involved in Chicago. Roughly one half of
my appearances each year are on college campuses and most
times there’s a lively give-and-take bull session after the con-
certs. But having this weekly, monthly contact with students,
I could not clearly understand the sudden shift to violence in
1968 and 1969. I did make a guess that some of it had to be
controlled.
The President’s commission and other, independent reports
affirm there had been tension in the Kent State community
long before the actual outbreak. On occasion it had reached
the point of terror. Sometimes baskets of broken glass were
dumped on the heads of pedestrians, setting the stage for
counterreaction.
Before it peaked, the conditioners again employed the
dancing, rock music and key wordings of Chicago. The results,
of course, were tragic. But in my findings they were predictable
and inevitable as long as the conditioners, and controllers,
were permitted to operate. To deny them that right is another
matter, perhaps without solution. Yet as one who profession-
ally practices “suggestibility” and knows its power, I tend to
agree with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes that no one has the
right to yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater if there is none. The
situations are parallel; civil liberties are involved in both.
After fomenting experimental riots on college stages, using
only the power of suggestion to create the climate for violence,
simply to prove a point, I've had students come backstage to
say, “Now I know what you mean when you say ‘suggestive’
techniques were used in Chicago [or Kent State]. I was there
and see the similarity in approach.”
This does not mean that the students were not willing, even
desirous of participation, of gladly joining in violence. It does
mean that the emotions of the participants were calculatedly
programmed and that many of their responses were totally
uncritical. The students were, in brief, “used.”
134
I’m fully aware of the peace-movement passions and issues
involved, of the bitter disappointments, of the purpose and
steadfast beliefs. I'm sympathetic to them. Yet, as a steady
practitioner in the use of the power of suggestion, I also know
that Chicago, Kent State, Berkeley, and other examples of
student disruption that led to self-defeating violence could not
have occurred without programmed incitement. The high
school march on Mayor Lindsay’s office in New York did not
“just happen” on the spur of the moment. The late Senator
Everett Dirksen was quoted, “. . . some of the men in that
group were the same faces as in Chicago.”
Following the August 1970 meeting of state university
executives in Chicago, a meeting called specifically to exchange
information on campus tensions and the fall semester outlook,
the Associated Press quoted an unidentified top administrator
of a large Midwestern university as saying: “I think it’s clear to
us that there are a bunch of pros at work, cynically manipulat-
ing our students. Compared to them we're a bunch of amateurs.
If they want to shut us down, they can.”
The candid admission that the universities could be shut
down was frightening. But manipulation by power of sugges-
tion is almost unbeatable if those responding are unaware of
the techniques.
Traditional and increasing targets for radical movements,
campuses present both comparatively easy access to masses
and the open-mindedness of the young. They also usually have
one or more professors in residence who sincerely believe in
one or more radical causes. They gladly espouse, if not pro-
mote, their cause. Academic freedom must continue to assure
opportunities to air any cause, far left or far right. However,
to maintain that freedom, on campus or off, students and
faculty may now have to learn some hard facts about the
science of suggestibility—its negative and explosive factors, at
least. Nazi Germany is a lesson.
Appearing at an Eastern university in 1969, I was quickly
made aware of a movement, being manipulated largely by an
off-campus nonstudent group, that was gathering momentum
135
toward violence. My estimated audience that evening would
number about three thousand, and the administration warned
that there might be an attempt to use the mass gathering for
other purposes. In defense alone, I decided to discuss some of
the negative factors of suggestibility and demonstrate the role
of controllers. I think the point hit home. A number of the
demonstrators were present but no attempt was made to take
over the stage or the mike.
Coupled with the negative factors of suggestibility, it
strongly appears that all people tend to lose some degree of
responsibility in a mob, feeling that they can eventually put the
blame on those around them. They become less a part of the
decisive factors. Obviously the conditioners or controllers take
advantage of this protective coloration.
Not long ago, a New York psychologist decided to conduct
an experiment on individual response as compared to multiple
response in an identical situation. He placed an ad offering a
job and then used his office as a “lab.” It contained several
chairs and couches in addition to a secretary’s desk. A focal
point was an overhead vent, used for heating and air condi-
tioning. At a precise moment, smoke was fed through the vent.
When one applicant was present, he rose immediately to tell
the secretary that there might be a fire in the building. When
two applicants were present, it took a longer time for them to
warn of possible danger. When five were present, none got up
immediately. In fact, several pretended they didn’t notice the
smoke, taking on protective coloration.
Dr. Freud appears to have been correct when he noted that
man has a sheeplike quality on occasion, seeming to respond
as a herd when grouped together. Control is possible with the
emergence of a leader. Had one person in the room with the
smoking vent assumed leadership, the four others would no
doubt have responded immediately, “Yes, I do see smoke.”
In riot cause and control, Congress might do better spending
a few dollars on a handful of books written in the 1880’s and
18g0’s than appropriating massive expenditures for commis-
sions and investigations after the fact. Dr. Boris Sidis, with -his
136
Psychology of Suggestion; Dr. Hippolite Bernheim, with Sug-
gestion Therapeutics; Dr. E. W. Scripture of Yale University,
with Power of Direct Suggestion; as well as Ivan Pavlov of
Russia, Albert Moll of Germany, and Otto G. Wetterstrand of
Sweden—all explored mass human reactions almost a hundred
years ago, and the factors remain the same. They are more
explosive today because there are more of us around, usually
very prone to suggestion.
As a dominating force in our lives, suggestion won't go

away, politically or otherwise. As advertising, based mainly on
suggestibility and persuasion in all its visual and aural forms,
we wake up with it and go to bed with it. As with all com-
munications it is open to devious uses, and furor several years
back over “subliminal advertising” was warranted if only for
the purpose of investigation.
The idea behind it was reprehensible. Flashing almost
imperceptible designs or words on movie or TV screens to
influence buyers was an unparalleled concept in deceit. The
possibility that it might succeed, dominating millions silently,
was almost too staggering to contemplate.
It was first tried in drive-in theaters, where the word
“popcorn,” fitting indeed, was projected subliminally. Some
reports indicated that sales were increased. Then it was dis-
covered that many of the theater operators had moved their
vending machines into more prominent positions to take full
advantage of this new low in friendly persuasion, Finally one
operator raised the sensible question: Is the sales increase the
result of subliminal huckstering or better position of the
poppers? The latter was indicated.
New Jersey was the first state legislatively to ban subliminal
advertising and then all the networks banned it, practicing
another type of mass hysteria. After the initial outcry was over,
psychologists looked into selling by flash perception. There
was no concrete evidence that the customer bought because of
the flash, if he even saw it.
137
Yet the Orwellian attempt remains as a clear warning against
tinkering with public forms of communication for purposes of
mass persuasion. Suggestibility also has its “1984” aspects in
the hands of an expert.
Lval
The late Edgar Cayce, “the sleeping prophet,” has now be-
come somewhat of an American saint in the peripheral areas
of ESP. It is a role that he probably did not envision, nor
would have wanted. Some of his readings, meditations and
comments have been fashioned into a multitude of books
bearing such titles as Edgar Cayce on Atlantis and Edgar
Cayce on Jesus Christ. They tend to diminish what appears to
have been a remarkable and unusual display of psychic power.
Except for Edgar Cayce, I have not been able to accept
much “clairvoyance.” But there is every indication that he had
a gift, or developed some unusual technique, that could be
applied to medical diagnosis. The talent, or whatever it was, is
now known as “traveling clairvoyance.”
At set times Cayce, in Virginia Beach, or wherever he
happened to be, concentrated on diagnosing a patient’s illness
in a distant place. Thus far his “hits” have defied explanation.
They have been probed from every possible angle by both
medical and psychical researchers. Nothing conclusive, pro or
con, has ever been established.
The problem with an Edgar Cayce, rare in any century, is
that his success in healing encourages others who do not have
similar gifts. The door is opened to those who plan fraud as
well as to those who honestly believe they have “hidden”
healing powers. For the victim, there is little difference between
the quack and the well-intentioned friend who has achieved an
alpha state as the result of a four-day course in mind control.
Advertised in many major newspapers and magazines, the
138
courses promise a greater control over emotions, a greater
ability to relax, a greater potential for achievement and general
all-round greater happiness, all sterling goals. A few advertise-
ments claim that “abilities to practice ESP can be achieved,”
and that if one stays for the full four days, abilities to achieve
the alpha state, or some other state, are said to be possible. One
such course, disastrously, even hints that “medical diagnosis”
is possible in such astate.
Recently, after a concert in Texas, I had dinner with the
sponsor group. One attractive, apparently intelligent guest
said that she had taken a mind control course; had achieved
the alpha state and was now convinced that she had diagnostic
capabilities. She said she had diagnosed stomach cancer in a
friend and was now practicing “mental medicine.” Had she
told the friend of the exact diagnosis? Well, no. She didn’t want
to upset the lady. Besides, the patient seemed to be improving.
My remark that both parties were suffering from a “dangerous
delusion” brought about wild anger.
Some two years ago I enrolled one of my own friends into a
mind-control class in New York City simply to monitor it. I
was dying to know what went on. One of the first class
exercises was to unite in a single thought to end the Vietnam
war. A second exercise was to unite in a thought to save the
life of a boy who was in a terminal condition at a Manhattan
hospital. Three months later, with the Vietnam war still raging,
and the boy dead, I had my monitor call the group leader for
an explanation. The answer was, “God did not feel the time
was right.” God had to take the blame. However, my friend
did report that he thought he had achieved the alpha state.
You can achieve the so-called alpha state, which is a dif-
ference in brain-wave patterns on the EEG, while reading
this book. All you have to do is lift your eyes, daydream; just
relax and daydream; let your eyes go out of focus, drift and
daydream—float off mentally.
If you have an EEG handy, there'll be an alpha response
on it.
139
Even as a layman, I do not see how the alpha state, which
somehow ends up smacking of a “trance,” can contribute to
diagnosing a bunion. It goes back to Mesmer’s day: A patient
would be paraded in front of a “hypnotized good subject” who
was said to be practicing “lucidity.” The subject would then
diagnose the patient’s illness, sometimes prescribe medicine.
The patient, of course, paid for such psychic deliverance. Very
possibly, he also died.
There are several good “mind” courses but they stay well
away from diagnosing ailments. Within the limitation of a few
days, they are as beneficial and as acceptable as the Dale
Carnegie courses. Depending on the individual they can, and
do, increase an ability to relax and exert greater control over
the emotions. They are largely in the “think positively”
category, thanks to Emile Coué and his “Day by day in every
way I am getting better and better.”
A step beyond and yet a step back is psychic surgery. It
comes full circle to the ancient “faith healers,” even to
Mesmer’s belief that electrical energy healed. It is the possibil-
ity of, healing through “fingertip” energy, with or without
religious aspects.
Already Russian scientists, breaking ground again, claim to
have recorded a strange energy force between mother and
child. Further, photographs of a “mysterious corona” in the
fingertips of certain faith healers, taken by the Kirlian process,
with film exposed by pulsed electrical charges, indicate that
additional research is worthwhile. But no area of psychic
phenomena, no matter how ridiculous it seems, should remain
unexplored.
Experimental work is being done in several clinics to “think
heat and warmth” into the hands. Subjects sit with eyes closed
and imagine that warmth is passing into their hands. A slight
rise in the temperature of the hands has been noted in sug-
gestible subjects. No one knows where it will lead, but it might
be of minor aid in circulatory problems.
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An offshoot of this work is the possibility of some relief of
migraine headaches. An application, or “laying on,” of warm
hands to the head of the subject has appeared to alleviate
migraine pain in some experiments. Perhaps a form of indirect
suggestion takes place, causing a change in pressure on veins
and arteries, So, imagination may be able to play a role in
something as common and frustrating as the migraine. Though
experiments of this sort must fall into the “far-out” category,
in terms of what is known about psychology, it is alone signifi-
cant that Stanford University is delving into psychic surgery.
Suggestion may also play a role in acupuncture, a treatment
every bit as controversial as psychic surgery or faith healing.
Prior to a treatment, Chinese doctors often lecture the patient,
showing charts of the acupuncture points. This is followed. by
the procedure known as moxibustion, the rubbing of heated
herbs into the flesh in the areas to be treated. The herbs have
the odor of incense. These factors are suggestible in the con-
ditioning sense.
Due to interest in acupuncture, and having a half-formed
theory about the part that suggestion might play in the treat-
ment, I invited an expert to appear on my television program.
We discussed the procedures and then the expert pushed a
needle into the fleshy part of my announcer’s hand, between
the thumb and the forefinger. Bill Luxton said that he “felt no
pain.”
Four audience volunteers, all middle-aged or over, had been
requested to remain outside the studio during the discussion
and needle demonstration. I then brought them inside, seating
them on the stage, side by side. After a few minutes of ex-
planation, I took an acupuncture needle and tapped the left
hand and wrist of each subject. I did not penetrate the skin but
tapped with enough force to have caused a reaction in an
unconditioned person. They were aware of a sensation but felt
no pain. The suggestion was through the needle. Their re-
sponse blocked the needlepoint.
Next, I requested all four subjects to close their eyes so that
141
they could not see which hand I would touch. I pinched the
right hand of the first man very hard. He winced. The same
reaction was achieved in the lady sitting next to him. Through
suggestion, and the coupling of imagination, they had desensi-
tized their left hands without the use of acupuncture.
Acupuncture is apparently much more than suggestibility
but there appears to be a linkage of the two, and that linkage
warrants investigation.
Healing will always be the most dynamic as well as the most
dangerous single area of psychic phenomena. Despite tons of
research, the emotions, and exactly how and when they inter-
lock with the physical, are frustrating riddles. They play a part
in many familiar incidents that occur far from the uncomfort-
able corridors of faith healing or acupuncture.
Liberace once approached a woman in his audience who
had been paralyzed and lame most of her life. He touched her.
Promptly, she got up and walked. It was hardly faith healing.
That elegantly dressed entertainer was as astounded as the
lucky lady. Emotionally triggered autosuggestion?P Who
knows?
Putting on a performance of radio’s Truth or Consequences
in a service hospital, Ralph Edwards was told of a man who
couldn’t walk, though there was no apparent cause. Switching
the format, Edwards brought in people from the man’s past.
At show’s end, after giving the patient a charm bracelet, with
all his friends and relatives gathered around, Edwards, at the
suggestion of a psychiatrist, said, “Now, sir, here is your car,
and the keys to it. Come over and get them.” The patient
shook, paused, rose up and walked across the stage. Emotion-
ally triggered suggestibility? Perhaps. Out of this incident a
very emotional show was born—Edwards’ This Is Your Life.
Vivid in my own memory is an evening at a private party
about six years ago. I had seated eight subjects in chairs and
had told them that they would soon be leaving on a train trip
and that they would describe the countryside and the towns
they passed through as the train rolled along. I said I would
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give them a signal—they’d wave good-bye to relatives, and
then the train would start. We did not take that imaginary trip.
On my signal to depart, a young girl raised her arm to wave
good-bye and there was an immediate outcry from many of the
other guests in the room who were observing. The girl had not
been able to lift her arm for three or four years because of a
previous injury. Physical and psychiatric therapy eventually
restored full use of the arm.
It appears that reactions in all of these cases were completely
automatic. None of the patients were considering their infirm-
ities at the moment. Suggestion went its own course.
[8]
It is probable that many people, with a limited concentra-

tion span, can never achieve telepathy, although the basic
equipment is there. Thought perception takes years of sensitiz-
ing. Few people are inclined to spend the time and effort.
However, the use of suggestibility, as an extension of our
normal use of suggestion, is possible for almost everyone.
Salesmen employ it daily but few realize the total potential. Of
course, to bring it to the refined state approaching the science
of suggestology would also require years of effort.
But autosuggestion, as I practice it, is within easy reach of
every human. With relatively little training and effort, it can be
used: in countless ways. No mind-control course is necessary,
not even a “how to” book. Simplicity, not in the process but in
utilization, is its chief asset. After a point it becomes as natural
as sleeping and eating.
In one respect, autosuggestion is the absolute antithesis of
the scientific method, which is to believe only what is observ-
able, or based on past observations and explainable only ac-
cording to scientific data. Admittedly, autosuggestion is also
143
contrary to common-sense dictates. Despite science and the
rules of common sense, it works.
As mentioned before, the key to the successful use of auto-
suggestion is one word—conviction. An old hymn says: “All
things are possible, only believe.” Another says: “Faith is
victory.” All things are not possible and faith isn’t always vic-
tory, but in this case, ridiculous as it may sound, the conviction
key carries more weight than science.
Conditioning is necessary. Call it autoconditioning or any-
thing you choose. It is composed of a series of mental exercises
that lead to the use of autosuggestion. However, they come in
the usually palatable form of relaxation. In this game, as in
most games, there are a few loose rules:
1. Make up your mind that you are not going to concentrate
intently on the exercises while you practice them. If you do,
how can you relax?
2. Be passive. Melt mentally. The imagination must be given
a free rein. The unconscious functions independently of the
conscious, so what may seem irrational is not. Suggestion and
imagination work hand in hand again, so the widest mental
plain should be opened.
With these two general guides in mind, the sequence for
autoconditioning may be roughly patterned as follows:
1, Sitting in a deep chair, or lying down, make yourself
comfortable.
2. Reflect for a few seconds on an experience in which you
have achieved extreme relaxation—perhaps while spending a
quiet afternoon on the beach, or falling asleep in front of a
fireplace after a walk in the snow, or lying in deep shade on
a riverbank. Recall as much of the experience as you can.
3. Close your eyes and think of your favorite passive color.
Blues and greens work best for me.
4. After a few seconds, take three deep breaths. Hold the
third, the deepest, and mentally repeat the color three times.
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5. Exhale and go limp. Make no effort to move a muscle.
Simply stay relaxed and count backwards, mentally from fifty
to zero; very slowly. At zero, count forward from one to three.
Open your eyes.
And that routine, consuming all of five minutes, is the first

step (in my home-grown method) toward autoconditioning,
which, in turn, sets the stage for successful autosuggestion.
There are other ways to go about it, but I prefer the simplest
route.
After doing it several times, you may find you lose track of
numbers or perhaps skip a few. It doesn’t matter. You'll end up
on zero, which is the conditioning goal for relaxation.
During the first two weeks, practice three times daily, pref-
erably at different periods of the day. It means closing off
the world around for fifteen minutes, a time period which even
the most harried mother and housewife or busiest executive
should be able to afford.
Beginning with the third week, the sessions can be reduced
to twice daily, but should not drop below that quota. Many
people who have tried it prefer to maintain three a day, finding
the experience pleasant rather than boring.
If miracles are not expected, if you don’t question what is
occurring and allow nature to take its course, you'll find you
are increasing a level of general relaxation affecting both the
muscles and nervous system, at the same time setting up con-
ditions for autosuggestion to succeed.
Basically, it is accomplished by not trying to relax but by
permitting the body and mind to take advantage of submission
set up through the conditioned mind.
Relaxation can be learned, and even for the hyperactive
individual it should not be overly difficult. Most experts on the
subject concentrate on reducing body tensions. Once the body
is relaxed, they maintain, the mind usually slacks off, too. The
procedures are reversible, of course.
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If you find that the easiest path to relaxation does not lead
directly from the mind, then you approach it physically:
1, Sitting or lying down, immediately tense all muscles. Now

relax and let go each set of muscles. Let your right arm go
limp; then the left arm. Your right leg, then the left. Drop the
shoulders, the back, the trunk. Even the eyelids are capable of
reacting to a signal to relax.
2. As you initially relax each arm and leg, you'll find that
other muscles are relaxing sympathetically. It is difficult to let
go the tension in one arm and not have a response in the other.
We return to the theory of the “whole” being; each member of
the body is part of the whole body.
This sympathetic reaction of the muscles also illustrates how
an attitude held in thought tends to affect the whole system. It
is impossible to relax the body without a similar reaction in the
conscious mind.
With this reverse course of conditioning now accomplished,
and in only a few seconds, you can go back to the steps of
thinking of a relaxing experience, a passive color, and the
counting, from fifty back to zero.
Gradually, using either method, the process of conditioning
can become such an integral part of your daily mental and
physical nourishment that you'll find it a fortification against
tension at home or in the office.
In time, the progressive relaxation can be dropped and
instant relaxation can be achieved through mind control. The
mind will do its job, on signal, responding in a few seconds.
I’ve taught several beleaguered, harried TV announcers how
to “come off it” in less than thirty seconds.
In the grind of today’s world, this use of mind control for the
purpose of relaxation alone would seem worthwhile. Fortu-
nately, theory is not involved. Biofeedback researchers have
established, through electrodes attached to subjects, that
certain thought patterns can lower metabolism. Naturally, they
can also increase it. Individuals who become skilled in the use
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of autoconditioning can relax while running or walking simply
by feeding thoughts that work for them.
Conditioning having been achieved, the mind readied to
receive and accept its singular important message, cleared of
trivia and turmoil, the processes of autosuggestion are possible.
Within these processes I have a theory that the unconscious is
alerted and readied to become the holding place, perhaps the
ultimate guiding place, for the thought.
The signal, or thought, can be something as simple as
arousing promptly at 3 a.M. without use of an alarm, instant
sleep on an aircraft, or the need to imbed a key answer to a
troublesome exam question; an act of self-improvement,
combating a habit or alleviating pain. I have used all of these,
and many more, at one time or another. The limit is within the
individual.
Pre-sleep autosuggestion can be a normal extension of its
use, providing longer and deeper rest. We often take worries
and problems to bed with us. As negatives, they forecast a
restless, tossing night and possibly disturbing dreams. While
total erasure may be impossible through autosuggestion, posi-
tive aspects can be implanted and will aid in sleep, and facing
the new day with the same old problem will be easier.
Studies at the Maimonides Medical Center’s Dream Labora-
tory have proven conclusively what had long been suspected—
the sleeping period is far from dormant. During certain
periods, the mind remains active and awake. There are also
indications that it attempts to recuperate, and dreams are
frequently important escape valves for accumulated pressures.
People are thought to be especially responsive to ideas and
suggestions during the earlier periods of sleep, estimated at the
first half-hour in the average person. This period, then, is the
ideal time for the mind to receive and integrate constructive
and acceptable suggestion.
The value of sleep-learning by recorded messages is, at best,
woefully limited. It is likely that any learning process would
have to take place during the early period, and there is no
147
gauge as to the depth of the impression, if any takes place at
all. In truth, the best response, in my experience, is the
technique of introducing suggestions prior to falling asleep.
My method of pre-sleep conditioning goes back to Coué,
stressing the positive. It doesn’t need to be his exact famed
slogan, but it should build self-esteem and look to a brighter
personal tomorrow.
Although it may sound as if you're indulging in ego-
polishing horseplay, assume your favorite sleeping position
and mentally repeat “Autosuggestion is becoming the key to
my daily self-improvement” or some variation. Even better is
to create your own personal slogan, using vivid references. The
slogan should be repeated twenty times. Move your lips as if
you were speaking it aloud. Simultaneously, count on your
fingers. Press each one against the thumb as the suggestion is
repeated silently. Without realizing it, you’re practicing both
a mental and physical exercise. If you need to make it sound
important, it’s known as a psychophysical exercise.
The sequence should always be completed the first seven
nights. After the first week or so, dozing off before completion
will not disturb the pattern. Your lips will move and your
fingers will press, carrying over into the doze.
Feed-in of the pre-sleep autosuggestion—whether it is to set
a “timing device” in your mind to awaken at 6:30 A.M. or to
probe the unconscious for a lost bank statement—is then
coupled with the conditioning prior to the point of drifting off.
“Where is that bank statement?”
Is it necessary to go through such a seemingly absurd
routine, one so foreign to the average intellect? In most cases,
I think it is, I think that the mind needs to be primed much as
a carburetor primes an engine. I'm at a loss to know why some
people reject the idea of intermental communication.
Practicing the simple arousal routine often, depending on it
to catch the next jet for a play date, I’ve often wondered
whether or not my unconscious literally “views” the clock at
the appointed hour or whether it counts down from the time I
148
went to sleep. How does it precisely awaken me at a specific
time? I don’t think that anyone knows.
Once again, the suggestion is quite temporary. It wears off in
a few minutes to a dozen hours, and in the case of self-
improvement, such as a golf game, must be reinforced con-
stantly.
In cigarette smoking, the person who quits after one session
of “hypnosis” or suggestion is primed to quit. He wants to quit
and only needs a push. He must then carry on his own treat-
ment by autosuggestion.
In achievement in job or career, autosuggestion is a rein-
forcement toward the aim. The aim is held in the mind and the
signal is reinforced daily. In this instance, it reverts back to
Peale’s “power of positive thinking.”
I remember sitting for an interview with news reporter
Taylor Holbrook in the Schaefer House dining room, Phillips-
burg, New Jersey, in 1966. Holbrook, of the Phillipsburg Free
Press, had forgotten his notebook. Laughing, he said, “Why
don’t you hypnotize me, make me remember everything.” I
went through a systematic technique employing suggestion,
and reinforced him several times during the two-hour conver-
sation. Later, from total recall, he wrote a story of about a
thousand words. However, it was his own mechanism, his
acceptance of the fact that he would “remember everything,”
that enabled him to retain the details. His response indicated
he might have accomplished the same thing through auto-
suggestion, reinforcing himself.
It is impossible to begin to cover the range of autosugges-
tion usage. In Russian experiments it is applied to cosmonauts
to distort time. Through visual imagery occupying the mind,
it can shorten time within the space capsule. An ordinary ex-
ample of this is possible during any flight. Stare out of the win-
dow at cloud formations and think of something entirely
removed from the aircraft. See it mentally, savor it. Ten min-
utes can become one.
Golf has a peculiar problem, I believe. Unlike basketball or
149
football, the player can become too self-indulgent between
holes. He competes with himself as well as with the other play-
ers. He has time between shots to reflect on the mistakes of
the last hole and worry about the next one. There is ample
time to feed in negative information which may well affect
his play. With autosuggestion, he can deflect the negative and
turn it positive.
Although the removal of pain by autosuggestion is a myth,
as it is by “hypnosis,” it can be somewhat deadened or divided.
It can be made to feel “detached.” If imagination can con-
vert a mere touch of the finger into a shooting pain, as has
been proven by suggestibility, then this same mental tool can
be employed, in some circumstances, to alleviate severe agony.
It cannot remove it, and the time span is limited.
I think the dangers of the use of autosuggestion for pain
alleviation are exaggerated. Some psychiatrists claim that auto-
suggestion may have lasting negative effects because a pain
is being masked, This falls into the category of a thousand
different psychological “may have’s.” So far, there is no factual
support to indicate that a person who uses his mind to allevi-
ate pain, something the human species has probably been do-
ing since creation, will suffer later mental damage. However,
he may delay needed medical attention.
The real danger in autosuggestion, in my opinion, is that
people will expect results, in any given situation, beyond its
capability.
ia
The first definitive American work on “hypnosis” was writ-

ten by Dr. George H. Estabrooks, professor of psychology at
Colgate University. Titled Hypnotism, it was published in
1943. Though it was my scientific bible for years, I now con-
sider it, and most other works in the same field, as science
150
fiction, I arrived at that conclusion eight years ago after
“hypnotizing” an estimated thirty-five thousand people.
For nineteen years I had believed in Estabrooks and the
sleeplike “hypnotic trance,” practicing it constantly. Though
I had nagging doubts at times, I wanted to believe in it. There
was an Overpowering mystique about putting someone to
sleep, something that set me and all other “hypnotists” apart.
We were marvelous Svengalis or Dr. Mesmers, engaged in a
supernatural practice of sorts. Then it all collapsed. For me,
anyway.
The Svengalian phenomenon has quite a history. A number
of European medical doctors and journalists believed that
Austrian physician Franz, or Friedrich, Anton Mesmer (1733-
1815) was nothing but a dangerous fraud; others eventually
claimed he was the true father of “hypnosis.” Events have
proved he probably doesn’t deserve either lot.
Ultimately chased out of both Vienna and Paris for his sup-
posedly crackpot theories, Dr. Mesmer’s discovery and down-
fall began when he became fascinated with magnets and
experimented by holding them over his patients. Some, he dis-
covered, reacted by shaking or having spasms, then appeared
to be cured of their illnesses or manifestations of illness. For
a time he was convinced that the lodestone electrical force
was a curative.
His fascination is understandable. Medicine was still rela-
tively primitive in the eighteenth century and the magnet was
one of the most mysterious objects on earth. Well before Mes-
mer, Catholic Father Maximilian Hell, who has been lost in the
history of “hypnotism,” toyed with magnets.
Mesmer had begun healing with them in Vienna, but his
clientele was mostly limited to the wealthy and bored. That
circumstance often seems to have crawled over to today’s psy-
choanalysis couch. However, the élite took interest in his work
and spread the word. Mozart, for one, commented on it after
Mesmer helped a “blind” pianist regain her sight. As frequently
occurs, the psychological cure had its penalty: Mesmer lost
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favor with Maria Theresa’s family because the pianist’s in-
come went down when she was no longer “blind.” There was
no audience sympathy.
After further experimentation, Mesmer decided that per-
haps his own magnetism, and not the iron he was holding,
was responsible for healing. He then began to theorize on ani-
mal magnetism: that certain human beings could exert a mag-
netic or force influence over others; that it could drain out
illness or other negative factors. Psychic surgery?
In 1766 Mesmer wrote a book entitled De planetarum in-
fluxu, now a collector’s item avidly studied by students of psy-
chic medicine, on how the stars and planets influence human
beings. Adopting some theories of the oldest occult belief, as-
trology, he quickly gathered a following.
In practice, Mesmer and his disciples, termed “magnetists”
by that time, treated patients with stroking gestures, discard-
ing the magnet, causing energy to flow from their fingertips.
It was current-day faith healing without religious aspects. The
patient did not go limp when the treatment supposedly took
effect. They went into fits. Eyes closed, they shook all over,
screamed, fell on the floor, banged their heads violently, then
went limp, perhaps from exhaustion. Mesmer called this the
“crisis,” believing that it was a necessary factor in effecting
the cure.
How his theory evolved is not known, but there is suspicion
that a lot of his patients in Vienna were narcissistic, self-
indulgent hypochondriacs. Their problems might have re-
sulted more from boredom than from anything else. Releasing
tension with loud screams and writhing was a cure of sorts.
As the story goes, one of his most learned disciples was the
Marquis de Puységur, who lived in the bucolic village of Buz-
ancy near Soissons, France. Enter a peasant boy in his teens
named Victor Race. He suffered from violent headaches and
was told to go to the local “magnetist,” or “mesmerist,”—the
marquis. Now, Victor had never seen a demonstration of “mes-
152
merism” and had no idea that he was supposed to throw a
fit before he was cured.
He sat down in the traditional way and the marquis be-
gan his flowing gestures which started at Victor's forehead
and continued down to his feet. Victor apparently didn’t
know what to make of this, but his eyes did close and soon
his head nodded.
The marquis waited. No tremor, no screaming. He was puz-
zled but finally asked, in essence, “Are you all right? Can you
hear me?”
Obviously very relaxed, Victor reportedly answered in a
faraway voice, taking on a role, “Yes.”
The marquis then said a few other things and the boy an-
swered. He was asked to move his arm. After a pause Victor
moved his arm in a lethargic way. Soon the marquis discov-
ered that whatever the boy was told, he did. He moved, talked
and responded to suggestion. He looked to be “asleep” and
therefore the marquis decided he was in a “trance.”
At the end of the session the marquis made gestures in
the opposite direction, upward, as usual, to “de-mesmerize”
the patient, throwing away the invisible now-spent “magnetic
fluid.” He finally got the boy to open his eyes and asked how
he felt. Victor responded that he felt fine but had difficulty
in remembering what had happened.
The marquis, convinced that he had discovered a new psy-
chic state, didn’t know what to call it. Eventually he settled
for “somnambulism,” sleepwalking, derived from the Latin
words somnus, “sleep,” and ambulare, “walk.”
Medical writers and psychologists interested in the field
have pinpointed the Marquis de Puységur incident as the first
formal discovery of “hypnosis,” growing out of Mesmer’s ear-
lier experiments. In truth, Victor was responding in a different
manner to the same old modality—suggestion. More impor-
' tant, if the story is true as we know it the boy knew nothing
about “mesmerism” or what to expect, or how he was sup-
posed to act. But apparently he was suggestible, and here was
153
a man making gestures over him, not too far removed from
a mother stroking a child’s head to console. He relaxed.
Downward passes of the hand tend to cause blinks. In his
case it could have been misinterpreted as an instruction to
close his eyes. From his point of view, something was certainly
expected. The easiest and simplest reaction was to close his
eyes. But aside from the absence of screaming and writhing,
there was really nothing different in this session and prior
“magnetist” sessions. Both ended limp. Victor just didn’t have
to go through the preconditioning of a self-induced fit. Within
twenty years, mesmerism shed its staged fits.
There were occasional exceptions and they still occur. A
subject who is inclined to be hysterical, particularly one with
exhibitionist tendencies, will scream during a suggested state.
Early Sinatra and Elvis Presley and later the Beatles created
much the same phenomenon, including fainting, without mag-
nets or “hypnosis.”
Notable is the fact that most of Mesmer’s “séances,” as he
called them—not in the spirit sense but in group participa-
tion—had interaction between people, today’s group therapy.
Of course, some of the same interaction was evident in Sina-
tra’s appearances in the forties. Aided by drugs or not, it ap-
plies to present rock concerts. “Sent” and “far out” are not
idle terms.
Not surprisingly, Mesmer was hounded. Medical concern in
both Vienna and Paris, aimed at eliminating quackery, was
the principal cause. A lesser reason was that Dr. Mesmer was
getting both attention and patients. Traditional vested med-
ical interests have always moaned at the mention of psychic
healing.
Even Benjamin Franklin found himself involved in the Mes-
mer controversy. In France to request aid for the new Ameri-
can states in 1784, he was asked to judge mesmerism as part
of a commission. In a separate opinion, Franklin said there
was no proof of a special “mesmeric ability” and that the
“claims of mesmerism for lucidity were unfounded.” Then
154
Franklin made a devastating remark, for that time: “. . . the
response of the subjects was imagination.”
What Dr. Mesmer had really found, in my opinion, was not
“hypnosis” but suggestive response, the climate of triggered
sensitivity that has always existed in man. He groped, and
with the marquis, put his finger near the trigger, unknowingly
making a valuable contribution.
Despite the rude treatment of Mesmer, France soon became
the center of medical “hypnosis.” Jean Martin Charcot, Pierre
Janet, Hippolite Bernheim, Bertrand, A. A. Liebeault and La
Fontaine all explored it with varying results.
Freud, becoming interested after witnessing demonstrations
by a Danish entertainer named Hansen, attended the lectures
of Dr. Charcot, Europe’s leading psychiatrist in the 1850's.
Charcot had decided that only hysterical people could be
“hypnotized,” mainly the mentally ill, and often lectured at
Salpétriére, using the mental institution in Paris as a labora-
tory. He was the first prominent psychiatrist, but not the last,
to go completely astray in the field. His voluminous writings
on the subject of medical “hypnosis” have largely been dis-
credited.
A vain, Napoleonic figure, Charcot never personally “hyp-
notized” any subject, which was a great mistake. He em-
ployed several assistants to achieve the state. They worked
constantly with about six subjects, all women. Both laymen
and doctors attended the demonstrations as if they were freak
shows. Even the most disreputable stage “hypnotist” would
have considered Charcot’s routine disgraceful and demeaning.
After he died, the same subjects he used for medical experi-
mentation would put on a Sunday afternoon show at Sal-
pétriére without being “hypnotized.” For a few coins, with
no aid from Charcot’s assistants, they would exhibit pain en-
durance, stretch themselves between two chairs and exhibit
other familiar routines. They were not quite as “mad” as Char-
cot had estimated.
In contrast, retiring Hippolite Bernheim was pointing out
155
that the true “hypnotic” response usually occurred in normal
people, or the relatively normal—that it was, in fact, sugges-
tion. Dr. Bernheim was the first to say publicly that the “hyp-
notic sleep trance” did not exist. He wrote an unpopular paper
on the subject and it is still treated as contaminated pulp in
many quarters.
But the man who contributed the term, a Britisher, Dr.
James Braid, began as a disbeliever. He attended a perform-
ance of La Fontaine’s. At first Braid called La Fontaine a fraud
but changed his mind after a series of demonstrations. He
then invented the term “neurohypnotism,” later shortened
to “hypnotism,” from the word Hypnos, the Greek god of
sleep, brother of Thanatos, death,
Near the end of his life, Braid began to understand more
about the phenomenon and attempted to change the word
to “mono-ideism,” meaning “one thought.” However, Braid was
stuck with “hypnosis,” and so are we. In fact and fiction, in
medicine and in entertainment, it will likely be forever identi-
fied as a state of sleep. At best, it is a very false and needless
sleep.
France made a contribution toward the truth through
Coué, who was billed by press agents as a psychotherapist
but in actuality was a pharmacist who had become interested
in “hypnosis.” After creating a stir in Europe, Coué came to
America in 1920 preaching but one thing, his “better and bet-
ter in every way.”
Although he was an expert in “hypnotism,” Coué eventually
shunned it. Instead, his efforts were toward self-improvement
by suggestion without the drag of a trance state. Oversold by
publicity and finally discredited, his preachment ended up as
passing fancy. Despite the somewhat silly-sounding bromide,
Coué was on the right track. And his bromide, now employed
in autosuggestion, is not as silly as it sounds. Self-esteem is
recognized as the single most important item in mental health.
Although Bernheim, Janet and Braid, among others, gave
“hypnosis” a feeble recognition as something more than “mes-
156
merism,” it has always been under a cloud, either feared or
jeered. For more than a hundred years it has been the butt of
“evil eye” jokes and cartoons, What could be worse for its
image than to have men like Rasputin, Count Cagliostro and
Adolf Hitler practice it? It’s remarkable that no “hypnotist,” of
record, has ever been burned at the stake.
Yet, even in vaudeville days, probably the lowest point of
respectability, there were legitimate and responsible stage
“hypnotists” doing two-hour concerts and actually “hypnotiz-
ing.” In contrast, the performers who had twelve-minute seg-
ments on the circuits used “horses,” assistants who traveled
with them from town to town. They rejected local volunteers
as being “unhypnotizable,” and beckoned their “horses” up.
Little wonder that it was labeled phony.
[ 10]
There are many methods of inducing “hypnosis,” and in the

comic strips even cats have now found their methods for
“hypnotizing” mice. The Svengali-Trilby relationship is end-
less. The “hypnotist” says, “Look at something on the wall.”
It can also be a candle flame, watch fob, key ring, or a
marble on the table. The object is usually small. As a fixed ob-
ject, a mountain obviously presents difficulties in narrowing
attention.
Then: “Your eyes are getting heavy. So heavy. So very
heavy. They can’t be kept open. You're blinking. Your arms
are getting heavy. Your legs are getting heavy. You're becom-
ing drowsier . .. and drowsier ... and drowsier ... you
want to sleep. . .”
The subject is literally conned into what the “hypnotist”
- thinks is a “trance.” He has boxed this mind, separated it for
his own control. He believes the subject is in a state where he
is completely unaware of his own existence within the body.
157
After all these years, many “hypnotists” still do not realize
that it is very difficult for most people to stare fixedly. The
natural tendency is for the subject to blink. He “waters” his
eyes for lubrication. But when the subject hears the “hypno-
tist” say, “Your eyes are blinking,” he thinks, “The ‘hypnotist’
is right. My eyes are blinking. I am responding. It’s working!”
At that precise moment he is emotionally involved. He is be-
ginning to believe that he can and will respond. He has been
sitting still, and development of “sensory awareness” has be-
gun. The arm that can itch so easily with no “hypnotist” within
ten miles can also become “heavy” simply by suggestion.
Then the curtain opens on the playlet between the “hypno-
tist” and the slumped-over, “entranced” subject. In this psy-
chodrama, there is considerable action on the part of both
performers.
I slowly realized that the possibility existed that the “sleep
trance” was an invention passed along from Mesmer’s days. I
went back to Bernheim’s writings and suddenly “hypnosis” be-
gan to reek. I now realize that as a teen-ager I submerged
doubts while working with Anna Piukutowski. I had been told
that when a good subject entered a deep trance, the “rap-
port” ‘would be so strong that (1) the subject could not hear
anyone except the “hypnotist,” (2) the subject would ignore
any directions and even the physical presence of outsiders.
With Aunt Anna deep in an apparent trance, I would impress
on an audience her complete separation by having people
come up to say, “Aunt Anna, wake up.” Each time I noticed
that she would begin to stir, moving her head. I’'d quickly end
the test. Obviously, I was afraid she would awaken, and also
afraid to admit she could hear other voices. Plainly, she was
never “asleep.”
Twenty years having passed, I decided to use my stage
shows as an experimental laboratory. In the second half of the
program, prior to “hypnotizing” anyone, I tried to induce them
to do the same things without setting up a “trance.” There
would be no “sleep,” no slumped-over posture.
158
At first, possibly because I wasn’t certain that it could be
done, I had many failures. But as the months went by, I be-
gan to improve on my techniques. As a showman, I had
learned how to get attention and the trust of my audience, a
prerequisite for accomplishing anything by “suggestion.” It is
also one explanation why medical “hypnosis” has never been
very productive. Very few doctors are skilled at it and are un-
able to work with it constantly.
With audience volunteers, complete strangers, I edged into
it by first attempting to read their thoughts. This was mainly
a crutch for me, and had little to do with their later response.
After that, I finally succeeded in doing everything previously
labeled “hypnotic” by simply getting their attention: freezing,
at my suggestion, in an awkward position; seeing things that
weren't there; imitating well-known entertainers; finding their
hands spinning, one around the other. It took two years to
perfect.
Throughout it all, I kept going back to the nonscientific,
“nonhypnotic” example of Ralph Edwards. Through audience
interaction and encouragement, and a form of suggestibility,
he had achieved almost the same things in the television ver-
sion of Truth or Consequences. He had people doing the wild-
est things without the slightest mumbo-jumbo or dangling
watches or saying, “You're getting drowsier and drowsier . . .”
He enticed them, motivated them, and “paid” them, in terms
of awards.
There was a solid basis, I believed, on which to question the
“sleep trance,” which has always been the chief manifestation
of “hypnosis.” And as much as anything, it has been the spooky,
mystical state which has foundered the true “hypnotic phe-
nomenon,” whatever it is, on the rocks of the occult and other
nonsense. I decided that if modern science had not been able
to understand the phenomenon in more than two hundred
years, explain how or why it really works, then it was open to
many questions.
I’m now convinced that no person under “hypnosis” has
159
ever been asleep unless sent to that nontrance happy state by
the lullaby drone of the guide. I am convinced that there is
no such thing as a specific state, condition, trance—call it any-
thing with any twist of semantics—that can be considered
“hypnosis.”
Brain-wave patterns on the electroencephalograph will
show that a person supposedly in a “deep trance state” pro-
duces exactly the same patterns as if he were totally awake.
A polygraph test will prove that the subject is aware of every-
thing that goes on. Therefore, he cannot be asleep, unless the
definition of sleep is changed.
Simply to make it worthwhile as a scientific endeavor, pay
for time involved, I’ve offered twenty-five thousand dollars to
anyone who can prove, conclusively, the existence of the
“hypnotic trance.” Over a period of three years, my challenge
has been accepted on three occasions but abandoned each
time. The EEG and polygraph are formidable opponents.
One by one each manifestation of so-called “hypnosis” has
been discredited:
(1) The sleep trance has been discredited.
(2) The unconscious state has been discredited.
(3) Regression has been discredited.
(4) The hysterical state has been discredited.
(5) The conditioned-reflex state has been discredited.
If all these theories have been discarded by reputable au-
thorities, dating back to Dr. Braid, we are left with the di-
lemma of trying to define a supposedly abnormal state or
condition without a scientific barometer to make positive judg-
ment. What causes us to respond to suggestion cannot be
readily explained. Therefore, it must be called “hypnosis.”
Otherwise, it poses a threat to our reasoning.
The battle of semantics may be waged for years, but I firmly
believe that what is termed “hypnosis” is, again, a completely
normal, not abnormal, response to simple suggestion. But for
many reasons, not the least financial, it will be mystically
mined for a long time to come.
160
At the risk of being passed off as an idiot entertainer who
has reached a true state of psychosis, I believe that research
scientists in “hypnosis” have continually made one colossal
mistake—that of not being strictly scientific. Their controlled
laboratory experiments, often with the same people, “good
subjects,” bring about predictable results. A commonly used es-
timate is that only one person out of every ten is a “good
subject.” The researcher is apt to use a “good subject” both
to save time and to gain “deep” results.
Within the lab, there is little astounding about inducing a
subject to feel “light” or “heavy” or imagine that he is in Haiti
or on the moon. What is amazing is that most researchers
have never gotten around to establishing the fact that the
subject, in his “trance,” knows that he isn’t in Haiti or in a
crater. More amazing, though, is the fact that all but a few
medical “hypnosis” experts completely accept the “trance”
state.
One scientist who has dismissed the “sleep trance” and
“hypnosis” is Dr. Barber of the Medfield Institute. Supported
partially by federal funds, Dr. Barber has made countless ex-
periments and has written more than one hundred papers on
the subject. His findings are often met with wailings and re-
criminations in the field because there is that usual dollar
mark on “hypnosis.” Entertainers, doctors, dentists, psycholo-
gists, writers and hypnotists of a dozen varieties make money
from it.
Dr. Barber reached the firm conviction, far beyond Bern-
heim’s position of long ago, that there is no evidence of any
special condition of “trance” that we currently label “hypno-
sis,” or anything slightly suggestive of it. In his lab he has dem-
onstrated, as I've done onstage, that most normal people can
be motivated and persuaded in a wide-awake state simply by
applied suggestion.
What happens is more in the realm of Coué and of Peale’s
Power of Positive Thinking than in the freaky halls of Sven-
gali. Everything is within the person. He does not need to as-
161
sume an unnatural state to utilize mental capabilities whether
for fun, relaxing tension, pain suppression or achieving greater
potential. In addition, after all his extensive research Dr, Bar-
ber does not know “what makes a good hypnotic subject.”
Neither do I. Obviously some people are more susceptible
than others to this psychic response, by any name. But the
exact “why” remains unknown, except that imagination and
creativity seem to help.
In our separate ways, both Dr. Barber and I have found
that if a subject is suggestible and has the capacity to accept
an idea, if he is properly motivated and willing, and if some
scope of imagination is present, he can be persuaded to do
every single thing that is currently done under the guise of en-
tranced “hypnosis.”
I'll use the oldest known example, which dates back to Dr.
Charcot, and perhaps to Mesmer: the rigidity state between
two chairs. Long ago I bridged Johnny Carson between
two chairs without use of “hypnosis.” I use Carson as an ex-
ample because, again, it was done in public, before cameras
and a live audience. Wide awake, Carson functioned normally
in every sense except that of muscular reaction.
Had it been “hypnosis,” the performance on network TV
would have been impossible due to restrictions brought about
by a:pair of concerned New York psychiatrists, Drs. Harold
Rosen and Herbert Spiegel. They succeeded in abolishing ex-
amples of formal hypnosis from television, reportedly for fear
of having the masses influenced.
At any rate, Carson was bridged between two chairs, head
on one, feet on the other, with singer Bette Midler sitting on
his stomach, Johnny knew where he was, who he was, and
what he was doing. Tapes of the show will prove that he was
talking throughout the demonstration without the faraway
voice of a trance. He said there was “no strain at all.”
As additional public proof, I’ve done it with Mike Douglas
on his show; on my own show with actors Eddie Albert and
Van Johnson; on the concert stage and in night clubs with
162
volunteers. They were wide awake. Admittedly, it is not ac-
complished with the method usually employed by the stage
“hypnotist,” the “become rigid, stiff, rigid, like a bar of steel”
method. Estabrooks did it that way; I used the same technique
for many years.
In the usual stage demonstration, someone can sit or stand
on the subject’s stomach, similar to the Carson test. But there
is a possibility of strain because the subject is so engrossed
in the “hypnotist,” so intent on achieving the bridge that he
is not aware of the strain. The muscles are locked. The “hyp-
notist” is the external influence, while in my method of pure
suggestion the subject takes his own directions to cantilever his
back, adjusting himself to the pressure comfortably. I’ve had as
many as three sitters on the subject without any evidence of
strain on his part, then or later. However, I wouldn’t select a
little old lady for the demonstration, although she’d undoubt-
edly be capable.
This type of presentation, always associated with “deep hyp-
nosis or trance,” brought about immediate allegations that Car-
son was “hypnotized” before the show went on the air and
that I then gave him a “secondary suggestion.” So far as I can
recall, I only saw him for a minute, to reassure him that he’d
suffer no physical harm, before going out to join his guests.
Not unexpectedly, most of the accusing mail came from “hyp-
notists” and not from the general public.
I appreciate the fact that some medical doctors are alarmed
at the prospect of an intrigued public attempting to bridge
chairs as a result of a demonstration or indulge in “self-
hypnosis” after seeing a TV show. The likelihood of either
experiment succeeding is in the same ratio as shooting a hole
in one after watching Arnold Palmer, and involves about the
same hazard. As to the effects on children, I'd rather have
them experiment with suggestion than watch most of TV’s
murder and mayhem.
The safety factor in “self-hypnosis” is that it doesn’t work.
No one has ever learned how to go into so-called “deep trance”
163
after reading a how-to book. I’m a prime example. I’ve tried
to “hypnotize” myself on hundreds of occasions. Nothing has
ever happened, It has always bothered me that I could put
thousands of people into “hypnosis” but not myself. I'm not
alone. Harry Arons, a professional in the field, flatly states that
“no one can learn self-hypnosis from a book.”
My own belief, based on personal experience, is that when
a subject is his own “hypnotizer,” he knows he is not going
to be entranced. The conscious may beckon him but reason
tells him no real trance is occurring. He works at it, and waits,
and waits. I have an idea he can wait until his hair grows
white. No one is there to convince him or guide him. He
eventually becomes disgusted, as I have many times, and talks
himself out of even superficial response.
Though I’m now attempting to shatter the “sleep trance”
myth, I strongly believe that the phenomenon of “hypnotic”
suggestibility has been overly maligned and made a goat for
endless reasons. Use of the “horses” in earlier years, and even
today; the fact that it is still shrouded in the unexplainable;
and because it occasionally offers a seemingly handy explana-
tion for irrational human behavior, all have contributed to a
shadowy reputation.
Several years ago a book by Robert Kaiser entitled RFK
Must Die theorized that Sirhan Sirhan assassinated Senator
Robert Kennedy after being “hypnotically” programmed. Ap-
parently this was the author’s own premise. It received atten-
tion on television and in some magazines. I was asked to
endorse it and perhaps appear in a film based on parts of the
book. I declined. The premise was entirely false.
During the Sirhan Sirhan trial a physician, obviously trained
in “hypnotic techniques,” was brought in by the defense to
testify that perhaps the alleged assassin had been “hypnotized”
prior to the shooting because he went under “hypnosis” so
easily. That leads into the “posthypnotic suggestion” area, of
course. We then have a “Manchurian Candidate,” which was
bang-up fiction. So was Sirhan Sirhan’s “hypnosis.” Had the
164
jury bought this theory, the future of felony defenses would
have had to include a session with a “hypnotist,” after which
the criminal could shed all personal responsibility and blame
it on his “trance.” It was a neat ploy on the part of the defense,
but it did not work.
In laboratories, where the “hypnotized” subject knows that
the gun handed to him by the professor is loaded with a
blank, hypothetical murder can be successful. So the professor
theorizes that the subject will fire that gun under real condi-
tions, as programmed. Every researcher I’ve talked to has ad-
mitted he has never tried it with a live bullet, for obvious
reasons. This lab experiment therefore remains theory. So does
the experiment with a vial of “acid” which is really water. The
subject flings it but knows he is not tossing acid with criminal
intent.
Rape while supposedly entranced is fantasy. Doctors and
dentists who practice “hypnosis” wisely carry insurance
against the possibility of a rape claim. But the woman who
cries rape and blames it on “hypnosis” is either a fraud or a
victim of her own imagination.
In the thousands of times that I was under the assumption
I had “hypnotized” people, I cannot recall a single occasion
when I was able to persuade a subject to do anything he or she
did not want to do. And these were mainly harmless, silly re-
quests. Even so, no subject complied, consciously or uncon-
sciously, unless he was willing to do so.
On four occasions, after being challenged by one psycholo-
gist or another, I have attempted to test the theory
of submission against the will. I took a butcher knife to a dem-
onstration in Bloomfield, New Jersey, and made a choice of a
young audience volunteer who had “gone under” rapidly. He
appeared to be an excellent subject, and was responding easily
to other tests. I told him that within five minutes after he
awakened and took his seat in the audience, he would have an
overwhelming urge to return to the stage. A butcher knife
would be on the table and he was to plunge it into my back. I
165
was confident that he would not do it; at the same time, there
is always a chance that this much-doubted theory is correct.
I admit to a slight uneasiness that day.
Five minutes later, as he left his seat and began to advance
toward the stage, a dropped feather might have made a noise
in the auditorium. It was not a lab setting, nor was the young
man a repeated experimental subject. He had a preoccupied
and detached look on his face as he reached the steps and I
turned my back. Slanting slightly, so that I had peripheral vi-
sion to my left, I saw him pick up the butcher knife. He had
some eight feet to go to reach me. When I saw him raise the
knife I had a sudden desire to run. But then, about two feet
away, he froze and I heard the knife hit the stage; I turned
and saw revulsion on his face. His knees buckled a bit and I
quickly reprogrammed him.
For the sake of both the demonstrator and the subject, it is
not a type of experiment that should be attempted very often.
My point in doing it out of a lab setting and with a subject
off-the-streets was to substantiate the “alter” theory that it is
not possible to program an act which is against the nature of
the subject.
Yet I’ve considered several flaws which have nothing to do
with the nature of the subject: he might believe that I had
protected myself with a steel plate, or that the knife had a
trick blade and wouldn’t cut—that it was, in fact, one of the
usual controlled lab experiments. Though remote, these cir-
cumstances are possible.
Eventually a question was posed involving one area of this
test. Would it be possible to “stop” the subject by means of
telepathy? I think so, and it’s an experiment worthy of_a try.
Theoretically the act is against the subject’s will, and any
mental persuasion would reinforce that will.
More than theory is the lack of evidence of any murder be-
ing committed under “hypnosis.” The classic case, one cited
by some medical authorities as proof of “suggestive crime,”
involved a man named Hardrup. Even Estabrooks, in a re-
166
cent reprint of his work, pointed to the Hardrup case as proof
of entranced crime.
Hardrup was in a Copenhagen jail for a period in the mid-
fifties. On release he robbed a bank and killed a bank official.
After he. was brought to trial, a Danish psychiatrist testified
that Hardrup had been “hypnotized” by his cell mate, a man
named Nilsson, and programmed to rob a bank—to Kill, if nec-
essary. Publications in the United States and other parts of
the world picked this up and it snowballed into a flat fact.
Articles and chapters in medical “hypnosis” books, and some
criminology books, still chant it as gospel.
The court, however, discarded “hypnosis” as a factor. The
jury was instructed to regard it as meaningless. The convict
“hypnotist” was proved to have been involved in spiritualism
and other occult attitudes. Games in this area were played in
the cell. But “posthypnotic suggestion” had nothing to do, in
the court’s opinion, with the vicious act in the bank. The rob-
ber’s cell mate might have suggested looting but the partici-
pant wasn’t “triggered” by remote control, nor did he commit
the act against his will. It isn’t possible. Nature seems to have
provided a safeguard against this.
Meanwhile the psychiatrist wrote a book devoted entirely
to the crime, placing all the blame on “hypnosis.” He failed to
change the jury’s decision, or later appeals, but managed to
influence minds, including Estabrooks’, on a world-wide basis
by another type of suggestion—speculation.
Another well-known case took place in England in the early
fifties. It involved an American stage “hypnotist,” Ralph Slater,
who was sued by a young lady he had previously mesmerized.
The girl’s expert witness was a medical “hypnotist,” Dr. Van
Pelt, who had, it was later discovered, a personal ax to grind
with Slater. Specifically, the girl accused Slater of “mental
damages and harm” and won the suit. Van Pelt had treated
her.
What is remarkable about the Slater case, in modern times
and in England of all places, is that he was not permitted to
167
face the jury lest he “hypnotize” them. Later the verdict was
reversed and Slater was proved innocent of “mental damage.”
But as usual, the reversal received little attention and it went
down in the books as further proof of the dangers of “hyp-
nosis.” England had passed legislation against the public prac-
tice of “hypnosis” as a result of the case but later relented, so
the Svengalis can again practice their sleeping sessions in
public.
“Hypnosis” was once more a psychical target when Dr.
Herbert Spiegel, associate professor of psychiatry at Columbia
University, presented the broadcasting industry with a test
conducted before a medical audience. As previously men-
tioned, Dr. Spiegel is one of the two psychiatrists who can
take large credit for the formal banning of “hypnotic” experi-
ments from network TV.
Two people were brought into a room and were requested
to sit before a TV set. Upstairs in another room Dr. Spiegel,
introduced as a specialist in medical “hypnosis,” looked into
his camera and spoke to the subjects below, eventually putting
them into a “trance.” He ordered them to raise their hands,
and then told one subject, a lady, that she could not lower hers.
The gentleman, a salesman, was unable to release his clasped
hands, These are routine, typical tests. They proved, it was
claimed, “that people could be ‘hypnotized’ by watching a TV
screen,” Startling!
Later Dr. Spiegel came downstairs to release his subjects.
The networks, rightfully alarmed at the possibility of home
viewers being “hypnotized,” reacted as expected. They
banned further “hypnotic demonstrations.”
Confident on the ground that I was on, I maintained that
Spiegel’s demonstration was misleading, I did not think that it
was a legitimate medical experiment, done with complete
strangers, normal composition of a home audience. To open
it to public examination, and to re-examination by the net-
work executives, I invited Dr. Spiegel to appear with me on
the Merv Griffin Show, not only to debate it but to conduct a
168
similar experiment under uncontrolled conditions, with as
many audience volunteers as he desired. He ignored the in-
vitation.
The element that disturbed me was the fact that Dr.
Spiegel’s subjects, the lady and the salesman, were not inno-
cent viewers in their living rooms watching a “hypnotic” dem-
onstration for the first time. The lady had been “hypnotized”
several times before by Dr. Spiegel or his assistant. The other
subject, so far as is known, had not been “hypnotized” pre-
viously by the psychiatrist, but then Spiegel’s team mate ad-
mitted it had been determined that the salesman was
“hypnotizable.” To me, this means they had met the gentle-
man before, had talked to him, had determined that he could
be “put under.”
Additionally, what made the experiment somewhat ques-
tionable, from a professional standpoint, is the fact that both
subjects were aware that they were participating in a test and
being observed by a whole battery of medical men. A reaction
was expected of them, and being readily “hypnotizable,” they
reacted. I believe that any good “hypnotist” could probably
put the lady “under” with a phone call, without need for a TV
monitor set.
Having been accused of playing a role in murder, rape,
swindle, alienation of affections, and suspected by learned
people of having the capacity to put a million video watchers
into trance, the “hypnosis” phenomenon will probably never
come out from under its own shadow. Some of its practitioners
do not materially aid in the emergence. A few maintain that
they can “hypnotize” certain animals and birds. They cite the
rooster as proof. It is known that that barnyard fellow can be
induced to stay motionless for a long time if you plunge his
beak down to earth and focus his eyes on a long white line. I
doubt that he’s in a “trance.” If the rooster is at all capable of
thought, he’s probably wondering what fool got him into that
crazy position.
Some have said that the only way a snake charmer avoids a
169
fang is through use of “hypnotism.” Patient study has revealed
that the cobra is fascinated by the movement of the charmer’s
body rather than the message in his eyes or entrancing fluting.
And years ago I almost fell out of my chair while watching one
of Steve Allen’s TV shows that dealt with bird-and-beast en-
trancement. The featured guest was Dr. William J. Bryan, Jr.,
director of the now nineteen-year-old American Institute of
Hypnosis, headquartered in Los Angeles. Dr. Bryan said that
President Kennedy’s Thanksgiving turkey might be more ten-
der if it were “hypnotized” prior to the falling of the ax.
Perhaps it’s healthier if “hypnosis” does remain under a
shadow.
Pie]
In 1958 the American Medical Association announced its

official acceptance of “hypnosis” as a legitimate aid to the prac-
tice of healing. The AMA is conservative, and certainly should
be where psychic phenomena are concerned, but the an-
nouncement came some two thousand years after the first
recorded hints of suggested response, in any form, under any
name.
In 1972, although public interest was higher than ever in
the entire field of ESP, medical interest in “hypnosis” was pre-
dictably on the wane again. It peaked in 1958 with an esti-
mated eight percent of the doctors and dentists showing some
interest, a lesser number actually practicing it. Now practice
involving “hypnosis” is estimated to be down to three percent
and will probably sink lower.
Since Mesmer’s day, there have been five distinct cycles of
public interest in “hypnosis,” with medical interest appearing
to be largely a feedback from the public, the same stimuli now
prodding ESP.
Although medical science will probably dispute it, I believe
170
more knowledge about “hypnotism” has been unwittingly con-
tributed over the years by the lowly stage “hypnotist” than
by medical scientists. Proportionately, the medical experience
is minute. Only a fragment of all people who have been truly
and legitimately “hypnotized” have been entered into that
state by doctors and dentists. The periodical medical disen-
chantment has usually come about through overselling.
It doesn’t cure as forecast.
It remains questionable as an aid in psychiatric treatment.
It is not reliable as a pain suppressant.
It is not the answer to diet problems, nor to alcoholism or
drug habits.
It has only succeeded, in a minor way, as a deterrent to
smoking and improvement in physical skills.
Recently the aforementioned Dr. Bryan of the American In-
stitute of Hypnosis claimed that a time would come when a
football team’s training schedule would call for a period on
the “hypnotist’s” couch. Further, he stated that a team physi-
cian could use “hypnotism” to set a player’s broken leg or
sprained limb almost immediately with practically no pain or
swelling, and the recuperative time would be diminished. Dr.
Bryan said this would be achieved “through subconscious con-
trol of the autonomic nervous system.”
It has never lived up to such claims and never will.
A number of athletes have sought “hypnotic” help with
varying results. Maury Wills, of the Los Angeles Dodgers, had
a leg problem during the 1962 season. “They ached,” he said.
“Or at least I got it into my head that they ached. I began to
worry.”
He reported that under “hypnosis” he was told to do ex-
ercises and that they would not be painful unless there was
something physically wrong with his legs. “It was amazing,”
he said. “I felt no pain. Of course, some people will say the
pain was all in my head in the first place, which is true.”
Other athletes have reported absolutely no results from
“hypnotic” sessions and that will be the continuing story—fail-
171
ures and successes, depending on the subject and on the “hyp-
notist.”
I worked with a golf pro in the New York area who could
no longer make a two-foot putt. I don’t play golf and know
nothing about the game, but I quickly discovered that the
man had simply lost confidence in himself. We talked and I
“suggested” ways that he might regain that self-confidence.
Soon he was making short putts successfully. “Hypnosis”
wasn’t the answer, nor was it needed.
A Boston Red Sox pitcher had lost his capability to pitch up
to his known ability and came to me, hoping I could help in
some way. He asked to be “hypnotized.” Instead, we talked
about his state of mind when he was pitching well and I dis-
covered that personal problems were at the root of his slipping
average. “Hypnosis” could neither have solved these prob-
lems nor brought them into sharper focus, aiding him to throw
strikes,
Where the claims are totally false for “hypnosis,” in my
opinion, are in the areas of changing basic personality. It can-
not happen with any known techniques. Any change in per-
sonality is apt to be temporary no matter what the “hypnotist”
suggests. For all of these reasons, at the end of the cycle of
interest, medical science practically drops it until the next
cycle. Hopefully, something is learned during the peaks of
interest.
Predictably, there was considerable hedging in the AMA ac-
ceptance. The previously mentioned Dr. Harold Rosen
headed the association’s committee on “hypnosis” and quickly
went on TV channels to discuss the rather abrupt change in
AMA’s attitude. As an interested observer, I caught him on
Art Linkletter’s House Party and other shows, and read his
statements in the press and magazines. He stressed the
tremendous dangers of “hypnosis.”
No dentist, no psychologist, not even a physician should
practice it unless he was also trained in psychiatry, said Dr.
Rosen. Above all, it should not be demonstrated on the stage
172
or over TV. The bibles were all but chained. In fact, it almost
appeared that no one should practice it except Dr. Rosen. It
was a rather astonishing position to take in view of the ad-
mitted fact that medical science does not know how “hypnosis”
works,
Dr. Rosen maintained that use of “hypnosis” should require
a prior in-depth analysis in order to fully understand the sub-
ject, or patient. Without such analysis, presumably at going
rates, Dr. Rosen claimed that a “hypnotic state” could be
“hazardous.” Further, he cited cases where, in his judgment,
it has caused temporary or permanent damage. One extreme
case involved a suicide, resulting from improper “hypnotic”
treatment, according to Dr. Rosen.
As a psychiatrist, Dr. Rosen had to know that the only pos-
sible scientific way in which to make a definite determination
was through an “in-depth” verbal examination of the de-
ceased. But I assume Dr. Rosen did not go to a medium to
accomplish this. Therefore, what he distributed to the TV
audience had to be more theory than fact, but it sounded
factual.
Medicine, unfortunately, joins stage entertainment in vested
“hypnotic” interests. As one of its values Dr. Aaron Moss, in
his book Hypnodonture, states that an “additional fee can be
charged.” In charging one hundred dollars for a single forty-
five minute session to break the smoking habit, Dr. Spiegel
cited the reason of not wanting to be “overrun” with patients.
A hundred dollars is reasonable enough but the point is—
medical “hypnosis” can and does make money.
Writing on the subject, doctors usually make a first-chapter
statement that there is “no great mystery about hypnosis,” then
proceed to drape it in mystery. That’s rather human but it does
substantiate the ego value in “hypnosis” which seems to go
hand in hand with the money value.
With or without the help of Dr. Rosen and the AMA, no
person should go to a nonmedical “hypnotist” for a medical
problem. If I have an ache, the last person I'll see is my local
173
“hypnotist,” and then only to trade reading matter. Medically,
in most cases, “hypnosis” has absolutely no value. Of course, I
have somewhat the same feeling about many psychoanalysts
and psychologists. I have about as much faith in the psychoan-
alyst’s couch as I do in flying carpets, and I'm now appalled at
some of the psychology I stuffed into my head, and fully be-
lieved, in earlier years.
Since creation, pain has plagued man and the single most
fascinating aspect of medical “hypnosis” has been its use as a
pain reliever. It has been repeatedly claimed that surgery can
be accomplished under “deep trance” without the patient feel-
ing anything, and that dentistry can be accomplished without
any sensation of pain. It simply isn’t true.
Under so-called “deep hypnosis,” the patient is aware of
every cut or prick but apparently through his own defensive
mechanism rejects it as pain or transfers it or divides it up.
Everything is felt and the polygraph can prove this. Addition-
ally, I've interviewed many patients and not one has denied
the “awareness” of pain.
Working as a consultant with a qualified physician, Dr.
Robert Stein, I've conditioned more than two dozen expectant
mothers to have their children without anesthesia or with very
little chemical anesthesia. In postnatal interviews, all admitted
being aware of the pain. They either rejected it or transferred
it. For instance, we trained one young lady, having her first
child, to sing through the labor pains and think of other things.
The discomfort diminished, but through her own mechanisms
and not mine. She “suggested” her pain away but was not in a
“trance,” nor under “hypnosis.”
In conducting tests with Dr. Barber outside the laboratory,
away from more or less controlled responses, we discovered
that those people who were able to reject pain accomplished
it, basically, in one of three ways: (1) Concentrated on some-
thing else—an incident in their lives, a person, a tranquil set-
174
ting. (2) Made believe they were apart from their bodies. (3)
Disbursed the pain.
“Tve got to work with it. The pain is here but I'll divide it
up over my jaw. It isn’t all in one place now.” This is not “hyp-
nosis.” It is self-generated use of natural autosuggestion.
For centuries, mothers and fathers have been practicing a
form of it. When a child bumps his head or hurts his hand, the
mother often consoles him: “Johnny, you hurt your hand. Let
me kiss it. We'll make the boo-boo go away.” Depending on
the injury and the intensity of the pain, the child is eased; the
pain is “sent.” But the mother did not produce a “trance” to
accomplish it; no words except those of instinct and love. The
healing was within.
In early surgery, without anesthesia, an estimated five to ten
percent of the patients, according to medical reports, submit-
ted to the knife without moaning or stirring. They seemed to
resign themselves and showed little or no outward sign of pain.
How did they do itP With no other explanation available, it
had to come from within. They apparently handled their situa-
tion by natural autosuggestion. This means that the ninety
to ninety-five percent who manifested great pain were appar-
ently not capable of utilizing self-suggestion or other mental
defensive mechanisms.
Where the emotional leaves off and the physical begins is
another admitted unknown, according to medical science. For
a time, psychosomatic medicine was simplified to the point
that for the laymen it meant that a physical problem created a
mental problem or vice versa. Those expert in the field knew
differently, soon realizing there was no easy way to isolate
the two. We are “whole,” totally interconnected. A common
cold affects the outlook on life, our mental attitude, as well as
the ability to function physically. A toothache is disturbing to
the mind function as well as to the physical function.
The human mind may well be the most important key to-
ward working with that “whole.”
175
[ 12]
Able to pull a rabbit from a hat at the age of ten, practicing

levitation before I needed to shave, and having discarded the
only crystal ball I ever owned when I was seventeen, I find it
hard to buy much of the occult at the age of thirty-seven. But
I’m sure I'd feel more kindly toward mediums, seers, star-
gazers, witches, vampires and werewolves if a sizable portion
of the millions of Americans who purchase occult services and
wares of one type or another weren't being bilked.
Not everyone who believes in ESP believes in the occult,
but every occultist I've ever known, and that numbers quite a
few, accepts ESP for fact, often using it to authenticate their
own special mystic art. In size, the occult swamps both the in-
terest and endeavor in legitimate psychic phenomena. Out of
my library of more than three thousand titles on psychic
phenomena, some two thousand deal exclusively with the oc-
cult. They are interesting to read, often amusing, but most, I
think, should be placed on the shelf with ghost stories.
With a history dating back almost to the beginning of man,
occultism has been a many-tentacled octopus eating away at,
and confusing, serious research in telepathy, clairvoyance,
psychokinesis and other related fields of ESP. For good reason
the general public, as well as a portion of the scientific com-
munity not involved in parapsychology exploration, has sel-
dom separated the two distinct areas. Certain to last until
man’s end, growing as population increases, even spurred by
technology backlash, the occult will continue to put gruesome
warts on parapsychology, twining in and out of genuine
phenomena. With one set of long jeweled fingers on reality,
the other hand of the secret arts grasps a combination of reli-
gion, folklore, imagination, ignorance, insanity and the unex-
plainable desire of man to believe in the impossible.
176
Occult bookshops flourish in all the major cities. The pub-
lishing end of occultism alone is worth millions, even to
thriving Book-of-the-Month-type clubs. A late check of the
paperback racks reveals dozens of titles, from former carnival
lion handler Anton Szandor LaVey’s The Satanic Bible to Do-
It-Yourself Witchcraft, The Power of Prayer on Plants and
The Cosmic Forces of Mu.
Other available wares would astound an old sorcerer. Ritual
potions, oils for concentration and good karma and psychic
sex, even aerosol sprays for better prayer are offered, along
with black-magic kits and séance kits and apparition kits and
such ordinary items as crystal balls, new or used; plans for
astral projection; teleporting instructions; formulas for invisi-
bility; and courses in everything from palmistry to the under-
standing of Zoroastrianism, the ancient Persian religion of fire
worship.
What might be considered predictable, youth being explora-
tive as well as easily led, is that the most of the occult buyers,
except those who follow astrology and purchase prophetic
staples, are under the age of thirty. They are also white, and
middle-class, although the occult has its fair share of celebrants
in the wealthy suburbs. Many have been to college, and a few
pass as intellectuals but appear to be ignoring reality, for the
time being. Perhaps that’s the name of the whole game.
Hardly surprising is that hippie communes throughout
America are reporting many incidents of psychic phenomena.
Already pointed in the direction of the paranormal, embrac-
ing astrology, reading tarot cards and I Ching, the Chinese
book of forecast, they are often self-conditioned for imagined
experiences in clairvoyance or telepathy. Dr. Krippner, of the
Maimonides Dream Laboratory, studied the experiences in
twenty-two communes. His findings suggest that mind-altering
drugs and yoga-type meditation were no doubt responsible for
most of the psychic experiences. When consciousness is altered
over an extended period of time, people tend to provide their
177
own frame of reference to validate religious or paranormal
occurrences.
In mid-June 1972, Time magazine devoted a portion of an
issue to the occult explosion, terming it a “substitute faith.”
This is the area that can eventually send bats screaming out of
the occult belfry. The other areas. seem to rise and fall as
crystal balls become cloudy or crack. In addition to LaVey’s
colorful Church of Satan, duly recognized as a religion and
incorporated under California laws, with a membership that
cuts a wide but infinitesimal swath in society, there are an esti-
mated hundred, or more, other occult denominations in the
United States, all fulfilling metaphysical needs of one sort or
another. They vary from old-fashioned spiritualism to nuclear-
age science groups. Whatever the brand, they have in common
a moneymaking capacity. The occult “clergyman” is often well
rewarded.
One of the current fads in the occult field is astral projec-

tion. There are psychics and mystics all over the world who
flatly claim they can send their “other body,” or soul, on ex-
ploration or observation trips around the universe, supposedly
whistling through space. A few are sincere; some may have
produced a manifestation that satisfies them as being an actual
experience. Hard to swallow, though, is the “other body,” in
detached form, soaring like an invisible bird. It is either
psychosis or a rousing good dream.
However, dreams are a natural, normal form of astral
projection. In that sense, all of us take astral trips almost
nightly. We are released to mind travel. Fortunately, most of
us accept the fact that the mind stays where it should stay,
after cavorting a bit, projecting imaginatively; the only body
we have remains in bed. We awaken whole, with a good or
bad memory of the trip.
Dreams often occur in the early stages of natural sleep, very
often when a person is still partially awake, but asleep, too, as
we know sleep, which is another scientific mountain to climb.
178
It happens to every normal person—an awareness that you are
in a room but still somehow in a dream, too. It can only be
attributed, at this point, to mind distortion.
Additionally, most people have occasionally experienced a
feeling of “floating away” from themselves when falling asleep.
A further infrequent step in the dream state is the actual
observation of the detached dreamer—astral projection but
nonoccult. A person sees himself from the third-person point
of view in all sorts of surroundings, with other persons, known
and unknown. Obviously there is sometimes a feedback from
the body which increases a type of dream autosuggestion. Also,
a type of mental telepathy is sometimes thought to be involved.
Many people have dreamed of levitation; they have seen
themselves floating above the ground or running above it,
much to their amusement and enjoyment, and much to the
amazement of those observing below. One possible explanation
is that sleep has made a part of the body dormant; numbness
has set in. Even in the half-awake state, the person can feel
flotation; he is no longer touching the bed.
This same phenomenon goes a long way toward explaining
the yogi who steadfastly believes he has levitated himself after
sitting in his yoga position for hours, legs crossed beneath him.
Circulation has been cut off. So far as he is concerned, eyes
straight ahead or closed in meditation, he has no feeling of
roosting on earth. In his mind, where it counts, he is literally
floating.
Of all the occult pastimes, astrology is closest to fun. Yet I
don’t believe we are predestined, which is why I can’t resolve
star guidance. I treat astrology like perfume: I can savor it but
I don’t wear it very well.
While I honestly attempt to be charitable about another
person’s occult beliefs and am often asked, in the question-
and-answer period after a college performance, to put bless-
ings on a kinky branch, the only safe reply is, “I don’t believe
it.” Some occultists almost plead for public substantiation, no
matter how slim. I can try to fence the question by truthfully
179
saying I’m not an authority or claim I’m not acquainted with
that particular cult, or “spirit contact is a phenomena that we,
ah ... don’t understand . . .” but the psychic door is left
open a crack and a coven of witches fly through.
Once I had a wild idea to gather all the promoters of the
occult—the mediums, soothsayers, seers, Satanists, palmists,
phrenologists, mind travelers, devils, vampires and voodoo
doctors—to a psycho-fest in Madison Square Garden and let
them do their things in booths, orchestrated and stage-lit. It
might be the greatest show on earth and a bit beyond, entirely
commercial. The only drawback I could see was that another
two million people would become converts.
[ 13]
The core of a séance, for good or evil, knowingly fraudulent

or genuinely believed, is suggestibility. After the conditioning
of hymns and holding hands, the sitters are emotionally
receptive to signs of the departed ones. If they were not, how
could one “sitter” recognize a glowing blue form as her
deceased husband? The glowing blue form could be fashioned
into any of a thousand different objects, but suggestion directs
it to be the late Mr. So-and-so, at least to the eyes of the
widow.
If delusion is desired, practically anything is possible in a
séance. In a darkened room, after the proper verbal condition-
ing, usually with religious overtones, the skilled medium can
mechanically produce manifestations that are rather convinc-
ing. Emotionally charged, the person desiring contact with a
deceased loved one is an easy victim.
But manifestations can be produced ina totally dark room
without a medium and mechanics. My own experiments,
conducted with friends, have produced colors, shapes and
movements within twenty minutes. We knew why we were in
180
the room but I was not acting as a medium; I did not speak
after the lights went off. The effect was like one of those picture
spreads in the National Geographic of fish in Stygian black five
miles down in the ocean. The manifestations were imagined.
They were self-generated by those within the room.
After observing many séances, and having taken part in a
few, hoping to learn something, I’ve never seen or heard any-
thing that would legitimately indicate that one or more per-
sons have ever communicated with the “spirit” of the dead.
Tn some cases, I’m certain the medium steadfastly believed that
he or she has penetrated the world beyond. Autosuggestion
may play a part in this, the medium acting out a fully
believable psychodrama in his or her mind. Or it is possible
that telepathy, in which the medium is receiving from the mind
of the living “dear one,” seated nearby, is involved. Mediums
of this type are seldom paid. Their reward is a sick fulfillment.
The séance permits the role of God for an hour. But the
majority of the “spirit” contacts are staged, cruel put-ons,
another of the dangerous games of the occult.
Hypothetically, let's say that the medium does have a
capacity to communicate with a deceased person or his “soul.”
She makes the contact in a darkened room, which is neat
theatrics (why not daylight; the “spirit” wouldn’t care) and
then begins passing information on to the living. In that
setting, the information sounds authentic; mainly upbeat, or
benign, because the deceased is past all harm or danger.
Further, the deceased has achieved an unworldly wisdom, so
can give fatherly advice. The séance may broaden as the result
of feedback from the living person, human putty at this point,
especially if bereaved.
Medium: I see an elderly woman standing by him. She’s

smiling, as if they belong together.
Widow: Yes, oh, yes! That’s his mother. That’s Al's mother.
Medium (confidently and soothingly): Yes.
181
Incredible.
Safely for the medium, it could be Al’s deceased mother,
sister, favorite aunt, teacher. Most people usually have a
“deceased elderly person” somewhere in the background. The
medium is not taking much of a chance when seeing “an
elderly woman standing by him.”
In the earliest known séances, taking place more than two
hundred years ago (done for enjoyment and not for “spirit
contact”), table legs “rapped,” demonstrating the same phe-
nomenon as today’s table tilting. They “talked,” hence the
modern term “table talk.” In time the medium took over, and
instead of asking “Will it rain tomorrow?” posed “Sam Fuller,
do you hear me?” Two raps: Yes. °
And although lovable William Fuld, of Baltimore, suppos-
edly “invented” and did indeed patent the ouija board in 1892,
almost the same device, called the planchette, was available in
France in the seventeenth century. In those days it was thought
that a spirit was taking over the body of the player causing the
movement of the small wooden piece on the board, providing
“yes” or “no” answers, foretelling the future.
The.same theory bobbed up in America at the turn of the
century, adding weight to the spiritualist movement. Editorials
in major newspapers gloomily projected that the ouija board
might destroy society and religion, and doom us all. The fad,
hot between 1912 and 1916, almost disappeared until it was
revived again in a minor way in the thirties and forties. It
mushroomed once more in the late sixties when the Parker
Brothers bought the Fuld family rights.
One reason for the recurrent and continuing popularity is
its game factor and social ramifications—board resting on four
knees, with two sets of hands, preferably male and female,
involved. Another reason is that it is kin to table tilting, in-
volving automatism, genuine physical responses directed by
the unconscious. The how and why of automatism is another
phenomenon yet to be explained, but it has nothing to do with
spiritualism.
182
Although man has been invoking gods or contacting spirits
in one way or another since the beginning of recorded history,
the present brand of spiritualism started in America in 1848
and soon became an export. England, never a land to reject
ghosts, welcomed the phenomenon.
Two children, the Fox sisters, Catherine and Margaret, of
Hydesville, New York, gave birth to the movement with the
help of a friendly poltergeist, supposedly the ghost of a man
murdered in their sedate old home. His name was “Mr.
Splitfoot.” He freely communicated with the children on com-
mand by rapping on walls and ceilings. The Fox family did
not discourage their personable poltergeist but opened the
home to demonstrations attended by the press and medical
doctors, and eventually the general public. Moreover, he was
not a nasty ghost and didn’t fling furniture.
The demonstrations were so convincing that a portion of the
public both in America and England—those eager to believe
not only in a life hereafter but in communication with the
dead, a very natural longing—at last had undeniable proof.
Spirits existed, could be verbally contacted, and the Fox sisters
became the first of many “go-betweens,” or mediums.
They didn’t get around to confessing it was all a hoax until
nearly a half-century later. Catherine admitted the “rappings”
came from crackings of their own knee joints. To have this
energy reverberate to walls and ceilings sounds implausible
unless it is coupled with the subtle conditioning of the
witnesses. Simply, they wanted to believe, and then sugges-
tion snared them. In most people, surface skepticism was a
cover for a deep and ancient desire to accept spirits and
spiritualism. The desire is still there.
Sherlock Holmes’s creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, took up
spiritualism in 1916 at the age of sixty. He claimed to have
received a message on attending his first séance but never
revealed the message. Later, using his skill as a writer, he
endorsed many mediums. Unfortunately, many were revealed
to be frauds. And Conan Doyle didn’t stop at spiritualism. He
183
maintained that Houdini’s feats were not altogether physical;
the Houdini dematerialized and then materialized in accom-
plishing certain routines. Houdini frothed at the idea, though
the gentlemen had once been friends.
Chroniclers of Thomas Alva Edison have been remarkably
silent about the inventor’s interest in psychic phenomena,
perhaps judging that facet as damaging to his overall genius.
Yet Edison told his friend B. C. Forbes, founder of Forbes
magazine, that he was intrigued with communication toalife
hereafter. On October 20, 1920, Scientific American quoted
Edison: “. . . if our personality survives, it is strictly logical
and scientific to assume it retains, memory, intellect, faculties
and knowledge that we acquire on this earth. It is reasonable
to conclude that those who leave this earth would like to com-
municate with those left behind. . .”
Edison was apparently serious about inventing an instru-
ment “so delicate as to be affected or moved or manipulated by
a personality as it survives in the next life.” Such an instru-
ment, when made available, “ought to record something.” The
inventor never got around to making his “instrument,” for
which we should perhaps be thankful.
But belief in spiritualism has been universal, from White
House occupants to 10 Downing Street. Abraham Lincoln had
some passing interest in spiritualism and did, of record, attend
several séances, perhaps only to find out why they were
attracting the attention of Mary Todd Lincoln. Canada’s
Prime Minister William Mackenzie King attended séances to
discuss various matters, thought to be personal rather than
affairs of state, with his deceased mother. He also claimed to
have spoken with his sister Isabel and brother MacDougal.
While I do have a deep personal belief in a hereafter, I
remain a steadfast spiritualistic heretic.
184
[ 14]
The most famous American spiritualist was the late Rev-

erend Arthur Ford, who achieved overnight fame in January
1929 by supposedly contacting Houdini, who had died three
years earlier. Ford had excellent reasons to attempt a séance
with the escape artist.
Houdini had spent much time during his last years exposing
spiritualists as fakes. Earlier, his beloved mother had passed
away while he was in Europe. Houdini often spent seven or
eight hours a day prostrate on her grave, carrying on a one-way
conversation. Almost insanely bereaved, he went to several
mediums to arrange contact. Quickly recognizing hoax, he
became enraged. Finally obsessed, he would travel miles to
completely shatter the performance of a medium, duplicating
every manifestation in broad daylight. His crusade reached the
point where he was well on his way to destroy any respectabil-
ity given to spiritualism.
Not surprisingly, on his death the spiritualists couldn’t rest
until they proved him wrong, in absentia, by making contact
with him, and by wresting from him a phantomly apology,
plus a sweeping endorsement of their craft from that other
disembodied world. One can imagine Houdini having
brooded over this long before he died. Contrary to the Tony
Curtis movie version of Houdini’s life, he did not die in the
Chinese Water Torture Cabinet. A student at McGill Univer-
sity in Montreal punched him several times in the stomach,
testing Houdini’s claims that he could withstand blows if his
muscles were set. The punches came as a surprise, and Houdini
was not “set.” Peritonitis developed and he died on October
31, 1926. Halloween night, of course.
As scientifically as he had planned his jumps between air-
craft while handcuffed and his fantastic escapes, he had
185
planned his “escape” from the mediums in death. He gave his
wife, Beatrice, a code, with the understanding that unless these
specific words—pray, answer, say, now, tell, please, speak,
quickly, look, be quick—were used, it would be but one more
example of the spiritualistic mantrap.
Until the Reverend Ford’s séance, no medium had broken
the code despite their unearthly powers. It is safe to guess that
hundreds attempted legitimately and a number would no
doubt have traded a shipload of rapping tables to have come
up with the information by any means. A few reportedly tried
by breaking and entering.
The Reverend Ford, according to his own account, had
discovered his psychic powers in 1924 during a meditation
session in New York with Swami Yogananda. He went into a
trance and suddenly began talking with a French accent. The
“voice” belonged to “Fletcher,” a French-Canadian Catholic
who had been killed in World War I. Ford had played with
“Fletcher” as a child, and the voice from beyond became
Ford’s constant spiritual control, or guide. Sir Conan Doyle
took credit for having persuaded Ford to become a profes-
sional medium in 1927.
Then came the startling news that Bess Houdini had called
Walter Winchell, the New York columnist, to say that the great
Arthur Ford had communicated with Harry Houdini, and that
he had repeated the ten words to her. If anything on earth
would prove that spirit communication was possible, this was
definitely it. Mediums the world over were jubilant and Arthur
Ford was superheroic. Not for long. Within a matter of weeks,
Bess retracted the statement and said there was no evidence of
any communication with her husband.
As the puzzling story developed, it became known that the
widow had been ill during the period of Ford’s séance.
Lucidity became a question. Further, one of the nurses at-
tending Mrs. Houdini was a friend of Arthur Ford's. This
also tended to cloud the breaking of the code. However,
186
persons close to Bess later declared that the nurse was not
involved.
Few people seemed to take into account the fact that the
code had already appeared in print the previous year. With the
help of author Harold Kellock, Bess Houdini had written a
warm, indulgent biography of her husband, revealing the ten
words. In effect, Bess had already made it impossible for the
spiritualists to prove anything. Ford had only to read the book
entitled Houdini to make good his claim of spirit contact with
the former Ehrich Weiss.
Ford’s attempt was not the first or the last. By nature,
magicians are curious people. Though they may not buy
spiritualism, they cannot resist probing it. Following the deaths
of the Great Carter and Thurston in 1936, Harry Blackstone
not only tried to communicate with them but also tried to
contact Houdini again. On May 12, 1936, Blackstone said,
“We were agreed to wait until we felt conditions were right.
Tonight is the night. Success or failureP That, of course, I
cannot tell.” He failed, but his statement indicates that he did
discuss the future attempt with both Carter and Thurston in
some detail.
It is also known that Carter had previously waited for some
message from Houdini, although he maintained, along with
the escape artist, that spirit contact was a myth. During two
stage performances, Carter reported that he did “hear” four
taps in an effects cabinet which could not be explained, He
tapped back but received nothing more and later was inclined
to believe that it was a freak incident, or that he had imagined
it, rather than his friend’s communication in Morse code.
Over the years, Arthur Ford continued to insist that he had
contacted Houdini. It tended to lend credence to spiritualism
and bothered me for personal reasons beyond a disbelief in
mediums. As the fictitious incident was renewed again and
again within spiritualistic circles, there was never any recogni-
tion of Houdini’s passionate hatred of the go-betweens.
Finally, in 1966 I contacted Ford, inviting him to duplicate his
187
earlier “success” in full public view on television. I reasoned
that it could be duplicated because Houdini hadn't gone any
“farther out” since 1929, or my understanding of spiritualism
was that time did not decrease the possibility of contact.
I did not hear from Ford but was dumbfounded when Ford
performed a séance on television with Bishop James A. Pike,
supposedly contacting Pike’s deceased son, on September 17,
1967. I flew to Canada to examine the film which appeared on
a show titled Perry’s Probe. I ran it back and forth for hours,
then attempted to unravel the prior relationship between Pike
and Ford, if any. Their TV appearance had been arranged by
Allen Spraggett, religious editor of the Toronto Star.
It was not the first time the controversial bishop had been
involved in a séance. Pike had been party to several séances
conducted by members of Ford’s organization, without Ford
present. Whether Pike was taking part in the séances at that
time because of a belief in spiritualism or simply investigating
it is not known. Ford and Pike finally met outside a church in
New York.
On Perry’s Probe, it all begins quite innocently and it is very
possible that Bishop Pike had no knowledge that Ford planned
a séance. The two men are discussing things in general,
conversing in the manner of any talk or panel show; then
suddenly Ford goes into a trance and announces he is in
communication with Pike’s son, who had committed suicide
the previous year.
“Fletcher,” the constant other-world companion, was again
the guide to Pike’s son. In viewing the film, it is almost as if
“Fletcher” is Ford, the usual routine, fitting himself to the
responses of Bishop Pike. There is a noticeable feedback of
information. The more you listen to, and look at, the film, the
more aware you become of the feedback. It went something
like this:
Ford: I see him, he is with someone in England.

Pike: Oh, yes, yes, that’s a teacher of his.
188
Later, in Pike’s book about the Ford séances, we are told

that Ford communicated the presence of the teacher. The fact
is, Pike told Ford about the teacher. In my opinion it was con-
trolled, or developed, information, not free information
grabbed from the “other side.”
In studying the film of Perry's Probe, it is interesting to see
just how much information Bishop Pike was giving away by his
rate of breathing, signs of excitability and lurchings of his
body. The experienced medium can read these signs as a
doctor reads a heartbeat. He targets on any scrap of informa-
tion he can develop.
Fortunately it was Pike himself who finally said, of that
particular night, “Maybe it wasn’t spiritualism; maybe it was
telepathy.” I hope he meant telepathy from-Pike-to-Ford. An
occultist for more than fifty years, Ford would have been re-
miss not to develop telepathic communication.
Ford said that a second séance was held several months later
in Philadelphia and that more information from Pike’s son was
developed, enabling Pike to write The Other Side, but suppos-
edly many things were left out of the book because they were
too personal and intimate to print. Pike became a convert and
enthusiastically embraced certain areas of the mystic sciences.
Pike, the thinker, the scholar. Bafling.
But after the Pike séance in Canada, I could not resist again
inviting Reverend Ford to demonstrate his psychic powers on
TV. He had now voluntarily indicated a willingness to perform
in front of cameras. So I persuaded Mike Douglas to grant
ninety minutes for a taping. Ford would be able to set his own
conditions, except that it would have to be on film for later
analysis. He had previously said that he would not work on
“live TV” because his gift couldn’t be “turned on” that way, so
Mike agreed to lose the studio audience. Besides, Ford would
be paid.
In order to convince the public that no “confederates”
would be used, no controlled information available, I sug-
189
gested that we bring in a reporter from the Philadelphia
Inquirer with names of deceased persons from the news-clip
morgue. They would not be famous persons. Consequently,
the medium could not be accused of using sources of readily
available information. The Reverend Ford could have his pick,
trying one after the other until he achieved success. The news-
clip file could then be used, on the spot, to identify friends,
associates and relatives of the deceased. I was to stay on the
sidelines as an observer.
A friend of Ford’s, whom I later met, was in the medium’s
home in Miami when the wire arrived. He said Ford winced
and went on about his other business. After the sensational
Pike episode in Toronto, I'm stre he did not care to air
séances. This time, though, he formally declined on the
grounds that he would not appear with an entertainer. I was
amused more than having my feelings hurt.
Ford again got into the act when Bishop Pike was reported
missing in the Israeli desert. Ford stated that he went into deep
meditation and saw Pike in a cave. A few days later Diane
Pike, the bishop’s wife, reported a vision in which she saw her
husband leave his body and ascend to a large crowd of people.
Incidents such as the various Bishop Pike “contacts” are
extremely difficult to bury. They lend themselves to repeats.
The British psychic and medium Ena Twigg, with whom I
spent an interesting afternoon in Chicago, let it be known that
she had contacted the bishop himself after his emergence on
the “other side.” Previously, she had claimed contacts with
Pike’s son, joining Ford and an American medium named
George Daisley as the selected go-betweens with the younger
Pike.
According to Mrs. Twigg, her tape-recorded contact with
Bishop Pike occurred prior to the time his body was found on
the Israeli desert. In the recording, Dr. Pike’s voice is sup-
posedly relayed through Mrs. Twigg, who was in a trance
state. Several witnesses reportedly attended the séance and
posed questions, which the bishop reportedly answered.
190
Acknowledging the “evidence” of Perry’s Probe film and the
tapes of Mrs. Twigg, I remain skeptical. And it is safe to wager
that the bishop will be contacted again and again by one
medium or another. His prominence and his pre-death involve-
ment in spiritualism guarantee he'll be a target for many years
to come, joining that erstwhile nonbeliever, Harry Houdini.
I do not go about tossing challenges, having done it but
twice in twenty-odd years, but in both the Dr. Spiegel
“hypnotic test” and the Ford case I couldn’t resist in the name
of reason.
[15]
Because of the potential damage to many people, prophe-

cies, especially the doomsday variety that appear in news
columns, have always made me uneasy. Despite the celebrated
Jeane Dixon and others, prophecy is basically an occult area.
Linked with astrology, it is probably the oldest secret art.
Although I’ve abandoned even the amateur practice of it,
I’ve made predictions from cold calculation and pure guess to
prove that it is possible to be a “seer” by following and
analyzing news events, playing percentages and making use of
actuarial tables. Successful prophecy also requires making
more than one prediction for a designated period of time. Odds
are that one or two out of three or four prophecies will be
“hits.”
Back in 1965, while appearing at the Weldwood Lounge, a
night club on the Scranton-Carbondale Highway in Pennsylva-
nia, I predicted stories that would appear in the Friday, April
g, issue of the Scranton Tribune. The predictions were made on
April 2 and handed to WDAU-TV commentator Nancy
Dolphin, It was done for publicity purposes.
First prediction: Headline, page 1, “collision kills driver,
demolishes car. A 22-year-old man or woman will be involved.”
191
Second prediction: “Robber in gun battle with police.”
Third prediction: “Eighteen-year-old Negro terrorized.”
I added a general statement: “The car crash tragedy may be
pushed off the front page by the Health-Welfare Bill vote. If
so, the House of representatives will pass it by approximately
200 votes.”
The outcome was as follows in the Tribune of April 9:
1. Headline, page 1: “City Man Dies in Car Crash.” The
overline said: “Small Foreign Car Demolished.” In the first
paragraph, it was revealed that the driver was twenty-two
years old.
2. Headline, page 1: “Robber in Store Holds Off Police
Three Hours.” .
3. Top headline, page 2: “Arrest 2 Cops for Terrorizing
Negro.”
An Associated Press story, date-lined Washington, also on
page 1, stated that the House passed the Health-Welfare
measure by 198 votes.
Analyzing the “hits,” it is rather safe to predict that in an
area the size of Scranton, a fatal car crash will occur within
almost any overnight period, The guess at the victim’s age was
luck. If I had not been right about the age, the reader would
dismiss it, being satisfied by the fact that I'd hit the accident
itself.
The second prediction was equally guided by calculation but
had a larger potential to miss. I carefully did not say that the
“robber would be in a store or hold off the police for three
hours.” A safety factor was that I did not specifically name
Scranton. The incident could have taken place in Philadelphia
to validate the prediction.
The third prediction also stemmed from calculation. There
had been racial unrest in the Scranton area for some weeks. As
I recall, the victim of alleged police brutality was not eighteen
years old but this prophecy miss was overlooked. The main
prediction had come true.
My footnote to the predictions on the House vote was
192
ferreted from several news stories out of Washington that
appeared around April 2. They forecast that the bill would
pass by approximately 200 votes.
In discussing the accuracy of the predictions with reporters,
I said that I made “no claim to psychic ability and that the
prophecies were based on logic.” But statements of this sort,
I’ve learned, are lost in the more sensational disclosures of the
seer.
On Tuesday, August 15, 1967, a story by Louis Effrat ap-
peared on the sports pages of the New York Times crediting
me with predicting the post positions of the following Saturday
night’s $100,000 International Trot at Roosevelt Raceway. I'd
selected Roquepine, Grainella and Real Speed for one, two
and three post positions as a dual publicity venture for the
raceway and myself. However, I did not gaze into a crystal ball
to come up with the order of the trotting horses. Cold cal-
culation largely provided the answers. -
As a further example of this nonprofessional “seer talent,” I
took on the task of prophecy for TV’s Joey Bishop Show,
promising to predict stories that would appear in the Los
Angeles Times on the day of the Bishop program.
Studying two weeks of the Times, front to back, I attempted
to forecast events simply by trends in the news, then I made
three predictions a week ahead, as with the Scranton perform-
ance. They were sealed in an envelope and given to Inspector
Sherwood Black of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Depart-
ment.
The day of the show, Bishop, a bit antsy, called to ask if I'd
hit them. By then, I'd seen the morning paper but refused to
reveal the predictions. Bishop kept saying, “Milton Berle wants
to know, too.” I was pleased that Milton Berle was interested
but felt that Bishop should react spontaneously on camera. He
- was exasperated but had to go along with it. I seldom discuss
what I’m going to do with anyone, unless technical help is
needed, and I seldom reveal any results until they are shown
onstage. It goes back, I’m sure, to the magic training.
193
The time arrived, and the detective opened the envelope.
Bishop whooped when the Times headline matched the pre-
diction almost word for word. I'd also called the editorial-page
subject correctly, but the third prediction—that a story on the
transport of Army nerve gas would appear inside the paper—
wasn’t in either edition I’d checked that morning. However, the
inspector spoke up to say that he thought there was a third
edition. During the commercial break, someone located it and
on page 5 was a story of nerve-gas movement.
Once again I appeared to be a miraculous prophet but it
was entirely deduction, along with some luck. A major event
could have broken to push the headline and the nerve-gas
account out of the paper. I would have failed. But with simi-
lar research, any non-prophet, particularly an experienced
newspaperman, could have done the same thing. Indeed, I
believe most prophecy is based on deduction and logic rather
than vision.
My amateur dabbling, a thing of the past, has never involved
personalities or doomsday events, and I become ill when a
seer predicts the death of a famous person. In the present
cliniate, forecasting death is placing a gun in the hands of some
pathetic paranoid who needs only this justification to begin
his stalk. In print, the death has been decreed. Beyond this
possibility, even the most secure, hardened political leader or
world figure would have to be affected at least momentarily
by reading of his imminent death. And newspapers seemingly
cannot resist passing the bad news along. However, I realize
it is “news” of a sort. But there are indications that both the
press and television are awakening to the dangers.
Not long ago a famed seer was scheduled to appear on the
Tonight Show and his shocking moment of glory was to be a
prediction that one of America’s best-known political figures
was to suffer a tragedy. On learning the politician’s name, the
Carson staff wisely declined. (No, it was not George Wallace.)
Happily, the tragedy hasn’t occurred thus far.
It is claimed, perhaps with some validity, that fortunetelling,
194
spread over the receptive millions, is probably harmless:
“Youll meet a beautiful girl and live happily ever after.” Yet
untold thousands have suffered mental anguish because of a
seers reading. In some cases, disaster and tragedy can be
directly linked to foretelling without the occult nonsense of
predestining the event. My answer is always the same when
someone asks, “Can you recommend a reputable seer?” I don’t
know one.
One morning I was ushered into the dressing room of a
famous actress. We were to appear shortly on the same show.
She was distraught and had been crying. She said, “I have to
ask you something. I'm very much in love with this man. But
I've been told not to marry him.” I begged off, lightly saying I
left that type of advice to “Dear Abby” or Joyce Brothers.
Then I found she'd gone to a celebrated Hollywood soothsayer
the previous night. He did readings with cards and had “seen”
her future: If you marry this man, the first four years of your
life will be divinely happy but something terrible will happen
in the fifth year. You both will be devastated.
No matter how divinely happy she would have been the first
four years, the fifth “cursed” year, if the prediction was be-
lieved, would have been approached with misgiving and
suspicion. Any quarrel might be blown out of proportion by
memory of the prediction. Worse, the actress definitely be-
lieved in the occult or she wouldn’t have gone to the soothsayer
in the first place.
Although I made an effort to point out that I thought all
such predictions were ridiculous, she decided not to marry the
man. Eventually she went to another well-known fortuneteller.
This time the advice was even gloomier. After a while she lost
her TV series and her present life is a mess. Month by month,
and even allowing for deep neurosis on her part, it can be
traced back to the first soothsayer.
There appear to be two kinds of future; the controlled future
and the free future. They are probed by the fortunetellers of
one specialty or another—astrologists, numerologists, phre-
195
nologists, palmists and other categories, Reading devices range
from crystal balls and tarot cards to wrinkled handkerchiefs.
Tea leaves, of course. I know one man who reads beer suds.
Predictions of the controlled future, such as events, appear
to be largely calculated. Past incidents forecast future inci-
dents. Although the public often seems to be impressed, it is
hardly a display of mystic power to forecast an earthquake
along the San Andreas Fault when seismologists already have
made the prediction based on technical data. Nor is it par-
ticularly impressive to forecast a “war in the Middle East”
or a revolution in Latin America. Within a given time span,
odds are on the side of the prophet.
Predictions of the free future ‘category, not tied directly to
events past or present, plucked out of the ether, are somewhat
a grand gamble. They are also notable for failure. California
did not slide into the Pacific a few years back, one of the
wackiest prophecies of the century, probably spawned by a
geologist’s casual remark. Even those that appear to be a
brilliant success eventually seem to fall into question and
doubt.
Jeane Dixon’s prediction that Russia would send an object
into space was in the “free future” category, at first glance.
There were no closely related events at the time. Sputnik went
up and so did Mrs. Dixon’s reputation. It was a startling,
brilliant “hit.” But later analysis, certain to come, raised the
question of government knowledge of Russian activity in early
space research and Mrs. Dixon’s wide contacts in Washington.
Science was not totally unaware of the Russian preparations.
Mrs, Dixon’s innate goodness, sincerity and firm belief in
her predictions are not in doubt. She may well have psychic
abilities; she may well have developed hers to an exceptional
degree. She admits to the use of telepathy. Perhaps some in-
formation is gained in this manner. But prior information,
gained in any manner, does not produce what the general
public labels and accepts as “pure prophecy”—visions un-
tainted by related factual events.
196
Previously Mrs. Dixon had predicted that China would go
Communist, but so did a number of State Department analysts.
She predicted the defeat of Thomas Dewey by Harry Tru-
man; the landslide election of Dwight Eisenhower, the fall
of Nikita Khrushchev and the suicide of Marilyn Monroe. Her
batting average has been good, but some of these events were
predictable by trend. Beautiful Miss Monroe was a rather good
candidate for tragedy, and Khrushchevs ouster did not
astonish knowledgeable diplomats. The Harry Truman victory
was a remarkable prediction, however, whether visionary,
telepathic or based on a Washington cocktail-party hunch.
Mrs. Dixon, who in private life is a real estate broker, is
probably best known for her prophecy that John Kennedy
would die in office. In a May 1956 Parade Magazine issue,
she forecast that whoever was elected President in 1960
would be a Democrat, have blue eyes and die in office. Putting
aside the “blue eyes,” by the late fifties there was a better than
even chance that the next President would be a Democrat.
After eight years of a Republican administration, with Presi-
dent Eisenhower retiring, the odds were tipped toward the
out-party in this controlled future.
Additionally, many numerologists around the world pre-
dicted that the “1960 President” would die in office because of
the curious fact that every President, except the first two, who
was elected in a “zero” year did not finish his term. By 1976,
the numerologists are certain to forecast that the 1980 Presi-
dent is doomed. Name unknown, he has already been elimi-
nated.
However, in analyzing the Dixon forecasts, she also, weeks
before the 1960 election, predicted that Richard Nixon would
be the winner. In the biography by Ruth Montgomery, Mrs.
Dixon is quoted as insisting that Nixon would have won had
there been a recount. It presents a dilemma: Does she want
credit for predicting the “recount” winner or predicting that
the Democrat would die? The Greek oracles tended to work
197
this way, taking advantage of whatever prediction came true.
Even Nostradamus, the champion of all, stayed vague too.
Prior to Kennedy’s departure for Dallas, Mrs. Dixon said
that she saw “war clouds” over the White House. After the
fact, this vision could be interpreted to mean something other
than armed conflict. It could be read as trouble of any kind,
linked to events. Dallas newspapers had reflected a climate
that wasn’t favorable and this was reflected, in turn, by the
Washington press. Several of Kennedy’s advisers had cautioned
him against the trip. This, too, was known. An ominous future
for JFK had some fact as foundation.
The Jeane Dixon successes have been much publicized; her
failures have been lost in the oriward rush of the news. She
predicted that President Johnson would die in office, that
Hubert Humphrey would succeed him, and that the Vietnam
war would end in the spring of 1968. Of her ten major predic-
tions for 1968, not one came true.
Among her most interesting 1970 predictions: Ambassador
Sargent Shriver would win a governorship; George Wallace
would again obtain political office but his effort for the presi-
dency will be neutralized by forces emanating from the Sen-
ate; Fidel Castro would be physically removed from Cuba
sometime that year.
Her “hits” included: No peace in Vietnam (that year);
Vice-President Agnew rising in stature; Prime Minister Eisaku
Sato would lead Japan to greater prosperity; continuing prob-
lems with Latin America, especially Cuba; defense spending
would increase.
Certain people seem to have developed a high sensitivity to

perceive information in a manner that is not common. They
might be called “psychics.” Likewise, some of the manifesta-
tions of the “medium” could be explained by clairvoyance or
telepathy as opposed to spirit contact. In that sense, I do be-
lieve in some “psychics.” Particularly, I’m inclined to believe
in those who practice and explore the field scientifically,
198
separating religious aspects; the tinkering of the usual “me-
dium.”
Although the late Eileen Garrett, founder of the Parapsy-
chology. Institute in 1951, was often called a “medium,” she
was no doubt a true psychic, in the above sense. “I have agift,
a capacity—a delusion, if you will—called ‘psychic, ” she said.
“T have been called many things from a charlatan to a miracle
woman. I am, at least, neither of these.”
Her psychic abilities, first discovered in childhood, seemed
to lie in clairvoyance, healing (though it could not be de-
scribed as faith healing in the religious application) and
perception of auras or field consciousness. Mrs. Garrett con-
tinually stressed her acute sensory abilities.
But notably, the “gift,” as she described it, underwent long
training. She spent five years at the British College of Psychic
Science in London, and put in another five years of grueling
work and preparation in all aspects of psychic research. She
was not a charlatan.
[ 16]
On the first rehearsal of a Flip Wilson TV show, the

comedian threw up his hands in a warding-off fashion and
howled, “Don’t touch me!”
I had started toward him.
Everyone laughed.
Flip said, “You think I'm kiddin’? Leave my brain alone.”
He got another laugh, which was the purpose, but there are
times when I almost feel as if I'm back in Baron’s store in
Bethlehem, flashing porabiti, the “evil eye.” I can sympathize
with Mrs. Garrett.
Very much aware that I’m often considered a bit different,
I realize that people sometimes tend to be uncomfortable
199
around me, as if I had invisible antennas. Mr. Spock has come
to visit from Vulcan.
Strangers often lump me with psychics and mediums. Some
people suspect I’m continually reading minds. There’s always
the person who will come up to demand, “Tell me what I’m
thinking.”
I’ve had drunks say, “Levitate me.”
I'm asked to read fortunes, predict stocks; call the winners
of football games and horse races. I patiently explain that if I
could predetermine the Kentucky Derby or foretell a hot
stock I wouldn’t be spending as much time on jets or coping
with night owls at a 2 A.M. Vegas lounge performance.
Usually I’m successful at laughing my way out of it or chang-
ing the subject, but I never really win. I’m the performer who
won't perform in private, the expert who dodges. However, I
don’t know any professional entertainer who doesn’t have the
same problem.
There are also the “how do you do it?” people. They want
to know, step by step, how telepathy works, and if psychoki-
nesis is possible. I don’t blame them. But I either have to sound
inadequate by admitting that I don’t really know or attempt
an explanation about what is known, which can never be sat-
isfying and would take half the night.
So I do try to by-pass parties unless I’m a paid performer.
Additionally, I have to stand around with a soft drink and ap-
pear to be enjoying myself. I'm not against social drinking,
but gin and thought perception do not mix. Drugs might
provide a synthetic sensitivity, or afford trips of a kind, but I
prefer natural methods. Despite numerous recommendations,
the praises of the late Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary and
others, I’ve never tried LSD, nor do I intend to. I have too
much respect for the human brain to turn it into a biscuit on a
rainbow.
I do get myself into messes sometimes, mainly through a
combination of innocence and stupidity. After an opening
night in Vegas I had to do a “command” appearance at a man-
200
agement party. Showing off a bit, I took out a deck of cards,
selected one, displayed it, and then shoved it back into the
deck about thirty-two cards down, then riffled the deck with-
out lifting it from my hand, producing the selected card now
in the top position. (It’s pure sleight of hand but thus far,
even with slow-motion cameras, no one has caught the trans-
fer.) There was applause and I then shuffled the deck, cut it
several times, and dealt three hands of poker, one hand of
which I knew would contain four aces and a king. Again, it
was manipulation but done faster than the eye could follow. I
performed it several times, the aces and the king always hit-
ting in the same hand.
About twenty minutes later a sleepy-eyed observer drew me
aside. “Say, Mr. Kreskin, I'll give you $15,000 to sit in with
me tomorrow night.” I refused, of course, but he kept calling
every day for almost a week. That brought about a decision
to stop performing card effects, except for lounge audiences,
anywhere in the state of Nevada.
I seem to have a problem with cards in Nevada. Although I
was irked for a while, ’m now only amused that I’m banned
from playing blackjack at the Flamingo casino in Vegas. My
ban, not the first for someone who works in the mentalist area,
resulted from a night when I ran some money to six times its
original amount in about an hour. However, I did not use any
form of ESP as was implied by the Flamingo. I was playing
from memory of the cards, an awareness of the odds and how
the deck changed as it was dealt. The secret in any card
game, bridge to blackjack, is casing the deck.
In blackjack, when a card is tossed off the deck, the odds of
another card of that value coming up again immediately
lessen. As each four or five leaves the deck, the statistical odds
move to the favor of the player if he remembers the values of
the played cards. As an example, if all the fives remain in the
deck, I rarely bet anything but the minimal count I allot my-
self for playing each hand.
As they are played, all cards should be mentally filed away
201
to keep the deck in favor of the player. As the higher cards
come into his favor, it is time to play the high bids. When the
deck remains in favor of the house, the wise blackjack player
will stay with a minimal bet.
Obviously, when the “pit man,” the game boss, realizes that
the player is casing the deck, memorizing it as it is played,
he'll instruct the dealer to shuffle the cards more as the deck
reaches the halfway point. When it becomes apparent that
even shuffling will not favor the house odds, the pit man
usually requests the player to remove himself from the table,
which is what happened to me at the Flamingo. In fairness,
no casino welcomes anyone in my field. The pit bosses have
nervous spasms.
But since I do enjoy blackjack, I'm permitted to play at the
Nugget in Reno. I reached an agreement with Jim Thompson,
the casino boss, and owner John Escuaga that I’d never play
for more than an hour, and never bet more than five dollars a
hand. But during one engagement there, using the casing sys-
tem, I played for twenty-one straight mornings, usually be-
tween four and five, after my last show in the lounge. I kept
a record of my winnings and found I'd multiplied my original
five dollars into four hundred times that amount. The casing
system does work.
One area, not involving cards, that I've completely aban-

doned is pickpocketing. For a long while I used it as a warm-
up when appearing before businessmen’s groups. Mingling
with the audience prior to the banquet and show, Id lift a
wallet and then single that person out later to ask, “Could I
borrow a dollar bill, please?” While he was frantically patting
his pockets, I’'d turn to a subject onstage and make a similar
request. As he began to reach, I'd ask, “Sir, do you always
carry two wallets? What’s that bulge in your side pocket?”
It backfired several times when a subject would discover his
wallet was missing prior to the show. Once, at a Philadelphia
smoker, a victim of this exercise called the police before I
could return his money. He was irate, I've also stopped lifting
202
watches, which was a variation of the pickpocket routine. Both
were leftovers from the magic-act days.
Yet it is often difficult to separate the stage from the off-
stage, and when my act featured “hypnosis” I’'d be called on
now and then to perform away from the spotlight. When an
entertainer is struggling up, it isn’t wise to turn down a club
Owner's request. “Kres, my wife wants to stop smoking. How
about helping her?” I remember treating one such lady, sug-
gesting that the cigarettes would taste horrible (which isn’t
the way to go about it) and even the smell of smoke would be
sickening. The lady awakened me the next morning to say that
she still had the desire and what could she do about not being
able to keep food down. Eventually I quit that medical area.
But there is always the temptation to be helpful. Appearing
in Baltimore at the start of the World Series between the
Orioles and the Pittsburgh Pirates, I was asked by the mayor
to give a mental assist to the home team. I replied, innocently
enough, “Tell them to think positively.”
The mayor's PR man apparently took the advice to local
papers. The next day stories appeared on the sports page that
“Kreskin, the mentalist, told the people of Baltimore to think
positively,” implying that half a million minds could put the
Orioles over the top. I even saw street signs that said: “Tnx
PosITIvELY FOR THE Bins.”
They lost, three games to four, and flying to Louisville after
the final game, I sat beside a man from Baltimore. We began
to talk and he said, “Oh, you're the guy...”
And every entertainer has gone through the period when
he attempts to impress friends offstage, usually for laughs. In
a restaurant I’d ask the waitress to concentrate on an impor-
tant date in her life and then go back to the kitchen and write
it down. I’d jot the date on a calling card and pass it to my
dinner companion. On return, the waitress would be flustered
when the two dates, usually the birthday, matched. It would
be worth a few minutes of laughs and awe. Fortunately I grew
out of that ego routine too.
203
Although I really prefer college audiences to all others,
because of their eager response, club dates are often fun, too.
Other performers, band leaders, waiters and waitresses, stage-
hands, become friends. There’s that traditional “inside” atmos-
phere, a crazy climate all its own, which is welcome after a
run of campus and town-hall dates. Show-business camaraderie
is of course unlike any other and hasn't changed much in a
century or more. Now and then something typically “show biz”
will occur to afford a moment of warmth and satisfaction.
I was walking down the main street of Reno one morning
when I spotted Ralph Young, of the singing team of Sandler
& Young, on the opposite side ofthe street. I yelled over but
he didn’t answer back. He opened his mouth and pointed to
his throat. Knowing that they were scheduled to open that
night at the Nugget, I crossed the street. In barely more than
a whisper, Ralph said he’d gotten over an allergy attack but
had lost his voice. His doctor had told him that there was no
apparent physical reason and had suggested that he seek
psychological help. Young was thinking of flying to Los
Angeles to see a “hypnotist.” He was ready to cancel the show,
even though the team was due onstage in about ten hours.
I reasoned that if the loss of voice was psychological, Young
would have to provide his own cure, with or without help. I
requested he call his doctor for approval. We met in his dress-
ing room about an hour later and I told him I thought he
might respond to suggestion on an unconscious level and con-
vince himself that he could recover his voice. After proving
that he was capable of response, I taught him a simple, pro-
gressive exercise which lasted no more than thirty seconds,
then left the dressing room. I talked to him once more before
show time and had the feeling that he had licked the problem.
When the spotlight hit Sandler & Young that night, Ralph was
relaxed, smiling, and sang with his usual ease. Without in-
vading psychiatric territory, I'd administered a simple mental
cough drop and felt good about it.
204
There are fun times. Playing the Hilton in Vegas, I kept get-
ting an intriguing but distracting thought. I also had the feel-
ing that four separate sets of eyes were staring at me, literally
locked on. They seemed to be well in the shadows at the back
of the lounge. I did say, once, “I don’t know who you are but
Pll talk to you later.” There was low female laughter from sev-
eral points at the back of the room.
After the show was over and the room had cleared, the
waitresses came up, smiling widely. One said, “Did you get it,
Kres? We decided to send you a single thought. You a good
lover?”
They all four broke up in laughter. We kept the gag running
for a week and then I was off to Los Angeles.
A personal life is difficult. Romance, if that word is still ac-
ceptable in these days of Women’s Lib, is a problem and I’m
unmarried. For one thing, almost constant travel forces tele-
phone friendships, and here-tonight-gone-tomorrow evenings.
Yet there is another difficulty which involves, in a way, ESP.
Take a new date out, find her attractive and fun, and at one
point in the evening there is a suspicious look and a question
that is not altogether kidding. “Kres, are you reading my
mind?”
Not guilty. But projecting that slight suspicion into mar-
riage and placing myself in a wife’s shoes, I can see that it
would be something of a burden. A women’s page editor once
asked, “Would you apply suggestibility in a marital situa-
tion?” I replied, “No, I wouldn’t do anything like that.” I'm
certain I would. I’m human, as prone to self-protection as any-
one else.
I am guilty of sensing certain things. In ordinary conversa-
tion I tend to read eyes and breathing rates. I do it automati-
cally, without thought. The only advantage is the tip-off when
someone is becoming tense or bored or wants to change the
subject. Most people “read” the same signs automatically.
Perhaps my reaction is a little quicker.
I do carry over some habits from the stage, although I
205
attempt to guard against them. Without really being aware of
it, I usually walk to the left of anyone, circling around them if
I find myself on the right. It’s disconcerting, I'm sure, but I
work to my right when doing a concert, simply a habit, and
always work to my right when being telepathically “guided”
toward a hidden object.
I’m also inclined to jot things down on a slip of paper, sim-
ply to remember them. Understandably, scribbling makes a
dinner guest uneasy and is insulting. So is rolling a coin back
and forth across the knuckles of my hand. I’ve been doing it
since childhood and occasionally do it today, quite uncon-
sciously. It’s a nervous habit. If .I’m talking to someone and
suddenly realize that they are studying my hand, I can be cer-
tain that a quarter is riding the humps of the knuckles. It
usually happens when I’m waiting to go onstage or fidgeting
around in an Office.
Memory, offstage, is a continuous problem. I think I com-
pensate, purposely, for the deep concentration required by
work. I forget names, misplace papers or keys, and what is
most embarrassing, have missed dinner or business appoint-
ments. I must write them down; then they seem to by-pass
the psychological block.
Although it isn’t a part of what I do now, I believe I could
still do memory routines in front of an audience. I learned how
in high school. My brother Joe used to wheel out a blackboard,
and Id call a teacher to the stage to write down twenty-five
or thirty words, numbering each one as the audience called
them out. I'd take one look, then turn my back to the board,
matching the correct numbers with the words the teacher read
out loud. However, I now feel pretty ridiculous when I go into
a large lot and can’t remember where my car is parked. I can
read the expression on my date’s face while I look helplessly
around: Some mentalist.
One result of this applied poor memory offstage is that Lou
Reda lays out my schedules precisely, and on paper, as to
plane departures, hotel accommodations, local contacts, tele-
206
phone numbers, where and when I’m supposed to appear.
Often complicated, sometimes requiring five or six flights a
week from coast to coast, the schedules look like battle plans.
But as generals and admirals have discovered, there are
times when the best of battle plans go completely awry. Let
us call this Concert Tour No. 1, 1973:
In good spirits, I arrived at Newark Airport at 7:15 a.m. for
a flight to Detroit, scheduled to arrive at 9:30, enabling an 11
A.M, concert in Grosse Point, Michigan. For the first time I was
accompanied by a travel manager, Sam Lasagio, simply be-
cause of complexities of twelve shows in eight days.
Approaching Gate 17, I was recognized by the airline’s smil-
ing key man at Newark. He took me in tow. The chief
security man also recognized me, said something about being
sure that I wasn’t a hijacker and waved us all through, falling
in behind. We went to the coffee shop, guests of the genial
airline representative, who said wed eventually board
through Gate 21; just relax.
Over coffee and jokes, I glanced at the big clock over the
counter now and then until my new travel manager, looking
out of the window, said, “Isn’t that our plane taking off?” The
airline man and the security chief promptly disappeared. The
big clock was slow.
I no longer trust genial airline greeters.
After a frantic private helicopter ride to La Guardia, Amer-
ican Airlines worked out a schedule to get us to Detroit by
12:15 P.M. The concert finally began about one o'clock. I
had some difficulty establishing rapport with my audience.
The next stop was Hillsdale, Michigan, for a concert at Hills-
dale College. We drove there late that same day and were met
by the sponsors. One said, “We're sorry you're late for the press
conference. They’ve all gone home.”
I asked, “What press conference?”
It was a great start, particularly when I found out that the
doors were to open at 6:30 for a show we'd scheduled for 9:15.
I'd requested, selfishly, the late time instead of the usual 8 P.M.
207
to be able to watch a Flip Wilson show in which I'd made sev-
eral appearances. This meant they'd twiddle their thumbs for
three hours.
“Didn't you tell the public that it was a nine-fifteen cur-
tain?” I asked. The contract had been written up that way.
“Well, there was a rumor to that effect,” he answered. “But
don’t let it bother you. We've set up TV’s in the auditorium so
everybody can watch it with you.”
I groaned.
Hastings was next. At one o'clock the following afternoon a
car drove up to the motel. The Michigan booking agent had
sent his eighteen-year-old son, Mike, to take us from Hillsdale
to Hastings. The car was loaded with sound equipment. The
back seat was crammed. So was the trunk. Huge boxes of
amplifiers and speakers, enough to handle The Grateful Dead.
“Tm not a rock-and-roll performer,” I said. “All I need is
two mikes, a table, a chair and a small folding screen. Why do
we have all this?”
“My dad thought we should come prepared,” Mike said.
So the three of us mashed into the front seat and set out for
Hastings. What was supposed to be two hours turned into
four. Worse, the heater couldn’t be adjusted. It was a constant
ninety degrees in the car. I thought our shoes would melt.
Arriving at the Chamber of Commerce building, I was
promptly told, “The press left about a half-hour ago.”
“What press?” I asked.
They said, “Oh, TV, a radio station and the local news-
paper.”
“No one told me.” We could have left at noon.
Everyone had a blank look.
While I tried to square myself with the press over the phone,
Sam and the booker’s son went to the school auditorium to
check it out. They returned to say that the sound equipment
was handled by the custodians and wouldn’t work.
“See,” Mike grinned. “My dad was right.” He set up the
rock-and-roll system.
208
We had Hastings and started out for Detroit at about one
o'clock. I tried to take a nap, my feet burning from the heater.
An hour later we lurched to a wild stop on the shoulder. Mike
had fallen asleep and Sam had grabbed the wheel. Sam vol-
unteered to drive but we had to push the seat forward, since
he is only five feet five.
Mike left us, cheerfully, at the Detroit airport about dawn
and we slept for an hour and a half before flying on to
Indianapolis for a concert at Clews Hall. Everything went
beautifully and I began to think we'd broken the jinx.
The next day we flew to Downey Grove, Illinois. A reporter
was supposed to meet us at the airport. This time I knew of the
arrangements. She wasn’t there.
The sponsor said, “Well, I explained to her that you didn’t
like to meet the press.”
I couldn't believe it. For twenty years I'd had fine relations
with newspapermen, radio and TV people. Now this. It
seemed like a plot. I remember clapping my hand on top of
my head.
He talked on. It was a Sunday and some religious group
had gathered two hundred signatures on a petition to stop
the concert. They claimed I was in “league with the Devil.”
Whatever league I was in, the performance started on time.
After it was over, a spokesman for about fourteen people said,
“How about us taking you out to dinner?” I was starved and
immediately agreed. At the end of the meal the waitress
dropped the check for all sixteen of us into my lap.
We flew on to Chicago for a suburban night-club appear-
ance. A limo picked us up and I went to the motel near the
club to find local press people who had been waiting for more
than an hour. By this time I had a stock answer: “No one told
me.”
I had requested a small folding screen to be placed on the
stage, and on arrival found they'd nailed it to the backing. A
claw hammer solved that, but didn’t solve the warm-up emcee,
who I was told also played the accordion between shows at
209
the club. Sam came back to the dressing room to say, “There’s
a guy out there telling jokes that couldn't live in a sewer.”
Some of the audience was already leaving. I went out earlier
than anticipated.
At 1 A.M. we went on to Butler Airport, a private field in
Chicago. The night club had chartered an aircraft to fly us to
Saginaw, Michigan, where I had a 10 A.M. Town Hall per-
formance. There was no plane. After five or six phone calls
we learned that the limo driver had taken us to the wrong air-
port. The right one was two hours’ driving distance.
I think it was about 3 a.M. when the aircraft finally landed
at Butler and got us airborne for Saginaw; it was well after
4 A.M. when we arrived. The température was fifteen degrees
below zero. There was no one to meet us, the sponsor having
wisely given up and gone home to bed. We made it to the
same position about five-thirty, with a wake-up call for eight.
Except for the fact that the stage crew was in a quarrelsome
mood and wanted to strike, everything in Saginaw went fine.
That afternoon I bid good-bye to Sam in Detroit. For the
remaining three days I'd be in professional hands—show-
business people. I was scheduled for New Orleans, a conven-
tion of the National Association of TV Broadcasters. I was
very excited about that appearance. I would share the honors
with Bishop Fulton Sheen.
The Braniff plane took off for New Orleans, arriving over
the Mississippi in a violent thunderstorm. After circling and
bouncing for thirty minutes, we went over to Shreveport,
where we circled and bounced some more, finally going on
to Dallas. Five minutes after landing we were off again to New
Orleans. It was a fruitless flight. Back at Dallas, we waited for
another thirty minutes. Finally, at 11 p.m., we landed in New
Orleans, one half-hour after the anticipated Bishop Sheen-
Kreskin appearance was over. I later heard that the bishop
was magnificent.
No one was at the airport to shepherd me to the hotel. Hav-
ing averaged three hours’ sleep a night, nerves shot, near ex-
210
haustion, I made it to the convention headquarters to learn
that my lodging was supposedly across the street in another
hotel. However, there’d been another slip-up. After two hours,
it became apparent there was no room in town.
At 3 A.M. I called a convention executive to announce that
I was headed for Newark; I'd had it. He came scurrying over
and offered a company’s hospitality room. Apologizing for the
fact that someone had erred on reservations, he said, “Kres,
you gotta be professional.” I was trying.
We went to the hospitality room. It was wall-to-wall chaos
with empty liquor bottles and full ashtrays. There was a small
bedroom off on one side. We went in. It was filled with TV
sets and spotlights, but there was a bed in it.
The executive said, “When you wake up, we'll get you a
room.” He left in haste.
I thought about taking a shower and went into the bath-
room. The shower was filled with mattresses. There was an-
other bedroom on the opposite side of the suite. That shower
had assorted storage.
I'm not sure why I did it, but I decided to go for a walk. It
was daybreak when I got back and turned in. About two
o'clock the phone rang. It was Lou Reda in Easton. He said,
“Tve heard, I've heard. There’s a vice-president who’s been
sitting out in the reception room all day, guarding it. He’s been
afraid to knock on your door. Go out and say hello.”
I performed for the TV broadcasters later that afternoon
and then flew to Chicago for a night-club date that night. I
wasn’t at all surprised when it was announced that O’Hare
Field was iced up, and we'd have to hold over Milwaukee. We
circled twenty or thirty times and then landed. I had twenty
minutes to make the show.
Operating now in a complete mental fog, I decided to keep
going, or else collapse, and took a flight to Newark about 2
AM. Of course Newark was fogged in and we couldn't land
at six as scheduled. Instead we went to La Guardia. At that
airport I called my sister-in-law to say I would arrive by taxi.
211
Otherwise, I was certain I'd get on a helicopter bound for
Staten Island.
As I was making the call I watched a man and a woman
stop outside the phone booth. The man picked up my bags
and headed away. I dropped the phone and ran after him.
Yelling for him to stop, he pointed at the woman and said, “I
thought they were hers.”
So ends the absolutely true account of Concert Tour No. 1,
1973. But it isn’t always like that. Only sometimes.
Unless I’m on a college show, which can often lead to a

lively, serious discussion of ESP with students after the cur-
tain, I prefer the hotel room and TV or reading. I’m usually
back in the room within an hour, having had late supper. If
there’s a good horror movie, especially anything Gothic, I try
to sandwich it in between shows. I read a half-dozen books a
week and also relax by playing chess or cards. Hearts is aggres-
sive without building the tension of bridge. Pinochle is fun
and I’ve got steady pinochle partners in twenty or thirty cities.
In fact, I sometimes code forthcoming engagements by the
names of my pinochle partners rather than by city names.
Aside from dining occasionally with close friends in one
place or another, it’s basically the lonely life of any performer
on a schedule of many one-night stands. At home, the few
days of the month that I can call my own, I relax by playing
the piano. I also enjoy camping and hiking but seldom have
the time.
Yet I love the life and never really think about doing any-
thing else. Unhappy when I’m not working, I constantly com-
plain to Lou that I’m overbooked and never have the time to
do the things Id like to do. That, too, is typical of most per-
formers. Those who know better ignore it.
Money has never been as important as breaking through
some new area or application of ESP, of having a stubborn
physical effect finally work. Then there are those goals that
everyone has. Long ago, when playing to my Polish relatives
212
at St. Michael’s Hall in Bethlehem, I vowed I’d someday ap-
pear in Carnegie Hall. In early 1973 I did a one-man show in
that hallowed theater.
The only people I was really looking for beyond the foot-
lights were the Poles from Bethlehem and Allentown, friends
and relatives from Caldwell, and the Catholic fathers from
Seton Hall. About fifty of my kin arrived on West Fifty-
seventh Street that Saturday night, a street they seldom visit.
This may all sound like a corny page out of a vaudeville movie
but I don’t know any performer who doesn’t have a lifelong
dream of one special room in which to show his wares, to
realize a youthful ambition.
Another milestone might have occurred. I could well be the
only entertainer who has ever played “Chopsticks” on Carne-
gie’s grand piano. It was a musical sacrilege I couldn't resist.
Ignace Paderewski, another good Pole, might have turned over
in his grave. I doubt it, though. Mr. Edison never completed
his machine for spirit contact.
Autobiographies are usually written late in life but I con-

sider what has gone into these pages as a midway account
rather than an autobiography. Hopefully, I'll explore and ex-
periment with ESP and suggestibility for a long time to come.
There is so much to learn.
I think the human mind awaits many new and startling
uses. Regretfully, we seldom call upon it to do more than it
did yesterday, or a thousand years ago.
213
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“SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
with author’s comments
Abbott, David P., Behind the Scenes with the Mediums (Chicago,
The Open Court Publishing Company, 1907). An interesting
account of deceptions during the heyday of spiritualism.
Barber, T. X., Hypnosis—A Scientific Approach (New York, Van
Nostrand Reinhold, 1969). In my opinion, probably the most
important collection of findings in scientific research of hyp-
notic phenomena seen in this century.
Baudouin, C., Suggestion and Autosuggestion (London, Allen & Un-
win, 1920). An early work well worth evaluating.
Bennett, Colin, Hypnotic Power (London, Occult Book Society,
n.d.). A simple but strangely intriguing book by a lay thera-
pist.
Bernheim, H., Suggestive Therapeutics (Westport, Conn., Associ-
ated Booksellers, 1957. Originally published: 1886). A pio-
neering classic written during the “golden age” of hypnotic
phenomena.
Bernstein, M., The Search for Bridey Murphy (Garden City, N.Y.,
Doubleday, 1956). This single book triggered a wave of con-
troversy through the Western world on the subject of reincar-
nation.
215
Bjornstrom, F., Hypnotism (New York, Humbolt Publishing Com-
pany, 1887). An alarmist account by a psychiatrist.
Bolen, J. G., ed., Psychics (New York, Harper & Row, 1972). The
editor of Psychic magazine has included nine in-depth inter-
views, including one with the author of this book.
Bramwell, J. M., Hypnotism (London, Grant Richards, 1903). Au-
thor of the period of Bernheim.
Brandon, J., Successful Hypnotism (New York, Stravon Publishers,
1956). A program book for the performer.
Brennan, M., and Gill, M. M., Hypnotherapy (New York, Interna-
tional Universities Press, 1967). A psychoanalytic perspective
in “hypnotic” treatment.
Brown, Slater, The Heyday of Spiritualism (New York, Hawthorn
Books, 1970). A spicy history difficult to put aside.
Burton, Jean, Heyday of a Wizard: Daniel Home the Medium
(London, Harrap, 1948). A “biography” of a medium.
Carrington, Hereward, The Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism
(Boston, Small Maynard and Company, 1908). A monumental
work on fraudulent spiritualism.
——, and Fodor, Nandor, Haunted People (New York: Dutton,
1951). Both authors believed in the possibility of true polter-
geists.
Carter, M. E., My Years with Edgar Cayce (New York, Harper &
Row, 1972). A more recent personalized account of Edgar
Cayce and his work, written by his secretary.
Christopher, Milbourne, ESP, Seers, and Psychics (New York,
Crowell, 1970). We are treated, in part, with lengthy discus-
sions of animal and side-show acts.
——, Houdini: The Untold Story (New York, Crowell, 1969).
Newspaper-style report of Houdini’s life.
———, Panorama of Magic (New York, Dover, 1962). A beautiful
pictorial history of stage magic.
Clareus, C., An Illustrated History of the Horror Films (New York,
Putnam’s, 1967). Brilliant and scholarly; a study of the visual
and auditory fascination of the mind through Gothic horror
movies.
Cocke, J. R., Hypnotism (Boston, Arena Publishing Company,
1894). Typical popular book, reflecting professional interest of
the period.
216
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Coué, Emile, Self-Mastery through Conscious Autosuggestion (Lon-
don, Allen & Unwin, 1951). Originally published in 1922.
This is the author who made “Autosuggestion” internationally
popular,
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, The Complete Sherlock Holmes (Garden
City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1930). What irony that Doyle would
feud with Houdini over spiritualism!
Drake, D., Horror (New York, Macmillan, 1966). The author errs
at times in his enthusiastic descriptions of the horror film.
Duke, Mark, Acupuncture (New York, Pyramid House, 1972).
Only passing mention is made of suggestion.
Ebon, Martin, ed., Psychic Discoveries by the Russians (New York,
New American Library, 1971). A collection of papers by or
about Russian researchers. Worth reading.
Elman, Dave, Findings in Hypnosis (Clifton, N.J. Published by au-
thor, 1964). Radio’s Hobby Lobby seemed to interest doctors
in suggestive therapeutics.
Elworthy, T. F., The Evil Eye (London, Collier, 1958). An excel-
lent historical study of superstition.
Erickson, M. H., Hershman, S., and Secter, I. I., The Practical Ap-
plications of Medical and Dental Hypnosis (New York, Julian
Press, 1961). Very weak in content; not worth the price.
Esdaile, J., Hypnosis in Medicine and Surgery (New York, Julian
Press, 1957. Originally published: 1850). Historical curiosity.
Estabrooks, G. H., ed., Hypnosis: Current Problems (New York,
Harper & Row, 1962). Better than his earlier book (below)
because of the contributors.
Estabrooks, G. H., Hypnotism (New York, Dutton, 1943). Long
considered the first American authoritative source, it is replete
with distortions and unproven “facts.”
Ford, Arthur, in collaboration with Margueritte Harmon Brother,
Nothing So Strange (New York, Harper’s, 1958). The “life”
of the controversial medium, with the myth of breaking the
Houdini code kept intact.
Forel, A., Hypnotism (New York, Allied Publications, 1949). A re-
print of a classical work.
Fredericks, Carlton, and Goodman, Herman, Low Blood Sugar and
You (New York, Constellation International, 1969). An inter-
217
esting commentary on how low blood sugar may affect mental
perception.
Fuller, J. G., The Interrupted Journey (New York, Dial, 1966).
Therapeutic “hypnosis” (we are told) is used to reveal a UFO
sighting and abduction aboard a spaceship.
Gardner, Martin, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (New
York, Dover, 1957). Includes a jaundiced view of ESP.
Gibson, W. B., and Gibson, L. R., The Complete Illustrated Book.
of the Psychic Sciences (Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday,
1966). An extensive and almost encyclopedic presentation.
Hansel, C. E. M., ESP: A Scientific Evaluation (New York, Scrib-
ner’s, 1966). In the name of science, a remarkably biased de-
bunking of all parapsychological research.
Hargrave, C. P., A History of Playing Cards (New York, Dover,
1966). Fascinating romance of playing cards.
Hilgard, E. R., Hypnotic Susceptibility (New York, Harcourt, Brace
& World, 1965). Read it with skeptical glasses.
Holzer, Hans, Predictions: Fact or Fallacy? (New York, Hawthorn,
1968). By the famous ghost hunter. Holzer may be the out-
standing science fiction writer in parapsychology.
Hull, C. L., Hypnosis and Suggestibility: An Experimental Ap-
proach (New York, Appleton Century, 1933). The “first” of
experimental textbooks on “hypnosis.” Dull reading.
Hynek, J. Allen, The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry (Chi-
cago, Regnery, 1972). A brilliant search into UFO phenom-
ena by a man who admits the role suggestibility might play.
Janet, P., Psychological Healing, Vol. I (New York, Macmillan,
1925). The author was influenced by Charcot and his theories
of hysteria. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Re-
search (New York). This is an internationally respected, highly
conservative quarterly which should be in the hands of. all
serious students.
Kline, M. V., Hypnodynamic Psychology (New York, Julian Press,
1955). The title alone should scare people away.
Kroger, W. S., Childbirth with Hypnosis (Garden City, N.Y., Dou-
bleday, 1961). A book for the general reader in an area of
diminishing popularity.
Kuhn, L., and Russo, S., Modern Hypnosis (New York, Psycho-
218
BIBLIOGRAPHY
logical Library Publishers, 1947). Not as modern as it is his-
torically interesting.
LaCron, L. M., Experimental Hypnosis (New York, Macmillan,
1952). Some interesting contributions and articles. The au-
thor’s credentials should not strengthen the worth of this
material,
, and Bordeaux, J., Hypnotism Today (New York, Grune &
Stratton, 1947). Much better than Estabrooks.
Leitner, K., Master Key to Hypnotism (New York, Stavon Publish-
ers, 1950). The “master key” is deep breathing! Slightly in-
credible,
Mackay, Charles, Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions
and the Madness of Crowds (London, Routledge, 1892). Fas-
cinating accounts which give insight into mob psychology.
Maltz, Maxwell, Psycho-Cybernetics (Hollywood, Calif., Wilshire
Book Company, 1971). Superficial techniques of using the
imagination with autosuggestion, but worth studying.
Marks, W. M., The Story of Hypnotism (New York, Prentice-Hall,
1947). A fast-moving history; noteworthy for the author's com-
mentaries on many movements.
Marcuse, F. L., Hypnosis: Fact and Fiction (Baltimore: Penguin
Books, 1959). I found it difficult to distinguish fact from
fiction.
Marmer, M. J., Hypnosis in Anesthesiology (Springfield, Ill., C. C.
Thomas, 1959). One will suspect that the natural-childbirth
schools may have more to offer than “hypnosis.”
Maskelyne, N., and Devant, D., Our Magic (Berkeley Heights,
N.J., Fleming Books Company, 1946). Originally published in
1911, one of the most important works on conjuring ever writ-
ten has been read by few.
McConnell, R. A., ESP Curriculum Guide (New York, Simon &
Schuster, 1971). A modest guide for high school or early
university courses on the subject.
McNally, R. T., and Floresce, R., In Search of Dracula (Green-
wich, Conn., New York Graphic Society, 1972). Many of the
fears, delusions and artifacts of occult power are encompassed
in “Dracula.” Excellent.
Moll, A., The Study of Hypnotism (New York: Julian Press, 1958.
219
Originally published: 1889). A classic similar to the works of
Bernheim and Bramwell.
Montgomery, Ruth, A Gift of Prophecy (New York, Morrow,
1965). Jeane Dixon’s recountings. Enough said.
Moss, A. A., Hypnodontics: Hypnosis in Dentistry (Brooklyn, N.Y.,
Dental Items of Interest Publishing Company, 1952). Better
left unread by the busy dentist.
Murphy, Gardner, Challenge of Psychical Research (New York,
Harper Colophon Books, 1961). Gardner Murphy is one of a
half-dozen true twentieth-century pioneers in the U.S.A.
Parkyn, H. A., Suggestive Therapeutics and Hypnotism (Holly-
wood, Calif., Wilshire Book Company, 1958). A typical mail-
order course popular at the early part of this century.
Pike, James A., with Diane Kennedy, The Other Side (Garden City,
N.Y., Doubleday, 1968). I¢ all started with the Ford-Pike sé-
ance.
Podmore, F., From Mesmerism to Christian Science (New Hyde
Park, N.Y., University Books, 1963. Originally published:
1909). A fascinating chronology of the movements to arise out
of magnetism.
Pollack, J. H., Croiset The Clairvoyant (New York, Bantam Books,
1965). A remarkable book about a remarkable person.
Prince, F. P., Noted Witnesses for Psychic Occurrences (New Hyde
Park, N.Y., University Books, 1963). A brilliant pioneer in
occult research.
Psychic magazine (San Francisco, The Bolen Company). A bi-
_ monthly periodical with responsible editing (J. G. Bolen, ed.).
Reiff, R., and Scheerer, M., Memory and Hypnotic Age Regression
(New York, International Universities Press, 1959). One
should bear in mind that maturity tests in “regressed” subjects
show no real regression.
Reiter, P. J., Antisocial or Criminal Acts and Hypnosis: A Case
Study (Springfield, Ill., C. C. Thomas, 1958). An unsuccess-
ful attempt to “prove hypnosis” was significant in the Den-
mark case.
Rhine, Joseph B., Extra-sensory Perception (London, Faber &
Faber, 1935). The beginning of the controversy and of Rhine’s
great contributions.
220
BIBLIOGRAPHY
——, New World of the Mind (New York, Sloane, 1953). Stuffy,
repetitious, and dull reading.
Rinn, J. F., Sixty Years of Psychical Research (New York, The
Truth Seeks Company, 1950). By a man who knew Houdini
but whose memory was failing when he wrote his story.
Robert-Houdin, Jean E., Memoirs of Robert-Houdin (Minneapolis,
Carl W. Jones, 1944). The nineteenth-century autobiography
of the man often called “the father of modern magic.”
Scarne, John, Scarne’s Complete Guide to Gambling (New York,
Simon & Schuster, 1961). The gambling expert offers a cut to
protect victims against card cheats, but it’s not the protection
one is led to believe.
Sheen, Fulton J., Peace of Soul (Garden City, N.Y., Garden City
Books, 1951). By a man who must, in his love for God and
mankind, have achieved what his book title implies.
———, Life Is Worth Living (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1953).
Scripts of the legendary TV series which made the bishop a
household word.
Sidis, B., The Psychology of Suggestion (New York, Appleton,
1910). Should be read by all serious students,
Sinclair, Upton, Mental Radio (New York, Collier, 1971). Written
in 1930, the book has become a classic in telepathy and con-
tains a meaningful commentary by Albert Einstein.
Smith, Suzy, Confessions of a Psychic (New York, Macmillan,
1971). A highly personalized biographical account by one of
the most prolific popular writers in the field.
Snyder, E. D., Hypnotic Poetry (Philadelphia, University of
Pennsylvania, 1930). Poetry which is supposed to create a
hypnotic state! What?
Spraggett, Allen, The Unexplained (New York, New American
Library, 1967). Spraggett condemns those who claim that Ar-
thur Ford practiced fraud.
St. Clair, David, The Psychic World of California (Garden City,
N.Y., Doubleday, 1972). Why, oh why, do there seem to be
so many psychics in California?
Stearn, Jess, The Door to the Future (Garden City, N.Y., Double-
day, 1963). All the more interesting because Stearn originally
set out to expose fraudulent cases of ESP but changed his
mind.
221
Steger, M., Hypnoidal Therapy (New York, Froben, 1951). The
use of a “state” preceding “hypnosis.” I pass.
Stoker, Bram, Dracula (New York, Pocket Books, Inc., 1947. Origi-
nally published: 1897). Stoker's legendary character was
skillfully created to strike fear in the minds of readers (and
moviegoers). A masterpiece.
Thurston, Howard, My Life of Magic (Philadelphia, Dorrance,
1929). A ghosted autobiography of the great stage magician.
Volgyesi, F. A., Hypnosis of Man and Animals (Hollywood, Wil-
shire Book Company, 1968). Traditional Russian confusion of
animal and human “hypnotic” response.
Ward, D., ed., Favorite Stories of Hypnotism (New York, Dodd,
Mead, 1965). Commentaries by Dr. Milton V. Kline precede
each mystery and horror story. The fiction is the best part of
the book. j
Weitzenhoffer, A. M., General Techniques of Hypnotism (New
York, Grune Stratton, 1957). A detailed description of “hyp-
notic” induction techniques, including a large coverage of those
used for stage “hypnosis.”
———, Hypnotism: An Objective Study in Suggestibility (New York,
Wiley, 1953). Weitzenhoffer’s subjective study.
Wells, W. R., “Experiments in Waking Hypnosis for Instructional
Purposes,” J. Abnormal Social Psychology, 1924, New York.
A tentative questioning of the necessity or even lack of a “hyp-
notic” trance.
Wolberg, L. R., Hypnoanalysis (New York, Grune and Stratton,
1945). There may be a contradiction in combining “hypnotic”
suggestion with analytic techniques.
Wydenbruck, N., Doctor Mesmer (London, John Westhouse,
1947). An idyllic biography.
Young, P. C., “Hypnotic Regression—Fact or Artifact?,” J. Abnormal
Social Psychology, 1940, New York. An interesting weighing
of both sides of the issue.
Zilboorg, G., and Henry, G. W., A History of Medical Psychology
(New York, Norton, 1941). An extensive suggestion has
played a role in this history.
222
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ee Grabbing
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:
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(continued from front flap)
ered that he could achieve the same manifesta-

tion with the subject wide awake.
In addition to relating his own experiences in
the field of parapsychology—the story of his de-
velopment as a “mentalist’—Kreskin takes a
sharp but humorous knife to deal with mystic
arts and the occult (his contempt for most me-
diums and seers is evident).
During his adventures and research into the
occult, he’s found some interesting people. Who
would think that Lincoln went to a séance? That
Edison once taiked about inventing a machine to
communicate with spirits? That the daredevil
Houdini, who was even afraid to drive a car, laid
a trap to expose mediums after his death?
In this tour through his own amazing world,
Kreskin drops off information on how to tilt
tables, lower the metabolic rate through autosug-
gestion, achieve automatic writing; even a handy
way to beat the blackjack odds at Las Vegas.
There has never been a book about telepathy,
clairvoyance, premonition, psychokinesis and
“hypnosis” quite like The Amazing World of
Kreskin.
Jacket design by Ira Teichberg
L i
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Millions who have watched Kreskin’s thought

perception or suggestibility feats on his own tele-

As a performer, a “mentalist,” for lack of a better self-

work, I’m not in awe of the field itself. Why should we be

The Power of Suggestion

The unknown is always there. Where do you stop?

“Think of his address, please,” I then said.

My own mood counts. I take a walk at least a mile long be-

During the 1890’s—the early period of the British Society for

I’ve often been asked why I use illusion, completely unre-

Unlike psychometrist Peter Hurkos, I took no falls from a

We were centrally located, to say the least. The Catholic

With my father, or sometimes with both our parents, Joe and

One man is often responsible for the difference between a

Any performer is terrified of failure before an audience.

As any current performer well knows, television consumes

Perception of numbers is perhaps the easiest ESP effect to

Almost nightly, things do occur that aren’t programmed at

Hopeful of spontaneity, praying for something offbeat to

All of these demonstrations are attempts to show energy

In contrast to this legitimate area of mental-dynamic energy

When communication is without sound, darkness seems to

Thought perception in auditoriums, theaters or night clubs

6. March 22—“Press Only” badge.

Two hundred of the “receivers” had almost direct hits on

My reasoning factors often become my enemies.

As part of each concert, to combat skepticism and the ac-

I suppose that anyone who calls himself a mentalist invites

A strong belief in ESP appears to be a major factor in its

The Hermann’s teen-age son, James, was present, somewhere

Some parapsychologists are concerned about the current

To me, one of the most intriguing, perhaps the most excit-

ei 5 “hye Pe tacos aie Taare iene oe ha

Bria tots, abe

Suggestion, for my specific purposes of entertainment,

Through autosuggestion, with calm, tranquil imagery, I can

Suggestion has of course always been the keystone of “hyp-

With imagination as the key, with the power of suggestion

One of the masters of suggestibility is Arthur Godfrey.

“Where do you live?”

Suggestibility rips through inhibitions and occasionally

On a summer’s night long ago, at the Brant’s Beach Yacht

People are suggestible in different settings. A scientist may

In the broad aspect, involving both mental and physical

As a dominating force in our lives, suggestion won't go

It is probable that many people, with a limited concentra-

And that routine, consuming all of five minutes, is the first

1, Sitting or lying down, immediately tense all muscles. Now

The first definitive American work on “hypnosis” was writ-

There are many methods of inducing “hypnosis,” and in the

In 1958 the American Medical Association announced its

Able to pull a rabbit from a hat at the age of ten, practicing

One of the current fads in the occult field is astral projec-

The core of a séance, for good or evil, knowingly fraudulent

Medium: I see an elderly woman standing by him. She’s

The most famous American spiritualist was the late Rev-

Ford: I see him, he is with someone in England.

Later, in Pike’s book about the Ford séances, we are told

Because of the potential damage to many people, prophe-

Certain people seem to have developed a high sensitivity to