I love a psychic story. It’s like catnip to me. Give me a local reporter shamelessly pandering to the nonsense of a purported sage or mystic, and I’m instantly all fired-up with lovely apoplectic ire. ‘Talks to the dead, does he?’ ‘See the future, can he?’ The irritation caused by yet another credulous, fact-free, pseudoscientific puff-piece just feeds me. Which is why I was delighted to find a report in local paper Wigan Today reported this week on the psychic pieman. ‘Oooh’, I thought, ‘Here we go’. So, who or what is the psychic pie-man? Well, apparently, Wigan-based baker Kevin Warrilow has put aside the pastry knife and taken to the crystal ball after undergoing an ‘unexplainable’ transformation in his life. The paper explains:
“Things changed dramatically after the pie shops hit financial problems and he began to be guided by the spirit of a beautiful Afro-Carribean (sic) woman called Lisa, whose face would materialise in curtains, doors or tables to tell him of the new direction his life must take”
I think the key phrase there is ‘financial problems’ – after converting his pie shop into a Love and Light Spirituality Centre and flogging crystal, tarot readings, Angel Cars and incense, I think it’s safe to say his income is somewhat flourishing. The article continues:
“He then began to give private readings to friends and family who were profoundly impressed with how accurate they proved to be.”
Which sounds either like he’s a really gifted and genuine psychic, or he’s using simple cold reading tricks that anybody can easily pick up. Also, it’s worth noting, it’s REALLY easy to give accurate personal readings about the people you know really well. ‘Hi Mum, welcome, take a seat. OK, the spirits are telling me that you have a son called Kevin who used to sell pies, and now he sells lies*…’ Amazing.
The prescient pasty-maker says of his kooky career change:
“Friends were amazed at how I had changed almost overnight to a deeply spiritual person and how I had this amazing gift, which I can’t explain and have given up trying to”
It seems to me like Kevin has given up trying to explain things a little early, so to help him out I’m happy to have a go at explaining it – he’s using simple cold reading techniques that anybody can pick up, and he’s turned to them after the bottom fell out of the pie business. There, that’s just one possible explanation, and I barely spent any time on that one.
“I had no more interest in this subject from your average fella off the street. I remember going to a developmennt (sic) circle and cracking up with laughter and thinking I was surrounded by looneys, (sic) because I was as sceptical as the next man. But I was then guided by spirit to transform one of my former bakery shops into a spiritual shop” (original spelling in Wigan Today preserved – nice spell-checking, professional journalists…)
I would venture that the main spirit he’s in touch with is the spirit of entrepreneurship.
Still, there may soon be more money in the psychic business than Kevin could predict, because in keeping with precedent set by Randi’s million dollar challenge, a new $50,000 challenge has been issued to psychics and mediums to prove genuine spirit communication. What’s unusual about this new challenge, however, is that it’s not being run by a bearded and seasoned skeptical debunker like dear Randi, but instead by a purported spiritualist and medium.
Eddie Benitez of Arizona is issuing the challenge to psychics to prove that what they’re doing is genuine – which is pretty odd given that he purportedly believes he is able to see and communicate with spirits and with angels himself. Eddie sees no inherent dilemma in this – his firm belief in his own mystic talents have led him to challenge others in the field in order to weed out the fakes and phonies, apparently. If only all psychics were so noble in their intentions, I seem to remember a certain Liverpudlian mystic who admitted to knowing fraudulent psychics personally, but refusing to out them or to challenge them to prove themselves.
Eddie, unlike Joe Power, believes that the frauds in his industry are conning vulnerable people out of money and hope with false claims to communicate with their deceased loved ones, or claims to predict their futures. I can’t say I disagree, as Tim Minchin so excellently puts it:
“These people aren’t plying a skill,
They are either lying or mentally ill”
Psychic Eddie hopes someone will be able to rise to the challenge and prove once and for all that psychic connections and talking to the dead is real. Which we can safely presume it isn’t – based on current evidence, scientific knowledge, logic and common sense. Still, fair play to Eddie for making the effort.
First in the queue of prominent self-professed mediums he hopes to call to task are James Van Praagh and Sylvia Browne, who he’s issued personal challenges to. Surprisingly, neither have accepted the challenge – which is weird, because Sylvia’s usual modus operandi is to accept the challenge and then make up crappy excuses not to go through with it.
The most important factor, of course, is the criteria on which the challenge will be judged – this hasn’t been announced yet, and it’s quite possible that Eddie’s parameters will be loose enough for someone like Sylvia Brown, James van Praagh or John ‘Biggest Douche In The Universe’ Edward to slip through with a mix of bluffing and cold reading – until the criteria is announced it’s not possible to place much stock in the challenge. Yet, if the methods are suitably rigorous, and the testing done honestly and with as much involvement from cold-reading and psychology experts as possible, maybe it’ll be worthwhile. I hope Eddie’s first in the queue to take his challenge – that will go a long way towards proving it’s not just a poor PR stunt to allow one claimed medium to expose out his rivals and lessen the field for his own benefit. Still, it’s an interesting take on the challenge nonetheless.
*Please note, in the hypothetical scenario above, the spirits are claiming Kevin sells lies. I make no such claim, nor do I desire to.