Psychics From the 70s
from "You Idiot"
“No casino has ever banned psychics from the gaming room because there is no need” – The Skeptics Dictionary
About three decades ago a psychic and astrologer named Tenny Hale made the following prediction: between 1979 and 2000, law enforcement “will be done by psychic means. Psychics will run radionic devices and psi generators at police departments, defense plants, and other government facilities”.
Bahahaha! This, obviously, turned out to not be true. In fact, it was way off-- psychics don't exactly hold positions of power and prestige in modern day society. But, on the other hand, they have not yet been ridiculed into well-deserved obscurity a la the alchemists. Weird, huh?
I mean, I would imagine that most psychics have an accuracy rate that hovers in the low single percentage points, a figure that would lead to finished careers and shattered knee caps in other fields that require prediction-making. They get shit wrong, spectacularly wrong, all the time, and when they happen to get something right you can almost always chalk it up to vagueness or dumb luck. And yet, they are rarely discredited or dismissed. No one (that I know of) keeps a score card of their past predictions, and they hardly ever seem to get confronted with their past blunders.
Why is this? Part of it might be because the people who actually pay attention to psychics are sympathetic to them, and really want to believe, which makes them more likely to excuse an incorrect prediction. Plus, those who snort at the existence of psychic powers are often tarred as skeptics, a word that is synonymous with “party pooper” (and occasionally “Jesus hater”) to a good chunk of the population. In a nutshell, people want to believe psychic predictions, so they're willing to forgive (or forget!) mistakes along the way.
But I think part of it IS because of a lack of a psychic scorecard of sorts that can be referenced when a new prediction is made. For example, if Larry King introduced Sylvia Browne onto his show by saying not just “here is psychic Sylvia Browne”, but expanding it to include “she has helped out law enforcement in 35 different cases, out of which she has given useful, verifiable information 0 times”, then people watching at home might at least begin to second guess the ‘powers' claimed.
All this occurred to me recently when I re-discovered my copies of The People's Almanac #1 and #2, a pair of pretty-awesome reference books that were published in 1975 and 1978. They contain a lot of great articles, obscure trivia, interesting historical information, and so on, plus a handful of hilariously stupid features like “predictions by present-day psychics”.
This is great, because while I'd have a somewhat difficult time conclusively grading the performance of psychics from today (if their predictions are still set in the future, for example), it'd be pretty easy to look at a prediction made in 1975 and conclude that it's either wrong or right.
So, that's what I did!
The books give a brief background on each psychic before listing their “Past Predictions: Wrong”, “Past Predictions: Right”, and “Future Predictions”.
As you might expect, the Right ones tend to be vague and not-quite-awe-inspiring. I mean, check it out—to demonstrate the supposed psychic abilities of John Reeves, the Almanac notes that “In 1970, he predicted that the Vietnam War would drag on. It did. Reeves was right.” Whoa, amazing! I heard that Mr. Reeves also once successfully predicted that a penny would land heads side up! The Wrong predictions, on the other hand, tend to be highly specific with plenty of ridiculous details.
This makes for an odd, rather hilarious coupling. “I was incorrect in thinking that a spacecraft from the planet Xebron would land on the White House at noon on August 2nd, 1974. But I was correct in predicting that Richard Nixon would not die of polio that year”. “Golly, Mr. Psychic, you amaze me!”
The Predictions
The Psychic: Malcolm Bessent, a “young psychic who has trained at the College of Psychic Science in London” (Nice, he's even got the psychic education!) His other credentials include successfully predicting that there would be “a change” in the British government during the summer of 1970. Impressed? You should be.
The Prediction: For 1975-1980, “New York will be uninhabitable. The water level will rise and eventually flood the city out of existence”
The Reality: This did not happen.
The Psychic: David Bubar. A “baptist minister as well as a psychic”, Bubar “Was one of 10 men indicted for conspiracy in the bombing of a $10 million rubber plant…. (he) had been psychic advisor to a leader of the alleged conspiracy”. Well, there's strike one right off the bat—a real psychic would have immediately said “we're fucked, this won't work. We gotta blow up a different rubber plant”.
The Prediction: “A ‘Thought-Action-Deed' machine (TAD) will appear in 1986. Using the machine, scientists will be able to tune into past, present, or future events based on a computer analysis of the pattern of history. In 1996, TADS will be released for mass production. Before that, they will not be used by the public”.
The Reality: Sadly, TADS are not yet available in mass production. Nevertheless, the specificity of this prediction is both impressive and bewildering—I mean, of course you're going to be wrong with something like that. It's way too detailed. That's why a smart psychic makes predictions like “During 2012, a popular new electronic device will be released” instead of “In March of 2012 a new portable video player called the Theatrix will be released, allowing users to utilize laser beams to create replicas of their favorite movies as holograms. The initial price will be $249 and will come equipped with Spiderman 5. Blah blah blah”. Unless you're actually psychic, which no one is, you have pitiful odds at getting the latter prediction right, but pretty good, maybe over 50%, odds of getting the former prediction right. So, if you're actually trying to get a decent success rate, keep it fucking vague!
Of course, maybe Bubar understands this.…. maybe like Nostradamas, his predictions, intentionally or not, are meant to be interpreted in a broad, vague, in-the-ballpark sense. His virtual crystal ball can be smudged and cloudy, so sometimes he gets the gist of something while screwing up the specifics, and we should cut him slack and attempt to interpret his findings accordingly. Maybe? Well, probably not, but if so….
1. The Sega Master System was released in 1986.
2. It had a game called Back to the Future 2 wherein the player explores the past, present, and future
3. Only the lucky few people who owned the Sega Master System were able to play this game, but by 1996 the spread of online emulators allowed anyone with a computer and the internet to enjoy it too.
Eh? Maybe? Uh… no, I guess not.
#3.
The Psychic: Criswell. A “former teacher and mortician” who “says his predictions are 86% accurate and claims to know the future through the year 1999”. That's impressive, yes, but of the 41 predictions he makes for the years leading up to 1999, a total of zero were actually correct. That gives him an accuracy rate of… let's see... 0%. Presumably someone who knew the future through 1999 would do better than that, but psychics are mysterious and stuff.
The Prediction: From 1975 to 1978, the devil will rule the earth.
The Reality: I double checked Wikipedia and there is no mention of this. Yes, I will cede to Criswell that Wikipedia is sometimes wrong.
The Prediction: In 1977, the dairy industry in Wisconsin will end.
The Reality: I was born after 1977 and I've eaten Wisconsin cheese all my life, so I've gotta call bullshit on this one, Criswell. It's a pretty lame prediction either way, but it's great when viewed in the context of the previous prediction. I mean, I love the idea that people are fretting about the dairy industry while the earth is RULED BY THE FUCKING DEVIL. “Satan? Oh, yeah. Well it sucks, but whatcha gonna do? The lack of milk, though, that's the real bummer right now.”
Overall Score: 0 for 41. No mind control, no draining of Lake Michigan, no outbreaks of cannibalism in Pennsylvania, no Aphrodisiacal Era from May 1988 to March 1989, no moving of the US government to caverns below Wichita Kansas. And, as far as I know, In 1982 a dying planet named Bullanon did not come close to earth, affect the poles, and rise a lost continent that bridged Africa and South America, triggering a 40 day snowstorm with ice.
#4.
The Psychic: Olof Johnson, who apparently once “communicated through ESP with Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell while Mitchell was on his way to the moon”. I would love to see a transcript of that conversation, but alas was unable to track it down.
The Prediction: between 1991 and 2000, there will be no more automobiles, and furthermore “we will no longer be dependent on plants and animals for food and energy. Instead, we will get food and energy from the sun.”
The Reality: Geez, what the fuck was this guy thinking? Did he really think that humanity was going to suddenly switch from normal food to Sun Food, which apparently just appears out of nowhere? “Ahh, what a beautiful sunrise…. whoa, there's chicken wings falling from the sky! AWEsome!!!” What the fuck. Sometimes I wonder if these “psychic” folks are just describing weird-ass dreams of theirs and randomly attaching dates to them. (“Giant frogs descend on earth. July. Next year. (Yawn) Time for coffee”)
Anyway, obviously this did not happen. Not even close. But it makes me respect, again, the ballsiness of the prediction's specificity. Much easier would have been to take the Nostradamus route, where you make your “prediction” so cryptic and vague that it can be interpreted in innumerable different silly ways, and you can rarely be conclusively proven wrong. If Johnson had done that, he might have a defender right now angrily insisting that “No, no, clearly he was predicting the advent of Sun Chips! It is amazing!”. But as is, he was way too specific and now looks like an idiot, just as he looked like an idiot when “he predicted that Muskie, rather than Nixon, would with the 1972 election for President”. Shit, babbling on about sun food was probably a safer bet than thinking Muskie would take down tricky dick.
#5
The Psychic: Daniel Logan, a medium who “works through a spirit guide—Dr. Stanley”.
The Prediction: Between 1979 and 1980, “through telekinesis, negative people will cause the poles to shift, which in turn will create rising tides, earthquakes, glacial changes, and the reappearance of large land masses”.
The Reality: Nope! How would that even happen, anyway? Enough people are in a pissy mood and suddenly a huge land mass pokes out of the ocean? And how would you even trace that as the cause? “Scientists are convinced the new continent was caused by a recent wave of grumpiness”?
I was hoping Logan would follow-up with a sweet prediction like “in 1981, positive people strike back and cause the poles to shift back”, but instead he offers some bullshit about superior beings from outer space showing up in 1996 to help solve the energy crisis.
#6
The Psychic: Kathy Sotka, a psychic who showed off her abilities at the young age of 8 by successfully predicting “the death of a relative”. Not sure how this was received at the time -- I mean, was it like “holy moly, grandma DID die! This is a miracle!”?
The Prediction: “The Fountain of Youth will not be discovered in chemicals but rather through mind power and pyramid energy. This by the mid-1980s (sic), sooner than most people believe. Thereafter, homes built in pyramid shapes will come increasingly into vogue”.
The Reality: The 1980s produced some ugly-ass houses, but I don't believe pyramid-themed ones were among them. I don't think the whole fountain of youth thing panned out either.
However, I love the “sooner than most people believe” line. As if all these people back then were like “man oh man, the pyramid energy-based fountain of youth is going to be sweet! Too bad we have to wait until the early 90s for it to be discovered”
“You're just cherry-picking the really bad ones!” you're probably fuming. “You fuckhead!” Well, you're right—I am! However, I'm doing so only in a (futile?) attempt to keep the article mildly interesting and/or entertaining. It would be a bit boring if I wrote stuff like “Ha ha! Dr. N predicted that in 1987 clinics will test people for cancer every six months! WRONG! Does the N stand for ‘Not a fucking psychic', Doc?”.
So, yeah, I plucked out some of the dumbest ones. However, if you're legitimately wondering how the group of psychics held up, let's take a look. But: before we dive in to the data, here's a few ground rules regarding the stats: I ignored predictions marked “No Date Given” cuz, well, when someone makes a prediction along the lines of “People will be grown, or at least ‘started' in gardens like nurseries. This will take place at least 500 years from now”, you grudgingly cannot prove them wrong. You can say “Alright, buster, we'll wait this one out and see who's right”, but you'll never win. In 2475, the psychic's descendents will just shrug and say “She said at least 500 years. Could be another 30,000 years from now before the people gardens get going”.
So, because that's bullshit, I'm leaving such predictions out. Same deal with ones that don't give a specific “at least” time frame, too. I mean, yeah-- “A new laser gun will be able to kill people and destroy huge tanks”—I bet that will happen someday, if it hasn't already. But big fucking deal if you predict that and slap on the caveat of “no date given”. Something that vague, and that believable – “someone will someday invent a better version of an existing thing” – does not make for an impressive prediction. Here, watch me try one: “I predict that someday they will invent a car that goes faster than all existing cars. I give no date for this.” Wow, whoopee! Therefore, those are out too.
With all that trimmed away we are left with the categories of Right, Wrong, and Other. The first two are self-explanatory. Other refers to ones that were too vague, or I wasn't sure and was too lazy to double check. Did country X encounter difficulties in 1978? Shit, maybe, but that's a half assed prediction anyway and I'm not going to check its veracity.
Finally, if someone made a correct prediction in the context of a larger, incorrect prediction, I didn't count it as “right”. For example, predicting that the republican party will win the 1984 election is Right, but predicting that they win it partly due to issues with Jimmy Carter's 2nd term is Wrong. I guess you could argue it either way, but fuck it I'm saying WRONG. Besides, again, that sort of prediction has a 50% chance of being right to start, so it's doesn't even border on being vaguely impressive anyway.
OK! So how'd they do?
230 predictions, between the two books, fit into the criteria outlined above. They breakdown as follows:
Right: 6
Wrong: 213
Other: 11
That's right, the psychics were wrong or too vague…..99.98% of the time! If you didn't know any better, you'd think they were just pulling shit out of their ass, and doing a poor job of pulling it!
“Well, wait a minute” you say. “What were the right ones? If there was even one mind-blowing prediction from back then that turned out to be correct, it would validate the medium!”
Alright, chump, you asked for it. Here are the 6 correct predictions. Now, remember, an actual psychic would presumably be able to warn us about natural disasters, make a killing on sports betting, wow us with dead-on political predictions, help cops find fugitives, and so on. Right? So they have these stunning powers at their disposal, and here's what they hit on:
1. John Reeves, for 1975-1980, said “Russia and the US will remain as leading powers”
2. For 1975-1980: “No world wars”, said psychic Ann Jensen.
3. Ann Jensen also predicted that, for 1981-1990, “Again no world wars”.
4. Ms. Jensen also correctly predicted in 1975 that “all fighting will cease in Vietnam by 1980” (this is arguable I suppose, as there were probably still fist fights and couples arguing and what not).
5. “Senator Howard Baker may seek the presidency in 1980, but his dream will not be realized”, claimed psychic Jeane Dixon.
Now, obviously, these are less than impressive because they are all predictions where the, uh, “psychic” had a 50% chance of being correct-- either those countries remain world powers, or they don't, either there's a world war at some point between 1975 and 1990, or there isn't, and so on and so forth. And shit, look at #5—the psychic was too half-assed to say “Baker will run for president”, instead hedging her bets with “may”.
So that means that out of 230 predictions only 6 were correct, and of those six, 5 were predictions that amounted to coin flipping, leaving us with one:
6. Ms. Jensen, for 1975 to 1980, predicted “The assassination in the US of an important, beloved figure, but not the President”.
…..holy fucking shit! John Lennon! Th-that's amazing! And it also shows impressive restraint, because while Jensen could have chosen to specify the actual name and date, she knew that would be seen as showboating and chose a 60 month window instead.
Either way, I'm convinced now. For certain things, if the choice of explanations is between dumb luck coupled with sufficiently vague and broad details, or magic, you have to go with magic.
So there you have it—psychic powers are real!
