More Downs than Ups at the American Society for Psychical Research

A few days ago I came across an article dated 12 July by Nancy A Ruhling on the Mansion Global property website stating that the fine building occupied by the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) at 5 West 73rd Street in New York is up for sale with a hefty price tag of $17.995m.  I put the link on the (British) SPR’s Facebook page and Twitter feed (hereafter SPR refers to the London-based organisation) with the single word ‘worrying’.  I had assumed the meaning was obvious, but the Facebook post was picked up by a message board, generating discussion speculating what the ‘worrying’ signified, with one comment saying the writer assumed the ASPR was defunct; a not unreasonable assumption as it happens.  It seems worth outlining what those worries are, with some of the context.

There have been clear indications that all was not well at the ASPR for some time.  Its Journal had not been published for many years, and no visible services provided for members.  Researchers wishing to use the library – proudly displayed on the Society’s website – were not being granted access, with no reason given.  Emails were not being answered.  I first became aware there might be a problem in 2009 when I was asked – as the person looking after general enquiries to the SPR – if there had been an issue of the ASPR’s Journal published recently.  I have never been a member of the ASPR but when I consulted someone who was, I was told there had not been an issue ‘for a while’.

Having heard more rumours about problems at the ASPR, and deciding to look into the subject in more depth in 2013, I came across a 2007 blog post by George P. Hansen headed ‘A Salary in Parapsychology: Patrice Keane (ASPR).’  It noted that in 2005, payments to the ASPR’s Executive Director, Patrice Keane, totalled $177,297.  This seemed a huge amount for what on the face of it did not seem to be very much work.  Using figures in the ASPR’s own federal tax return, Hansen made some assumptions about the split between the various categories of membership and estimated that the membership in 2005 stood at 23, down from 591 in 1998.  Its flagship publication is (or was) its Journal, a quarterly, and according to Hansen, it appeared regularly until about 1997, when its schedule became erratic.  In July 2007 they posted out an issue, dated January-April 2004, which as far as I am aware was the last.*

What surprised me was the minimal response in 2013 when I put a link to Hansen’s post on the Facebook page of the SPR: two people, both Americans and who can be considered positively inclined towards psychical research, were dismissive of Hansen and implied it was poor taste to have raised the matter of the ASPR’s finances.  It seemed nobody, apart from Hansen, wanted to raise concerns about this venerable institution.  This left me puzzled, and I wondered, given the situation, why ASPR members, or whatever was left of the membership, were not shouting about it.  Clearly the ASPR’s returns were in need of more scrutiny than its members had given them thus far.

Sadly, things have gone further downhill since 2007.  In November 2011 Stacy Horn, most definitely a bona fide researcher, reported difficulties in accessing the ASPR library, having been repeatedly fobbed off over a period of a year and a half.  She could not even find out what was there.  Eventually she gave up, reporting that others had told her similar stories to her own experience.  Her blog post title: ‘What is the deal with the ASPR?’   She is probably still waiting for an answer to that question.  Then Hansen returned to the subject of the ASPR at the 2012 conference of the Academy of Spirituality And Paranormal Studies.  He noted that the ASPR’s assets according to its 1998 IRS Form 990 had stood at $927,428, with compensation to Patrice Keane at $65,600, while in 2010 assets stood at $-1,693,720 and compensation to Keane at $139,955.

The SPR’s Guy Lyon Playfair wrote a Forum piece in Fortean Times in 2014 in which he traced the ASPR’s fluctuating fortunes, its ‘ups and down,’ during its history and decided the organisation was probably now ‘down and out’.  On the other hand, in a rare bright spot Beth A Robertson’s acknowledgements in her 2016 book Science of the Séance included thanks to Jeff Twine of the ASPR (Twine was at one time billed as ‘acting editor’ of the ASPR’s Journal, not a busy role), which suggests she was successful in penetrating the inner sanctum.  I have heard of a couple of other people who have managed to gain access though, as I understand, permission required a great deal of effort to obtain and when granted was cast in the nature of a favour.  Like Horn, others report requests for access, or even information, being ignored.

While one might be forgiven for assuming the ASPR is no longer with us, its very dated-looking website, bearing a 2009 copyright, is still soliciting members, and it has a complex list of tariffs, ranging from ‘Associate’ at $70 p.a., ‘Fellow’ at £100 p.a., ‘Sponsor’ at £2,500, ‘Founder’ status (whatever that means) at $10,000 and ‘Benefactor’ at $50,000+.  Students and seniors are entitled to slight discounts on the basic.  These figures have not changed since at least March 2013, when I first noted them.  There is a PayPal facility, probably the most recent addition to the website, and much talk on the site of tax savings for donors as an incentive to give the Society money.  There are three sample articles by Rhea White from the Journal, the most recent from 1976; and I can find no mention of any ASPR-sponsored lectures or conferences, as was the case when I looked in 2013.  It is unclear what services the ASPR actually provides, and casual visitors to the website might not appreciate how little they are likely to get for their subscription.

The ASPR’s financial situation is illuminating.  The CitizenAudit.org website claims to contain ‘The most comprehensive source of U.S. nonprofit tax data’.  The latest IRS return from the ASPR covers 2017, filed in December 2018, and it shows the ASPR’s ‘officers and directors’ as being: Nancy Sondow (trustee/president), Marie Cooper Janis (trustee/first vice-president), Keith Harary (who was at one time treasurer, trustee), Doris Raymond (trustee/secretary), George Kokoris (treasurer), Barbara Gallagher (trustee) and Patrice Keane (executive director).  The first six received no financial compensation and were listed as working a nominal one hour per week, while the last received $139,955 for a 60-hour week.  Four people were employed in the calendar year, who and doing what is unspecified, though they were paid $48,190 for doing it.

The statement on its activities begins: ‘The ASPR continues to meet the growing need for accurate and relevant information through its research activities, library, and archival resources, public exhibitions, and educational resources and services’, with no evidence of these activities supplied.  Yet while the organisation’s income for the year was a mere $19,900, its total expenses were $1,520,868, among which was the executive director’s generous remuneration and a whacking $898,800 in interest.  Outgoings on everything were higher than one would expect in an organisation with such a low level of activity (despite those 60 hours a week).  Assets were stated to be $1,000,844, though not for much longer, because an eye-watering deficit of -$1,379,089 was recorded.  One might be forgiven for idly pondering on what all the money was spent.

Now the story has taken another turn with the news of the building sale, which is being handled by the prestigious-sounding Sotheby’s International Realty.  The Mansion Global report states: ‘The five-story townhouse, which overlooks the iconic Dakota apartment building on the Upper West Side, has been owned by the American Society Etal since 1966, according to property records.’  The precise nature of the ownership, and who would get what from sale is (like much relating to the ASPR) unclear, but 1966 is a key date.  Chester Carlson, inventor of the Xerox process, served as an ASPR trustee from 1964 to 1968, the year of his death, and helped to fund the purchase of the building in 1966, so presumably he set up a trust.  Unsurprisingly calls by Mansion Global to the ASPR went unanswered but Mr. Sieger of Sotheby’s told it ‘the society is selling the property because “they don’t need so much space anymore.”’  The deficit might also be a factor but it doesn’t do to tell potential purchasers you are strapped for cash.

Returning to the ‘worrying’ comment, my fears about the building sale are various.  First, saying they do not need as much space as before suggests they do not intend to carry out the functions they had at some point in the past, albeit apparently not recently.  Secondly, there is a danger of the surplus from the sale somehow going to wherever income has gone in the past, with little to show for it.  Thirdly, the reference to not needing as much space sets alarm bells ringing because of the library and archives, which could be dispersed on the grounds there is no space for them.  Technically the ASPR could function from a small office to maintain its existence but delivering little in the way of services, while its assets were deployed for expenses.  If the archives and library were liquidated they would be worth a fortune.  In the absence of a specific statement from the ASPR, they should be considered at risk.

Considering how long this situation has been going on there has been an astonishing lack of curiosity expressed, let alone action taken, by those involved in psychical research.  Perhaps a more concerted effort could have prevented this point being reached, but now we have, I do not understand why we hear nothing from the current trustees, or even members: dues for 2017 brought in $2,910 so it still has some left.  I should also have thought the Parapsychological Association, as the professional body for researchers, would take an interest, but they have been quiet as well.  In fact the situation in the years since it was suggested to me that publicising Hansen’s blog post was in poor taste has not changed, indicating a degree of indifference I find strange.  It may be too late for the ASPR as a body dedicated to research and education to regain its former glories, but it seems a shame not to at least ask why its decline has been allowed to happen.

A Spanish-language translation of this post can be found here: https://survivalafterdeath.blogspot.com/2019/07/mas-bajadas-que-subidas-en-la-american.html?fbclid=IwAR0Gufj2oCoAO8t51ifok4o-8B3t-lLpwZazrvJLJ6Su4c0giWGQYfut_dU

*Update 21 July 2019: I have received an email stating that JASPR dated July 2004 was published at some point.  Articles were accepted for publication after 2004, fate unknown.

References:

American Society for Psychical Research website, http://www.aspr.com/

George P. Hansen, ‘A Salary in Parapsychology: Patrice Keane (ASPR)’, 13 August 2007: http://paranormaltrickster.blogspot.co.uk/2007/08/salary-in-parapsychology-patrice-keane.html

Stacy Horn, ‘What is the deal with the ASPR?’, 20 November 2011: http://www.echonyc.com/~horn/unbelievable/?p=2412

George P Hansen, ‘Panel – Psience: What New Developments in Scientific Investigation Promote Understanding of Psi?’Academy of Spirituality and Paranormal Studies, Inc, Annual Conference, 2012 Proceedings.

Guy Lyon Playfair, ‘An American Institution in Low Spirits’, Fortean Times, Issue 320, November 2014, pp. 52-3.

Beth Robertson, Science of the Séance: Transnational networks and Gendered Bodies in the Study of Psychic Phenomena, 1918-40, Vancouver: UBC Press, 2016.

CitizenAudit.org: https://www.citizenaudit.org/organization/131655205/

Nancy A Ruhling, ‘Paranormal Society’s Manhattan Townhouse Lists for $17.9 Million’, Mansion Global, 12 July 2019: https://www.mansionglobal.com/articles/paranormal-societys-manhattan-townhouse-lists-for-17-9-million-205069?fbclid=IwAR2UlR2Fg0E3mg8w13H1XnYe7EAwVrRMpi6MQNMMeJPZU63lB-Oxd8w72oU

Seeing and believing on the BBC

The final episode of the three-part BBC series Victorian Sensations, broadcast on 5 June 2019, was titled ‘Seeing and Believing’.  It was presented by Philippa Perry, whose remit was to examine the last decade of the nineteenth century to show, at a time when established religion was under pressure, how the Victorians squared major scientific and technological developments with their interest in the paranormal, particularly life after death.  Perry is a psychotherapist who appears to have no credentials in this area and spent much of her time depicting wide-eyed awe.

It was a rich field to get her teeth into with only an hour to do it, and the result was not entirely satisfactory.  She began by describing Marconi’s work, noting the parallel between the development of wireless telegraphy and the possibilities of telepathy and contact with those in the afterlife, utilising the supposed ether. Such speculations demonstrated that the implications of scientific developments, such as communication at a distance by invisible means, could be co-opted by Spiritualists and psychical researchers.

Naturally we were shown examples of physical mediumship.  In a segment on spirit photography, Almudena Romero, not a noted expert and looking out of her depth, attempted to demonstrate the principles.  W T Stead’s Julia’s Bureau, set up to allow messages to pass between living and dead, and Stead’s association with Ada Goodrich Freer, with whom he conducted editorial meetings telepathically (though contrary to the impression given they did use the postal service as well), was the subject of some amusement.  Slightly off-topic was a segment on the fascination with life on Mars and its depiction in popular culture.

For part of the film Perry relied on the archive of the Society for Psychical Research at Cambridge, visiting the University Library to leaf through the records that make up the 1894 Census of Hallucinations and describe a crisis apparition.  The scientific and psychical researches of Sir Oliver Lodge (SPR president 1901-1903 and 1932) featured prominently, while other famous SPR members William James (SPR president 1894-1895), Alfred Russel Wallace and William Gladstone received name-checks.  Conan Doyle was shown getting his hands dirty going out on an SPR poltergeist investigation at Charmouth, in Devon.

Oddly, considering how prominent the SPR was in the programme, meriting first-billing in the acknowledgements at the end, nobody from the Society was interviewed.  Instead Matthew Tompkins popped up, presumably on the back of his Wellcome exhibition-related book The Spectacle of Illusion, to discuss Eusapia Palladino and some of the tricks mediums used in the séance room, including a demonstration of slate writing the secret of which, as a magician as well as a psychologist, he did not reveal.

There was an intriguing programme trying to get out on the overlap between psychical research and the new medium of cinema, which early on began featuring spooky themes.  While there was a mention of Hove filmmaker James Williamson, as Perry pointlessly recreated his The Big Swallow, there was no reference at all to G A Smith, who would have exemplified the connections between psychical research – working as hypnotist, among other things, for the SPR – and later, as a colleague of Williamson’s, as a film pioneer.  Bryony Dixon, silent film curator at the British Film Institute, was interviewed at length and showed a variety of trick film snippets, so it was a surprising omission.  And if you are going to quote from Maxim Gorky’s famous essay beginning, ‘Last night I was in the kingdom of shadows,’ why call him ‘one early reviewer’ rather than give his name?

Despite the weaknesses it was good to see the SPR receive this much coverage in a mainstream programme, and treated with respect rather than as an organisation filled with cranks.  Perry was at pains to show the extent to which its activities fitted in with scientific explorations of new frontiers in the 1890s, ‘an era when anything seemed possible’ as she put it, hence the SPR’s ability to attract a wide range of members, many of them possessing a scientific background.

Unfortunately she laid on the eccentric persona a little thickly, with the time-wasting Williamson ‘tribute’, having her picture taken sitting in front of someone completely covered by a sheet as a ‘spirit photograph’, and recording a humorous message on an Edison phonographic cylinder (there was nothing on Edison’s interest in communication with the dead either), but the programme was enjoyable as far as it went.  A better one would have ditched the Mars section, good for a documentary in its own right, and focused on the other topics in greater depth.

The Society for Psychical Research in Smoke and Mirrors at the Wellcome

  

The ‘Wellcome Collection’ in Euston Road, London, is currently running a free exhibition called Smoke and Mirrors: The Psychology of Magic.  Divided into three sections, ‘The Medium’, ‘Misdirection’ and ‘Mentalism’, it considers the connections between stage magic, Spiritualism and psychical research, and how collectively they laid the groundwork for psychologists to study the vagaries of perception, memory and eyewitness testimony.

Members of the Society for Psychical Research were at the forefront of the scientific exploration of ways witnesses can be misled when experiencing séance room phenomena, demonstrating that what participants thought had occurred was often far from the reality.  Magicians also played a role despite the mystical trappings of their acts, frequently using their expertise to expose fraud and distinguishing what they did as entertainment from what mediums often did to convince clients they possessed genuine paranormal abilities.

The Society’s name appears prominently at the start of the exhibition, where a panel, after mentioning Spiritualism, includes the statement that:

‘Alongside this popular interest in spirit communication, the disciplines and institutions of modern science were being founded.  In 1882 the Society for Psychical Research became the first organisation to carry out research into the phenomena witnessed in the séance room.

‘Psychical researchers collaborated with magicians, who drew on their knowledge of conjuring tricks and illusions to test the paranormal claims of mediums.  They laid the foundations for important discoveries about the nature of belief and memory that psychologists still draw on today.’

Another panel, devoted to psychical research, mentions researchers applying ‘rigorous scientific methods to investigate claims of psychic and paranormal phenomena’, including the development of a strict methodological approach to experimentation, and assessing whether natural explanations could be found for phenomena, in terms of psychological mechanisms rather than the paranormal.

There are some wonderful images and artefacts on display, and the SPR has lent the Wellcome a number of items from its archive, looked after by Cambridge University Library.  The objects indicate a balanced approach, neither gullible nor debunking, but demonstrating the intent, as the SPR has always had, ‘to examine without prejudice or prepossession and in a scientific spirit those faculties of man, real or supposed, which appear to be inexplicable on any generally recognised hypothesis.’

There are photographs of Eusapia Palladino during her visit to Cambridge in 1895 when she was investigated by the SPR, and caught cheating.  A fair amount of space is devoted to the medium ‘Margery’ (Mina Crandon), most strikingly a life-sized reproduction of the large box Harry Houdini used to confine her during séances.  Numerous objects have been lent by the Libbet Crandon de Malamud Collection, including the chair she sat on during séances and her lovely kimono.  The SPR supplied photographs, and some book plates with annotated overlays analysing material Margery produced during séances when she was tested in London by the Society, as reproduced in Eric Dingwall’s report in the SPR’s Proceedings, June 1926.

Enlarged SPR photographs show fingerprints in wax taken from sitters to distinguish them from those allegedly left by Mina Crandon’s deceased brother Walter, and wax impressions possibly claimed to be by Walter himself (the ‘Walter’ prints actually matched those of her dentist, Dr Frederick Caldwell, given the pseudonym Kerwin in reports).  A photograph from the SPR shows Margery with a cloud of ‘ectoplasm’ and the bell box which was supposed to be rung by the spirits – though Houdini was convinced Margery herself was responsible.  An investigation kit that belonged to Dingwall was lent by Senate House, where his archive is held in the Harry Price library, but the information card refers to his membership of the SPR.

Another medium, Mrs Piper, is represented by a large poster from 1901 advertising a statement she had given to the New York Herald in which she made what they asserted was a confession that spirits did not communicate through her (‘CONFESSION’ in huge type, followed by ‘The world’s greatest clairvoyant’).  What the poster did not include was her statement to the newspaper not that she was a fraud, but that she thought she was gaining information using telepathy from the living, rather than from discarnate entities.  Shortly afterwards she spoke to the Boston Advertiser to say she did not know whether it was spirits or her subliminal self at work.  The days when interest in mediums could justify billboard posters!

In a section devoted to ESP there is a large frame containing post- and lettercards collected by the SPR resulting from an experiment run on the BBC in 1967.  The backs of ten playing cards were displayed to viewers, who had to guess what was on the front.  This is a sample of the hundreds sent in by members of the public.  The final contribution by the SPR to the exhibition is a set of Telepatha cards from 1939.  These were developed by Harry Price as an alternative to the Zener cards used by J B Rhine, but they did not catch on in the public imagination the way Zener cards had.

There is a lot more in the exhibition, including a section on recent academic research using magic to examine cognitive processes, and it is fascinating to see a through-line from the early experiments of the SPR to the latest work elucidating how magicians can assist in showing how we make sense – and sometimes fail to make sense – of the world.  The clear implication is that we generally overestimate our ability to spot deception, and those who seek to fool us can call on a wide array of strategies which play on weaknesses in our processing of incoming information, weaknesses of which we are not aware.  We may feel we are in control of our choices, while we are being cued to the desired outcome through the manipulation of our assumptions and the power of suggestion.  The SPR can be proud that it played a pioneering role in such a key aspect of psychology.

The exhibition runs until 15 September 2019.

Mother Tongue – an exhibition at Pushkin House, London

Mother Tongue (Родная речь) is a small exhibition at Pushkin House in Bloomsbury Square, London, mounted in collaboration with GRAD.  It consists of panels and photographs by Yevgeniy Fiks, a Moscow-born artist living in New York, exploring Russian gay argot.  This is a secret language dating to Soviet times, as can be seen by some of the expressions it contains.  The organisers liken it to Polari, a similar underground language in England, though Polari has a longer tradition and was spoken by a broader group than homosexuals.

Such language helps to establish a group identity, particularly important when under attack by the authorities, and provides an element of secrecy when one’s sexual preferences could be severely punished.  It is significant that use of Polari began to decline following its ‘outing’ by Julian and Sandy, accelerating after the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967, whereas the Russian equivalent lasted much longer.  That a form of it exists today is an index of continuing adversity for gay people there.

Remarkably, homosexuality was only decriminalised in Russia in 1993.  The exhibition information notes how for a couple of decades after legalisation there was slow but steady progress in the acceptance of gay rights, but the introduction of the Gay Propaganda Law in 2013 ushered in a new period of difficulty as the political and social climate once again became overtly homophobic.

Sadly the slang thus still performs a function, though since the fall of the Soviet Union it has undergone a process of internationalisation, with Anglo-American imports diluting the Soviet-era lexicon.  Fiks’s project is therefore one of nostalgic excavation, showing the language as it was, though in practice it has moved on.

The exhibition falls into three parts: a video, not operational during my visit; sheets of text listing words and phrases; and photographs of cruising spots, ‘pleshki’.  The text element includes translations, highlighting the wit and subversiveness of the coinages.  They are presented in an academic manner, as if in a classroom, a blackboard reinforcing the feeling of being in a learning environment.

An initial panel is devoted to grammatical constructions, presenting the slang as bearing the same linguistic significance as any other Russian vocabulary.  Terms are displayed alphabetically, the initial letter in the sort of oversized style that might be used to help small children remember them.  Underneath each in much smaller letters is a Russian slang expression beginning with that letter, plus English translation, and what it means, one sheet per letter of the alphabet (i.e. 33 sheets, 33 expressions).

Some terms are amusing (a ‘reader’ is someone who sits in a lavatory cubicle waiting for a partner) but there is bite here as well.  An ‘agentess’ is a gay person who betrays his or her people and, my favourite, sexual minorities are ‘Mensheviks’.  The unsnappy in English ‘kgboonchik’ is a ‘young provocateur who is sent to entrap gays.’  Weirdly an orgasm is a ‘grandfather clock’, while a penis is a ‘voice’.  Tellingly, homosexuality itself translates as ‘storminess’ and meeting places are ‘zoos’.  A gay person who hides his or her sexual orientation is an ‘undergrounder’, suggesting an affinity to others at odds with the regime.

The photographs are labelled with the dates between which the sites were used, often going back to the 1920s – the end dates presumably signifying when the authorities cracked down and meeting places moved elsewhere.  Many were also tourist spots, and without the extra information that they were employed as rendezvous points they would simply be record shots of parks, public buildings and lavatories.  No people are visible and Fiks chose overcast days, rendering them rather forlorn-looking places.  He must have talked to individuals with knowledge of these sites’ gay histories because it was unlikely to have been included in guidebooks, but the weakness of the exhibition is that it omits the first-hand experiences of those who used the language, and frequented the locations.

It is a small show occupying one large room, and really does not justify a long trip, but if in the vicinity of Pushkin House it is well worth taking a look.  The exhibition is free, with only donations requested, and runs from 9 March to 11 May.  An accompanying bilingual book by Fiks, with the same name as the exhibition, is available.

An Unsuccessful Lottery Experiment

There is a chap in Norfolk, Virginia, USA, by the name of Chris McDonald who predicts the results of American state lotteries.  He operates on Facebook and claims to have been extremely successful.  He offers two types of service, free and paid-for.  For the former, he throws out 3-digit numbers when people ask him about particular lotteries in the comments to his posts.  Curiously nobody seems to have replied thanking him for a win.

As well as providing the free 3-digit numbers, he has a private service predicting the better-paying 4- 5- and 6-number lotteries, for which he takes ‘donations’.  For this, people contact him on Facebook to ‘schedule’ ‘consultations’.  To someone wanting to make a ‘donation’ he replied by requesting they contact him privately and added ‘my fee is cheap’.  This method may result in lack of public feedback by any dissatisfied paying customers.

His psychic ability must be fairly recent because in July 2017 he ran a Gofundme effort to purchase an aeroplane ticket to start a new job in Washington DC which only raised $25.  Presumably that is why he is still in Virginia.  However, in preceding years he did win free pizzas in giveaway competitions so perhaps there was a psychic component to that.

In December 2018 he began a YouTube channel which he intended to update with weekly predictions starting in January 2019, but this has not taken off and only the initial video exists thus far.  In it he says he also predicts the outcomes of American football games, but there is no more information available on this aspect of his claimed abilities.

McDonald is not promising correct numbers for specific lottery draws.  He will make a series of predictions for the next few days that might apply either to daytime or nighttime draws.  Thus following his tips will require some outlay as one of a selection of numbers supplied might be predicted to come up in one of say six games, two per day over three days.

As to how I know of McDonald’s existence, he contacted me on the Society for Psychical Research’s Facebook page to tell me about his ability.  Over the years have handled a number of approaches to the SPR claiming abilities of various kinds such as telepathy, clairvoyance and precognition, though fewer recently than used to be the case.  I was quite happy to see if McDonald could predict lottery numbers accurately, or at least enough to come out ahead financially.

Often there is an assumption that success would result in an endorsement by the Society.  When I have explained that as the SPR does not hold corporate views it cannot as an organisation endorse a psychic claim as true, claimants often fade away, the demonstration being of secondary importance to the desire for validation they can use for promotional purposes.

Some stay and say they would like to demonstrate the ability anyway.  I have done a variety of simple tests that would not in themselves provide strong evidence of psi, but might perhaps throw up possibilities warranting more rigorous examination.  To date I have not had any successes, and when this happens I try to be kind.  I will say the result might be due to the test not accurately reflecting their ability, it was an artificial situation so perhaps did not generate the required motivation, such abilities cannot be summoned on tap, or perhaps I was not the right person to conduct the test.

I never say the ability does not exist because I would not want to hurt their feelings, and who knows, perhaps one of those reasons was correct.  The person invariably takes the result with good grace, I suspect mostly concluding they do have the ability but it works best in spontaneous circumstances, and we part amicably.

McDonald, however, was to prove far from amicable.  He got in touch via Facebook Messenger on Monday 4 March to tell me he can predict lottery numbers ‘accurately’.  He had called his local radio station last July when they asked for ‘psychic stuff’ and given them numbers live on air.  He stated he had correctly called numbers for a $100,000 win, plus a correct ‘mega ball’ number.

He said that for proof I should check the show’s archive or call the station.  Doing so would not have proved anything because all lottery games are won by somebody getting the numbers right (leaving aside rollovers).  Assuming McDonald had called the numbers correctly, and I have no reason to doubt him, it could have been by chance.  In any case, if his ability was as strong as he led me to believe I hoped to be able to see for myself.

I replied by congratulating him and wondering if he could maintain that success rate.  He then assured me he had been keeping records of his predictions, amounting in October 2018 to the incredible total of about $534,435,000, since when he has been predicting all 50 US state lotteries.  He implied he had been placing bets when he said ‘do you see how serious this is?? ~ or ~ do i need show you my bank acct. for proof??’

He told me he wanted to be studied and gave me more anecdotes of impressive guesses, though not ones he had put cash on.  Already I was getting conflicting messages of a great talent but not one backed by consistently placing bets.  Still, it seemed worth pursuing further as from what I could deduce reading his rambling messages he claimed a hit rate of about 50% from making predictions for ‘Facebook psychic groups’.

So I asked him if he would make predictions for me, stating the lottery the prediction related to and when it would be drawn, to allow me to make my own check.  At the same time I asked why he did not always place a bet to back his guesses.  Strangely he told me to forget the financial part and asked me if I wanted to be the first to believe him – which was curious if he was giving numbers to strangers on Facebook.  Wouldn’t they believe him when they were successful, and keep coming back for more?

I stressed that I needed the predictions in advance because anecdotes of past glories were irrelevant to a controlled test.  After asking me if I was in North Carolina (no), he chose the Virginia Pick 4, which is called twice daily.  He gave me five 4-digit numbers and said one should come up in the next three days; a generous latitude, but at this stage I was happy to set the bar low.  Conditions could be tightened after an initial success.

Sadly, his numbers did not come up so I was glad I had not placed bets on his recommendations.  While not a promising start, I was happy to give it another go.  When I sent the results I mentioned that he had said he could demonstrate his success by showing me his bank balance, and I asked how often he actually put money down.  I was thinking of the point sometimes made that psi employed for one’s own financial gain will fail, whereas when used with a humanitarian motive it is more likely to succeed.  What I got back surprised me, as I had not realised I must have touched a nerve:

‘You idiot...call the radio station I gave 100,000 dollar win numbers to and again the Mega ball number on air live...you do that or explain as mathematical probability?? Go fuck yourself’

Once again I pointed out that, while suggestive, claiming hits retrospectively cannot be compared to conducting a controlled test.  He did not have to be able to succeed every time, but he needed to be able to at a rate significantly greater than chance.  In return he reiterated his successful past results as I tried in vain to explain the scientific method.  After further rudeness from McDonald our correspondence petered out.

My concern is that people may actually be giving him money for shaky predictions, leaving them out of pocket.  Naturally, as always in such cases, one wonders why somebody successful at making predictions would want to take a few dollars from Facebook acquaintances if the lottery itself is a potential cash cow providing free money.  More to the point, why isn’t McDonald now a multi-millionaire?