Benign Counselors
Psychics represent a harmless form of entertainment or act as benign counselors, others knowingly hurt and con vulnerable clients. The authors recently investigated some of these individuals operating in London.
Miraculous Recovery Psychic Surgery: Just over a year ago, the first author, was invited to a function room of a London public library to observe a demonstration of psychic surgery. I did not anticipate that the performance would contain anything new or exciting - perhaps the surgeon would appear to make some cuts on the patient's stomach, pretend to remove some diseased tissue, and then cause the wound to "miraculously" recover.
Very Disturbing
The demonstration was, in reality, far more disturbing. I arrived about ten minutes before the start of the demonstration, and the function room was already crowded. The surgeon's helpers asked individuals who wished to be treated to make themselves known. About thirty people raised their hands.
Details Of Their Illness.
They were each given a small slip of paper and wrote down details of their illness. Then the service began. A "preacher" sat at the front of the room and started to talk about his spiritual philosophy. After a few moments, the surgeon's helpers selected the first "patient" and led him into another room.
Was A Young Man
Psychic surgeon was a young man in his mid thirties, dressed in a white shirt and jeans. He was standing by a large couch that held a tray of surgical instruments (including scalpels, syringes, needles, and scissors). The patient was shown into the room and asked to sit on a chair next to the couch. The surgeon picked up the syringe and started to prod its needle into the back of the patient's neck.
Blood Emerged A few moments later spots of blood started to appear. The surgeon placed a piece of cotton wool over the wound, secured it with surgical tape, and asked the patient to lay on the couch. He picked up a scalpel and made an incision into his abdomen. It was a shallow but real cut. The surgeon picked up some scissors and placed them into the wound. Blood emerged from the cut.
Post-Operation Area The scissors were removed and the surgeon pushed the two sides of the cut tightly together, secured some cotton wool over it, and sent the patient to the post-operation area - a duvet spread out in one corner of the room. I observed about five of these "operations," and they all followed roughly the same pattern.
Transmitting Blood Disorders The surgeon didn't wash his hands or instruments between patients, and there was an obvious risk of his transmitting blood disorders from one patient to another. That night the surgeon operated on approximately fifteen people. The following night more operations were carried out - only this time the medical dangers were greatly increased because several of the patients were apparently HIV positive.
The Police
Psychic surgeon had operated on about forty patients before the alarm was raised. The library was contacted, and it quickly canceled the remainder of the scheduled meetings. The police also received an anonymous phone call from one of the patients who claimed that the surgeon had operated without her consent.
Ran Away Unfortunately, the surgeon had left the country and was heading on to France (the next stage of his world tour) before any legal proceedings could be initiated against him. We chose five London-based psychics from advertisements in various newspapers (e.g., Eastern Eye, Ms. London), focusing on those that claimed to be able to remove curses.
Sting Operation We thought that one or two might try to exploit their seemingly vulnerable clients - however, nothing had prepared us for what we were about to encounter. Psychic Readers: More recently, we (both authors) were asked to help make an investigative documentary about exploitative psychic readers for British television. The project sounded interesting, and we agreed to participate. After several meetings with the program's producers, we decided to help set up an undercover "sting" operation.
Fight With Boyfriend
Basically, we would send two actresses to several "psychic" readers. Each actress would say that she had recently experienced a great deal of bad luck in her life (including, for example, family bereavements, problems at work and with boyfriends) and was eager for help.
Unaware It Is A Lie The psychics would be unaware that these problems were completely fictitious and, perhaps more important, that the actresses were fitted with hidden cameras that would film each of the consultations.
Psychic A First up was Psychic A, a male, who operates from a cosmetics and hair products shop in North London. The actress claimed that she had just split up with her boyfriend. Psychic A assured her that he could help and went on to recommend that the actress buy some white underwear and return in a couple of days for an herbal bath.
Implicitly Sexual Nature
This would "loosen her up" and bring her boyfriend back to her. The cost of this "treatment" would be [pounds]450 (roughly $720 by current exchange rates). After the consultation, the actress remarked that she had felt very unsettled by the implicitly sexual nature of certain comments made by Psychic A.
Psychic B The same actress then visited Psychic B (a female). This time, the actress claimed that she had always had a difficult relationship with her sister, and that matters had recently been made worse by the death of their mother. Psychic B informed the actress that her sister was jealous of her, was trying to drive her boyfriend away, and "doesn't care how far she goes to destroy your future."