I was recently interviewed about psychic charlatans again, this time specifically about so-called “psychic investigators” who purport to assist law enforcement in solving crimes, especially with things like missing person cases.
It was for a podcast, the award-winning Worldwide, hosted by Tricia Jenkins, a professor of Film, TV, and Digital Media at the Bob Schieffer College of Communication at Texas Christian University.1 Their engrossing new season focuses on the true crime story of Jim Thompson, the mid-20th century U.S. intelligence officer and businessman who was singlehandedly responsible for revitalizing the massive Thai silk trade, and who mysteriously went missing in 1967 in the jungles of Malaysia.2
Over a hundred psychics claimed to have supernatural visions that would help investigators solve Jim Thompson’s disappearance, including traditional Thai spirit mediums, Maylasian bomohs (shamans), and U.S. celebrity psychics. But the most prominent psychic claiming to have visions about Thompson’s vanishing was the Dutch-born Peter Hurkos, the mid-century magician and psychic performer turned psychic detective.3 4
I was invited on Worldwide to explain how psychic detectives do their thing, and why they are actually quite dangerous. In summary, and leaving aside the brute fact that there’s no evidence psychic detectives actually help solve crimes, psychic detectives divert law enforcement’s limited time, money, and human resources away from proven investigative methods that are based on gathering evidence and credible forensic science. Psychic detectives also give false hope to grieving families, which makes them especially susceptible to emotional manipulation and financial exploitation by these unscrupulous psychics.5
In the interview, I explain my taxonomy of psychics, and how all psychics aren’t created equal, either in their methodology or their ethics. (As I’ve said for years: all psychics are fake, but not all psychics are frauds.) I detail some of the specific tricky methods Peter Hurkos used as a psychic detective, and talk about some of the methods that comprise what’s commonly called “cold reading,” such as the Forer effect, the shotgun method, pareidolic pronunciations, how psychics capitalize on their victim’s confirmation bias (their propensity to “remember the hits and forget the misses”), etc.
I also get into my personal history decades ago as a psychic performer. And for the first time ever, I publicly talk about and reveal some of the tricky methods I used when demonstrating my psychic powers for my clients.6
You can listen to the whole in-depth episode and extensive interview here, but here’s a short clip:
In addition to her eye-opening research on the U.S. government influencing DC and Marvel superhero movies (!), Jenkins wrote a great book on the CIA and Hollywood more generally. This Jim Thompson true crime series is the perfect intersection of her interests in the intelligence community and unfounded belief.
Thompson’s missing person case became the most extensive land search in Southeast Asian history.
Hurkos became quite the celebrity, and was featured in constant TV and radio appearances, as well as touring with live shows, what he called his “demonstrations.” This is despite his prior conviction for falsely impersonating an FBI agent at a crime scene in order to gather facts he wanted to later regurgitate as a “psychic detective.” Hurkos, unbelievably, was actually brought in by police to help with serious criminal cases, including both the Charles Manson and Boston Strangler murders.
An episode of Leonard Nimoy’s great mystery-mongering 1970s TV Show In Search Of gave Hurkos significant national media exposure. As the intro of the show states: “This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture. The producer's purpose is to suggest some possible explanations, but not necessarily the only ones, to the mysteries we will examine.” This particular episode also focuses on an eccentric 1970s team of psychic detectives from my hometown of St. Louis, Missouri.
Psychic Sylvia Browne was another spectacular example of this reprehensible psychic detective fraud. Notoriously, in 2004, Browne appeared on The Montel Williams Show and told the mother of Amanda Berry, who had gone missing in 2003, that her daughter was dead, and “in water.” Browne's exact words were, “She's not alive, honey,” and, heartbroken, her mother died a year later, believing her daughter dead. But in 2013, Amanda Berry was found alive, having been held captive by her kidnapper over that decade. Another example is the Shawn Hornbeck case: also on The Montel Williams Show, Sylvia Browne told the parents of Shawn Hornbeck, an 11-year-old Missouri boy who had been missing for months, that their son was dead. Claiming to have a psychic vision, Browne described in detail where his body could be found, but investigators never uncovered the body. The boy was found alive over four years later in 2007, an hour away from where he disappeared, in the home of his kidnapper.
I should say that at the end of all of my shows as a psychic entertainer, I offered a clear disclaimer, explaining that everything I did was for entertainment only — that I was, in fact, a magician who, rather than using props like other magicians would use, such as a deck of cards or silk handkerchiefs or ropes, etc., I used information and psychology. Few, if any, audience members left those shows believing I had supernatural powers.
It is great that you tried some form of meditation. It is something everyone can do. TM helps develop Open Mindedness, yet with Critical Thinking Ability, needed to see the truth.
TM has over 300 scientific research studies published in peer reviewed journals listed by the National Institutes of Health.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2211376 www.TM.org
Doug Henning and many Hollywood celebrities learned how to do TM, including David Lynch, Jerry Seinfeld, Clint Eastwood, Oprah, Ellen Degeneres, and others. Billionaire Ray Dalio says TM is his secret to success.
https://maharishischool.org/school-news-blogs/25-celebrities-who-know-transcendental-meditation
Like the old saying, paraphrased-‘there’s one born every minute”...at least.