April 23, 1998 Thursday 2D EDITION
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. A-01
HEADLINE: Spirited medium insists he's dead-on
BYLINE: By Michael Booth, Denver Post Staff Writer
BODY:
That James Van Praagh gets a lot of things wrong bothers almost no one in the crowds of people who gather around him everywhere he goes.
When you're talking to the dead, who's nitpicking?
...
Is he faking? The answer is the oldest problem of human spirituality: If you have to ask, you're not the kind of person who ever would have believed anyway.
...
"Someone here has lost a son," he says. Since those who have suffered tragedy are drawn to Van Praagh's readings, a half-dozen hands shoot up around the room. He points to one.
"I did lose my son," she says, nodding.
"You have something in your pocket related to him?" Van Praagh says. Critics say this is one of the oldest tricks of the mediums, since surveys show people who have lost relatives to tragedy often carry some memento of the loved one.
She nods again. "It's his grandmother's compact," she says.
"He didn't like his dad?" She shrugs, gives no response.
"You're no longer with his father, are you?" he ventures.
Well, yes, she still is with him.
Contradicted but decidedly undaunted, Van Praagh turns to the woman's daughter who is standing nearby. She has been nodding throughout his show. Van Praagh says her brother's spirit is "telling me you had a dream of him recently."
She nods enthusiastically.
He adds that he's getting "something about fishing." She replies that she swam with dolphins three weeks ago.
Case closed.
...
Skeptic Magazine editor Michael Shermer claims Van Praagh practices other common Vaudeville-era deceptions. Since 90 percent of people die in only a half-dozen popular ways, it is easy for Van Praagh to toss out "I sense pain in your middle area" and eventually connect it to the listener, Shermer writes.
Other times, he simply tosses out possibilities and waits for a nod, "to see what sticks," as Shermer puts it. "He only needs an occasional hit to convince his clientele he is genuine," Shermer writes in an article posted on the Internet.
...
Van Praagh announces the spirits tell him someone else in the room has lost a son. He picks one of many hands, belonging to a middle-aged man whose wife is already crying.
"Was this an illness?" Van Praagh stabs.
No, a car accident, the man responds, unoffended.
Ah, yes, a car accident, Van Praagh repeats. The spirits tell him more. "Did they try to get him to a hospital or something?"
...
"Nobody can tell you how to live. Or how to grieve," Riley said.
Van Praagh exudes love for everybody, even the reporters who have sprained their foreheads raising eyebrows at his claims. He is always game for another try.
"You're a Virgo, right?" he asks.
Well, Scorpio, actually.
"Ah, yes, the detective," Van Praagh responds, as if he had never guessed anything else. "Always seeking information." He signs another book.
"It doesn't matter to me if people believe me or not," he concludes. "That's not my responsibility. The truth is the truth."
