It seems pretty easy to do. While painting a house in 1943, fall off a ladder and manage a concussion, wake up, and you're psychic. At least that's what one of the most famous psychics of the last century managed to do. Peter Hurkos, a Dutch "clairvoyant" who became the darling of the media in the '70s and '80s, attained a reputation as a "police psychic" first in Europe and then in the USA -- where he found the money much more easily earned.

As so many of the "psychics" choose to do, Hurkos decided that finding missing persons by mystical means could be a very lucrative pursuit. It seems that there are always well-to-do parents with missing children, police departments who will naively allow mystics to clutter up their investigations, or media outlets who will employ wand- wavers to spice up an evening newscast.

(A recent example is the currently-popular "speaker-with-the-dead" artist, James Van Praagh, who has offered his services to the Ramsey family to ask the murdered child Jon Benet just who did her in. Asked about this in a TV interview, Van Praagh rather gave away one of the necessary elements of his performance. "Would you be able to contact Jon Benet without [the parents'] assistance? For example, at home or here in our studio?" the TV host asked. Van Praagh responded, "You know, I'd need them to bring her energy in. Because she wouldn't necessarily come to you or to myself because she doesn't know us. She doesn't know us. So a family member, the closest one to her, would be the best way to reach her." What he is saying here is that he needs feedback -- and that's the single most necessary part of his "cold reading" technique. Without someone to supply the information to him, he would be working in a vacuum....)

One of the cases that catapulted Hurkos into world attention took place in 1951, and it's quite typical of the sort of mythology that accompanies these performers. The popular version of his feat goes thus:

1. A series of arsons that occurred in the town of Nijmegen, Holland, had authorities puzzled, and they had no suspects.

2. Hurkos pointed to the 17-year-old son of a respectable local family, to the surprise of everyone, since these folks were beyond suspicion.

3. The police chief was amazed when the boy confessed to the crimes.

The actuality is rather different.

1. The boy was known to be mentally deficient.

2. He had been a suspect almost from the beginning of the investigation.

3. The police had finally found positive evidence connecting the boy with the arsons, at one of the crime sites.

4. The boy was arrested on the strength of that evidence. Hurkos had nothing to do with it.

5. Hurkos only made his identification the day after the arrest of the suspect.

True to form, those who support belief in Hurkos and such claims, still choose to quote the Nijmegen case as proof of their naivety. I repeat what I've said before: No evidence against a firmly-held belief, no matter how good or abundant it may be, will sway the true believer.

I almost got to test Hurkos. Years ago, Alan Thicke was the host of a late-night talk show that had me on as a guest. Following my appearance, the producer was contacted by the agent/secretary of Peter Hurkos with a challenge. Hurkos, she said, would appear to meet my offer of $10,000 (now increased to $1,000,000, as you will know) and she assured him that the psychic would walk away with the prize easily. The caller -- who turned out to also be Hurkos' wife -- suggested that to prove his claim, he would do "readings" for audience members, live, on the show.

Well, I'd seen his readings before. They were almost word-for-word the same sort of thing that Sylvia Browne and James Van Praagh are now doing for a new generation of viewers. It was simple "cold reading." That would hardly do for winning my prize, so I suggested a really definitive -- and rather entertaining -- test.

I knew that Hurkos was fond of doing "psychometry" demonstrations. That consisted of handling an object that had personally belonged to someone, and the claim was that "vibrations" had been put into such an object by the owner, and a psychic could tell from these forces, otherwise unknown details about the owner. The ideal object would have no previous owner, so that the sensitive powers would not be confused. I believed I had the perfect design for such a test, and I submitted it to the TV producer.

I proposed that before the show, we would ask that 20 men from the audience (none of them seated in the front row) be asked to come backstage and contribute their right shoes to be used in the experiment. This was an ideal object, very probably having no previous owner, and obviously a "personal" object. Each show would be plainly numbered and a list kept of which number corresponded to what name. Those men would then return to the audience minus the one shoe. But -- only five randomly- chosen shoes from the pool would be selected, the rest placed aside. Seated before a large opaque box in which the five shoes were concealed, Hurkos would be asked to handle each one in turn without describing it or showing it in any way, but giving the number and any "impressions" he obtained through his powers.

Each of the 20 men in the audience would then be asked to score all five "readings" for applicable facts. Of course, 15 of these didn't even make it into the box, so we would have many high scores from men who weren't being "read for" at all -- if this were just a guessing game. And, I suspected, there would be no significant correlation between reality and what Hurkos said.

(I freely admit that I also had in mind the picture of all the 20 men coming on stage to recover their footwear, and resulting confusion. Hey, it's showbiz!)

Luckily, I predicted to Thicke that Hurkos would reject the proposed test -- which he did, saying that I was not a scientist and didn't know how to design tests. I think that was a damn good test, and I also think I know why Hurkos refused it.

I never got the chance to test Peter Hurkos, but his published record speaks for itself, in any case.

The UFO puzzle here last week was easily solved by all but one person who tried. The object was one of three overhanging street lamps, with the support just out-of-frame. Many entertaining solutions were received, and I chose this one to share with you:

I don't believe it! You've finally captured a photograph of a UFO BASE!!! Not only is there one flying above the man's head, but there are at least two more docked on their mooring posts behind him.

If this picture is from, as it appears, the US Naval Academy, you finally have UNDENIABLE PROOF of the government's cover-up of its UFO activities. Then again, I have been off my medication recently....

Andrew I. Kapust

Thank you, Andrew! Look over our JREF shopping list and choose an item you'd like. If you're not too presumptive/avaricious, we'll send it to you as a prize.

NEXT WEEK: A test I designed for metal-benders and sumitted to Professor John Taylor of King's College, London, England. And what happened to it....