Last night I was watched a very impressive and emotionally compelling seance.
It included objects moving on their own, volunteers themselves channeling spirits not a specific medium, where they’d revealing knowledge they couldn’t have, such as the contents of a sealed envelope. No stooges or actors were used in conducting the actual seance. They were very much freaked out by the experience.
Of course, it wasn’t real; it was an elaborate television special conducted by a famous magician who excels in deception, using magic and psychology, as an experiment to see if a modern day audience would be suckered by such showmanship. Disappointly, they were. And, in the end, the magician even showed the participants how he pulled it off and manipulated them, hoping they’d question their beliefs about the supernatural that made them fall for it. It’s clear that he, like many other magicians, do not have a belief in the supernatural and get very cheesed off when tricks of the trade are passed off as genuine, especially for the sake of defrauding.
It was amazing how easily smart people get suckered. For example, they were all told to look at a set of photographs and let one come to them, but not to reveal it. However, outside the context of the seance, it was no different than when, say, David Copperfield would have you put your finger on the television anywhere and tell you to follow his instructions, revealing your position at the end; this was just more sophisticated. Later on he’d make them reveal that name using a makeshift Ouija board (he also explained how that worked). Sneaky, if not genius, to apparently take himself out of the loop.
Of course, the Ouija board is more psychological trickery, especially since the dead spirit being called on happened to move the glass happened to be an actress sitting outside in a van. None the less, the glass moved, as it had to, with no stooge touching it, leaving them to invent a plausable explaination for the context they were in.
It started with the directions “Everyone ask, ‘Are you here spirit? If you’re here, move the glass to Y, for yes.”
At that point I paused the show, turned to the person next to me and stated, “If you’re not here spirit, move the glass to N, for no.” It was the spooky equivalent of “Everyone who’s not here, raise your hand.”
