I BELIEVE!

For thousands of years people have been fascinated with the idea of people who have the ability to forecast events and see into the future. Psychics and clairvoyants have fascinated men and women not to mention jealous gypsies. Gypsies, of course, are famous for reading tea leaves, palms of hands and pots of kasha. Why is this need to explain the unexplainable and delve into the unknown so important to humans? If I knew the answer to that I would be spokesman for the Psychic Hotline and sing like Dionne Warwick. Isn’t it interesting that if the Hotline wasn’t a scam they would have known that they’d go bankrupt quicker than Enron’s poor employees.

The list of famous dead, and still dead, clairvoyants include people like: Nostradamus – whose “readings” of the future still fascinate millions. “Nostra” as he was known by friends predicted such historical events as Napoleon’s defeat in Cleveland, Ohio and the lack of staying power of the Nehru jacket. Personally, “Nostra” always sounded like a nose spray to the Geezer. There was also Jeanne Dixon, a strange woman who insisted that the price of the 3 cents stamp would never go down – and – that Paul Anka would lose his suntan. Edgar Cayce was a very famous clairvoyant who to the day he died insisted he wouldn’t. He took out a perpetual life insurance policy with Lloyd’s of London which ended when he passed at the age of 6-months.

The reason for this exploration of the hereafter comes about because of a very interesting pay-television séance on In Demand which conducted a pay-television séance to contact John Lennon. The séance was organized by the producers of a failed 2003 attempt to channel the late Princess Diana’s spirit, a show the earned scathing reviews but grossed close to 8 million. They never did ‘contact’ Diana; it seems she was out for a drive in Paris. I guess that experience proves that a sucker is born every minute which was the theme of the TV series, “Vomiting with the Stars.”

These hucksters decided to continue their scam and came up with the idiotic idea of trying to contact John Lennon. If you don’t think people actually spent dollars and euros on this scam, you are the kind of yahoo who believes that Barry Bonds doesn’t take steroids. People paid $9.95 to watch the pay-for-view Lennon special and saw audio crew members, a psychic and an expert in paranormal activity claim that the late Beatle’s spirit contact them through what is described as an Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP). The EVP was discovered during a taping of a séance at La Fortuna restaurant in New York, which Lennon frequented.

La Fortuna had an autographed picture of Lennon prominently displayed next to a signed photo of Norm Crosby and Mookie Wilson. The show’s organizers said psychic Joe Power’s voice feed went dead for a few seconds and the message was found on it when the tape of the voice feed was played back. EVP is based on a belief that spirit voices communicate through radio and TV broadcast signals. On the television show, filming at La Fortuna suddenly stopped and the narrator said something odd has happened. Power had turned his back to the audience, then turned back and placed a Ringo Starr doll seated on his lap. Without trying to move his lips too much a mysterious voice can be heard on Power’s voice feed seemingly coming from the Ringo doll. The producers called an “EVP specialist” to examine the voice and she proclaimed it Lennon’s. In that she happened to be the daughter of the show’s producer caused some skeptics to cry “fowl!”

When they examined the voice which believer's insisted said, "Peace...the message is Peace," but doubters insisted said, "Peaches...I can't find a good, juicy peach here." They also said the voice sounded very much like Senor Wences’. Some critics called the entire exercise “tacky and exploitative.” However, they announced their own production to try and contact Jimmy Hoffa in Bosnia or Camp David. It’ll be $9.95 well spent.