The Trickster and the Paranormal

by George P. Hansen

  Summary

  All three of these movements have loose boundaries. It is often difficult to tell if someone is part of them or not. Many who attend Spiritualist services are also members of established religions; New Age followers are drawn from all faiths. Witchcraft and neo-pagan groups are perhaps more distinct, but ambiguity reigns there as well with vast differences among them. Within covens, beliefs and rituals can change with the whim of the high priestess or priest. There is no higher ecclesiastical authority or common text that solidifies dogma or mandates what, how, or when rituals must be performed.

  These three movements have striking similarities. In all altered (i.e., destructured) states of consciousness play a major role. Women are prominent, as are the issues of feminism, the environment and healing. None recognize a central authority for their movement, and they engage in virtually no institution building. All of the movements are considered subversive by the establishment; they court direct involvement with paranormal and supernatural phenomena, and all display elements of the trickster constellation.

  The most vocal opposition to these movements comes from two sources: establishment scientists (exemplified by CSICOP) and conservative and fundamentalist religious groups. Both of these antagonists are typified by large, male-dominated, status conscious, hierarchical institutions—the antithesis of the targets of their scorn. Both have produced massive amounts of literature denouncing the New Age proponents and modern pagans, and similar attacks were directed at the Spiritualists of the nineteenth century. While some of the political and social goals advocated by the “deviants” have been partially incorporated into science and mainstream churches (e.g., feminism, ecology, alternative healing), the establishments’ most vehement attacks remain directed at paranormal and supernatural practices.

  CHAPTER 15

  Institutions and the Paranormal

  Sociologist Nachman Ben-Yehuda published an excellent book in 1985 entitled Deviance and Moral Boundaries: Witchcraft, the Occult, Science Fiction, Deviant Sciences and Scientists. It remains underappreciated, perhaps because his analysis mixed science, science fiction, and the occult, topics that many academics wish to keep separate. Comparing materials from such diverse areas is not always welcome, but it can provide unexpected insights.

  Ben-Yehuda commented that occult groups typically engage in little or no successful institution building. This is an exceedingly important observation, but almost no one has recognized its implications. Few groups that directly engage paranormal phenomena have been able to institutionalize, and that is an anti-structural property of the phenomena. In this chapter I will examine a variety of examples involving institutions and the paranormal and show how they conform to anti-structural patterns.

  The word institution has several meanings. Here I will use it to refer to an organization that has paid staff, buildings, grounds, etc. Institutions have some stability and legal identity apart from the people who form them. Institutions may be large or small. Those of government, industry, and academe are a pervasive part of our lives, and we are rarely aware of their full influence over us. We take them for granted as a natural part of the order of things. They are largely responsible for the statuses we hold (e.g., schools attended, places of employment), with whom we associate, where we live, etc. Their power is subtle.

  The paranormal’s relationship to institutions can be studied via several avenues. One approach is to examine groups that began with a direct focus on paranormal phenomena, review how they became firmly established, and note changes in paranormal activities. Another method is to study the positions of paranormal practitioners (e.g., psychics, healers, mediums) in relation to modern institutions. Briefly, the practitioners are likely to be found more outside of institutions rather than being part of them. A third approach is to observe how business and academe treat paranormal themes. They are not neglected, but the situation is curious. The entertainment industry gives the paranormal extended coverage, but in fiction. Within academe, the supernatural is discussed in departments of literature, folklore, and religion. These institutions serve important functions in relation to the paranormal—by what they present, and by what they ignore.

  Paranormal Groups, Individual Practitioners, and Institutions

  A number of groups formed for the purpose of producing paranormal phenomena and later institutionalized with paid staff, buildings, and offices. The examples can be divided into two classes: those that maintain a focus on directly engaging the phenomena and those that shift away from that.

  Of the first type, Spiritualist camps are some of most institutionalized. Several own buildings and grounds and have a number of mediums associated with them for months or years. These camps maintain a commitment to their visitors to produce phenomena such as spirit messages, apports, and materializations. Unfortunately, the groups also have a reputation for being rife with fraud. There have been damaging exposés, and one of the most graphic was The Psychic Mafia (1976) by M. Lamar Keene, who had been a highly successful medium. The association of Spiritualism with fraudulent mediumship is so widely known that the camps are assured of maintaining their marginal status, even within the larger paranormal subculture.

  The second type of group also began with a focus on paranormal phenomena, grew, and eventually succeeded in institutionalizing. As they evolved, emphasis shifted away from training or display of psychic abilities and toward “spiritual development” and “personal growth.” Two prominent examples are the Theosophical Society (TS), founded by Helena P. Blavatsky in 1875 and the Association for Research and Enlightenment (ARE), founded by Edgar Cay ce in 1931. Blavatsky gained wide notoriety for fraudulently producing messages from “ascended masters.” She was discussed in the earlier chapter on prominent psychics. Cayce did distant healings and clairvoyant diagnoses, but he escaped any serious charge of deception. Both organizations are now devoted to spiritual development and have buildings, professional staff, publishing facilities, and produce magazines and books. Psychic manifestations are downplayed. Even though the ARE has thousands of members, there is no permanent role of “psychic” within its institutional structure. The ARE and TS are largely monuments to an earlier era and are frequently staffed by gray-haired, elderly people. Within the paranormal subculture, they have a higher status than the Spiritualist camps.

  Many large organizations with paranormal interests do not, qua institutions, directly engage the phenomena themselves. National societies for dowsers, astrologers, and psychotronics specialists are typically loose confederations of groups and individuals. Such national organizations might recommend certain practitioners, but as a corporate body they rarely provide paranormal services to clients. The same is true of local societies.

  Spiritualist churches were discussed in an earlier chapter. Compared with ordinary churches, they are rarely successful at institutionalizing. Further, they are often independent entities and do not answer to any larger ecclesiastical body. The more respectable of them tend to emphasize mental phenomena rather than the more dramatic and dubious physical manifestations. The churches may have a number of psychics and mediums loosely affiliated with them who typically donate their services; rarely are they employees.

  The individual psychic practitioner’s relationship to modern institutions is also worth noting. The large majority of professional psychics that I know work out of their homes, though a few have small offices. They operate as individual consultants rather than through corporations. Psychic fairs may employ many psychics, but these often last only a day or two, again displaying transient, anti-structural qualities. Numerous police departments use psychic detectives—even some that deny doing so. The psychics generally volunteer their time, and I know of no police force that has employees with the job description of “psychic detective.” Of course psychics have lives apart from their paranormal roles, and some are employed full-time by large corporations, but in ordinary capacities. Their paranormal activities are conducted off the job.

  Ther
e is one major business that now hires psychics—the telephone psychic hot lines. These have become popular in the last ten years due to heavy television advertising. The industry grosses at least hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

  One of the most prominent and successful companies was the Psychic Friends Network, which was endorsed by singer Dionne Warwick. Its infomercial was the second most lucrative of all infomer-cials aired in 1995.1 The owner, Baltimore-based Inphomation Communications Inc., was reported to annually gross $125 million at its peak, and they had more than 1000 psychics working for them. In 1998 Inphomation was forced to declare bankruptcy, and court filings and newspaper coverage gave inside details about the company. The founder, Michael Lasky, was accused of shady business practices and numerous lawsuits were filed against him.2

  There are still a number of other hot lines with celebrity endorsers, and they continue to attract callers. But the industry in general has an unsavory reputation, and public utility regulators have received many complaints about the companies for deceptive advertising.

  Freelance writer Sherry Amatenstein published a short account (really a small exposé) of her experience as a phone psychic with one hot line (unnamed). She had no problem getting the job, even though she didn’t believe herself to be psychic. There was no test to pass. The company charged callers $3.99 a minute to talk with her, and she received $.25 of that. This translates to $15.00 an hour for her, a mere six percent of the $239.40 an hour paid by the clients. When Amatenstein was not on the phone, the company’s representatives called frequently, urging her to try to keep people on the line in order to maximize billings. The primary concern was profit, not service.

  Amatenstein had real sympathy for her callers, and soon had second thoughts about what she was doing. She discovered that the clients “had one thing in common: vulnerability.” She said that: “They needed to talk, some so badly that they called over and over. What had initially seemed like a harmless way to earn spare cash turned out to be serious business. I felt guilty and ashamed of myself.” For a few minutes of consolation, clients were spending hundreds of dollars, dollars which most could ill afford. Amatenstein lasted only about three days on the job.4

  I have personally known others who worked on the hot lines and who believed themselves to have genuine abilities. They did not stay with it for very long and returned to doing private readings on their own. I suspect that the industry has an extremely high turnover of personnel.

  The telephone hot line psychics are, in effect, high-priced, untrained counselors. There is little or no emphasis on producing or verifying real ESP, and there is little reason to think that much really occurs.

  The hot lines have a deservedly sleazy reputation for preying on vulnerable people. The psychics, too, are poorly treated, and underpaid; they are pushed to increase profits with little regard for the welfare of their clients. In short, the hot lines’ high visibility, combined with their disreputability, help assure the marginality of the paranormal.

  The Paranormal In Entertainment Media

  Throughout history, art, literature, and drama have portrayed supernatural themes. In the secular culture today, the paranormal makes its most prominent appearance in fictional TV programs, books, and movies. The industries devoted to such fiction are massive. In terms of capital, manpower and resources, they dwarf the organized groups devoted to direct contact with paranormal phenomena. Millions of dollars are available for projects with stories of ghost busters, witches, exorcists and the like. The contrast between the fiction industries and the reality from which they borrow is comparable to no other area. For instance, police officers and medical doctors often appear in exciting television shows and movies, but their industries are far larger than those that portray them in fiction. Contemplation of this state of affairs gives clues to the nature of psi.

  The entertainment industry’s treatment of psychic themes is instructive.

  Anthropologist David Hess analyzed Hollywood films in his book Science in the New Age: The Paranormal, Its Defenders and Debunkers, and American Culture (1993). He noted that paranormal heroes tend to be marginal or exotic, and he was not the only one to detect this trend. Psychologist Keith Harary also reviewed Hollywood’s portrayal of psychics and found them often presented as odd or unusual; frequently there was a negative taint.5 Harary’s paper was presented at a parapsychology conference, and in the published discussion that followed, D. Scott Rogo noted that psychics are similarly viewed in many cultures. The comments after Rogo’s suggested that his observations were not particularly welcome, and the other conference-goers seemed to want to ignore the implications. Yet Rogo was clearly correct, and though characters in film are often exaggerated, they do reflect a reality that some would prefer to deny. Hollywood recognizes that the paranormal is associated with marginality, which suggests that the producers are more perceptive than the scientists.

  Supernatural horror fiction is exceedingly popular. Bookstores devote much shelf space to it, and the novels of Stephen King and the movies based on them gross untold millions. Many other writers specialize in this genre and make a good living doing so. Paranormal motifs are particularly common in horror films,6 and this needs an explanation. Folklorist William Clements analyzes interstitiality in relation to horror in his paper “The Interstitial Ogre” (1987). He notes that many horror figures are “symbols of disorder”7 and that “their essence is their interstitiality. They articulate ultimate defiance to humanity by challenging … the founding constructs upon which all of culture rests.”8 He is not alone in this recognition; in Power and Paranoia (1986), film critic Dana Polan talks of “what Julia Kristeva calls ‘the powers of horror’: the fear in the presence of that which ‘disturbs identity, system, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite’.” He elaborates that “For Kristeva, in other words, the power of horror is the horror of all those experiences that might suggest to the human subject the ultimate nothingness or foundationlessness of all his/her being.” The above quotations refer to classification and foundations, and it is through them that the implications of liminality, interstitiality, and antistructure can be extended. The next Part of this book will do that.

  Horror fiction contains graphic, concrete imagery of monsters, ghosts, and ET aliens, and that reinforces the culture’s perception of the paranormal. Clements notes that “the very fact that these beings are presented in literature or films labeled as ‘fantasy’ reminds that the threat … is unreal.” Polan likewise concludes that “by treating all this as mere fiction … holds the threat at a distance, writes it within the limits of a reason.” In fact that may be its most important function. To suggest that such things are actually real, no matter in how veiled a manner, is to provoke an extraordinary level of unconscious anxiety in many. Indeed, some of the most terrifying films are those that are not overly exaggerated.

  Even fictional portrayals can be uncomfortable for some. CSICOP has capitalized on the uneasy feelings evoked by the paranormal, and in their fund-raising letters, they have denounced fictional TV shows with paranormal themes. They imply that even fiction gives the topics credibility, and that rationality is thereby subverted. An example is the television program The X-Files which has dark plots of government cover-ups, UFO abductions, conspiracies, psychic characters, and the like. It attracted a devoted following, and X-Files conventions were held in large cities around the country. Chris Carter, the producer of the show, was invited to a CSICOP conference, and he received sharp criticism there. Neil deGrasse Tyson, a Princeton University astrophysicist, accused him of misleading the public and hindering attempts to improve scientific literacy.13 The attack came despite the fact that the show is explicitly fictional and that Carter made it clear that he was only a storyteller. Even so, some people are unsettled by stories like the X-Files. For others though, fictional accounts are reassuring; they help reinforce the idea that paranormal events are just that: fiction.

&
nbsp; Tabloid newspapers constitute another branch of the entertainment media, and they highlight many issues. Tabloids are liminal entities; they blur the distinction between news and entertainment, between fact and fiction. Culturally, they are of low status, both in terms of news content, as well as in entertainment, and of all the major media, they give the greatest coverage to paranormal topics. Indeed, many of them feature it on their front pages.

  Though the tabloids have long been fixtures in popular culture, and few take them seriously, they rouse the anger and indignation of CSICOP and other debunkers. No matter how blatantly silly the tabloids may be, the skeptics’ periodicals carry articles denouncing the tabloids’ coverage of the paranormal. CSICOP’s attacks are not light-hearted spoofs; they take the tabloid stories as a real menace, and have done so for more than 20 years. This is curious because even magazines and newsletters of the paranormal subculture give little attention or credence to the tabloids. The readers of The Skeptical Inquirer are even less at risk of uncritically accepting the stories; of its readership, 83% have some type of college degree and 54% have an advanced degree. 14Why then does CSICOP raise such a furor over the tabloids?

  It makes no sense to maintain that the debunkers’ attacks are provided to educate their readership or a wider public. The function of the denunciations lies elsewhere. The skeptics’ tirades effectively reinforce the marginality of the paranormal by emphasizing its association with the tabloids and their excesses. Thus boundaries are strengthened, the paranormal kept at bay.