Amidst accusations of war profiteering by the German pharmaceutical company Bayer, it's important to recall that times like these can give rise to another sort of profiteering as well -- one that attempts to cash in on people's grief.
I'm not just talking about fake charities trying to bilk those generous enough to donate to the families of September 11 victims. Consider: John Edward, the celebrity psychic medium and host of the Studios USA show Crossing Over, actually had the gall to record unaired segments in which he purportedly contacts the departed spirits of World Trade Center victims as a consolation to their loved ones. In the latest issue of Skeptical Inquirer magazine -- unfortunately not online at this writing -- Edward's spiritualist techniques are thoroughly exposed and debunked by the paranormal investigator Joe Nickell in an article titled "John Edward: Hustling the Bereaved." (Full disclosure: I used to work with Nickell at Skeptical Inquirer.)
Edward, explains Nickell, is a skilled manipulator who relies on a process called "cold reading" to make people believe he can actually contact the dead. In actuality, Edward cleverly elicits clues and personal data from members of his audience, then repackages this information on the spot in supposed messages from beyond that shock and startle the unsuspecting. Edward also happily allows his gullible viewers to lend their own personal interpretations to his frequently vague statements. As Nickell puts it, "nearly anyone can respond to the mention of a common object (like a ring or watch) with a personal recollection that can seem to transform the mention into a hit."
And sometimes, it appears, Edward even cheats, using previously discovered information as though it's just suddenly popped into his head courtesy of the spirits. As Nickell writes:
On Dateline, Edward was actually caught in an attempt to pass off previously gained knowledge as spirit revelation. During the session he said of the spirits, "They're telling me to acknowledge Anthony," and when the cameraman signaled that was his name, Edward seemed surprised, asking, "That's you? Really?" He further queried: "Had you not seen Dad before he passed? Had you either been away or been distanced?" Later, playing the taped segment for me, Dateline reporter John Hockenberry challenged me with Edward's apparent hit: "He got Anthony. That's pretty good." I agreed but added, "We've seen mediums who mill about before sessions and greet people and chat with them and pick up things."
Indeed, it turned out that that is just what Edward had done. Hours beforethe group reading, Tony had been the cameraman on another EdwardshootÂ…Significantly, the two men had chatted and Edward had obtained useful bits of information that he afterward pretended had come from the spirits.
The good news is, there seems to be a clear consensus that in trying to channel World Trade Center victims, John Edward, like Jerry Falwell and Susan Sontag, has finally gone too far. It's not that cranks suddenly deserve to be censored because it's wartime; that's just as bad an idea as it ever was. But the fact that Studios USA shied away from airing Edwards' World Trade Center performance suggests awareness on the production house's part that Americans would recoil in horror from such exploitation. Could this mean that deep down, when it really matters, we all actually do know that psychic mediums are full of it?
Still, the mystical responses to our national tragedy have been manifold; I detailed some in a previous web article titled "The Numerology of Terror." Since then, another stunning example has come to my attention. Earlier this month Spiked, a British webzine, published an article by Sarah Glazer detailing the Utah-based Nurse Healers' Professional Associates International's loopy response to September 11.
Nurse Healers' is the lead organization advancing the alternative medical technique known as therapeutic touch, which pervades the nursing profession. Invented by former New York University nursing professor Dolores Krieger, therapeutic touch involves running your hands just above a person's skin in vigorous motions, allegedly in order to untangle the patient's personal "energy field." But now, reports Glazer, Krieger is advocating that this dubious technique -- which doesn't involve even touching a patient -- can be practiced from a distance to aid already deceased World Trade Center victims:
I suggest the following. The names of several of the victims have been displaying themselves on the screen throughout the day. I am taking the name of one person however often I can, and thinking of him or her as an individual. I am doing healing at a distance, which I do by visualizing myself at that person's side and see/feel/think of myself doing Therapeutic Touch to that person. In this I am calling upon the help of the angels of compassion and am trying to work with them as best I can understand. My first thought is to help the person through the terror of dying so suddenly and so horribly. I try to maintain a supporting sense of love, strength and stability. There are ways, I find, of permeating my thought with more than one color at a time, and I do this; however, the predominant color I project is that wondrous blue that is connected with the Mother of the World in all belief systems. I try to be as intelligent and as aware as I can be throughout this time, working together with whatever beneficent forces I think of or who present themselves at this time. I also think of the relatives of these persons to help them through their grief. Here blue is so powerful, too. You can send the above to whomever you choose. I think a process such as noted above will help ourselves as well as those we think of, don't you?
In other words, try prayer.
At least Krieger doesn't obviously stand to benefit personally from this World Trade Center-related stunt, except through the possible further spread of therapeutic touch among nurses. It's hard to say the same for John Edward, whose star has been rising of late thanks to Crossing Over and his book of the same name. The Washington Post reports that Edward's World Trade Center segment was originally targeted for television's November sweeps rating derby. Perhaps the most appropriate words that can be said about this kind of behavior come from another spiritualist -- one who repented. Writing in Skeptical Inquirer, Nickell leaves us with a quotation from Harry Houdini, the magician and former medium who came to regret having bamboozled so many bereaved people early in his career:
As I advanced to riper years of experience I was brought to a realization of the seriousness of trifling with the hallowed reverence which the average humanbeing bestows on the departed, and when I personally became afflicted with similar grief I was chagrined that I should ever have been guilty of such frivolity and for the first time realized that it bordered on crime.
