Nothing unexplained about Helen Duncan

I have always enjoyed the performances of British actor Tony Robinson. First and foremost, he is the charmingly nutty sidekick of Blackadder in the classic BBC comedy series. But he is also great as presenter in the archaeology programme "Time Team", where he runs around among archaeologists and researchers on intensive three-day excavations all over Britain and sometimes abroad. But there is a dark cloud...

In 1982, Tony Robinson received a call from TV producer John Lloyd, who wanted him to audition for the role of servant to the Duke of Edinburgh in a sitcom set in 15th century England. Robinson got the job and when BBC 2 aired the pilot in June 1983, his portrayal of several generations of Baldricks in the service of several generations of Blackadders granted him a place in the Great Hall of Comedy Fame. Four series were produced, along with several one-off installments and if you haven't seen any of it, I strongly urge you to do so - preferably something from the second or third season of the original TV series.

After Blackadder, Robinson turned to digging. In 1994, UK Channel 4 launched the archeology show "Time Team", with Robinson as presenter. The format is simple. During three days, a team of archaeologists and experts conduct an excavation somewhere in Britain or, on occasion, abroad. Robinson acts as a kind of middleman between the scientific crew and the viewer, asking questions and explaining in laymen terms. After more than 200 episodes, the show is considered to have improved public understanding of archeology in Britain and Robinson, along with others in the crew, has been awarded several honorary degrees for popularizing science.

In 2005, Robinson hosted Wildfire Television's two hour documentary "The Real Da Vinci Code." The show is an almost ruthless demolition of the myths and hoaxes presented as facts by Dan Brown in his bestselling novel, and by Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln in their Dänikenian "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" from 1982.

So when Robinson turned up as host and associate producer of the three episode paranormal documentary series "Tony Robinson & ..." in 2008, my hopes were high that he would bring his fact oriented and inquiring mind from "Time Team" and "The Real Da Vinci Code." The production company, Flashback Television, did indeed announce that the series, also known as "The Unexplained", would "bring a rational approach to the world of psychic mysteries and the myths and legends of the past." Having seen the first episode dealing with psychic medium Helen Duncan, aired on British Channel 4 on 29th of December 2008, I must conclude that Robinson's dig into the sewers of spiritism is yet another example of how journalistic inquiry turns into naïve ignorance when facing supernatural claims.

Although Robinson is accompanied by freelance scientific journalist Becky McCall, the episode on Helen Duncan adds to the myth surrounding her rather than present facts. Even if Richard Wiseman in one sequence stresses that one needs to "look very closely in the records", no such scrutiny is employed. Instead, the viewer gets the standard "eyewitness" accounts, albeit over 60 years old, and an emotional testimony of Duncan's granddaughter Mary Martin.

I understand the need for television shows to be entertaining, but I don't understand how someone honored for popularizing science so easily converts to popularizing myth and fraud. And I particularly don't see why the facts about Duncan are less entertaining than the fiction.

Let's look at some of the claims made in the show. First of all, there is the suggestion that Duncan was hunted by MI5, that she in some way was a threat to national security during WWII. Did she pose such a threat? And her granddaughter claims Duncan was arrested as a spy. Was she really?

The suggestion that Duncan had revealed war secrets during her séances was put forward by Percy Wilson at a conference organised by the College of Psychic Science in 1958, i.e. two years after the death of Duncan. Prior to that, nothing. There is no such claim or suggestion in the 1944 court proceedings - and nothing in the Old Bail Trial report that covers over three hundred pages. No public mention of it at all by anyone prior to 1958. It is in essence a later fabrication aimed at rendering Duncan martyrdom. Several circumstances supports this conclusion. First, Duncan had allegedly conveyed the message that HMS Barham had went down in the Mediterranean before that information had been made official by the naval authorities. The Barham was sunk on 25th of November, 1941 and the news was released 28th of January, 1942. Helen Duncan was arrested two years later. It is an absurd thought that a suspicion of being a security threat would take two years to result in an arrest, in wartime.

Second, according to myth, Duncan received the Barham message in the form of a sailor with the name "HMS Barham" on his capband. But during WWII, capbands had only "HMS" on them, ship names were omitted for security reasons. This is illustrated by a sculpture at the memorial Robinson and McCall visits in the episode, see picture below.

Similar claims regarding another ship, HMS Hood, are made by one of the "eyewitnesses" in the episode. Duncan is supposed to have received a message during a séance on the same day it went down. This is, in lack of any supporting evidence whatsoever, of course another fabrication.

Was MI5 involved in the arrest? Well, let's recall what really took place. In January 1944, Helen Duncan gave a series of séances at The Master Temple Psychic Centre in Portsmouth. The establishment, along with the drugstore above which it was situated, was run by spiritualist couple Homer. Duncan was paid £112 for six days of performance. During one of these séances, two naval officers attended. One of them, Lieutenant Worth, received a vivid message from his aunt, which left the officer unimpressed since he didn't have any deceased aunt. Later during the sitting, he became even more suspicious when a spirit materialised claiming to be his sister. When Worth confronted Duncan about the fact that he had no sister, the psychic explained that his sister had been premature.

When Worth's mother assured him she had never had a premature child, he was disgusted by the psychic's show and reported the matter to the local police. Following instructions, Worth booked two seats for another seance and attended in the company of a policeman in plain clothing. During a materialisation, Worth switched on a light and the policeman sprang forward grabbing the psychic in order to remove the white drape. Sitters rushed to the psychics defense and as one turned the light off, another snatched the cloth from the policeman's grasp. When the light came on again, the cloth had disappeared.

This incident, and nothing else, is what brought Helen Duncan to the Old Bailey, along with her assistant Mrs Brown and the Homer couple. Duncan was sentenced to nine months imprisonment, Brown to four, and the Homers were bound over for two years. An appeal was made but the verdicts and sentences were upheld. The group was sentenced for falsely conspiring to pretend that Duncan was able to communicate with the dead, under section four of the Witchcraft Act. Nothing else. Not for spying or revealing war secrets. Duncan was accused and committed for being exactly what she was - a psychic fraud. MI5 had nothing to do with it.

Twelve years later, in 1956, the Nottingham police raided another of Duncan's séances. She became ill and died after a month, 59 years old. And no, there was nothing odd about her death. It was not caused by her "trance" being disturbed by the police or other ridiculous claims in that line of thinking. Duncan's medical records showed that she had a long history of ill-health and as early as 1944 she was described as a large, obese woman who could only move slowly as if she suffered from heart trouble.

So, contrary to the suggestions of Robinson, there is nothing unexplained about Helen Duncan. Had Robinson followed Wiseman's advice and looked into the records, he would have found that Duncan was exposed as fraudulent by the research department of the London Spiritualist Alliance and by Harry Price in 1931, that following Price's report, Duncan's former maid came forward and confessed in detail to having aided Duncan in her psychic feats, that her husband admitted that he believed the materialisations to be the result of regurgitation, and that a suspicious sitter in a 1933 séance grabbed the psychic and when the lights were turned on, Duncan was found sitting in stockinged feet, hastily stuffing a torn white west up under her clothes. Perhaps Robinson would have had something to respond to the "eyewitness" account of how a one-piece garment was sufficient safe-guard against any fraud - Duncan's trick with that garment was exposed as early as 1931.

In closing, I would like to quote Price's report from the Duncan tests, as quoted by Paul Tabori in The Art of Folly:

At the conclusion of the fourth seance we led the medium to a settee and called for the apparatus. At the sight of it, the lady promptly went into a trance. She recovered, but refused to be X- rayed. Her husband went up to her and told her it was painless. She jumped up and gave him a smashing blow on the face which sent him reeling. Then she went for Dr. William Brown who was present. He dodged the blow. Mrs. Duncan, without the slightest warning, dashed out into the street, had an attack of hysteria and began to tear her seance garment to pieces. She clutched the railings and screamed and screamed. Her husband tried to pacify her. It was useless. I leave the reader to visualize the scene. A seventeen-stone woman, clad in black sateen tights, locked to the railings, screaming at the top of her voice. A crowd collected and the police arrived. The medical men with us explained the position and prevented them from fetching the ambulance. We got her back into the Laboratory and at once she demanded to be X-rayed. In reply, Dr. William Brown turned to Mr. Duncan and asked him to turn out his pockets. He refused and would not allow us to search him. There is no question that his wife had passed him the cheese-cloth in the street. However, they gave us another seance and the "control' said we could cut off a piece of "teleplasm" when it appeared. The sight of half-a-dozen men, each with a pair of scissors waiting for the word, was amusing. It came and we all jumped. One of the doctors got hold of the stuff and secured a piece. The medium screamed and the rest of the "teleplasm" went down her throat. This time it wasn't cheese-cloth. It proved to be paper, soaked in white of egg, and folded into a flattened tube... Could anything be more infantile than a group of grown-up men wasting time, money, and energy on the antics of a fat female crook?

Needless to say, Helen Duncan was one of the more revolting and offensive con-artists on the psychic scene, so perhaps Robinson should let her remains stay in the sewers of spiritism, where they belong. Or at least look for facts instead of boosting myth.

See the episode on youtube.com:

Part 1,
Part 2,
Part 3,
Part 4,
Part 5

Mitchell the Lunar Lunatic

On 4th of July, Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell appeared on the Larry King Live show, stating that aliens have indeed visited Earth. High ranking civilians and military officials told him so. In addition, the Roswell incident was indeed an extraterrestrial vehicle that crashed and since then has been kept in secluded and top-secret care of the US government. The fact that Mitchell knows this and the rest of us don't, is of course due to a massive cover-up by a government conspiracy against Truth and Mankind, a conspiracy embodied in an extremly secret organization called MJ-12, instigated by Harry S. Truman and ordered to take care of the ET matter. Basically, it's the same story that Mitchell has been telling over and over again for years. So the Larry King Live appearance was in no way sensational and American media subsequently did not bother to follow it up. Perhaps they know Mitchell by now.

Almost three weeks later, Mitchell repeated the story in an interview on a London radio station. This time, all hell broke loose and he made international headlines. In Sweden, conspiracy fetishist Torbjörn Sassersson hooked on and started to make accusations against Swedish ufologist organization UFO-Sverige, claiming they are in liaison with the military in keeping the lid on UFO reports. Clas Svahn, head of UFO-Sverige, rebutted referring to an old interview he did with Mitchell. Sassersson immediately counter-attacked with an alleged e-mail correspondence with Mitchell that in essence confirms Svahn's stand, which brings further doubt about Sassersson's state of mind. Once thrown out of the ufologists' forum due to misconduct, Sassersson then applied for a new account and triumphantly announced their reluctancy to grant him one as a sign of fear of his questions. And so the battle goes on, and on...

The promotor supreme of Swedish psychics, Mrs Caroline Giertz, is said to have described Sassersson as a terrier; once he gets a grip on something he doesn't let go. That is perhaps a too mild description of the pathological hysteria so often displayed by Sassersson. But Svahn, on the other hand, is far from critical concerning claims of paranormal nature and they both have one thing in common - they glorify Mitchell in a way that is naivë at best and deceptive at worst.

Years before Edgar Mitchell embarked on the Apollo 14, he took a trip to woo woo land - on a one-way ticket. Popular myth suggests that he had some kind of revelation in space but in reality, he was a woo woo during his student years and was later baptized into mysticism by Reverend Arthur Ford, the alleged medium who in 1928 claimed to have conveyed a message from the late Harry Houdini to his widow. The Houdini hoax was publicly exposed almost immediately after it was executed but mediums tend to survive such blemishes. Mitchell became friends with Ford in December 1969, perhaps because they shared a common interest in the idea of a rocket-to-earth ESP experiment. Unfortunately, Ford died just weeks before the Apollo 14 launch in 1971 and, incidentally, the nature of his mediumship became more than evident when a multitude of biographical notes and clippings on his sitters, disguised as the "poetry books" he used to read before seances, were discovered. (Christopher, 1975) But by then, Mitchell was probably too busy with space matters to learn from the lesson involuntary given by his friend. Or confirmation biased beyond reproach.

In the Olof Jonsson entry, I mentioned the Apollo 14 ESP experiment involving Mitchell as "sender" in space and four psychics - not two, as Svahn (2007) states in Det okända - as "receivers" on earth. The project was Mitchell's private sneak operation. A proposal from the American Society for Psychical Research for a telepathy experiment had been turned down by NASA in 1970, so Mitchell played it safe and kept his plans to himself and those involved.

The experiment was of fairly simple design. Christopher explains:

Mitchell wrote down two hundred numbers in eight columns of twenty-five numbers each on a piece of paper. The figures, chosen at random, ranged from one to five. The numbers would represent the five ESP symbols in a sequence to be chosen each time he attempted to transmit his thoughts earthward. The receivers were given the days and hours they should be receptive to the images Mitchell hoped would reach them. (Christopher, 1975, p. 106)

But things didn't go as planned. The launching of Apollo 14 was forty minutes late so Mitchell's first two "broadcasts" were delayed as well, i.e. the receivers of the first two runs were receiving on the scheduled time without anything being sent. Then Mitchell had to cancel two transmissions but was able to complete the last two on his way back to earth. But Jonsson and one of the anonymous receivers made notes on all six of the planned transmissions. I think you understand where this is going. Due to the first two delayed transmissions, parapsychologists Rhine and Osis, who volunteered to evaluate the "data", decided it was not a test of telepathy, but of precognition. It's a good thing that research design is so flexible... And what about the scores? You may have heard or seen Mitchell stating that the experiment was successful and yilded results of 3000 to 1. Journalist and ufologist Svahn (2007) quotes him stating it, but also refers to Semitjov (1979) who states a somewhat more modest, but still significant, result. Something unusual did happen during the experiment, concludes Svahn.

If Svahn had read Mitchell's Psychic Exploration, he would have realized that something unusual happened after the experiment, namely during evaluation. Randi did read Mitchell, and quotes him:

The results were statistically significant, not because any of the receivers got a large number of direct hits but because the number of hits were so amazingly low. The statistical probability of scoring so few hits was about 3000:1. This negative ESP effect, called "psi-missing", is something that has frequently arisen in other psychic research work, and theorists are attempting to explain its significance. In any case, it offers good evidence for psi, because the laws of chance are bypassed to a significant degree. (Mitchell quoted in Randi, 1982, p. 115)

Please note that these are Mitchell's own words in his own book. And he is saying that telepathy, or precognition, was abscent during the experiment to such an extent that the absence must be judged as paranormal. That is the truth behind the "3000 to 1" result that Mitchell is flaunting around - the psychics performed remarkably poor! But Mitchell prefers to omit that part of the analysis. And journalists prefer to ignore Mitchell's account in Psychic Exploration. I wonder why...

Mitchell left NASA shortly after the Apollo 14 flight and founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences in Palo Alto, California. Its mission was to study theoretical and applied consciousness research and one of Mitchell's first endeavours was to raise funds to bring Uri Geller into the laboratory of the Stanford Research Institute (Christopher, 1975). He met the Israeli con artist at the luxurious home of Dr. Andrija Puharich, who had brought Geller to the US. Puharich and Mitchell then arranged a meeting with Targ and Puthoff, and the rest is pseudoscience history. Initially, Mitchell sat in during the SRI experiments but to his credit, he got frustrated because Targ and Puthoff totally lost controll of the situation, and left (Marks, 2000). Mitchell is, however, a devoted Gellerite, by all accounts. And Uri Geller is still the most exposed fraud in the history of psychical research.

For decades now, Edgar Mitchell has proven himself to be an ardent believer in all kinds of mumbo-jumbo. And as a fund raiser for a wide variety of paranormal projects, he has probably flushed more money down the toilet than most people. In assessing his credibility, people unfortunately focus on his space mission - someone who has walked the moon must know what he is talking about! And this blank check of confidence has kept Mitchell in the spotlight far too long, and far too often. Although a moon-pedestrian, the guy is a full-fledged woo woo and doesn't care what is right or wrong. He is willing and able to go to any lengths to promote the notions he feels must be true.

Take, for instance, the MJ12 documents. They have been proven forged over and over again (Klass, 2000). Yet Mitchell still refers to them. Why? Because he wants them to be genuine. And because some people will believe whatever he says because he walked the moon and because he tells them what they want to hear. That is what living in woo woo land is like. They make their own rules, and to hell with reality.

The only lid that is being kept on is the one covering the facts rebutting all the lunacy Mitchell is spreading. And while the likes of Sassersson are sitting on the lid, the likes of Svahn look the other way out of undeserved respect.

References
Christopher, M., (1975). Mediums, Mystics & the Occult. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell
Klass, P., (2000). The New Bogus Majestic-12 Documents. In Skeptical Inquirer, May/June 2000. Available online: http://www.csicop.org/si/2000-05/majestic-12.html
Marks, D., (2000). Psychology of the Psychic. New York: Prometheus
Randi, J., (1982). The Truth About Uri Geller. New York: Prometheus
Semitjov, E., (1979). Mellan dröm och verklighet. Askild & Kärnekull
Svahn, C., (2007). Det okända. Övernaturliga fenomen från Sverige och världen. Stockholm: Semic

Olof Jonsson - the Swedish Swindler

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The popularity of physical mediums and spiritualistic seances faded inexorably during the first decades of the 20th century. Most of the prominent psychics were exposed as fraudulent and as some of them confessed and revealed the methods used, business for those remaining wasn't exactly blooming. The reputations of researchers like Sir William Crookes, Charles Richet, Baron von Schrenck Notzing, Sir Oliver Lodge, Henry Sidgwick, Edmund Gurney, Frederic Myers, and Sir William Barrett, were unsparingly blemished when spiritualistic mediums they had once declared genuine now admitted to fraud or were exposed beyond doubt. (Edmunds, 1966; Hansel, 1989)

In 1934, Joseph Banks Rhine published Extra-Sensory Perception, in which he described very promising research on telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and psychokinesis at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. It aroused huge interest among the lay public and the term "ESP" was suddenly on everyone's lips. But the critique was severe, and rightfully so; Rhine's experimental conditions were far from satisfactory (Hansel, 1989). Nevertheless, his work set the standard for modern parapsychology. And the people who claimed contact with the dead were not welcome. Although religiously inclined, Rhine left no laboratory door open for spiritualism. His research subjects were mainly university students. A special group of individuals did however emerge - the birth of modern parapsychology paved the way and introduced an academic label for a new breed of swindlers: "high-scoring subjects".

You have probably heard of some of the names. There was Ingo Swann who "remote viewed" the content of boxes by simply peeking into them when no one was looking (Randi, 1982). Bill Delmore made his way into the annals of parapsychology by doing parlour card tricks (Diaconis, 1978). Ted Serios produced "psychic" pictures by holding gadgets in front of camera lenses (Christopher, 1975; Diaconis, 1978). In the Soviet Union, Nina Kulagina was able to move objects by "psychokinesis", i.e. with the help of thin threads and magnets (Björkhem & Johnson, 1986). There was of course Uri Geller, who managed to hoodwink hordes of parapsychologists and gullible scientists. He is probably the most exposed fraudster in history but there are still grown-ups, even on university payroll, who credit him with genuine psychic abilities. Not bad for a con artist.

These dexterous and unscrupulous attention-addicts were met by researchers who were gullible and presumptuous, to say the least, by experimental conditions that could be altered or overturned at whim, and by experimental analysis that demanded few successful deceptions to cause "statistical significance". But if the parapsychologists were clowns in the laboratory, they excelled in covering up. Diaconis notes that reports from ESP experiments "are often wholly inadequate" and offer poor record of what has actually taken place (Diaconis, 1978). When Barber suggested that parapsychological research very well could serve as a model to other fields of science regarding stringency and control (Johnson, 1980), it was on the basis of reports, not actual experiments.

Into this hodgepodge of deception, delusion and sloppy science entered a flamboyant Swedish psychic in the middle of the 20th century. His name was Olof Jönsson.

Most psychics create some sort of interesting background narrative to gloss over their often ordinary and banal descent. In Jönsson's case, the story is passed on by long time friend, Swedish literature professor Olle Holmberg (1968), and American writer Brad Steiger (1971), and it carries the standard elements of mindblowing miracles as everyday fun for the innocent psychic child. Jönsson, born in Malmoe 1918, claimed that he started to experience strange things at the age of seven. At his parental home, he one day discovered, allegedly, that he could make a bottle fall from the table to the floor just by concentrating on it. According to Jönsson, he realized that he could affect lots of objects just by looking at them. He also claimed to have started to dream of events that later occured and that he knew what people were thinking; he could answer questions before they were asked. In school, he didn't need to study because he dreamed up the answers the night before the tests. That no one heard of those miracles when they were performed is astonishing...

One of his school teachers is said to have lulled Jönsson into Rosicrucianism. Later, when he was beginning his psychic career, Jönsson used to start his sessions with a lecture on the fundamentals of this branch of mysticism, but he soon gave that up since his audience had more taste for miracles than for ludicrous "wisdom".

Jönsson studied engineering and after a couple of odd jobs following his exam in 1941, he was employed as a draftsman at the Monark bicycle manufacturing company in Varberg 1946. By then, he had also dabbled a bit in healing together with a sidekick whose stutter Jönsson claimed to have cured. But it was during his time in Varberg that Jönsson's reputation as a miracle man started to spread. He soon became the pet psychic of a number of influential names in Swedish psychic research. Unfortunately, that doesn't say much since Swedish parapsychology has been, and still is, the playground of woo-woos with or without academic badges. Subsequently, the "experiments" with Jönsson, as described in Holmberg's, Steiger's and other's tributes, were in most cases carried out in the comfort of someone's home, during dinner, in the living-room, or at a restaurant, always in the company of friends and devotees. The feats reported is the standard routine for most mentalist entertainers; a lot of card tricks, identifying apparently random words in "never-before-seen books", and an occasional pullling of bottles with threads. Yes, that's right - Jönsson was performing parlour magic. But he, and his fans, called it "clairvoyance", "telepathy", "psychokinesis", and so on.

In 1949, the professor of telephony and telegraphy of the Royal Institute of Technology, Torben Laurent, conducted a series of experiments with Jönsson. Laurent was astonished but could not explain Jönsson's accomplishments with other than it had to be tricks. And again, as you read the "reports", the "experiments", although in an academical setting, are nothing but card tricks. Jönsson was allowed to do exactly what he was doing among friends in their homes; he had full controll over the situation.

A couple of years ago, I made notes on several of Jönsson's most common effects. Now, when you describe a magic trick, you have to separate what is being performed by the magician from the effect it has on the audience. The most important psychologichal tool of the magician is misdirection, i.e. leading the audience to look somewhere else when the feat is executed. But the misdirection can also be in time, i.e. the presentation of a trick is done long after it has been executed.

The reports on Jönsson's effects are available en masse, but I wanted to find out how some of them could have been produced. I e-mailed a translated compilation of my notes to a very prominent British mentalist, who was kind enough to take the time to read and answer my letter. He admitted he had trouble identifying the exact tricks that would cause the described effects. But not because he didn't know how they had been produced, but because he couldn't decide which of many possible ways to produce the same effect had been used. Every effect, i.e. what the audience experience, often has a multitude of different ways to be accomplished. That is another very important tool of the magician. Never produce an effect the same way twice.

Indeed, when magicians were present during Jönsson's "experiments", they had no doubt about what he was doing. At one private dinner party, Erik Truxa and his wife were invited and when Jönsson demonstrated his "telepathy", Truxa immediately duplicated the trick, showing that all it took was some sleight-of-hand (Wikipedia.se, Truxa). Eric Cubis was another magician who debunked Jönsson several times.

But the downfall of Jönsson in Sweden was his own doing. In the small village of Tjornarp in the south of Sweden, a murder occupied the police and the national press in November 1951. Mill owner Allan Nilsson was found dead in his bed after a fire had almost burned his house down. During the following investigation, the police soon suspected arson and in the autopsy, the cause of death was found to be severe battery. But the police had no leads and in desperation, one of the many psychics that had announced their interest in the matter was called in - Olof Jönsson.

Jönsson was confident and stated that he at anytime would be able to disclose who committed the crime, even if the murderer had made his way half around the world. With the help of objects belonging to the victim, Jönsson spent a day trying to "sense" the killer. He was assisted by local police officer Tore Hedin - seen here together with Jönsson who is "feeling" a rifle. The picture was published nationwide and confirmed Jönsson's reputation as a miracle man. But Jönsson was unable to come up with the name of the murderer and the crime remained unsolved for almost a year.

On the night of Friday 22 August 1952, local police officer Tore Hedin slew his sleeping parents with an axe in the village of Saxtorp. After having set the house on fire, he proceeded to Hurva village, and a home for old people where his former fiancée was working, and living. He crushed the back of her skull with the axe, in her sleep. The next victim was the manager, who received three blows to the head and died. Hedin dropped the axe, got two cans of gasoline from his car and set the house on fire. Four more people died in the flames.

Hedin wrote a suicide note and had some sausages in his car. Then he took a rowing-boat, went out on lake Bosarp, tied some weights to his body, jumped in the water, and drowned himself. He was found on Saturday. In his note, he admitted to having killed mill owner Allan Nilsson the year before. In the following investigation, it was discovered that Hedin had saved a clip with the picture of him and Jönsson during the arson investigation in 1951. The national headlines that followed cunningly mocked the psychic for apparently being too close to the perpetrator (Nilsson, 2008). Jönsson's reputation was wrecked and only the Swedish parapsychologists still had faith in him. With their help, he left for the United States in 1953(Steiger, 1971).

In the US, Jönsson got rid of the dots over "o" to make it easier for Americans to pronounce his name. He moved to Chicago, where he found work with the help of an aunt. In Durham, J. B. Rhine had heard about the Swedish miracle man - although I doubt that the Swedish parapsychologists had informed him of Jönsson's assistance in the Hurva murder case or the many fraud exposures - and offered him to come down for testing. Jönsson willingly complied and of his accomplishments at the Rhine laboratories, there are several versions.

According to Jönsson (Steiger, 1971), Rhine considered him one of the most talented psychics he had ever tested. His results were so significant that Rhine even asked some research assistants to "adjust" the best ones because they were too good. And Jönsson told his fan club back in Sweden that he was performing well in controlled experiments (SM, 1998). The "tests" he bragged about were those conducted at night, during a stop with the car on a road, or in someone's home (Steiger, 1971) - conditions very far from those prescribed by Rhine as necessary when verifying parapsychological hypotheses (Rhine & Pratt, 1974).

Rhine, on the other hand, had a slightly different version. The testing of Jönsson was terminated because he never managed to produce anything convincing. In fact, Rhine noted that Jönsson's performances diminished as controls increased. At an important presentation for a group of scientists, Rhine even caught Jönsson red-handed, when he was about to cheat. Rhine whispered to him:
- Ollie, stop that at once!
Jönsson blushed, embarrased, and failed miserably with the test. Rhine had also figured out how Jönsson did some of his other "telepathy" card feats. (Semitjov, 1979)

Holmberg (1968) notes that both he and Jönsson overestimated the support Jönsson would get from American researchers, so I guess it is safe to conclude that Rhine's version is closer to the truth. But, in fairness, there are some parapsychologists in the States that were completely taken in by Jönsson. Norman Don, for instance, illustrates how completely deluded you can be and still hold an academic title. Although Jönsson died in 1998, Don corresponded with him as late as 2001 (Harrell, 2001). There is also William Cox who readily acknowledged that Jönsson was a fraud but still considered him a "sensitive" (Cox, 1974). Yes, the same Cox who, at the 1976 Parapsychological Association convention in Utrecht, declared that magician Ulf Mörling, who was demonstrating how paranormal phenomena could be accomplished with trickery, was a genuine psychic without knowing it (Johnson, 1980).

Jönsson's next big escapade was the telepathy experiment during Apollo 14's space trip in 1971. In short, four psychics on earth were supposed to receive telepathic signals from astronaut Edgar Mitchell in space. The tests failed miserably, of course. In fact, Jönsson's results were so bad the parapsychologists decided it was supernaturally bad, so-called PSI-missing (Randi, 1982). Jönsson even "received" during a day when Mitchell had to cancel "sending" due to other commitments (Semitjov, 1979). What is interesting about this experiment, though, is Jönsson's stunt with the press. NASA had decided that the test, which was Mitchell's private project, should be conducted in secret and it was stipulated that the names of the four psychics not were to be disclosed, they were only to be referred to as A, B, C, and D. But days before Apollo 14 landed, someone leaked to the press and the experiment made big headlines. Only one of the psychics was named. Olof Jönsson. He was psychic A. None of the other psychics have ever been disclosed. According to Mitchell, the leak was Jönsson (Backstrom, 2001). He simply couldn't restrain himself from seizing this opportunity to personal fame and glory.

One of many outrageous psychic accomplishments Jönsson claimed was helping adventurer Mel Fisher to find a Spanish galleon with $300,000 (or sometimes $140million) worth of gold in July 1974. The site of the wreck was outside Florida Keys and Jönsson was allegedly able to direct the search team to the spot were the treasure was found (Semitjov, 1979). But no one at Fisher's company - it is still in business, or at the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum, has any recollection of any such assistance or knowledge of a man by the name of "Olof Jönsson" - and some of the people now (or when I contacted them a couple of years ago) working for the company did so back in 1974. In fact, no galleon was even found that year, no major discoveries at all were made. The famous gold treasure and pieces of a ship found in 1985 was the result of a long-time search effort with findings of scattered pieces preceeding it. And Olof Jönsson had nothing to do with it, although he may have claimed that too.

The stories about Jönsson led Philippino president Ferdinand Marcos, a certified woo-woo with psychic aspirations of his own, to hire the Swede for a World War II treasure hunt, the gold cargo of a sunken Japanese heavy cruiser, the Nachi. Jönsson's reward, if he found anything, was to be more than generous. This time, Jönsson was sort of lucky. The location was already marked on a map. When a first dive failed, Jönsson insisted that they should try some hundred yards away. Ka-ching, there was the Nachi! Jönsson had actually found war loot using his psychic powers! And a map marked with the location of the wreck... (Seagrave & Seagrave, 2003) On the picture below, Jönsson meets with Marcos.



In closing, perhaps Olof Jönsson's obituary in the Chicago Tribune may serve as a proper summary of his life as a psychic. I quote:

Yet Mr. Jonsson did establish an international reputation as a psychic as a young man growing up in his native Sweden. After a small town in Sweden had a series of bizarre murders in which 12 women were brutally slain, police authorities contacted Mr. Jonsson, who had a detailed vision of the crimes and the murderer. After Mr. Jonsson identified the suspect as a young policeman, the officer confessed the crimes in a suicide note. Mr. Jonsson later told the Tribune that the situation disturbed and depressed him, and he swore to never again get involved in solving violent crimes. (McSherry Breslin, 1998)

Remember Jönsson's complete failure in finding the Hurva murderer, police man Tore Hedin? Well, in the US, Jönsson converted that to a success. He didn't even bother to keep track of essential details, such as the number or gender of the victims, or the fact that Hedin only had slain one person at the time when Jönsson was involved in the investigation. He sometimes counted the victims to thirteen, and claimed that Hedin made a note in his suicide letter that it only was a matter of time until Jönsson would identify him (Semitjov, 1979). No journalist ever bothered to check Jönsson's stories...

Olof Jönsson was a simple trickster, with an amazing career. Next to Uri Geller, he may very well be the swindler that managed to cheat the largest number of parapsychologists ever. Then again, anyone can call him- or herself a parapsychologist. And if you take an interest in these matters called "paranormal", you will soon find that anyone does.

References
Backstrom, F., (2001). Private Lunar ESP: An Interview with Edgar Mitchell. In Cabinet Magazine, 5. [web document] http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/5/esp.php
Björkhem, Ö., & Johnson, M., (1986). Parapsykologi och övertro. Stockholm: Forum
Christopher, M., (1975). Mediums, Mystics & The Occult. New York: Crowell
Cox, W. E., (1974). Parapsychology and Magicians. In Parapsychology Review, May-June, pp. 12-14.
Diaconis, P., (1978). Statistical Problems in ESP Research. In Science, 201, (14)
Edmunds, S., (1966). Spiritualism. A critical Survey. London: Aquarian Press
Hansel, C. E. M., (1989). The Search for Psychic Power. ESP & Parapsychology Revisited. New York: Prometheus
Harrell, M. A., (2001). Condition Three. [web document] http://www.marharrell.com/Pages/NDon01.html
Holmberg, O., (1968). Den osannolika verkligheten. Stockholm: Bonniers
Johnson, M., (1980). Parapsykologi. Zindermans
McSherry Breslin, M., (1998). Olof Jonsson obituary. In Chicago Tribune, quoted in [web document] http://paranormal.se/topic/olof_jonsson.html
Nilsson, K., (2008). Polis - och mördare. Tore Hedin utredde sina egna mord. In Aftonbladet, 9 July.
Randi, J., (1982). Flim-Flam. Psychics, ESP, Unicorns and other Delusions. New York: Prometheus
Rhine, J. B., & Pratt, J. G., (1974). Parapsychology. Frontier Science of the Mind (5th printing). Springfield: Charles C. Thomas
Seagrave, S., & Seagrave, P., (2003). Gold Warriors: America's Secret Recovery of Yamashita's Gold. Verso.
Semitjov, E., (1979). Mellan dröm och verklighet. Askild & Kärnekull
Steiger, B., (1971). Fallet Olle Jönsson. Ockulta fenomen - parapsykologiska experiment. Zindermans. (Am: The Psychic Feats of Olof Jonsson, Prentice-Hall)
SM, (1998). The laws of nature were put out of play. Conversations with Sune Stigsjöö. In Sokaren. [web document] http://www.sokaren.se/INDEX98.HTML
Wikipedia.se, article Truxa, [web document] http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truxa

Colin Fry revisited

In August 2007, English psychic Colin Fry signed over charlatan hothouse Ramsbergsgarden, Sweden, to Jane Lyzell and her spouse. Lyzell served as Fry's sidekick during his time in Sweden (see Is the Small Fry a Big Fish?) In a way, it's a shame that Fry's Swedish engagement has been reduced. After all, he brought a bit of class and style to the Swedish psychic scene. Now we are left with nasty rabble like Terry Evans, Jörgen "Cry Baby" Gustafsson, Elisabeth Lannge, and of course the absolute scrapings, Jane Lyzell.

As a tribute to Fry, it would be nice to revisit a definite highlight in his career -- the trumpet incident. I know he has made everything he can to pass this occasion to oblivion, but it is such a great moment I just have to repeat the story again. I do it in form of the actual article in Psychic News that broke the news to the world. Just click the following images to open high resolution versions in new windows. As an extra bonus, I've added an image of Colin Fry playing around with so called ectoplasm at the bottom. What a great showman, what a great fraud - enjoy!