“They say they help people recover from grief, but grieving is a natural part of death,” he says. Lying to people doesn’t give them real closure or comfort…
Over the years, Banachek has tested numerous people who claim to have psychic abilities. It’s been his job to make sure that the subject wasn’t cheating by trying to pass off magic tricks as paranormal powers. Like the old saying goes, it takes a thief to catch a thief; so who better to catch a magician than another magician? He has tested clairvoyants, palm readers, dowsers, people who say they can talk to the dead, and even a woman who believes she can make people urinate on command.
Fortunately, that claim didn’t hold water.
Banachek is unfailingly open-minded, kind, and fair, which has earned him the respect of both skeptics and believers alike. Claudia was a big fan. Okay, she used to have a little crush on him. She could never resist a sharp-dressed man; that had been her downfall with Gil, but no one was better dressed than Banachek in the dapper three-piece suits he wore on stage.
Banachek is on the side of the skeptics, but he is one of the rare nice guys in skepticism. He has honesty and integrity, while some other skeptics are as bad as the frauds. Banachek admits that the militant skeptics put others offside and belittle the very people they’re trying to convince. As a result, “they don’t break down walls, they put up walls.”
Skeptics can be closed-minded, and too ready to draw the conclusion that a phenomenon isn’t paranormal. They can also be too quick to insist on a natural explanation that may not be correct. There is more than one way to skin a cat, and at least 10 different ways to bend a key. Instead of insisting on explanations for the paranormal, Banachek likes to give people information so they can make a decision for themselves about what to believe in.
He always said, “Don’t be afraid to say, ‘I don’t know, or you know what, I don’t have enough information to make a decision. Let me call Banachek’.”
So Claudia gave him a call for some advice about the Gil Godsend situation.
“Claudia! How are you, my friend?” he greeted her.
Whenever she called he seemed to be in some exotic or strange location. Today he was doing some filming for a television show in Las Vegas.
“I’ve only got five minutes to chat right now,” he said. “I’m trying to work out how to make three elephants disappear.”
Banachek was usually doing something crazy and unexpected. The last time she called him he was searching for a corpse to use in a magic trick.
“That’s okay,” she replied. “This shouldn’t take long.”
“You know, I’ve been thinking about you,” he said. “I’ve seen Gil Godsend in the media a lot of late and wondering if you were going to step up and say something.”
“That’s exactly why I’m calling,” she said. “I’ve been getting complaints about him from some of his female clients. They’re asking for my help and I feel like I need to do something…”
“But?”
She sighed.
“It’s the last thing I need right now. My business is really taking off, and as you know, in my job I deal with about as many sleazes as I can handle let alone dealing with Gil again. And speaking of sleazes, I’ve been much happier since I left skepticism. It’s been a huge stress reducer to be away from it all and I don’t really want to have anything to do with it ever again,” she blathered. “Anyway, taking Gil on again feels futile.”
“If you’ve made your mind up then why are you calling?” Banachek reasoned.
“Touché… I’m curious to find out what he did to these women, and I guess I feel a sense of responsibility to them,” Claudia said. “But all the years I’ve tried to expose Gil as a con-artist have come to nothing and he’s still hurting people…”
“That’s not entirely true,” argued Banachek. “These women are coming to you for advice because of the work you’ve done all these years.”
“Good point.”
“You’re still helping people through this work,” he said. “And remember, you wouldn’t be doing this for the skeptics; you’d be doing it for Gil’s victims, and to prevent future victims. I think you should get in touch with these ladies and at least hear what they have to say,” he advised.
Claudia knew he was right. She had to contact these women and hear them out.
“Thank you, Banachek. I will,” she said, thinking she heard an elephant trumpeting in the background.
“You’re always welcome,” he replied. “Let’s keep in touch about this matter. But for now, I’d better get back to these elephants…”
Chapter 9
Claudia sat in the coffee shop in San Anselmo where she’d agreed to meet with Kate Thompson. Her face was aglow with the light from her laptop as she sipped on a cappuccino, nibbled on a blueberry muffin, and revisited old articles she’d written about Gil. For years, she had been preaching to the choir. Her only readers were skeptics who already agreed with her, not those who needed to hear what she had to say.
People only ever seemed to challenge their beliefs if they’d had a negative personal experience with a psychic, not because some skeptic had written a persuasive article debunking a dishonest psychic. Claudia was unenthusiastic about discussing Gil again but this Kate woman seemed desperate to speak with her. She couldn’t refuse. And she was pleased that her articles were finally reaching their intended audience.
A pretty woman wearing a bright blue coat raced into the coffee shop. She recognized Claudia from her photographs online and darted towards her.
“Hello, Ms. Cox,” she panted. “I’m Kate Thompson. Thank you so much for agreeing to meet with me today.”
“I’m very happy to do so,” Claudia responded warmly, now feeling guilty that she’d been so reluctant to get involved.
Kate took a seat at Claudia’s table.
“I need to talk with someone about my experience with Gil Godsend and you seem to know him very well,” she said. “I read all of your articles about him and I think they explain a lot,” she said with a strained look on her face.
“Let me buy you a coffee and you can tell me what happened,” Claudia offered, although Kate was so jittery she didn’t really need caffeine.
Cradling a hot cup of coffee in her hands, Kate told Claudia about her session with Gil.
“He knew so much about me and my husband. He almost knew too much. He mentioned specific, intimate details about our lives, and my husband’s death. That convinced me, at first. But you’ve written about how this could be something called a hot reading?”
“That’s right,” Claudia said, flattered that Kate had clearly read her articles. “Hot reading is secretly gathering information about people and presenting it back to them like it’s a psychic revelation. It’s cheating.”
“How is it done?” Kate asked.
“There are many different kinds of hot reading tricks that psychic mediums use,” said Claudia. “Some fish for information from audience members before a reading, asking, ‘who are you hoping to hear from today?’ If someone answers, ‘Uncle Arthur’, then suspiciously, Uncle Arthur always comes through. Others get their audience to fill out family trees or cards sharing personal information that’s then used in the readings. They might eavesdrop on conversations in the crowd before a show or they hide microphones in the audience to overhear people talking about the deceased loved ones they hope to communicate with during the reading. These sneaky techniques are so common they call it “pre-show” in the business.”
Claudia was on a roll. Once you got her talking about psychics it was hard to shut her up.
“Some psychics give pre-prepared readings to actors or stooges planted in the audience,” she continued. “A few psychic mediums have even been caught wearing earpieces and receiving information about audience members from an accomplice. Or they might research their audience using information gleaned from ticket sales. They know where their targets are located in the crowd because of pre-assigned seating. Modern psychics
who give private readings often research their clients online in preparation for the appointment. I think this is what happened in your case. Before the days of the internet there were networks of psychics who kept secret files on regular clients and shared this information with other mediums.”
After her tirade, Claudia took a deep breath and sat back in her chair.
But Kate looked puzzled.
“This all makes sense, but Gil didn’t have much information about me before the reading. I only gave him my name and phone number when I made my appointment.”
“That’s enough info for a talented con-artist,” Claudia assured her. “No supernatural powers required.”
“But I didn’t even tell him why I was there to see him,” Kate insisted. “How did Gil know that I wanted to contact my husband?”
“People visit psychic mediums expecting to communicate with a deceased loved one,” Claudia reasoned. “Most clients hope to hear from a spouse or a parent who has passed.”
“Then how did he know my husband’s name?” Kate asked as she scratched her head in confusion.
“Well, let’s find out, shall we?” Claudia said, feeling certain that she was going to find something damning online.
For a few minutes all that could be heard was the sound of her gentle tapping on the keyboard and the chatter of the other customers in the shop.
Suddenly her eyes grew wide and she looked straight at Kate.
“Your husband’s name was Alexander Douglas Thompson…”
Kate’s jaw dropped.
“That’s him! That’s my husband! How did you find that?”
“I did a search for your name and found his obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle,” Claudia explained. “The notice reads, ‘Alexander Douglas Thompson…who is survived by his wife Katherine Jane Thompson’.”
Kate’s shoulders fell.
“So it’s that simple to fool somebody?” she sighed. She thought about it for a moment. “Gil initially said my husband’s name was Alan or Alex. Why did he say this if he knew my husband’s name as a fact?”
“He was probably trying to appear mysterious,” Claudia said as she waved her hands about in the air like a cheesy magician. “Maybe he was pretending it was difficult to decipher the message from the spirits on the other side. After all, psychics are only actors. They’re performance artists.”
Kate got herself another cup of coffee and returned to the table where Claudia was still reading.
“You know, there’s lots of information in this obituary that Gil could have used in his reading,” Claudia said. “It says Alex was born April 15, 1980, and he died February 22, 2013. Gil could determine his age from those dates.”
Kate reflected on Gil’s words.
“Hmm…He did know that Alex was in his early thirties when he died.”
“He could also speculate on the cause of his death,” added Claudia. “As the obituary says, ‘In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to the Neurovascular Disease and Stroke Center at the University of California, San Francisco’,” she read.
“That must be why he guessed that Alex had died of a stroke or an aneurysm!” Kate realized. “But how did Gil know that I gave Alex a final kiss on the lips?” she asked.
“What wife wouldn’t kiss her husband goodbye?” asked Claudia sympathetically.
Kate had believed in psychics for so long that she was finding it difficult to accept that the reading might just be a scam.
“Gil also knew some things about me that he couldn’t possibly have known if he hadn’t been told by Alex,” she argued. “He called it “validation”. He knew that I was wearing diamond earrings that were a gift from Alex for our third wedding anniversary. He also knew that I’d worn them to Alex’s funeral. How do you explain that?”
“Let me look this up too,” said Claudia.
She did an image search using Kate’s name. She quickly found a photograph of a smiling Kate wearing a green wrap dress and dangly diamond earrings.
Claudia swung around her laptop and showed it to Kate.
Kate looked crestfallen.
“Oh... I forgot about that photo,” she said sheepishly.
It had been uploaded to a social networking site three years ago, around the time of Alex’s death. Below the image was a thread of comments in which Kate divulged that Alex had bought her the earrings as a third anniversary gift and that she’d worn them to his funeral. She also revealed that the photo was taken at a work Christmas Party and that her dress was a present Alex gave to her to wear for the occasion. This was all of the information that “Alex” had supposedly told Gil during the reading.
In the photo Kate was wearing the exact same outfit and hairstyle that she’d worn to the session that day.
“Gil’s psychic connection is Facebook,” Claudia quipped. “The internet is a goldmine of personal information that can be exploited by con-artists,” she added. “We have no privacy online. People searches and background checks allow complete strangers to find out our age and date of birth, relatives’ names, address history, email addresses, phone numbers, marriage and divorce records, criminal records, and much more.”
Claudia was on a role again…
“People tend to forget about the trail they leave behind online,” she said. “They disclose personal details publicly on blogs, social media and networking sites, forums, shops, news sources, and in obituaries. By the way, Alex’s obituary also says he was a resident in San Anselmo, California, at the time of his passing. Using that information, Gil could have done a background search and used an online map to pinpoint exactly where you live. He might have even scoped out your house in person so he could make it seem as though he could “see” your house in a psychic vision.”
Kate remembered Gil’s accurate description of her “big old house”.
“Hmm…I suppose that’s how he might have known that the garden and plum trees need attention, and that I have to clean the leaves out of the gutters”, she said, still unconvinced. “But how did he know that I need to get the furnace inspected? Could he have used his psychic powers to see inside of my house?”
“I think that was cold reading, not clairvoyance,” said Claudia.
Kate had read that phrase somewhere in Claudia’s articles.
“Cold reading is a psychological strategy that is used to give what seems to be a very convincing psychic reading,” explained Claudia. “It’s a set of techniques that includes making guesses and using generalizations. A convincing psychic has an understanding of human nature, a good grasp of demographical information, and is an expert at flattery.”
Kate hadn’t forgotten Gil’s charisma, confidence, and all of the compliments he paid her.
“As for his comment about your furnace, Gil probably assumed that a single woman living alone in an old home probably wasn’t doing any maintenance. This was presented to you as amazing psychic insight, and he got lucky because it happened to be true.”
Kate continued to give Gil the benefit of the doubt.
“He also saw that I had a problem with one of the toilets in my home. I had a plumber check them and Gil was right,” she argued in his defense. “I had to replace a leaky flush valve in the basement toilet. That was a very specific prediction for Gil to make.”
“That’s still cold reading,” Claudia insisted. “If he didn’t specify which toilet was faulty, or the actual problem with it. Another cold reading trick is to talk about a trivial thing in the home that seems like a detailed hit, but it’s actually common to many people. The psychic might mention some medicine in a cabinet that is years out of date, a box of old photographs that isn’t sorted into albums, or a gadget which no longer works, will never be repaired, but hasn’t been thrown out.”
“I have all of those things in my home!” Kate marveled.
“Many people do,” said Claudia. “Psychics might also say they “see” a problem with the plumbing or the electricity. Household maintenance issues are common an
d if the psychic is correct it seems like a hit. If it’s a miss they can change course and turn it into a hit by warning, “But I foresee future problems”. There’s nothing mystical about this prediction because all homeowners have these kinds of troubles at some stage. Either way the psychic can’t lose.”
Kate fetched herself another cup of coffee as she mulled over their conversation. When she sat down again Claudia noticed that her hands were shaking.
“I think I need to find myself a better psychic!” she concluded.
“In my opinion, psychic abilities don’t exist,” Claudia said. “But there’s a big difference between the famous psychics and the little old lady who reads tea leaves as a hobby. There are two kinds of psychics, those who deliberately con people using hot and cold reading techniques, and then there are intuitive people who truly believe they have psychic powers. All they’ve really done is learned how to do cold reading without realizing it. I’ll leave it up to you to decide which category Gil belongs to…”
“You don’t believe that anyone can talk to the dead?” Kate asked.
“Anyone can talk to the dead,” Claudia said with a hollow laugh. “But getting an answer back…that’s the hard part…”
The women sat in silence as the whir of the espresso machine could be heard in the background.
“You know, there was something else strange about the reading,” Kate said. “I swear that I could smell Alex’s cologne. It made me feel like he was right there in the room with me.”
“What’s the name of it?” Claudia asked.
“Acqua d’Estate Essenza by Ermenegildo Zegna,” Kate said. “I spray it on my pillow at night to remind me of Alex. It’s discontinued now and really hard to find so I have to order it from rare fragrance sites.”
“It’s possible that Gil wears it too,” said Claudia, knowing how much Gil liked expensive cologne. “It’s also possible it’s another trick.”
Hits & Mrs. Page 9