Pro Medium Repents for Life of Cons
The New York Times
By MARK OPPENHEIMER
August 31, 2012
Don’t mistake
Mark Edward for John Edward. The two men, who are not related, are both professional mediums, men who charge money for their supposed skill at transmitting messages from the dead. But whereas John Edward had a nationally syndicated television show and still plays to large crowds in Las Vegas and across the country, Mark Edward’s biggest gigs were a baby shower at Eddie Murphy’s house and Buddy Hackett’s 70th birthday party.
But what Mark Edward Wilson (he doesn’t use his last name) lacks in professional success, he is trying to make up for in intellectual respectability. In his messy yet fascinating new book, “
Psychic Blues: Confessions of a Conflicted Medium” (Feral House), Mr. Edward, 61, comes clean about the tricks that he has used to dupe people since he began working the Los Angeles magic scene in the 1970s. His book is a strange mishmash of self-pity, self-justification and genuine repentance — and a compelling look at the disputed territory where entertainment meets religion, where some practitioners actually think they can practice both at the same time.
...
In an interview this week, Mr. Edward said that after years of sympathizing with the skeptics but making money from people’s gullibility, he felt he had to choose sides.
“My conscience — I could no longer do it,” Mr. Edward said. “I’d been walking both sides of the line. My magician friends” — many of them skeptics — “thought I was selling out to the psychics, and the psychics thought I was selling out to the skeptics.”
...
