Can people read minds? That is, can you or I have our memories stolen and then fed back to us as, for example, proof of contact with the dead? It's an interesting proposition, one which is infinitely more acceptable than the talking to the dead claims made by spiritual mediums and psychics. These abilities to apparently read minds and produce information not previously known is amazing-almost magical! Magic...Now there's a word not popularly used by psychics, and for a good reason. Once you look at the magicians’ and illusionists’ acts, past and present, you start to see that the psychics are using methods and techniques first known and used over a hundred and fifty years ago. The 1830s saw a tremendous upsurge in interest in the occult, especially subjects as diverse as witchcraft, secret cults, séances and ghosts, which probably explains why the Fox sisters’ claims of contact with the dead were taken so seriously and without question. The magicians and illusionists of the day quickly picked up on this interest in the populace and began to devise bigger and better illusions to satisfy peoples cravings for all things paranormal. The invention of the magic lantern, the forerunner of today's slide projector, opened a whole new era in the history of illusion. For the first time illusionists could step across the dividing line between this world and the next and produce apparitions of the dead seemingly at will.  As early as the 1790s, there were ghost shows like the 'Phantasmagoria', which had its origins in Vienna and finally ended up in Paris where its popularity faded. Later, a man named Robertson, was to perfect this technique in a most peculiar and alarming way. He would throw narcotic drugs into flaming braziers, producing hallucinogenic plumes of smoke which would envelope those attending the séance causing them to experience all manner of inexplicable happenings. Once those attending the séance were as high-as-a-kite Robertson would project a vaguely human image onto the smoke causing mayhem to ensue. Then in 1862 in London, John Henry Pepper refined and polished this illusion and came up with Pepper’s Ghost, which used as its basic principle light reflection and angled sheets of glass. A good example of this principle is when you stand in a brightly lit room and look out of a window at night only to see your own ghostly reflection staring back at you. This formula was embellished and refined further in Paris in 1890 when people could visit the 'Tavern Of The Dead' and watch the macabre sight of a woman, suitably laid out in a coffin, slowly decay into a skeleton in front of their very eyes. The Haunted Ballroom in Disneyland where visitors can watch transparent ghosts dancing and feasting at a huge banqueting table uses the very same principle that was made popular over one hundred and twenty years ago. The legendary encounters of apparitions in many of the early Victorian séance rooms could well be down to this deception which, when deployed properly, can be quite amazing as anyone who has visited the Haunted Ballroom will verify.

It’s the best kept secret, and not something that followers of certain psychic superstars would want you to know, but Uri Geller, Mathew Manning, Sathyanarayara Ratnakaru Raya (Sai Baba) and Doris Collins, etc, are not a new phenomenon just a neatly rewrapped version of the mentalists, illusionists and slight of hand specialists who shocked the world over a century before. So what is mentalism? Quite simply mentalism is a theatrical act which appears to be psychic in origin but is actually accomplished through conjuring means. Those who become proficient in mentalism can actually fool the academics, and indeed, have done so several times in the past although the advent of the video camera has allowed psychical researchers an opportunity to look over the psychic’s shoulder and see what's really happening. In the last decade or so a new breed of entertainer, using mentalist techniques, has come to light with an advanced and trendy title for their abilities-Neural Linguistic Programming- which some define as being the art of letting your subject believe they are in total control when, in fact, you are. NLP, however one looks at it, is just mentalism. For a good example of mentalism let you and me play 'psychic snooker'.

Psychic snooker isn't as hard as regular snooker, thank God, and relies on a completely different level of skill, namely my ability to predict which of the above numbered snooker balls on the next page you are going to end up on. So, pick a ball, any ball except the centre ball which represents the white and has no value. Now, starting at the next ball travelling clockwise around the triangle, spell out your name. Done that-good. Next, using the next ball, once again, traveling in a clockwise direction, spell out the name of the road or street where you live. Okay, next using the same principle, spell out either your mother’s, father’s, or child’s name. The choice is yours! You should now find yourself on one of the seven balls that surround the white ball. Each of the balls, as in ordinary snooker, has a certain number of points allocated to it, red= 1, yellow=2 etc. Starting at the next ball count your way around the triangle the number that your ball represents until you should now find yourself on one special ball.  For the duration of this illusion we will  call this your psychic ball. Think hard about the colour of the ball and at the end of this article I will accurately predict which ball you landed on. And remember this! I can only perform this feat because I am psychically gifted and the seventh son of a seventh son...!

Henry Slade (1840-1905) was the first prominent mentalist to use his slight-of-hand abilities to claim to show conclusive contact with the dead, and this came about, of course, because of the emergence of the Fox sisters and the birth of modern spiritualism. These amateur magicians and illusionists quickly realised that there was an awful lot of money to be made from the gullible public if they claimed their abilities were psychic in nature. Henry Slade's routine involved strapping two slates together which, when they were released and separated, would miraculously have messages written on them which he would display as proof of contact with the dead. Somehow or other he managed to get away with this blatant deception for quite a long time until amateur conjuror, J N Maskelyne took offence and investigated his claims ultimately uncovering Slade as a fraud. It was also Maskelyne who revealed another accomplished mentalist, Irving Bishop, as a fraud.

Bishop's (1856-1889) act involved finding his way around obstacles while blindfolded.  A trick he learnt from another mentalist, John Randal Brown, who specialised in muscle reading,.a method whereby the so called psychic holds on to the wrist or hand of a subject and finds his way around obstacles, or accurately guesses words and numbers from the audience, while blindfolded. This is achieved by the psychic feeling slight movements in his accomplice’s wrist caused by intricate finger movements. Bishop, though, had a skeleton in his cupboard which would later prove to haunt him. He had gone on record years earlier denouncing psychic abilities until, that is, he realised just how much money there was to be made from people who needed their daily dose of the paranormal to keep them ticking over. Another of his routines included Psychic Cluedo where members of the audience would be asked to pick out a room, weapon and suspect and Bishop would accurately guess each in turn. It was while touring Britain exhibiting this very trick that Maskelyne took a lawsuit out against him due to the fact that he objected to Bishop’s psychic claims. Maskelyne eventually won his case. This, however, didn't stop one Charles Howard Montague stealing some of Bishop’s ideas and setting himself up as a psychic who could duplicate drawings made by his audience while he was blindfolded. A trick now demonstrated by Uri Geller and those professing to be remote viewers.

The Davenport brothers were another Vaudeville act who claimed they were psychics. Ira (1839-1911) and William (1841-1877) would be bound hand and foot to chairs which were then placed in a cabinet with a black curtained front. An assortment of objects, including tin trumpets and pieces of cloth, flags, balls etc, would be left inside the cabinet with the two brothers  which, when the curtains were drawn, would be thrown about or thrust through the curtain. Sometimes hands and legs would appear through the curtain which could be opened by anyone in the audience at any time. When this did occasionally happen, the Davenports would always be found slumped in their chairs, apparently, in a trance. They toured the USA for ten years with this illusion before making the journey across the Atlantic to England with their father who managed them and a gentleman named William Fay who was very important to their routines. Waiting for them was a Presbyterian minister who assured everyone that the Davenports had divine powers given to them by God. When William became ill and subsequently died it was William Fay who learnt the act and took the deceased brothers’ place in the cabinet. I have seen this same act and variations on it performed by children as young as six, but still the bonds with the unexplained and mysticism remain. The six year old performer named the illusion Silly Spooks! In the USA today Glenn Falkenstein and his wife Frances carry on the routine made famous by the Davenports but they openly reveal that what they do is a trick and nothing more.

A most unusual Danish couple, Julius and Agnes Zancig (1857-1929,?-1916) were another couple whose abilities were strongly supported, in their case by Lord Northcliffe who used the advertising powers of the Daily Mail to promote and embellish the duo's claims. Their act was, by all accounts, nothing special and involved Agnes, who was a hunchback, being blindfolded and accurately guessing what her husband was looking at while talking to members of the audience. Claude Alexander, billed as 'The Man Who Knows', was far more entertaining than the Zancigs who pale in comparison. Alexander would strut around the stage in robes and a huge turban, reminiscent of Ali Bongo, asking members of his audience to write down questions on slips of paper before folding them in half. Once all the pieces of paper had been gathered and placed in a hat Alexander would pick one out at a time, hold it up to his forehead and accurately read out the question. Sounds amazing, but this trick is easy and is often referred to as 'The One Ahead Trick'. The illusion is made possible by the fact that you are always one question behind. So for example, the first question that I picked up would be read out as the second and so on...When carried out competently this routine can look quite impressive.

In fact, an awful lot of academic psychical researchers got carried away with the various psychics who toured across America and the United Kingdom displaying their powers. The incomparable Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was that astounded by the spiritualists that he eventually became one, and was also a fervent supporter of the now known to be fake Cottingley fairy photographs. In 1882 Douglas Blackburn and G.A Smith somehow managed to get the approval of the Society for Psychical Research which was fooled by their act, the straightforward blindfold act made famous by the Zancigs. That is not to say that the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) was, or is, easily fooled. Make no mistake about it, the SPR is the finest society investigating such claims that has ever existed and its professionalism and sincerity has never been questioned. But it is the fact that it supported such individuals which shows how, and to what depth, blind faith and belief can effect one’s judgement and make us look at an event in an uncritical light. Intense shock and utter amazement is as virulent and infectious as the common cold and can be caught by even the most critical amongst us. Their claims would still be taken seriously if it wasn't for the fact that in 1908 Blackburn came forward and revealed the methodology behind their show. Amazingly, he only told his story because he thought Smith had passed on, but he hadn't and a fierce battle proceeded, Smith forcefully denouncing the claims of trickery and deception made by Blackburn. One method they used, according to Blackburn, involved utilising cigarette papers in a most unusual fashion. While copying a drawing he would reproduce said drawing on a cigarette paper that would be rolled up and concealed in the hollowed out end of his pencil. Then Smith, hidden beneath a thick black blanket would scream that he had tapped into Blackburn’s thoughts and wanted a pencil to draw what he perceived. The pencil would be handed to him and the deception was complete.  Simple when you know how!

The academics were sadly fooled again by the daughters of the Reverend A M Creery. The Creery's were finally uncovered as fraudulent in 1888 when a committee set up by the Society for Psychical Research, not satisfied with the first investigation’s findings, discovered subtle, well hidden verbal commands in the dialogue of their show. In the 1940s the SPR announced themselves duly satisfied with the abilities of another psychic couple, Sidney and Leslie Piddington, who effectively gave a demonstration of mind reading under controlled conditions which was no different from the Zancigs or Blackburns act.

However, the most famous mentalist of his time, and a man who captured the imagination of the public, was Joseph Dunninger(1892-1975.) The young Dunninger was an exceptional conjuror as a boy and got most of his ideas from watching John and Anna Fay. Anna Fay was billed as 'The High Priestess of Mystery'. Dunninger in turn delighted in his title as 'The Master Mind of Mental Radio', something which was given to him after he successfully deduced an address written on an envelope pulled out of a sack by the US Postmaster General in New York in 1943. The interesting thing about Dunninger was that he never ever stated he was psychic or a mind reader. "I was doing magic", Dunninger once told Walter Gibson, (an accomplished magician in his own right), but the audience didn't know it. If I changed a silver dollar into a twenty dollar gold piece and back again, they were sure it had to be a trick, no matter how completely I fooled them. But if I switched a folded piece of paper for a duplicate, then opened the original and read it before switching it back, they thought it was mind reading. This is a good example of people providing their own mysteries even when none exist. The effect that Dunningers act had on his audience was so startling that within weeks of perfecting his mentalism act he was able to dispense with all his magic props and replace them with simple cards, chalks and slates, papers and pencils etc. Some of his larger props were bought by Harry Houdini.

Dunninger’s magical show had been replaced with his new polished and aptly named show, 'Miracles Of The Mind'. Slowly he left behind him the theatres that had been his bread and butter and began to develop routines which would work on radio where he saw his future. The Philadelphia Metropolitan Opera House and The Egyptian Hall of New York were now replaced with trips to the White House to entertain the President and regular appearances on KYW Radio in Philadelphia and WJZ Radio in New York. Dunninger never tired of telling his army of admirers that what he was doing was a simple trick but they never believed him. Joseph Dunninger spent over twenty-five years astounding people on his radio, and later, television shows, and it was only in the latter years when his fame was subsiding that he began to claim that he was using thought reading powers.

Looking back over the decades at these supposed psychics one thing becomes apparent, and that is that once their time is up and the trick is rumbled, and their credibility is left in tatters most use their persuasive patter to sell horoscopes!

Robert Nelson (1901-1972) was a mentalist who went into the wholesale / retail business and eventually ended up writing and selling horoscopes as did Dr Faustus, otherwise known as David May(1930-1981) who was a minister who studied mentalism until he was good enough to represent himself as a psychic. May eventually sold magic paraphernalia as well as horoscopes. The story behind Kashmiri mentalist and fire walker, Bux Kuda was perhaps made all the more bizarre when his career was cut short by glaucoma. Define irony? Kuda,known as 'The man with x-ray eyes' losing his sight...

In later years Live TV aired a series of programmes hosted by mentalist Marc Paul called Mind Games. Paul gave demonstrations of supposedly psychic skills which he openly revealed were down to Neural Linguistic Programming. He is just one of many individuals openly displaying his skills who has the honesty, integrity and dignity to reveal that it is just trickery; an act that relies a great deal on people dispensing with their common sense and simply accepting what they are told. That is how irrational magic is. You know the magician is using slight-of-hand or misdirection to accomplish his illusion but you ignore common sense and hope there's something more to it! We dismiss the obvious and accept the impossible... Penn and Teller, Max Maven, James ‘the amazing’ Randi, Kreskin, Ian Rollands and Simon Drake are easily  the best at utilising these principles. If you asked a magician how he did his act he would most probably reply, 'Ask no questions, tell you no lies'. If you continued to annoy him for an answer he would undoubtedly tell you that he was psychic. The word has become a convenient camouflage for hiding the facts. In effect it is the perfect get-out clause for not revealing the truth.

When next you watch Uri Geller bending a spoon or David Copperfield flying over the Grand Canyon or making the Statue of Liberty disappear,- Lance Burton flying about in a sports car or levitating around a Las Vegas stage, or even our own diminutive magical superstar (with the drop-dead-gorgeous wife), Paul Daniels, successfully using a planchette, remember that it is just an illusion. They are manipulating reality with more than a little help from you the audience. In the 1850s Michael Faraday exposed the spiritualists who used table tipping to deceive the public and in the early 1920s Harry Houdini toured the United States showing how psychic mediums used well known techniques commonly used by magicians to elevate themselves to super stardom. Nobody took any notice! In later years Harry Houdini himself has become the focus for some magicians who attempt to contact him through elaborate séances held at the Magic Castle in Los Angeles. Mark Edwards, a magician, claims that while performing the 'Houdini Séance' many have experienced cold chills and invisible hands touching them on the shoulder and head. Considering the poor conditions and what transpires at the Houdini séance, it isn't too surprising that some have strange experiences. Edwards conducts the first half of the séance by the light of a single candle until this is extinguished, plummeting the room into total darkness. Then almost immediately a rather masculine voice claiming to be Beatrice Houdini whispers that she is going to give them all a sign. What is this sign you ask? From somewhere in the darkness the sound of a tambourine begins which lasts little more than a couple of seconds before it fades away and the lights are turned on to reveal Edwards slumped in his chair completely exhausted. What Edwards is doing in essence is providing the stimulus that feeds the over active and receptive minds of the sitters who, when they experience sudden sensory deprivation, succumb to their own imagination’s unlimited boundaries and the tendency for the subconscious mind to deceive itself. Alas, his clients’ claims have prompted him to break ranks with most of his fellow illusionists and claim that the line between magic and the paranormal is non-existent. Instead he theorises that there is a grey area where the two subjects touch and overlap. Houdini himself would roll with laughter at such claims. His investigation into spiritualism after the death of his mother uncovered nothing but fraud. His findings eventually led him to write, 'A Magician Among The Spirits', an exposé of fraudulent mediumship. For the next ten years after Harry's death in 1926, his wife Beatrice held séances on Halloween night until the final attempt in 1936. Nothing ever happened...

In the 1980s and 90s there are still a few stalwarts trying to make the public see that they are being conned and openly misled and still nobody is listening. Dr Ray Hyman went on New York radio as the mysterious Mr X and proved that using cold reading he could easily reproduce the psychic mediums act and James Randi and a host of other illusionists have proved with monotonous regularity that they can recreate the mind reading, spoon bending and compass deflection tricks made famous by the Israeli psychic, (and once amateur conjuror!) Uri Geller. Still the argument goes on. The highly entertaining and controversial radio and television presenter, James Whale, who hosts a highly rated late night phone-in programme on Talk Radio UK has become increasingly bitter at the claims of the mediums and psychics. On Wednesday night, 4 August, he issued a challenge to the psychics, pleading for any who were listening to phone the show and prove that they were telling the truth. During the previous nights James had even gone as far as to accuse all mediums of being charlatans and asking them if they had taken offence at his insults and provocations, to take him to court and sue him. Only one medium took up the challenge, although it is said that many more complained to the radio authorities. Wolf Greystone said on the Tuesday night that he could prove that the spirit world existed and was invited to the studio the very next night. He didn't show! A more than annoyed James Whale phoned him at home and during the heated argument that followed Greystone admitted that he couldn't prove that the spirit world existed. A startling admission from someone whose whole life is dedicated to mediumship and contacting the dead.

At the end of the day it's up to you to decide! The question is not, do I want to believe?  The question to ask yourself is, is the evidence of a high enough standard that I can allow myself to believe? 

To some, I'm afraid, ordinary everyday life isn't good enough. To these people alien abduction, channeling spirits, mind reading, remote viewing and fortune telling are a welcome release from the mind numbing boredom that pervades their sad existence. The intrusive world of science has removed all that was mysterious and replaced it with cold hard facts which are unpalatable to those who need their fix of weirdness. The paranormal is addictive! In fact, belief in alien visitors and spiritualism are now replacing orthodox religion which most are gradually becoming disillusioned with. If real aliens are out there, if spirits of the dead can return and interact with the living, indeed, if certain individuals can break the law of physics, then they haven't come forward as of yet and probably never will. The human need for mystery will no doubt be matched by the imaginations of certain groundbreaking magicians who will satisfy man’s desire for thrills and suspense with bigger and better illusions that will stretch our imaginations and consequently take our breath away. Sadly, some of these entertaining illusions will rely on our individual, unquestioning belief in all things paranormal and, perhaps inevitably, will be accepted as such without investigation. There are still an unfortunate misinformed few who believe they saw Harry Houdini walk through a brick wall at one of his stage shows and still many who will openly admit to believing that David Copperfield somehow truly managed to make The Statue of Liberty vanish...  But as most honest magicians will tell you, 'The magic is not in the trick, but in the presentation of the trick'... And I would like to add to that, psychic abilities only appear to be psychic because they are presented as such!

Oh yes, before I forget, the snooker ball you ended up on was the black.....wasn't it?