Michael Prescott's Blog

NOTE: I used to have several older essays on the paranormal posted on my author site. When I recently updated the site, I removed all this material and decided to post it here. This essay was originally posted in 2002 and updated in 2003. 

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R-101

On October 5, 1930, at 2:05 in the morning, the 777-foot British dirigible R-101 crashed in flames in the woods near the French town of Beauvais, en route to India. All of the passengers and most of the crew perished, and British airship production suffered a setback from which it never recovered.

Two days later, the London medium Eileen Garrett, while in a trance, began to convey messages purporting to come from Lt. H.C. Irwin, who had died aboard the R-101. In jerky, staccato utterances typical of his speech pattern in life, "Irwin" said, "The whole bulk of the dirigible was entirely and absolutely too much for her engine capacity. Engines too heavy. It was this that on five occasions made me scuttle back to safety … Useful lift too small. Gross lift computed badly – inform control panel … Explosion caused by friction in electric storm. Flying too low altitude and could never rise. Disposable lift could not be utilized …"

So began one of the most fascinating and convincing episodes in the history of psychic research, an episode ably chronicled by John G. Fuller in his 1979 book, The Airmen Who Would Not Die. Fuller’s book, extensively documented and written in a crisp, novelistic style, is now out of print but is well worth tracking down.

The voice of "Irwin" continued, speaking almost faster than the stenographer present at the session could take it down:

Load too great for a long flight … Cruising speed bad, and ship badly swinging. Severe tension on fabric, which is chafing. Starboard strakes started. Engines wrong – too heavy – cannot rise … Never reached cruising altitude. Same in trials. Too short trials. No one knew the ship properly.

Airscrews too small. Fuel injection bad and air pump failed. Cooling system bad. Bore capacity bad. Next time with cylinders but bore of engine 1,100 cc’s, but that bore is not enough to raise too heavy load and support weight. It had been known to me on many occasions that the bore capacity was entirely inadequate to the volume of structure. This I had placed again and again before engineer, without being able to enlarge capacity of Diesel twin-valve …

But the structure no good. That actually is the case, not gas did not allow mixture to get to engine – backfired. Fuel injection bad … There was not sufficient feed. Leakage. Pressure and heat produced explosion …

Weather bad for long flight. Fabric all water-logged and ship’s nose down. Impossible to rise. Cannot trim … At inquiry to be held later, it will be found that the superstructure of the envelope contained no resilience, and had far too much weight in envelope … The added middle section was entirely wrong. It made strong but took resilience away and entirely impossible. Too heavy and too much overweighted for the capacity of the engines …

Over the next few months, Eileen Garrett continued to receive alleged communications from Irwin and other R-101 crewmembers. While the first séance took place in the presence of psychic researcher Harry Price, the remaining ones involved a different sitter, Maj. Oliver Villiers, himself a friend of Irwin and an export in aviation (though not in the field of dirigible design).

Collectively the transcripts of these seances contain some of the most compelling evidence ever assembled for communication with the dead. Included in the messages received by Eileen Garrett are technical details about the R-101’s design and construction, recollections of test flights, discussions of political pressures and unrealistic deadlines that plagued the project, and a description of the crash itself and its causes. The personalities of the dead airmen also came through in recognizable detail. In one instance Villiers asked the communicating entity to identify itself, at which point the voice replied, "Use your damned intelligence!" – a catch phrase used by Sefton Brancker, who had died in the crash.

Indeed, the personalities of the men emerged so clearly that Villiers, who had several sessions with Garrett, eventually fell into conversing with his old friends as if they were in the room with him.

Garrett’s seances, held in broad daylight in a room designed by Harry Price to be a sealed, deceit-proof environment, yielded so much detailed, factual information that Villiers was moved to present the transcripts to Sir John Simon, in charge of the government’s investigation into the crash. This was a bold decision on Villiers’ part, one that could have jeopardized his career if Simon had looked unkindly on the idea of combing through the transcripts of seances for clues. Yet Simon handled the material respectfully and followed up on leads suggested by the communications.

Working independently of Villiers, Harry Price had the transcript of his single session with Garrett analyzed by Will Charlton, supply officer at Cardington, where the R-101 was built and tested. Charlton’s meticulous analysis revealed that the majority of the information was accurate.

"Irwin" said: "The whole bulk of the dirigible was entirely and absolutely too much for her engine capacity … Engines too heavy … Useful lift too small … Gross lift computed badly." All of these comments were correct.

"Flying too low altitude and could never rise … Disposable lift could not be utilized … Load too great for long flight." Many witnesses observed that the R-101 was flying low. The ship dumped half its ballast just to escape from the mooring tower, and heavy rain that night would have added more weight to the vessel.

"Weather bad for long flight … Fabric all waterlogged and ship’s nose is down … Impossible to rise … Cannot trim … Almost scraped the roofs at Achy." The trip took place in a driving rainstorm with high winds. The R-101 was seen flying with its nose angled downward. Charlton noted, "Achy is a small village, 12 ½ miles north of Beauvais, and would be on the R-101’s route."

Much of the information was outside the province of any layman.

"Irwin" said: "Starboard strakes started." The word "strakes" was a technical term known only to experts.

"Airscrews too small." Charlton felt that this was likely to be correct, and noted that the airscrews used on the R-101 were smaller than those originally planned.

"Next time with cylinders but bore of engine 1,100 cc’s …" Charlton noted that this would be correct if the term "cubic inches" was substituted for "cubic centimeters" ("cc’s").

"… the bore capacity was entirely inadequate to the volume of structure." Charlton noted: "This language is technically correct and might have been Irwin’s opinion [emphasis in original]. It is an opinion that could only be expressed by an expert in the subject …"

"… it will be found that the superstructure of the envelope contained no resilience and had far too much weight." Charlton found this accurate, saying, "It was the most rigid airship that had ever been constructed."

"The added middle section was entirely wrong. It made strong, but took resilience away and entirely impossible. Too heavy and too much overweighted for the capacity of the engines." The R-101 had been expanded to 777 feet by the additional of a new "middle section" only a few months before the flight. This addition greatly complicated the craft’s handling and may well have contributed to the crash.

In some instances, the information was unknown to anyone who had not been part of the Cardington team.

The "Irwin" voice: "This exorbitant scheme of carbon and hydrogen is entirely and absolutely wrong." This appears to be a reference to upcoming experiments involving a mixture of oil fuel ("carbon") and hydrogen. These experiments, in the planning stage at Cardington shortly before the R-101’s crash, were not reported in the press; only project team members, like Irwin, knew about them.

"Too short trials … No one knew the ship properly." The abbreviated test period was a concern of those working at Cardington, but was unknown to the public at the time of the séance.

"It was this that made me on five occasions have to scuttle back to safety." True – Irwin had cut short several test flights because the ship was too heavy. The press had not been told of these failures.

The Villiers transcripts, which were not seen by Charlton, offered an equal wealth of technical detail, as well as personal observations. Among these was the claim by a voice representing itself as another crewmember, Lt. Cdr. Atherstone, that he had kept a secret diary recording his worries about the R-101 program. When official inquiries were made of his widow regarding this diary, she insisted she had never heard of it. But years later, in 1967, Mrs. Atherstone produced the newly recovered diary, which was found to contain exactly the kinds of private worries mentioned by the "Atherstone" voice nearly four decades earlier.

In the face of this considerable accumulation of evidence for the genuineness of the Price and Villiers communications, it would seem that a powerful case for the continuation of life after death had been made. Indeed, many of those who participated (sometimes reluctantly) in the seances or in subsequent analysis of the transcripts came to this conclusion – among them, William Wood, a pilot and outspoken atheist who wrote for the magazine The Freethinker, and who startled his readership by declaring his belief in an afterlife after studying the messages.

And yet, in the field of psychic phenomena, nothing is ever cut and dried. There are always objections to be lodged, skeptical arguments to be advanced. The R-101 case is no different. A good summary of these objections is found in the book Psychic Detectives, by Jenny Randles and Peter Hough.

Critics [say the authors] claimed that the matter was not so clear cut. It emerged that Will Charlton was not an ‘expert’, but someone in charge of stores and supplies at Cardington. He was also a spiritualist. One of those challenging Charlton’s views was Archie Jarman, whom Fuller credited as knowing more about the subject than any other living person …

While Jarman was compiling a report on the R101 affair in the early 1960s, he consulted his own experts: Wing Commander Cave-Brown-Cave, who had been closely involved in the airship’s construction, and Wing Commander Booth, who had captained the R100 [a different airship] on its Montreal flight. Booth said, ‘I have read the description of the Price-Irwin sequence with great care and am of the opinion that the messages received do not assist in any way in determining why the airship R101 crashed.’

As for the Villiers sequence, Booth commented: ‘I am in complete disagreement with almost every paragraph … the conversations are completely out of character, the atmosphere at Cardington is completely wrong, and the technical and handling explanation could not possibly have been messages from anyone with airship experience.’ … From what was supposedly said during the seances, the officers knew they were setting off on a suicidal mission before the airship had left England. Writer Edward Horton argues that if this was really the case – and there was no indication of this before the seances – all Irwin had to do was turn the airship around and, with the wind behind them, limp back to Cardington.

Superficially this seems like a convincing rebuttal of the R-101 case. But in fact many of the arguments summarized by Randles and Hough are spurious. Let’s look at them one by one.

"Will Charlton was not an ‘expert.’"

While Charlton was not an engineer himself, he did know all the engineers who had built and tested the airship. He shared the transcripts with them, obtaining their input in addition to his own.

Charlton "was also a spiritualist."

He was not a spiritualist at the time he reviewed the transcripts. Later on, after becoming convinced that the dead airmen had made contact through Garrett, he became a spiritualist.

"One of those challenging Charlton’s views was Archie Jarman."

This does not seem to be accurate. It is true that Jarman did not find the Villiers transcripts useful, because Villiers had jotted down incomplete notes and later supplemented them by memory. Jarman felt that this method opened up too many possibilities for unconscious distortion or embellishment of the material. (He may have been too hard on Villiers, who was known for his prodigious and retentive memory, a faculty still intact when John Fuller interviewed him at the age of 91.) In any case, Jarman assessed the Price transcript (the one reviewed by Charlton) quite differently. Because these notes had been taken down verbatim by a trained stenographer, he judged them to be a reliable record of the séances – and he felt they did provide important evidence about the fate of the R-101b that could not be obtained through normal means.

"Booth said: ‘… I am of the opinion that the messages received do not assist in any way in determining why the airship R101 crashed.’"

Booth’s statement, as reported, is puzzling, because whatever anyone thinks of the messages’ provenance, they surely do provide a viable theory (at least) of the R-101’s crash. The scenario is as follows:

1) The airship was overloaded and underpowered, hence unable to achieve sufficient altitude ("The whole bulk of the dirigible was absolutely and entirely too much for her engine capacity … Useful lift too small … Flying too low altitude and could never rise … Never reached cruising altitude," said the "Irwin" voice).

2) High winds caused the chafing of the gas-bag compartments, one of which eventually ruptured ("Severe tension on the fabric which is chafing," said "Irwin.").

3) The rupture of this bag allowed the wind to penetrate the vessel, subjecting it to further strain as it twisted against itself.

4) This twisting caused structural damage.

5) The airship, having lost structural integrity, lost altitude. Because it was flying low to begin with, it didn’t have far to fall, and there was no time to execute emergency maneuvers like dropping the ballast.

6) At this point, one or more explosions occurred. They were set off by

1. a) the release of static electricity from the hull when the ship hit the ground ("explosion caused by friction in electric storm");
2. b) the backfiring of an overtaxed motor ("… backfired. Fuel injection bad."); or
3. c) electrical shorts produced by structural damage ("Pressure and heat produced explosion.").

Quite possibly two or even all three of these causes were responsible.

7) The explosions set fire to the huge amount of the volatile hydrogen gas inside the craft, quickly reducing the R-101 to cinders.

This scenario not only is plausible, but closely matches the official results obtained by a government inquiry into the crash. How Booth could say that the transcripts were of no value in explaining the disaster is therefore something of a mystery.

"Booth commented: ‘…the conversations are completely out of character, the atmosphere at Cardington is completely wrong …’"

Yet Charlton and Villiers, who worked at Cardington and knew the crewmembers, assessed the conversations quite differently. And there does not seem to be any doubt that "the atmosphere at Cardington" was one of political infighting, impossible deadlines, and desperate shortcuts, just as the messages suggest.

"Booth commented: ‘… and the technical and handling explanation could not possibly have come from anyone with airship experience.’"

But equally knowledgeable aviation experts like Lord Dowding, Commander-in-Chief of the (British) Fighter Command in World War II, and Sir Victor Goddard, former commander of the Royal New Zealand Air Force, were favorably impressed with the technical accuracy and evidential value of the transcripts.

"From what was supposedly said during the seances, the officers knew they were setting off on a suicidal mission before the airship had left England. Writer Edward Horton argues that if this was really the case – and there was no indication of this before the seances …"

Actually, more than one crewmember expressed reservations about the flight. On the day of the flight, Brancker told Villiers, "I have had several talks with Scott and Colmore [other crewmen]. They’ve become more and more uneasy at the prospect of this journey to India. In their opinion, the ship is not really airworthy." Another witness also reported that Brancker was unusually nervous that day. The Atherstone diary, mentioned above, confirms that the R-101 crew were well aware of the risks of the flight.

If "the officers knew they were setting off on a suicidal mission … all Irwin had to do was turn the airship around and, with the wind behind them, limp back to Cardington."

This objection was answered in the seances themselves, when it was explained that, for political purposes, it was thought necessary to start the much-ballyhooed trip to India by crossing the English Channel. The airship could then be docked in France, and the cancellation of the rest of the trip could be blamed on bad weather. This compromise was a way of saving face, both for the British government, which had invested two million pounds sterling in the project, and for the R-101 program itself, which was dependent on political goodwill for continued funding.

The scheme, while desperate, was not necessarily "suicidal." In fact, the airship did make its way across the Channel before suffering irreparable damage. Had the forecast of twenty- to thirty-knot winds proved accurate, the R-101 probably would have docked safely in France. Unfortunately, the winds blew at forty to fifty knots, conditions the crew could not have anticipated when starting out.

If the bulk of these objections are spurious, do we then have an incontrovertible case of after-death communication? Regretfully, I have to say no. While I find the R-101 case extremely powerful, I would not classify it as airtight. There are still legitimate areas of doubt. Here are a few things to consider.

First, although John Fuller did an excellent job in researching and writing The Airmen Who Would Not Die, his credibility is not unimpeachable. He had earlier written The Interrupted Journey, a bestseller about the alleged UFO abduction of Betty and Barney Hill. The Hill case has been well addressed by skeptics and, in my opinion, offers little if any evidence of an extraterrestrial encounter.* If Fuller could be favorably impressed by the Hills’ dubious claims, perhaps his journalistic hardheadedness is open to question in the R-101 case, as well.

(* Among other objections, skeptics point out that the bulk of the Hills' testimony was recovered under hypnosis, an unreliable method that often produces false memories. Other alleged memories of the abduction surfaced in Betty Hill's dreams, which she related to her husband, perhaps influencing his recollection. The story changed over time; in Mrs. Hill's dreams, the aliens appeared human, but years later, under hypnosis, she remembered them as having bulbous heads, wraparound eyes, and lipless mouths. In her early hypnosis sessions, Mrs. Hill said that one alien spoke English with an accent; later she said that he communicated without speaking, via telepathy. Many details of the encounter are reminiscent of 1950s and '60s science-fiction dramas, and Barney Hill's description of the aliens closely matches an extraterrestrial depicted in an episode of The Outer Limits that aired a couple of weeks before the hypnosis sessions began.)

Second, some technical details conveyed in the seances were wrong. These errors perhaps can be accounted for by miscommunication or mistakes in transcription, but they should not be glossed over. Villiers distinctly heard mention of "altimeter springs" on two occasions, but the R-101’s altimeters had no springs. "Irwin" mentioned a gas indicator rising and falling throughout the flight, but Booth says that there was no such gauge onboard.

Third, we have to remember that both the Price session and the Villiers sessions involved the same medium, Eileen Garrett. This is not too surprising, since Garrett was the most famous medium in England, and considered the most powerful by those who believed in her abilities. Still, while no taint of fraud was ever attached to Garrett in her long career, it is fair to say that the communications would have been more impressive if two, three, or even more mediums had been involved. Cross-correspondences among various mediums provide the strongest evidence of genuine paranormal phenomena but, except for some marginal communications reported by other mediums, are lacking in this case.

Finally, there is the fact that the R-101 program had been heavily covered in the press. It is conceivable that some of the technical details and other information conveyed by Garrett were known to her, if only subconsciously. Militating against this idea is the fact that Garrett was hardly a technical whiz. She never owned a car or even learned to drive, and, according to Jarman, who knew her well, she was entirely uninformed about mechanical principles. Even so, is it possible that Garrett pulled the necessary facts out of her own subconscious or, via telepathy, out of the minds of the sitters participating in the sessions? This hypothesis would not explain all the data that came through, but might cover some of it.

The bottom line is that no single case can establish the validity of a phenomenon like mediumship. What is impressive, as John Fuller and many others have pointed out, is the cumulative weight of hundreds, even thousands, of well-documented communications that have been received over more than a century of research. Even acquiring an overview of this mass of material is a large job, but a rewarding one. Those who would like to begin can find no better place to start than in the rainswept woods outside Beauvais, early in the morning of October 5, 1930, when the R-101 met its fiery end.

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October 15, 2003: Recently, while searching the Web, I noticed a few references to a 1984 book called Psychic Paradoxes by John Booth. It was said to provide "fresh, penetrating insights" into paranormal phenomena. But what really caught my eye was this promotional claim: "Booth's eye-opening, first-time explanations for the baffling R101 tragedy seance [and other mysteries] are revealed."

An explanation for R-101? This I had to read. On the Web, I tracked down a secondhand copy of the out-of-print book, supposedly in "fine" condition, and ordered it. I admit I had some trepidations about spending $15 on this item. Psychic Paradoxes was published by Prometheus Books, a small publishing house founded by rationalist philosopher Paul Kurtz, who also was instrumental in founding CSICOP, the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, a zealously skeptical organization. Prometheus Books is known for putting out a large number of anti-paranormal and anti-religious tracts, many of which seem to be hastily written and indifferently edited. Nevertheless, Psychic Paradoxes might be different. I owed it to myself, and to my millions — okay, dozens — of fans, to find out.

The book arrived about ten days later. It was not in "fine" condition. It looked as if someone had left it out in the rain and then peed on it. But it was readable. I turned to the index, and found that the R-101 tragedy was economically covered in just four pages. Booth spends the first couple of pages recounting the events in minimal detail. He then presents the groundbreaking theory which will explain it all.

Eileen Garrett, he tells us, was

a woman of abiding curiosity. Copies of the aircraft blueprints could have been slipped to the psychic long before the tragedy. Her friendships in high places were numerous. Security was not tight in that period of euphoric peace. The entire nation was fascinated by the construction of this new marvel of the airways.

We are aware that she had followed its building. In his book Eileen Garrett and the World Beyond the Senses, Allan Angoff … reveals that 'she had predicted (the R101 tragedy) long before the dirigible crashed in France.' Others who had studied its construction carefully, perceived dangerous potential flaws.

The medium was a brilliant woman. Her subsequent career as a psychic researcher, publisher and administrator, both in Britain and the United States prove this. She could deduce accurately the probable sequence of fatal events by piecing together newspaper reports, checking back over her earlier investigations and perhaps even discussing the matter in seeming innocence with a valued technician friend from the airdrome.

Preliminary trial flights of an airship, short ones, reveal defects that assist postmortem verdicts. Garrett's confidante [sic], perhaps noting later how she had picked his brain, would hardly dare to reveal the true source of some seance information. His own employment and standing would be jeopardized and a friend's reputation disintegrate.

The rest of Booth's treatment of the R-101 mystery consists of a brief discussion of a fake autobiography of Howard Hughes written by Clifford Irving, and the well-known Piltdown Man hoax. These cases prove that people can be fooled.

Now, when I read this, I have to confess that I became very excited. I felt I had just received a revelation of startling import and potentially life-changing implications — namely, that I should never, ever again buy anything published by Prometheus Books.

I also realized that Booth had proved his case conclusively in at least one respect. It is possible for people to be fooled. Case in point: I had been fooled into purchasing Psychic Paradoxes.

It's probably a waste of precious computer pixels to spend much time rebutting this remarkably dumb argument. A few points might be noted.

1. Eileen Garrett had indeed heard of the R-101 program before the crash. Everyone in Britain had heard of it. It attracted as much public interest as America's Apollo program of the 1960s. But the technical details of the airship's construction were never published, and the average person knew no more about the fine points of dirigibles than the average American in the 1960s knew about rocketships.
2. Garrett did indeed claim to have foreseen the crash. She made no secret of this, and it was mentioned in John Fuller's book and many other places. No one has ever made much of it. Psychics are always getting (or claiming to get) premonitions.
3. Garrett did have "friendships in high places." She was a member of London's literary arts community. Numbered among her friends were such luminaries as James Joyce and George Bernard Shaw. There is no reason to think that she ever hung out with aeronautical engineers, or that there was any overlap between the literary and theatrical circle in which she moved and the tightknit fraternity of engineering experts working on a secret government project.
4. Garrett was undeniably "a brilliant woman." And she was certainly successful as a psychic researcher, publisher, and administrator. None of these talents would qualify her for the job of "piecing together newspaper reports [and] checking back over her earlier investigations" (what investigations?) to deduce anything about the mechanical failure of an airship. Garrett's brilliance did not lie in the area of mechanics or engineering. She never even learned how to drive a car, and her ignorance of all things mechanical was well-known.
5. Could Garrett have had "a valued technician friend from the airdrome" who served as a secret confidant? Well, this claim is certainly impossible to disprove — since if the relationship was secret, then by definition it was never found out. Is there any evidence that she had such a relationship? No. Was the possibility ever raised at the time? Yes. Her statements about the crash were sufficiently specific to arouse the suspicion of the government, which send agents to investigate Garrett. No link between her and the R-101 project or any of its participants was uncovered.

But maybe the investigators just weren't good enough, or Garrett was too clever for them. She would have to have been very clever indeed. Presumably, according to Booth's "theory," she was smart enough to anticipate that the dirigible would crash in the near future. She decided she could use this event to enhance her reputation as a psychic. To pull off her scheme, she had to befriend a technician working on the top-secret project and obtain classified information from him, even including blueprints! She then had to use her formidable intelligence to anticipate how the crash would occur – employing a chain of deductive reasoning that was apparently beyond the capabilities of the engineers themselves. She also had to learn all the relevant technical jargon so that she could recite it in her seances. Moreover, she had to be so fluent in her use of this jargon and so knowledgeable about the underlying concepts that she could engage in extended, highly technical dialogues with an aeronautics expert. She accomplished this feat despite the fact that at no time in her life, before or since, did she show any interest in or knowledge of mechanics. She also had to learn so much about the deceased crew members' mannerisms, vocal inflections, and turns of phrase that she could impersonate them well enough to fool someone who had known them in life.

All this is plausible, Booth suggests, because, after all, people were fooled by Clifford Irving and by the Piltdown Man.

If anyone from Prometheus Books is reading this, could I please get my $15 back?

Sources

John G. Fuller, The Airmen Who Would Not Die, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1979

Jenny Randles & Peter Hough, Psychic Detectives: The Mysterious Use of Paranormal Phenomena in Solving True Crimes, Reader’s Digest Association, 2001

John Booth, Psychic Paradoxes, Prometheus Books, 1984

NOTE: I used to have several older essays on the paranormal posted on my author site. When I recently updated the site, I removed all this material and decided to post it here. Here's one of the essays. It was written around 2003 or so, and is dated now, involving a TV show that's been off the air for years.

Back then I was still somewhat hesitant about accepting paranormal claims. I've made a few changes in wording, but I haven't changed my overall conclusions, even though today I'm much less inclined to credit the super-ESP or living agent psi hypothesis.

The original article contained links to some of the quoted material, but I've omitted them, because after 20 years, most are probably defunct. — January 24, 2024

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More Thoughts on John Edward

The first essay I ever posted on my author site involved "psychic medium" John Edward, who says he can communicate with the dead. I gave paraphrases of Edward's readings with members of the studio audience on his show, Crossing Over, and indicated that I didn't see any obvious way that the trick – if it is a trick – could be done.

Since then, I've learned a lot more about psychic phenomena and about the mentalist techniques that can simulate such effects. I've thought of ways that Edward could fool his audience, but so far I've seen no good evidence that he is actually making use of these techniques. I've also reread The Afterlife Experiments by Gary Schwartz, a book that recounts a series of tests done with Edward and other mediums at the University of Arizona. Even after taking thorough precautions, Schwartz found that the mediums were able to come through with accurate, specific information. Some of their hits were dazzlingly on-target.

At the same time, there continues to be a great deal of criticism of Edward on countless Web sites and newsgroup message boards. These condemnations can be remarkably vehement. Here's an example from a Web site picked more or less at random and reproduced without editing:

"What would you call someone who capitalizes on the pain, agony, dreams, and hopes of innocent people? I call him a monster. John Edwards and his phony carnival sideshow 'Crossing Over' has preyed on his victims for far to long. He is a con-man, no more, no less. He is evil incarnate. He is, as 'South Park' has so aptly dubbed him: 'The Biggest Douche in the Universe'. "

At the conclusion of this heartfelt philippic, Edward is presented with the coveted "Rectum of the Month Award."

The reference to the animated series South Park concerns an episode that indeed bears this title, in which "John Edward" is unmasked as a phony. "Edward" is depicted using crudely obvious methods to fool an audience of morons. From the transcript:

Edward: He's telling me … oh well, he's saying that you two used to … do things.

Woman 1: [sobs and nods vigorously] Mmm-hmm.

Edward: And that those things involved … stuff?

Woman 1: The things did involve stuff, yes. [cries. The audience is awed and gets somewhat boisterous]

This episode has beome a huge favorite of Edward-bashers, some of whom even started a longrunning thread called "The Biggest Douche in the Universe." The show's most pointed weapon is sarcasm – which, perhaps not coincidentally, also seems to be a favored mode of disputation among skeptics.

But South Park also tries to discredit Edward in more substantive ways. At one point, a character announces, "I found tons of testimonials on the Internet saying that John Edward has the entire studio wired to hear what people are talking about before the show. And, he pays actors to be plants in the audience."

Unfortunately for the credibility of this argument, the "tons of testimonials" seem to be a fantasy of the show's scriptwriters. If they exist, search engines (combing through Web sites and newsgroups) can't find them.

This is not to say there aren't "tons of testimonials on the Internet" about Edward. There are – but most of them seem to be in his favor. Here's an excerpt from a September 18, 2000, newsgroup post (all ellipses are in the original):

"I was very, very skeptical. Then I went on the show and now…… I'm confused. 🙂 I was 'one on one' on the show (the recent 'one-on-one' with the 2 doctors, Sept 7) and I don't know what I believe. There is no doubt he told us things only we knew, and some things that my brother and I didn't know but my mom confirmed when she came on the show at the end. Like what was in her purse. I think it's one of two things. 1) he has some gift reading our own minds, or contacting those who have died or 2) the ultimate con ……If it's a con, there has to be hidden cameras, hidden microphones, and x-ray machines throughout the studio (which I strongly doubt) because only he and my mother knew my mom was carrying 'something belonging to my brother in a small plastic pouch in her purse.' My brother and I didn't even know about that one! He mentioned my father's brother by his NAME not the first letter and said he was directly to his side. He mentioned my aunt 'Philomena' by her name (how many people have a Philomena in their family?)"

Here's another testimonial posted by someone responding to the argument that Edward reads the sitter's body language to make informed guesses, and recites vague, generic facts that apply to most people:

"Then how do you explain his coming up with so many specific facts about total strangers in the audience at the Theater at Madison Square Garden when I saw him … Did the woman behind me give away the fact that her recently deceased uncle was a priest who had appeared on Broadway and considered himself the family star by her body language? Do you really consider that a generic fact about someone?"

Finally, a testimonial posted on a pro-Edward Web site, regarding a March, 2001, taping of the show:

"First off, there are no insidious 'Crossing Over' staff members descending on anybody, interrogating anybody or even being 'extremely chatty' (as I believe one negative article or post implied) with anyone. Everybody's really nice and really friendly but nobody asks you ANYTHING about anything other than to run you through a metal detector (cause you can't be too careful with those cynics, you know) get you to sign a STANDARD CONSENT form and to show a picture ID.

"THERE WAS NO FAMILY TREE FORM ever given to anyone to fill out, nor was there anything but ordinary interaction between gallery members and John Edward staff (where's the bathroom, thanks.) … The conversations of gallery members – outside waiting on line, inside waiting to enter studio and seated inside the studio – was of the most ordinary mundane nature and did NOT involve detailed (or even general) discussions of family members or history. (I should know because I was eavesdropping on everyone!)

"People were excited to be on a TV show, worried about the pigeons that were hovering over our heads as we waited outside, every manner of conversation OTHER THAN 'giving away' any information to the staff …

"I can definitely verify that there are plenty of hits in person and that Edward doesn't need tricky editing to bring them about on the TV show …

"I also happened to have lunch in the same place as a group who got a good reading and I eavesdropped on them too! They were definitely real people and totally freaked out by what they'd experienced."

Of course, these testimonials prove nothing in themselves – but then, anti-Edward testimonials wouldn't prove anything, either. Except, perhaps, to the people at South Park.

The more emotional criticisms, whether couched in terms of rage or irony, don't pack much of an intellectual punch. Other participants in the debate tackle the issue in a more substantive way by trying to expose Edward's tricks – or by claiming that his tricks have already been exposed. Some of these claims are based on misinformation, which, once published on the Web, can be endlessly perpetuated.

A common mistake, which l've seen repeated several times on message boards, involves confusing two different people: John Edward, star of Crossing Over, and mentalist performer Mark Edward, who frequently debunks alleged psychics and is an editorial board member of Skeptic Magazine. He has appeared with Penn and Teller on a series they did for the Showtime cable network, the off-color title of which is, as Tom Wolfe once put it in a different context, "a common tauro-scatological epithet." He was also featured on the Fox TV special Psychic Secrets Revealed, in which he used a "hot reading" technique to fool a member of the audience.

Mark Edward, it appears, has patterned his act after that of the more famous John Edward, right down to the similarity of names. The result is that casual TV viewers sometimes get the two men mixed up. In fact, I can't help but think that the producers of these shows hire Mark Edward precisely because people will get him confused with the Crossing Over star.

I have seen newsgroup postings which insist that John Edward appeared on Psychic Secrets Revealed, when, in fact, he made no appearance on the show. The same postings claim that John Edward was shown to be cheating and exposed as a fraud – but again, it was Mark Edward who was cheating (quite openly, for educational purposes), and the technique showcased by Mark Edward, while clever, was unlikely to work often enough to explain John Edward's consistent performances.
But even if that particular trick can't explain it all, isn't it safe to assume that Mark Edward, using other ruses, could reproduce everything John Edward does?

No, it's not safe to make that assumption. Here's why.

In 1999, Mark Edward appeared on another Fox show called Exploring the Unknown, in which he used standard cold-reading tricks to fool people in a shopping mall. Gary Schwartz comments about this show, hosted by noted skeptic Michael Shermer, in The Afterlife Experiments:

A producer … said he was interested in addressing the possible truth of mediumship, and wanted to do a segment focused on Suzane Northrup … We gave them access to the complete, unedited footage [of the experiments with Northrup] so they could make their own selections … The producer let us know in advance that he had screened the entire … footage. He had seen Suzane speaking virtually nonstop for over ten minutes, asking only five questions, yet producing more than 120 specific pieces of factual information with over 80 percent accuracy. But instead of using any of that footage … Fox made arrangements on the side to film her at another time … In between short clips of Suzane's statements, the program cut to the psychic magician [Mark Edward], who claimed that her statements were typical generalizations that could fit most people … Our … footage made it clear that she was doing nothing of the kind – so the program never used that footage.

Even so, Schwartz hoped to work with Mark Edward, in order to see if the mentalist could produce results in the laboratory, under the same controlled conditions that had been applied to John Edward, Suzane Northrup, and the other test subjects.

So we asked the network to put us in touch with [Mark Edward] … And then we asked again. We asked repeatedly, and were stonewalled. Perhaps the network realized the show segment had been irresponsible, perhaps the magician thought we were angry and were trying to trap him somehow, perhaps he knew from the footage that Suzane was really doing things he could not and was simply embarrassed for accusing her of using the same tricks he was using. Whatever the reason, the network would not put us in touch with the magician, and we finally gave up trying.

If Mark Edward can do everything John Edward does, wouldn't he jump at the chance to prove it in the laboratory, undergoing the very same tests that John Edward submitted to, and destroying John Edward's credibility once and for all? That would be the ultimate vindication of the skeptical position he espouses. Yet, curiously, Mark Edward seems to have passed up the opportunity to be tested – while John Edward, with much more to lose if he were discredited, agreed to participate. One can only wonder why.

Then there are stories that circulate via email. Recently someone sent me word of the definitive debunking of John Edward. I was told that Edward had been exposed on a cable TV show, for which a member of the Crossing Over staff served as an informant. Supposedly, this informant got someone with a hidden camera to mingle with the studio audience. The resulting video showed how "ringers," hired by Crossing Over, engaged audience members in casual conversation, eliciting facts about their families and personal relationships, which were then fed to Edward. Later, staff members surreptitiously stuck colored decals on the seats where these particular audience members were sitting, in order to allow Edward to pick them out of the crowd. This trickery was also caught by the hidden camera. For John Edward, it appears, the jig is up!

Sounds pretty definitive, doesn't it? The problem is that no one else seems to have heard of this history-making show. I searched the Web in vain for any hint that the program actually exists. When I asked my email correspondent if he could supply me with details of the show – what network it was on, when it aired, and so forth – he wasn't able to provide any, and said only that he was "pretty sure" the show involved Edward.

In short, it doesn't seem as if this alleged debunking episode ever took place. No doubt my correspondent saw some kind of TV program that illustrated simple methods of fooling an audience. But did it have anything specifically to do with Edward, or involve an informant from the Crossing Over staff? There is no evidence of it. Those aspects of the story are probably embellishments – the sort of memory lapses that create most "urban legends."

Many Web pages and message-board posts say that Edward uses "cold reading" to accomplish his act. This term, "cold reading," is tossed around quite a lot – often, it seems, by people who don't really know what it means. They seem to think it is a general term of derision for any act put on by a fake psychic. Actually, cold reading is a specific term of art, referring to a mentalist's skill at asking leading questions and observing subtle reactions on the part of his subject – facial expressions and body language cues, for instance – which then direct him to ever more specific statements.

There have been a few attempts to analyze Edward's performances line by line in order to show how he is using cold reading techniques. One such effort purported to explain how Edward came up with the information that the young daughter of an audience member had picked up a "special" feather during a visit to Niagara Falls. The skeptic opined that Edward's reference to Niagara Falls was a lucky guess, and once he had scored a hit with it, he just naturally assumed the little girl found a feather there, since, after all, there are lots of birds at Niagara Falls and so there must be lots of feathers lying around, and kids are known to pick up feathers …

Convincing? You be the judge.

Let's look at some other examples, from an essay called "So You Wanna Be A Psychic?" The author, identified as Franc, takes a look at transcripts of Edward's TV appearances to explain how the act is pulled off.

In what follows, material in square brackets is from the transcript:

"John Edward: They're either trying to tell me someone has a name like Celine [no reaction from the audience] … or they want me to acknowledge a name like Celina… but they re telling me to say Celine [as he motions the letter 'C' with his index finger].

"Female Guest: I have an Aunt Zia Lina."

Franc calls this "perhaps the weirdest hit in history. How she got from Celina to Zia Lina, I have no idea. But no matter, someone took the bait …"

Is it really so hard to see "how she got from Celina to Zia Lina"? The two names are both unusual and sound nearly identical.

Before we go on, please note that the female guest referred to Zia Lina as her aunt. The significance of this fact will be clear in a moment.

Edward: They're making me feel like there's some type of mom vibration that's has passed because there's an older female coming through and I feel like [pause] … is it your mom that's passed?

Female Guest: Yeah.

Franc's comment: " … he re-feeds her the 'mom' answer she gave earlier."

Despite his undoubtedly painstaking analysis, Franc has overlooked a minor detail – namely, there was no ""mom' answer she gave earlier." The earlier reference was to the woman's aunt, not her mother.

Tallying up this reading, the skeptic awards "O hits."

He then turns to a transcript of a Larry King Live show that aired on June 19, 1998. Notice that this was a live call-in show – no chance of finding out anything about the callers in advance, or reading their body language, or editing out "misses" to highlight hits.

CALLER: Hello.

KING: Go ahead.

CALLER: Yes, my mother passed away, quite a while ago, and l'd like to get in touch with her.

KING: What's your name?

CALLER: My name is Karen.

EDWARD: OK, Karen, the first thing that's coming through is not your mother, but I want to tell you that there's another female figure who is older than you, who's making you feel like she either helped raise you, or was around when you were growing up – is coming through. And she tells me she either passed from breast cancer or lung cancer. I see blackness in the chest area, but I don't think that this is related to you. I think that this might be either a friend's mother or a mother-in-law — I don't feel like there's a blood connection here.

CALLER: My stepmother.

Franc's assessment? "Edward shotgun[ned] his way thru it, but basically he stated 1. the presence of a person without [a] blood connection who helped raise her or saw her grow up who 2. had 'blackness' in the chest area. That is exceedingly vague."

Not quite. First, it wasn't just "a person," but an older female. Second, it wasn't just someone "without [a] blood connection," but someone who "might be either a friend's mother or a mother-inlaw." In other words, a mother-like figure who was not a blood relative and who was an important part of the caller's childhood. "My stepmother" fits these facts to a T.

And how did the stepmother die? Larry King asked that question.

CALLER: Lung cancer.

Remember that Edward just said "she either passed from breast cancer or lung cancer."

Franc, unimpressed, points out that Edward's statement about the cause of death "comes true whenever [sic] or not the chest problem is really in the breasts or lungs. This way, he can take credit for more precise hits, but still retain a hit for the more vague phrase."

But Edward said "she either passed from breast cancer or lung cancer," and it turned out she died of lung cancer. Is this really so "vague"? Is Franc seriously arguing that there are so few ways for an older female to die that "either … breast cancer or lung cancer" would be an easy guess? Couldn't the stepmother have died of a stroke, brain tumor, pancreatic cancer, leukemia, falling down the stairs, car accident, pneumonia, Alzheimer's, etc., etc.? Edward narrowed it down to "breast cancer or lung cancer" without asking any questions. And the skeptic calls it "vague."

The capstone of his analysis is priceless. "[Edward] did get one real, good hit during the hour: saying that a man was buried with cigarettes, and they were the wrong brand (unfortunately, the accent of the person is not specified – some other religions do bury cherished objects, and this may have influenced Edward)."

So if the caller spoke with an accent, then it would have been simplicity itself for Edward to guess that his loved one "was buried with cigarettes, and they were the wrong brand." Of course! After all, whenever / hear someone speak with an accent, I can immediately tell that their loved one was buried wearing rubber galoshes and mismatched socks.

Remember, the last two examples came from a live performance by Edward, taking random calls from all over the world. He couldn't see the callers, so he couldn't observe their facial expressions or body language. He had only seconds – a minute or two at most – to do his readings and had time for few, if any, questions.

Could Mark Edward, the skeptical mentalist, have come up with these hits? Doubtless he would say he could. Fine. Let's see him do it. Or let's see well-known skeptic and professional magician James Randi do it. (When Randi appeared on the June 5, 2001, edition of Larry King Live, King said, "Since James is skeptic, we will ask him to do some calls" to demonstrate cold reading. Randi conspicuously failed to follow up on this suggestion.) Let's see someone do it and show us gullible fools how stupid we really are.

Or is it possible that the mentalists and skeptics really can't duplicate what John Edward does, and they know it, and they are afraid to let us find out?
But in that case, they would be, well, just plain full of it, wouldn't they? Blustering, crowing, fulminating – and conning us the whole time? Pretending they have easy answers when actually they have no answers at all?

Say it ain't so.

At least those who render such analyses are attempting, however feebly, to address the evidence. Regrettably, many people who use the term "cold reading" do not seem even to have watched Crossing Over, let alone to have made any serious attempt to explain how the information is obtained. They seem to think that simply by using the term "cold reading," they can explain everything. But jargon, in and of itself, has no explanatory power.

Imagine, for instance, that you ask me, "Why do birds fly south for the winter?"

I answer, "It's instinct."

You: "What's instinct?"

Me: "It's what makes birds fly south for the winter."

Clearly I have told you nothing of substance, but my use of the word "instinct" may create an impression that something meaningful has been said. "Cold reading" serves a similar function in many critiques of Crossing Over.

"John Edward is just doing a trick called cold reading."

"What is cold reading?"

"It's the trick John Edward does!"

Q.E. D.

There is also a popular method of analysis known as "being nibbled to death by ducks." It consists of finding the tiniest discrepancies in Edward's statements, which become the basis for a wholesale condemnation of his honesty. Here are a couple of examples from "The Many Contradictions of John Edward", by Instig8R (probably not her real name):

On 1/5/97, John Edward told Newsday writer William Falk that the demand for contact with the dead is such that 'he could easily schedule 40 readings a week, instead of the 10 to 15 he feels comfortable doing' … Does anyone know how many readings are given by John Edward per week? It's got to be more than 15!!! On the night that I saw John Edward at the Westbury seminar last May (2002), I think he did about 7 or 8 readings. I believe he appeared at Westbury for 4 nights in a row, so I guess it would be a conservative estimate for me to say that he did more than 20 readings over a four-day period, right?

Even ducks can nibble better than this. When Edward said he could schedule forty readings a week, he obviously meant hour-long private readings. (Forty hour-long sessions would equal a standard forty-hour work week.) He was not referring to the much briefer readings done in groups, which may last only a few minutes each.
We're then shown another startling example of Edward's duplicity:

Sometimes, John Edward says his psychic powers are possibly hereditary. Then, at other times he claims the powers are acquired skills. It just gets funnier and funnier.

My sense of humor may have atrophied, but I don't see anything funny or contradictory about these statements. What Edward seems to be saying is that everyone is born with latent psychic abilities, but these abilities must be honed through practice. How is this different from the truism that anyone can learn to draw (or sing or sew), but we must practice in order to do it well?

I've found it interesting to see how some skeptics' explanations for Crossing Over have changed over time. At first, there was much talk of hidden microphones in the TV studio, which monitored the audience and picked up conversations about departed relatives. In its March 5, 2001 issue, Time ran an article by well-known skeptic Leon Jaroff, who speculated about the use of such microphones, though it appears that Jaroff did not actually go to the studio, interview anyone on the show's staff, or do any investigating whatsoever.

Perhaps to combat such speculation, Crossing Over now sends out an information packet to prospective audience members telling them that, whether they are on line outside or seated in the studio, they should not talk about their relatives or any other personal matters.

With this line of argument somewhat defused, the skeptics next suggested that Edward was using cold reading in the classic carnival sideshow sense. Unfortunately, the specificity of information that Edward sometimes comes up with – often without much, if any, prompting of the audience member – has made this hypothesis pretty unconvincing. In addition, Edward occasionally relates information that the audience member is not even aware of, information verified later when the person talks with another member of the family. Cold reading techniques work only when eliciting facts that the subject himself already knows.

Perhaps sensing that their earlier explanations were inadequate, skeptics increasingly have turned to another proposition – that Edward does research on people long before they ever arrive at the studio. Of all the skeptical explanations offered, this one seems most plausible to me, though I still think it has serious defects. What makes the explanation at least superficially acceptable is the way in which Crossing Over selects its audience. From what I understand, people call the show's 800-number and leave their name and telephone number on the voicemail system. They are then placed on a waiting list. A long time passes, sometimes as much as a full year, before the show contacts them to say that seats are finally available.

Now, it is possible that somebody working with Edward could take these names and phone numbers, use a reverse directory to learn the callers' home addresses, and then cross-index this list with, let's say, the various family trees posted on the Internet, obituaries available through LEXIS-NEXIS, "blog sites" (in which people publish personal information about themselves on the Web), and so on. If the typical caller has to wait months before getting tickets, there would be plenty of time for research to be done. All that would be necessary is to match an obituary – preferably one that includes the cause of death and a lot of personal information about the deceased – to the family of someone on the waiting list. Then tickets can be sent out, and this person can be targeted for a reading.

I became particularly suspicious that this technique might be in play when, on one of the shows, an audience member mentioned that she had spent a year on the waiting list, and then, only a few days after a relative's funeral, tickets finally became available. The woman interpreted this as a "sign" that she was going to get a reading and "hear from" this particular relative on the show, as indeed she did. But it could just as easily be interpreted as evidence that whoever was monitoring the cross-indexed lists was waiting for an obituary to come up.

One Web essay illustrates this theory by trying to show how Edward obtained two "special hits"i.e., unusually specific information. This essay, incidentally, is also by Instig8R.

In one case, the reading involved a young man who died in an auto accident. The skeptic found that by searching various databases, he could learn not only the details of the crash but certain facts about the victim – for instance, he had a "great love of sports" and had "completed his freshman year" at a certain college. Unfortunately, the essay doesn't provide any quotes or even paraphrases of Edward's actual reading, so it's impossible to determine how closely the material Edward came up with matches the material found online.

In the second case, Edward talked with the owner of an Italian restaurant, Russ Brunelli. The reading, we are told, "was a close parallel to the data that I was able to find out about [Brunelli], his parents and their businesses. Just to illustrate the information that is available, John Edward stated that someone had a 'double name', and this was validated. One of the sitters present was Ignazio Leone, a cousin/partner/executive chef at Brunelli's restaurant. He is known as 'Yan-Yan'. If you would like to verify that Ignazio is called Yan-Yan', and read other information about the Brunelli family and their business, visit the following site on the internet: Italian Cooking & Living: Ignazio Leone."

The only problem here is that the Web site in question does not mention that Ignazio is called Yan-Yan, or give much information about the Brunellis at all. Possibly the Brunellis' site has been revamped since the "Many Contradictions" article was written. Or possibly not, since the author goes on to say, "I found the information that Chef Leone is called 'Yan-Yan' from an article in NY Newsday, written by Sylvia Carter, dated July 21, 1999 on Page B11 in the Food and Dining Section …" (My essay was written not long after this date.) 

So apparently the Yan-Yan info was not on the Brunellis' site, after all. It's all rather, uh, "vague," to use a term we've encountered before. In any case, no quotes or paraphrases are provided for this reading, either, giving the reader little to work with.

Although these examples are less than compelling, I still think the cross-indexing hypothesis is the most convincing skeptical explanation I've heard. Still, it leaves key questions unanswered.

For one thing, it seems odd that none of the hundreds of people to get readings on Crossing Over have noticed that everything Edward told them had previously been printed in the newspaper. I realize that many people are gullible and have a desperate desire to believe, but you would expect at least a few of them to realize that Edward was parroting an obituary that they must have read and may even have written themselves. For folks like the South Park writers, this objection has no weight, because they regard Edward's audience as brain-dead idiots. I don't share this opinion.

For another thing, the laborious and time-consuming cross-indexing operation is unlikely to be done by Edward himself. Presumably he has assistants who do the grunt work for him. In an age of six-figure payoffs to anyone who can expose the dark secrets of a celebrity, you would think that one of these assistants would have gone public by now. Perhaps one of them will go public tomorrow, but as of this writing, no one has.* It seems hard to believe that a low-paid computer operator would pass up the chance to make a couple of hundred thousand dollars and become a national celebrity, if he indeed had the goods on America's most famous psychic.

(*It's now about twenty years later, and no such whistleblower has yet emerged. – MP, 2024)

For yet another thing, while much of the information Edward presents probably could be obtained from obituaries or from memorials printed in a local newspaper or an alumni magazine, some of the information appears to be too personal, too specific, and, in some cases, too embarrassing to be derived from those sources. My previous essay on Edward gives examples of embarrassing revelations of this sort. In one case, Edward claimed that a woman's late husband was making a reference to handcuffs. The woman, obviously abashed, verified this reference without explaining it, though the audience drew the obvious inference. I think it most unlikely that the couple's penchant for handcuffs ever made it into the husband's obituary.

In other cases, Edward seems to be able to come up with detailed information about things that the audience member has done very recently – usually minor but specific things that would not attract attention in the press – or about private experiences that the person has shared with no one, not even close friends and relatives.

Then there is the matter of the experiments performed with Edward and other mediums at the University of Arizona. Some skeptics have argued that precautions against fraud were inadequate, but we must remember that skeptics always say that the precautions, no matter how stringent, are inadequate. Even when tests have been repeated thousands of times in labs all over the world – as is true of the "ganzfeld" ESP experiments, for example – skeptics still say that the data cannot be trusted for one reason or another. It is hard to escape the conclusion that the more diehard skeptics can never be convinced. As the saying goes, "They'll see it when they believe it."

From my reading of The Afterlife Experiments, I would say that the precautions – especially in the later trials – were quite good. In fact, professional mentalists who have visited Gary Schwartz's laboratory report that they would not be able to perform under such tightly controlled conditions. And we have seen that mentalist Mark Edward was apparently not eager to exhibit his skills at the U. of A.

Skeptics sometimes counter this point either by insinuating that Schwartz and his colleagues are frauds or by saying openly that Schwartz is a weirdo and therefore nothing he says can be taken seriously. (The redoubtable Leon Jaroff again comes to mind, having been quoted as declaring, "Gary Schwartz believes in the tooth fairy.")

Neither of these objections holds much water. Schwartz would have little to gain by faking these experiments. If the fakery came to light, his career would be ruined, his professional reputation destroyed. In fact, he has taken a considerable risk and alienated many members of the academic community by conducting the experiments in the first place.

As for the claim that Schwartz is flaky, I suspect that all paranormal investigators, or even those of us who just like to read up on this topic, come across this way to those who find the whole subject preposterous. And Schwartz's books say anything about the tooth fairy, as far as I recall. At any rate, attacking somebody's character is not an argument – it is a logical fallacy, an ad hominem. Skeptics become very exercised when people launch personal attacks against them, and with good reason – such attacks are out of bounds and serve no useful purpose. But to be consistent, skeptics should not use these tactics, either.

So where do we stand? The skeptics remain certain that Edward is a fake, although they have not yet provided an adequate explanation of how he pulls off his trickery, and many of their more dramatic claims – reports of TV shows that unmasked Edward as a fraud, for instance – turn out to be without foundation. Even so, fakery can't be ruled out. It's possible that the cross-indexing method described above, perhaps combined with other methods, can explain the readings on Crossing Over. This still wouldn't explain the results of the University of Arizona experimentsresults that mentalists like Mark Edward have so far been unable to match – but until those results have been replicated at other labs, they can't be considered conclusive.

As I see it, the truth remains up in the air. Those who insist that Edward is defrauding his audience and laughing all the way to the bank have no hard evidence and are making an unproven assumption, often backed up with nothing more than bluster. Those who insist with equal fervor that Edward is for real and could not possibly be guilty of trickery are leading with their hearts rather than their heads, substituting a will to believe for objective proof.

The reality is that we just don't know. I remain willing to give Edward the benefit of the doubt, but it's understandable if others are not.

In my first essay, I ended by saying that "something genuinely spooky is going on." I continue to think that this is likely – that there are genuine paranormal abilities on display on Crossing Over. But I chose the evasive phrase "something genuinely spooky" advisedly, because I was not ready to commit myself to the proposition that Edward is actually communicating with the dead. And I'm still not.

The fact is, even if Edward is using psychic abilities, he may not have any contact with "spirits" at all. He may be using some form of ESP (perhaps without consciously realizing it) to read information from the minds of audience members, which he then repeats back to them. ESP would not account for all the "hits" he gets, but it would account for a good many of them. Quite a few parapsychologists have speculated about "super-ESP," a faculty that would allow the psychic to pull information not only from people in the room with him but from other people miles away, or even from printed sources of information, such as birth records and family albums. The super-ESP hypothesis is far-fetched and difficult to test, but it may not be any more far-fetched than the idea of talking to the dead.

The bottom line is that even if we accept Edward as a genuine psychic, we need not accept the metaphysics that he offers as an explanation for his abilities.

There remain more questions than answers. I'm reasonably content with this state of affairs – after all, nobody ever promised that all of life's mysteries would be solved. But as I look at various Web sites and message boards, I get the impression that many people just can't tolerate uncertainty or ambiguity in this area. For them, there must be a final, definitive, black-and-white answer, either pro or con. Leaving the matter in suspense is unacceptable. And so, depending on their predilections and temperament, they leap either to a hard-core skeptical position or to an equally hard-core true-believer position. In this sense, the militant skeptics and the zealous believers are not so far apart. Each side insists that it has the incontrovertible truth, and that anyone who disagrees is a fool fit only to be pitied and ridiculed. Hence the harsh rhetoric, the name-calling, the bitter sarcasm, and the ongoing, often pointless debate.

In the end, I suspect that the truth will turn out to be more complicated and more interesting than either side expects.

Time will tell.