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 Editorials | At Issue | July 2006 
Psychic Hoaxes: How Much Would You Pay to Remove a 'Curse' From Your Family?
 Don Dahler & Glenn Silber - ABC News
| | An encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural by James Randi. |
It all started innocently for Jackie Haughn. She was leaving work one day last November and found a flier on her car. It was an ad from a psychic, who called herself "Ann Marie," offering readings at half price. "A couple of weeks later, I called and decided to make an appointment. It sounded interesting. I figured I have nothing to lose," Haughn said.
So the 36-year-old divorced mother of two ventured over to Cresskill, N.J., just north of New York City, to meet with the self-proclaimed psychic.
Haughn told the psychic that she wanted to know if perhaps someone might be coming into her life. Haughn said Ann Marie offered to light candles to help her meditate and pray for answers to her problems. "When she said she lights candles, it automatically makes me think it's like a spiritual thing ... a good thing ... you're praying for somebody," said Haughn.
Haughn believed the psychic was sincere and supportive, even though she charged her $25 per candle.
Haughn said she gave the psychic $75 for the candles, because the psychic was empathetic and would do things like hold Haughn's hand and tell her, "God had brought you to me."
After her first session, Haughn felt as if she could trust Ann Marie, and she agreed to come back. During that next reading, Haughn said the psychic told her something dramatic: There was a curse on Haughn and her family. Haughn said Ann Marie convinced her that by performing a number of rituals, the curse could be removed, a curse that was put on Haughn's family many years ago.
Con Artist, Not Psychic
Detective Norman Saunders of the Cresskill Police Department said the woman Haughn knew as Ann Marie was well known to police as a con artist.
"She has eight different names. Ann Marie is her fortunetelling name and Tammy Mitchell is her real name," Saunders said. "She served time in jail in Florida for the same type of offense. Her goal in life is to scam people."
Saunders said he knew of at least four others in the county who'd gotten scammed for tens of thousands of dollars. "When you first get the statements, you kind of think, how could these people do this? But as you talk to the victims, it could be anyone that this happens to. Anyone who is vulnerable."
According to Michael Shermer, the publisher of "Skeptic" magazine and author of "Why People Believe in Weird Things," Haughn was a prime target for a psychic scam.
Could Happen to Anyone
"All of us are potentially gullible," Shermer said. "Smart people on some level are even more gullible if you can get them past their initial level of skepticism. Because most of what we believe, we believe for emotional, psychological reasons, and then we rationalize the belief after the fact, after we already hold it. Smart, educated people are better at rationalizing these beliefs."
Shermer said Haughn went from rational to gullible the moment she bought the three candles for $75. "She made a commitment that was going to be next to impossible to back out of."
Haughn felt as if Ann Marie had some sort of control over her. She talked to Ann Marie up to five times a day. "I guess I really wanted to believe her."
So much so, according to Haughn, that over the next few months she gave the psychic more and more money to remove the reputed curse.
Haughn said the psychic asked for half of her life savings, and Haughn's fear of the alleged curse compelled her to give the money over to Ann Marie.
According to Shermer, this could happen to anyone after you establish familiarity. "Once you start going down that road and you feel like you need to do this, it's very difficult to get out. Nobody walks into a psychic and in the first five minutes hands over a deed to a house or a hundred thousand dollars."
And it wasn't just cash that Ann Marie wanted. According to Haughn, there was a watch, too.
Ann Marie told Haughn she had to drive her to New York City to buy a watch that would somehow enable her "to reset time" in her life, but it couldn't be just any watch. It had to be a gold Chopard. Haughn said she bought the $20,000 watch for Ann Marie, and has never seen it since.
Apparently, even the $20,000 watch wasn't enough. Soon after, Haughn received a mysterious letter. Police are calling it an overt threat.
Threatening Letter
"I couldn't believe it," said Haughn. "I kept reading it over." When Haughn read the letter with Ann Marie, the psychic's response was, "Oh my god ... It looks like it's written in blood."
It read in part: "This is the spirit of God, my child. You must follow and obey my word. You must have $63,000 to suffer in place of you. If not, Satan will take someone."
Saunders, the detective on the case, called the letter extortion. "It's putting fear into somebody. I mean, our victims have families, and if they don't give a certain amount of money, this curse will not be lifted and something evil would happen."
"20/20" tried to talk to Tammy Mitchell (aka Ann Marie) about the allegations, but she wouldn't talk to us. Last month Cresskill police officers arrested her.
"We filed extortion charges against Ann Marie and theft by deception. It's two second- or third-degree crimes," said Saunders.
Tammy Mitchell's case will soon go before a grand jury. Jackie Haughn is still angry. "I feel like she brainwashed me."
In the end, Haughn said she gave the alleged psychic a total of $220,000. Now Haughn wants to get her money back and see Mitchell go to prison for a long time.
Strange Hoaxes That Endure
Joe Nickell & Matt Nisbet
The word hoax is thought to be a shortening of "hocus-pocus" — a synonym for trickery that in turn came from hoc corpus est, a Latin phrase from the Catholic mass spoken when the bread is supposedly transformed into the body of Christ.
A hoax is an intentional deception. Distinguished from a fraud, which is perpetrated primarily for gain, a hoax is characterized by the nature of the deception. It may involve money or not, but essentially a hoax is an imposition on the victim's credulity. It may range from harmless mischief, such as that associated with April Fool's Day, or it may have a more cruel or sinister aspect.
Typical of the range of hoaxes is the following "top-ten list" compiled by the staff at the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), publisher of Skeptical Inquirer magazine. Paranormal claims — those beyond the range of nature and normal human experience — frequently involve hoaxes, and some are outright frauds.
Roswell Incident
In 1947 a "flying disc" crashed near Roswell, New Mexico. Rancher Mac Brazel described the debris as foiled paper, sticks, string, and tape consistent with a radar reflector, once thought part of a weather balloon but now identified as a Project Mogul spy balloon. Over time the story has prompted many hoaxes, including the "MJ-12" documents (forged papers which supposedly proved presidential involvement in a cover-up of the UFO crash), stories of aliens stored at secret installations (tales largely spread by a raconteur, "professor" Robert Carr), and an "alien autopsy" (broadcast on the Fox television network and featuring an obviously rubber humanoid-type figure). Despite well-documented evidence exposing the Roswell hoax, the tale persists as part of the American consciousness. A 1997 Gallup poll revealed that over 80% of Americans have heard of the Roswell incident, and 31% believe that a spacecraft from another planet did indeed crash at Roswell in 1947. In addition, the UFO-government conspiracy lore ignited by the hoaxes has inspired major plot themes in the mega-popular X-Files television series and films like Independence Day and Men in Black.
Spiritualism
Belief in communicating with the dead is ancient, but modern spiritualism began in 1848 when two girls , Margaret and Katherine Fox, apparently received messages from the ghost of a murdered peddler. He responded to their questions by knocking a certain number of times to signal yes, no, or other simple answers. Soon, assisted by an older sister, the girls traveled all over the United States to promote their "Spiritualist" society. Four decades later, however, the sisters revealed to a theater audience how they had tricked the world. Margaret Fox demonstrated how she had slipped her foot from her shoe and snapped her toes to make the rapping sounds. In the meantime, as well as later, spiritualists were caught producing fake phenomena — from bogus spirit writing on slates to ghostly entities that proved to be mediums or their assistants in disguise. The most recent incarnation of spiritualism arrives in the form of psychic-medium James Van Praagh, whose book Talking to Heaven is currently atop the best-seller lists.
Psychic Networks
Fortunetelling is an ancient deception now updated for popular mass consumption. Just as gypsy seers practiced clever techniques such as cold reading (an artful method of fishing for information while watching the listener for subtle reactions), modern "psychics" use shrewd methods to appear clairvoyant. For example, many of their responses are phrased in question form, which may, if correct, be considered a "hit" but otherwise will seem an innocent query. Just keeping the caller on the phone, since the psychics are paid by the minute, is an obvious ploy. Some analysts predict that the psychic networks will be a $2 billion industry by the end of the decade. In February, however, mismanagement and competition forced the industry's pioneer network, Psychic Friends, to file for bankruptcy — an event that 2000 psychics employed by the network failed to foresee.
Shroud of Turin
Perhaps the world's most notorious religious hoax is the purported Holy Shroud of Jesus, now kept in a cathedral in Turin, Italy. It bears the imprints of an apparently crucified man, but modern forensic tests show the image was done in tempera paint, and radio carbon testing yielded a date between 1260 and 1390. This is consistent with the earliest written record of the cloth, a bishop's report to Pope Clement that an artist confessed he had "cunningly painted" the image. The "shroud" had been part of a phoney faith-healing scheme to bilk credulous pilgrims. Stories of the shroud's authenticity are sure to resurface this spring at the 1998 Shroud Exposition in Turin where the "relic" will be on display to the public for the first time in twenty years.
Cottingley Fairies
In 1917 two innocent-seeming English schoolgirls, 13-year-old Elsie Wright and her 10-year-old cousin Frances Griffiths, launched a deception that fooled many people over the following years, including the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. While playing in Cottingley Glen, the girls took close-up photographs of winged fairies dancing amid the foliage. The girls then made each other's picture with the wee creatures, and photo experts said the images were not double exposures nor had the negatives been altered. In fact, it was the scene, not the photos, that was faked: the girls had simply posed with fairy cutouts to make the "authentic" pictures. Some sixty years later, the aging Elsie and Frances confessed to what had begun as a prank but soon got out of hand as the story was publicized. Paramount Pictures recently revived the case with the magical release Fairy Tale: A True Story. Unfortunately, the film fails to provide modern audiences with many of the incriminating details of the Cottingley hoax.
Crop Circles
Since the late 1970's, mysterious swirled patterns have been appearing in southern English grain fields — invariably during nighttime. Some thought the depressions were caused by "wind vortexes," while others, plying their dowsing rods, believed they had a mystical origin, and still others opted for an extraterrestrial explanation: perhaps the designs were communications from alien beings. However, in 1991 two elderly men, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, demonstrated how they had made the first circles, which others copied and elaborated to produce the stylized "pictograms" that became known around the world.
Amityville Horror
America's most famous haunted house is located in Amityville, New York, where in 1974 a man murdered his parents and siblings. A year later the house was bought by George and Kathy Lutz who soon claimed they were driven out by spooky events, including demon tracks in the snow and damage to doors and windows. Investigation showed the events never transpired, and the murderer's lawyers confessed how, for money, he and the Lutzes had "created this horror story over many bottles of wine." Despite the admission, the story spawned the best-selling book Amityville Horror and a franchise of successful horror films that continue to be released on video today.
Piltdown "Missing Link"
In December of 1912 a major scientific discovery was announced: the long- sought-after "missing link" between man and his prehistoric ancestors was recovered near Piltdown Common in England by an amateur fossil collector named Charles Dawson. In response to skeptics, Dawson sought and found another set of bones, dubbed Piltdown II. The archeological revelations appealed to English pride, since previous discoveries relating to man's origins had been made in Europe and Asia. Piltdown Man quickly became the subject of numerous scientific articles and was enshrined in the British Museum. In 1953, however, the hoax was finally discovered. Eoanthropus dawsoni ("Dawson's Dawn Man") turned out to be a combination of human cranial pieces and the jawbone of an orangutan, stained to appear ancient.
Psychic Surgery
Among the most outrageous — and dangerous — hoaxes is a phoney healing procedure in which a practitioner appears to reach into a patient's body, without benefit of scalpel or anesthesia, to remove "tumors" and other diseased tissue. Common to Brazil and the Philippines, psychic surgery is actually produced by sleight of hand. Animal tissue and blood are used to give a realistic appearance, while a patient's fleshy midriff helps create the illusion that the surgeon's fingers have actually penetrated the body. Tragically, many of the patients, or victims, of the psychic surgeons have died within a year or so of the trick procedure.
King Tut's Curse@The "boy king" Tutankhamen ruled Egypt from the age of nine until his death at eighteen, during the twelfth century B.C. His tomb was discovered in 1922 by Howard Carter, but a curse written over the entrance began to take its toll, resulting in the death over the years of many associated with the excavation. Or so it was claimed. In 1980 the tomb's former security officer admitted the story of the curse had been circulated to frighten away thieves. In fact, ten years after the tomb was opened, all but one of the five who first entered it were still living, and Carter himself lived until 1939.
Other paranormal hoaxes include the Cardiff Giant (a nineteenth-century "petrified man"), P.T. Barnum's notorious "mermaid", UFO and Bigfoot hoaxes too numerous to mention, and many more, including weeping religious icons. Too often the explanations or criticisms of these fabricated claims go unheard in the media, while movie makers, television producers and book publishers draw on these hoaxes to weave top-grossing fiction that is often treated as real. Until the media provide more critical presentations of the paranormal, a word of warning is the only known antidote. |
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