Those of you who saw 20/20 Friday night saw James Van Praagh busted for
cheating and caught in a bald-faced lie. Here is my report, lifted from
two sections from my next essay in Skeptic magazine, entitled "TALKING
TWADDLE WITH THE DEAD."
There is additional information I got from a producer at NBC's THE OTHER
SIDE, of how Van Praagh cheated on that show as well. It follows some
biographical material on Van Praagh.
Michael Shermer
How to Talk to the Dead
Watching James Van Praagh work a crowd or do a one-on-one reading is an
educational experience in human psychology. Make no mistake about it, this
is one clever man. We skeptics may see him as morally reprehensible at best,
but we should not underestimate his talents at understanding what touches
off human emotions. He employs three basic techniques to "talk"
to the dead:
1. Cold Reading. Most of what Van Praagh does is what is known in the
mentalism trade as cold reading, where you literally "read" someone
"cold,"--knowing nothing about them. He asks lots of questions and
makes numerous statements, some general and some specific, and sees what
sticks.
Most of the time he is wrong. His subjects visibly nod their heads
"no." But, as noted above, he only needs an occasional hit to
convince his clientele he is genuine. Sometimes he gets lucky, and as
mentalists note, you always take credit for lucky hits.
2. Warm Reading. This is utilizing known principles of psychology that
apply to nearly everyone. For example, most grieving women will wear a
piece of jewelry that has a connection to their loved one. Katie Curic
on The Today Show, for example, after her husband died wore his ring on
a necklace when she returned to the show. Van Praagh knows this about
mouning people and will say something like "do you have a ring or
a piece of jewelry on you, please?" His subject cannot believe her
ears and nods enthusiastically in the affirmative.
He says "thank you," and moves on like he just divined this
from heaven. Most people also keep a photograph of their loved one either
on them or near their bed, and Van Praagh will take credit for this specific
hit that actually applies to most people. He is clever at determining the
cause of death by focusing either on the chest or head areas, and then
exploring whether it was a slow or sudden end.
Like a computer flow chart, he moves through the possibilities, then fills
in the blanks. "I'm feeling a pain in the chest." If he gets a
positive nod, he continues. "Did he have cancer, please? Because I'm
seeing a slow death here." If he gets the nod, he takes the hit. If
the subject hesitates at all, he will quickly shift to heart attack. If it
is the head, he goes for stroke or head injury from an automobile accident
or fall.
Statistically speaking there are only half a dozen ways 90% of us die, so
with just a little probing, and the verbal and nonverbal cues of his
subject, he can appear to get far more hits here than he is really getting.
3. Hot Reading. Mentalist Max Maven clarified for me that some mentalists
and psychics also do "hot" readings, where they obtain information
on a subject ahead of time. I do not know if Van Praagh uses private
detectives to get information on people, but I have discovered from numerous
television producers who were less than impressed by the medium, that Van
Praagh consciously and deliberately pumps them for information about his
subjects ahead of time, then uses that information to deceive the viewing
public that he got it from the spirit world.
Leah Haines, for example, a producer and researcher for NBC's The Other
Side, explained to me how Van Praagh used her during his numerous
appearances on the show in 1994 (in an interview on April 3, 1998):
For example, I recall him asking about the profession of the deceased
loved one of one of our guests, and I told him he was a fireman. Then,
when the show began, he said something to the effect, "I see a uniform.
Was he a policeman or fireman please?" Everyone was stunned at his
psychic powers, but he got that directly from me.
Haines also noted that any notion of Van Praagh not doing it for the money
were quickly erased as his fame grew. "We had him on the show a bunch
of times that first year. At the beginning he would drive himself to the
studio and we just paid him a token fee like all the other guests. But in
time he wanted us to send over a limo and he kept cranking up his appearance
fee. It really irked us because we knew that we were the ones who made
him."
Caught Cheating
Even for seasoned observers it is remarkable how Van Praagh appears to get
hits, even when he doesn't. When we were filming the 20/20 piece, I was told
that he had not done all that well the night before, but that he got a couple
of startling hits--including the name of a woman's family dog. But when we
reviewed the videotape, here is what actually happened. Van Praagh was bombing
in his reading of a gentleman named Peter, who was poker-faced and obviously
skeptical (without feedback Van Praagh's hit rate drops by half).
After dozens of misses, Van Praagh queried, "Who is Charlie?"
Peter sat there dumbfounded, unable to connect to anyone named Charlie, when
suddenly the woman sitting next to Peter (and a complete stranger), blurted
out "Charlie was our family dog." Van Praagh seized the moment and
proclaimed that he could see Charlie and Dad taking walks in heaven together.
The highlight of the 20/20 piece, however, was the blatant exposure of Van
Praagh cheating, and then caught in a bald-faced lie. On a break, with the
video camera rolling, he turned to a woman named Mary Jo and asked:
"Did your mother pass on?" Mary Jo nodded in the negative and
said "Grandmother." A full 54 minutes later Van Praagh turned to
her and said: "I want to tell you, there is a lady sitting behind
you. She feels like a grandmother to me.
He was caught cheating red-handed but when confronted by the 20/20
correspondent Bill Ritter, he lied, insisting that he got the grandmother
without cheating. When they showed him the video clip, he proclaimed:
"I don't cheat. I don't have to prove... I don't cheat. I don't
cheat. I mean, come on." As if repeating it enough times would make
it go away.
Yet, even after we busted Van Praagh for both cheating and lying, Barbara
Walters concluded in the wrap-up discussion:
I was skeptical. I still am But I met James Van Praagh. He didn't expect to
meet me. He knew that my father's name was Lew--Lewis he said and he knew
that my father had a glass eye. People don't know that.
Ritter, doing his homework on this piece to the bitter end, replied:
While Walters flustered in frustration, seemingly groping for some vestige
of hope, Hugh Downs declared without qualification: "I don't believe
him."
Where have we heard all this before? A hundred years ago, when mediums,
seances, and spiritualism were all the rage in England and America, Thomas
Henry Huxley concluded, as only he could in his biting wit, that as
nonsensical as it was, spiritual manifestations might at least reduce
suicides: "Better live a crossing-sweeper than die and be made to
talk twaddle by a 'medium' hired at a guinea a seance."
Strange that this phenomenon would repeat a century later. Perhaps Marx was
right when he wrote in the Eighteenth Brumaire that "Hegel remarks
somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as
it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the
second as farce." In this case, death is the tragedy, Van Praagh is
the farce.
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I can't say I think James Van Praagh is a total fraud, because he came
up with things I hadn't told him, but there were moments on the show when
he appeared to coming up with fresh information that he got from myself
and other researchers.
You told me the story yesterday and I told you I would look and see what I
could find out. Within a few minutes I found out that your father' name
wasn't Lew and that he was very well known in show business. And this
morning I was looking in a book and found a passage that says he was blind
in one eye -- accidental -- and he had a glass eye. If I found that out,
then he could have.
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