The Psychic Mafia

The following is an excerpt from an extraordinary work called, The Psychic Mafia. The entire volume is available from Scribed.com, here. Written by Rev. Canon William Rauscher, the work investigates the world of psychic shams and scams, while at the same time refraining from a total and wholesale debunking of psychic and paranormal phenomena. I have included the opening chapter in my blog as a teaser for the rest of the book. This is a must-read for anyone contemplating the validity of the supernatural realm, and psychic mediums in particular.

The Psychic Mafia

by The Rev. Canon William V. Rauscher

This book is true.

At first, when I met Lamar Keene, the former fraudulent medium whose story it is, I found his revelations in some respects almost incredible. Oh, I knew, as does every serious investigator of the psychic scene (and I have been one for more than eighteen years) that fraud existed. There was the expose at Camp Chesterfield in 1960 (described in this book) when infrared film of a materialization seance showed that the “spirits” were staff mediums dressed up in chiffon ectoplasm. I had personally checked out Camp Silver Belle, a spiritualist establishment in Ephrata, Pennsylvania, and Camp Chesterfield, and found rampant fraud. And I had heard of other cases, other exposures.

But with all the whispers, rumors, and suspicions nobody really knew how widespread the fraud was, whether it was organized or haphazard, or whether spiritualist authorities actively connived in it or merely winked at it. What was needed to set us straight was the inside story from someone who knew. And who would know? Only one who had been part of the fraud.

We now have that story– in this book.

Lamar Keene’s account is supported by a wealth of documentary evidence, which I have examined. I have met and talked with some of those he duped while he was a medium. I have checked out the church of which he formerly was minister-medium. His story is fact, not fiction.

In my judgement, this book may be one of the most significant in the recent history of psychical research. It will not be so important for the professional parapsychologist (who no doubt will tend to feel that Lamar’s tricks wouldn’t have fooled him) as for the interested layman, the average person who shares today’s popular fascination with anything psychic.

The enormous rise of interest in psychic phenomena and ESP in the last ten years has made it easier for the fake medium and clairvoyant to gain clients.

A recent poll showed that a majority of Americans now believe in such phenomena. This new climate of opinion is a gold mine for the phony psychic. The general public, softened up by watching mentalists on television and reading in popular magazines about psychic experiments in labs and universities, is prone to overbelief. The average person is exceedingly easy to fool. No book could ever detail all the methods by which the fake psychic or medium performs his wonders. Most people, with no inkling of such methods, believe in psychic phenomena much too readily.

This may sound strange coming from one who accepts the reality of paranormal manifestations (as attested in my own book, The Spiritual Frontier, an account of my psychic explorations). However, I have spent as much time arguing some people out of an overly credulous attitude toward the subject as arguing others into being open-minded toward it.

As Lamar’s story devastatingly reveals, the greatest friend the fraudulent medium has is overbelief on the part of his victims. Lamar calls it “the true believer syndrome.” The need to believe in phony wonders sometimes exceeds not only logic but, seemingly, even sanity.

A portrayal of this very attitude can be found in the unusual opera, The Medium, by Gian-Carlo Menotti. The central character is a fake medium, Madame Flora, who one day tells her sitters that all the wonderful phenomena she has produced were fraudulent. And the result of this confession? The sitters refuse to believe her!

Madame Flora says:

Listen to me!
There never was a seance!
I cheated you!
Do you understand?
Cheated you, cheated you!

But the true believers won’t give up their deluded faith. Echoes of this are found in Lamar’s story and are for me perhaps the most terrifying part. In my pastoral ministry, as a priest with a profound belief in the importance of psychic experience for religion, I quickly learned how vulnerable the bereaved are to any promise of reassurance that their beloved dead still live. People who have lost one they cherished will travel anywhere, pay anything, believe anything, it seems, to hear again that voice that is stilled. I’m personally besieged with requests to recommend “a good medium.”

Now, I believe that “good mediums” exist. I believe I have met some of them. Not all mediums are dishonest, and this book is 11 not intended to discredit those who are legitimate. Nor will it do so. The honest psychic or medium has nothing to fear from this book. It can only help him by making it harder for the fakes, cheats, and liars to continue their nefarious work and confuse the sincere seeker. The only medium threatened by this book is the fraudulent one.

My basic attitude toward mediumship and psychic phenomena in general is that historically taken by the Church. Long ago, wary of the dangers of psychic dabbling, the Church openly discouraged the mourner from seeking communication with deceased loved ones and instead stressed the reality of communion with the dead. This is the “communion of saints.” We the living are linked to the so-called dead in God’s fellowship of love. Attempts to go beyond communion to overt communication, however, as through a medium, can become a dangerous addiction.

But in trying to avoid extremes for the good of souls, the Church went too far and unfortunately abandoned some of its own mystical heritage. It so downgraded the reality of personal psychic experiences– which have happened spontaneously to millions of believing Christians – that unwittingly it played into the hands of those who would exploit man’s natural hunger for mystery for their own purposes. My firm opinion is that much of the current excessive
fascination with mystery, especially by young people, results from the Church’s aloofness toward the true, profound, and wonderful mysteries which lie at the heart of spiritual experience.

This is why I have taken a strong lead in urging the Church to rediscover its mystical and psychical roots– not to strengthen belief in the psychic, as such, but to strengthen belief in the Church’s message that there is a spiritual world, that man is part of it, and that Time is the antechamber of Eternity.

However, I have spent almost as much energy in trying to combat the abuses of psychic experience as in trying to win the Church back to an acceptance of the validity of such experience. It is precisely because I believe so deeply in the psychic dimension that I detest those who pervert and misuse it to their own advantage: namely, phony mediums. These desecrators of the holy, these blasphemers of the dead are psychic parasites fattening on the sorrow of the bereaved. This remarkable, unique book is the testament of one such fraudulent medium who lived for thirteen years in darkness and then emerged into the light. It is a spiritual story, not in the goody-goody sense, but in the most profound meaning of that word, because it tells how a man came to feel that he had gained the whole world but lost his soul.

When I first met M. Lamar Keene, through my Masonic brother, William A. Twiss, he had been in virtual seclusion for three years. That time had been spent, as this book tells, trying to disentangle himself emotionally from the sticky web of lies, deceit, and fraud in which he was trapped for so long.

As Lamar unfolded his experiences to me, I sensed how vital it was that this book be written. When I invited Allen Spraggett to collaborate as a professional writer and a psychic investigator, he agreed that Lamar Keene’s story was too important not to be told.

Those who read this book will have, I trust, ears to hear and eyes to see, and will not be like the believers in Madame Flora’s phony wonders who, even after being told they were phony, clamored:

Please let us have our seance,
Madame Flora!
Just let us hear it once more,
Madame Flora!

For the entire book, click here