COLD READINGS
Seldom, if ever, does a teller have an opportunity to do background research on a
customer. What she sees at first meeting is what she gets--but she is trained to
see far more than most people.
We are all constantly giving off tremendous amounts of information about who we
are, where we have been and what we have done. We do so through body language,
accent, vocabulary, intonation, hair style, jewelry, clothes and many other
attributes. Similar clues reveal our present disposition: happy, troubled, angry,
perplexed, in pain and so on.
All of us are more or less adept at interpreting the signals emitted by others and use them
extensively and often unconsciously in daily interaction. Fortunetellers have
perfected the observations. They quickly read the available clues and consequently
know much about their clients in the first few minutes of the initial contact.
Thus the pleasantries of introduction prepare the teller to say things about her
client's past no one should know who hasn't been there.
The first visit to a fortuneteller almost always begins with what is called a
"cold reading" during which the teller reveals information about the client's
past, current affairs and problems, much more information than is gleaned from
surface clues. Although cold readings can be extremely impressive, there is
nothing really mysterious about them. A cold reading consists of nothing more than
making observation-based generalities or ambiguous comments, carefully noting the
responses of the subject to what is said and letting those responses guide and
channel subsequent remarks.
The reason most fortunetellers prefer palm reading over other techniques is that
holding the client's hand provides a valuable aid in doing a cold reading. The
hand is a finely tuned barometer expressing one's feelings. In unconscious,
reflexive response to what the client is thinking and feeling, the hand informs
the fortuneteller where she has made a mistake or guessed correctly, appropriately
inferred an attitude, properly gauged a prejudice or hit a raw nerve. It similarly
tells her whether her customer is nervous, afraid, surprised, awed, suspicious and
the like. In the vocabulary of fortunetellers, interpreting signals coming from
the hand is known as "muscle reading."
In using this technique the teller studying the palm of an inner city client might
begin like this: "I see here it just seems nobody appreciates you. You work your
fingers to the bone and nobody cares." (This will fit most inner city clients.)
If the fortuneteller knows she's right through muscle reading, a nod or comment,
she continues: "You try to be good, to be kind and considerate but nobody cares.
You have been doing this for a long time."
Should, however, the teller sense that she has misread the client, she changes
tactics: "But I also see you got gumption. You're made of sterner stuff, able to
rise above all that and be proud of what you've made of yourself."
By always having two alternative responses, one to enlarge on what has been said
and the second to correct an error without appearing to have made one, the
fortuneteller covers her mistakes and lets the client lead her down the path of
the client's history. The teller can also obtain a wealth of information while
pondering her client's palm by remaining silent. Many patrons are anxious to find
someone to talk to who will listen, and the successful fortuneteller listens well.
Later the fortuneteller will repeat much of what she has been told but make it
appear as though the knowledge comes from her psychic powers.
Another technique for eliciting information from the client while appearing to be
all-knowing is to sprinkle the reading liberally with ambiguous imagery. With this
technique a general statement is made and we are left to fill in the blanks. For
example, the savant might say, "I see you standing at a crossroads in your life
and unsure which way to go. But you made the right choice." Since we are all
constantly faced with options and must choose among alternatives, every one of us
has stood at the teller's crossroads and will immediately recall a fairly
momentous decision that in hindsight was the correct one. Again, the
fortuneteller's "Sometime soon I see you all in black with tears in your eyes and
pain in your heart" is remembered in retrospect as "She not only told me Henry was
going to die but when he would die."
To enhance the cold reading techniques the fortuneteller will usually perform an
assortment of parlor tricks. Not expecting this type of exhibition most clients do
not watch what is being done with the jaundiced eye of those who attend the
performance of a stage illusionist. Here's a sampling of their most common tricks:
PSYCHIC THREAD
The teller has her client break off three pieces of thread form a spool and tie a
knot in each one. Explaining that the pieces of thread represent the client, her
husband and their child while the knots represent troubles the family is
experiencing, the teller wads up the pieces, places them in the client's palm,
folds the client's fingers back over them and prays. "Dear God, show this woman
that between us, You and me can solve her problems." When the hand is opened the
thread is restored to a single strand but the three knots are still in it.
Again the thread is wadded, placed in the client's palm and her fingers closed
over it. After the requisite prayer the thread emerges both united and knotless.
Then the fortuneteller makes her pitch for future sessions.
"It's going to take time to work, Honey, but if you have faith in God, faith in me
and faith in yourself, one of these days we're going to make your family whole and
untroubled again just like we did with the thread."
MAGIC MONEY
To demonstrate that she can make money multiply, the teller folds and refolds
a five dollar bill, then puts it in the client's hand and closes the client's
fingers around it. The prayer said over the fist apparently works for when the
hand is opened the five dollar bill has been transformed into a ten. It is a trick
aspiring magicians usually learn as children, practicing with play money long
before they ever have a real five dollar bill, much less a ten.
A LETTER FROM GOD
A message from God, usually telling the client that the teller is a trusted and
gifted servant here on earth, is easily produced. Tearing a seemingly blank sheet
of paper from her notebook, the teller holds the paper over the flame of a
"sacred" candle and slowly the communication emerges. This trick, when
appropriately presented, has even fooled people who in their youth learned that
something written in lemon juice disappears as it dries but reappears when the
paper is heated.
CURSES
KANSAS CITY, MO ---A Kansas City fortuneteller who was convicted of stealing a woman's life-savings jumped bond Thursday morning before
she was to be sentenced.
An arrest warrant was issued for Julia Marks, 51, after
she did not appear for her sentencing. A Jackson County jury convicted Marks in
May on charges she conned an Arizona woman into mailing 20 packages of cash to a
Kansas City post office in 1988. Marks told the woman that the money was cursed
and she would clean it and return it to her.
Together, cold reading, ambiguous imagery, simple magic tricks, showmanship and a
habit of telling the client what he or she wants to hear can turn a first time
customer into what the fortuneteller wants most, a patron who will return for
weeks, months and sometimes for years.
Although most fortunetellers limit their activities to those already discussed,
restricting themselves to their normal fee and striving to create a regular
clientele of satisfied customers, there are exceptions. There is always the
temptation to take customers for much more than the normal fee, especially if they
are wealthy. Doing so with those who are superstitious, gullible and deeply
troubled is simple. Unlike the Kansas City fortuneteller mentioned in the
newspaper article, many tellers who do go for the big scam succeed in conning
their victims without ever getting involved with the law.
The fortuneteller who decides to take her victim for all she can get typically
begins with the "big lie." The bad luck, ill health, financial trouble, family
turmoil, social problems and other ills that plague the customer are attributed to
someone who has placed a curse on him or her. That curse has thwarted the client's
aspirations and brought tribulations to the client.
The culprit said by the fortuneteller to be the source of the curse is someone out
of the client's past who has reason to wish him or her harm. It may be a jilted
lover, a former spouse, an offended neighbor, an alienated relative, a dismissed
employee or anyone else with whom the client has had conflict. Using her cold
reading abilities the fortuneteller lets her client unwittingly suggest an
appropriate person, someone who will be readily accepted as the originator of the
curse.
DEVILED EGGS
Just as the fortunetellers often use magic tricks to convince their customers that
they have supernatural powers, so they use other magic tricks to convince clients
that they have been cursed or bewitched.
"Take an egg," the fortuneteller says, "and put it in your bra between your
breasts at least an hour before our next meeting. The egg is the source of life.
It can help restore happiness in your life." At the following session the teller
holds the egg close under the eyes of the customer. "Here," she intones, "is an
egg that has been lying near your heart. It has been sucking the poison, the evil,
the witchcraft away from your heart, making you healthier, taking away your
troubles. See!" She smashes the egg and there in the mess is a hairy mass of evil.
Breaking the egg that close to the client inevitably makes her flinch, avert her
face and often close her eyes. Adding the "evil" is a simple matter.
Whatever the ruses used, they dramatically support the fortuneteller's contention
that her customer has been cursed and that, in time, the teller can use her
supernatural powers to ease and eventually terminate the effects of the curse.
Aside from frequent prayers, the most common ritual performed to enlist God's
support against the curse is the burning of candles. The candles are purportedly
imported from the Holy Land and are expensive, often costing fifty dollars or more
each. An effective treatment of the curse may require up to a hundred candles and
desperate victims have burned far more. For some patrons burning candles is
sufficient to exhaust their savings accounts. Others are more abundantly funded
and open to other con games.
CURSE REMOVAL TACTICS
One big lie typically leads to another. The patron who will accept the
fortuneteller's tale that he or she has been cursed will also believe the story
that the curse is contagious, capable of infecting things associated with the
client. Police records show that jewelry and money are most vulnerable to curse
contamination, but stamp collections, stocks, bonds and other valuables have also
been contaminated by the curse. So long as the client continues to hold the
curse-polluted possessions they form a concentrated mass of evil against which the
teller's rituals are ineffective. According to the fortuneteller, the only remedy
is to destroy or get rid of the polluted items.
Currency, stamps and other paper products can be burned but gold, silver, platinum
and precious stones require another treatment. They may be thrown into a river or
lake but the most effective means of disposal is to bury them in a graveyard where
the hallowed ground efficiently combats the evil poison. Many clients who accept
the necessity of burying their polluted valuables are loath to enter the cemetery
themselves and entrust the task to their fortuneteller, much to the delight of the
swindler who buries the valuables in her safe-deposit box.
Earlier it was noted that the classic bujo is rarely used today because
of decreased nomadism. Yet the switching technique used in the bujo is too
good an artifice to be ignored or forgotten. It plays a prominent role in getting
rid of items contaminated by a curse.
Polluted articles are brought to the fortuneteller who wraps them in a scarf or
puts them in a paper bag or cardboard box which is sewed, taped or tied as a
package. While heads are bowed in prayer and the victim prays for God's help in
conquering the curse, the package is switched for an identical package containing
cheap costume jewelry or newspapers cut in the shape of currency.
If polluted money is to be burned, the package is given to the client who is
led outside to a steel drum in which a roaring fire is started. Into the fire the
package is dropped. Reportedly, if one watches closely enough he or she can see
the evil rising in the flames and smoke.
Clients with unburnable items are given packages they believe contain their
valuables and are driven to a secluded bridge over a river or a dock from which
they take a boat out onto the lake. "The instant your cursed jewelry sinks below
the waves," the client is told, "you will feel a tremendous relief." The
suggestion itself is sufficient to commonly produce the predicted sensation.
TOP SECRET
Fortunetellers, whether working with a steady clientele or perpetrating a large
swindle, operate best if they can isolate their victim from others. Secrecy about
what goes on in the parlor is of crucial importance and the larger the scam the
more vital secrecy becomes. Friends and relatives of the client are likely to
doubt the fortuneteller's powers and view his or her sessions with the teller as a
waste of money. Spouses become angry when rent and food money gets tucked down a
teller's cleavage. Children become understandably incensed if they see their
inheritance being drained away and family heirlooms thrown into a river.
Once the fortuneteller has made her client dependent on her, she stops
cajoling and begins to threaten. By this point in the relationship the teller has
discovered what the client fears most: loneliness, cancer, divorce, loss of
fortune, whatever. Those fears, she predicts, will turn into realities unless the
client maintains absolute secrecy.
Exorcising the curse can be very expensive, costing hundreds or thousands of
dollars. In Dallas, Texas, one victim, a graduate engineer, was taken for
$170,000. In New York City another victim lost $108,000 to fortunetellers. In 1989
and 1990 seven victims in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed more than $270,000 to
a mother and daughter team of fortunetellers.
In the Hartford case the mother's husband had bragged to a relative that his wife
was going to take everything her clients had; she'd leave them with nothing but
"bread and water." His wife and daughter did, in fact, virtually pauperize their
victims. Noting not only the money swindled but the psychological stress and
turmoil the pair inflicted on their victims, the judge presiding at their trial
sentenced the mother to 230 years in prison on twelve counts and the daughter to
160 years. Even with the sentences running concurrently, it will be many years
before either is free.
As of this writing another mother and daughter team, Marie Wilson and Ann
Corricelli of East Peoria, Illinois, are still free and are probably somewhere in
Europe. They are charged with swindling fifteen women out of $600,000. Additional
victims are known to the police but those victims refuse to press charges or
testify in court; they are too humiliated and embarrassed at being gullible.
Undoubtedly there are other, unknown victims who for the same reason will not
admit their involvement with the fortunetellers to the police.
One of the victims who has agreed to testify, Mrs. Josephine Wallace, a widow, was
swindled out of over $200,000 in cash and jewelry. The fortunetellers also got her
to buy them a $30,000 Cadillac DeVille. The second largest loser was a woman taken
for $180,000. Like Josephine Wallace, most of the victims were elderly although
there were several college-educated professional women in their twenties and
thirties among the victims.
After one client complained to police about Wilson and Corricelli, bunco
officers initiated an investigation which included questioning people seen
visiting the Corricelli home and others who received numerous telephone calls from
that house. Word of the investigation soon got back to the fortunetellers from
some of those questioned and mother and daughter abruptly left town before they
could be arrested. Although Marie Wilson was subsequently captured and returned to
Illinois, she posted bond and again vanished.
In 1989 the swindling of Josephine Wallace was dramatized on NBC's Unsolved
Mysteries. The viewer response was by far the largest in the history of the
program. Calls flooded both the studio and Illinois officials from Canada, Mexico
and all 48 contiguous states. Relatively few calls pertained specifically to the
Wilson-Corricelli case. The majority were from people who had been victimized in
similar swindles but before seeing Unsolved Mysteries thought their cases
were unique. A subsequent second showing of the program generated almost as much
viewer response as the first one did.
Whether performing for a standard fee or gouging their victims out of everything
possible, criminal soothsayers swindle elderly people out of billions of dollars
every year. Unfortunately the reticence of many victims to admit their association with the tellers, bring charges and
testify makes even an educated guess at just how much money is fraudulently stolen
impossible. Feeling shame at having been taken in by fortunetellers and therefore
remaining silent may protect the victim from unwanted publicity but it also
protects the tellers from unwanted notoriety and allows them to continue fleecing
others.
REALITY
The bottom line on all so-called psychic powers is that they have yet
to be scientifically proven. So whenever you are tempted to place your faith or
your life's savings into the hands of your neighborhood fortuneteller just ask
yourself these questions: If Madam Teller actually possessed such awesome powers,
would she really be wasting her time with trivial readings and cheap parlor
tricks? Couldn't she just as easily become an instant millionaire by applying her
"special insight" to the stock market, the race track or the state lottery? Would
you place the same trust in an untrained or unlicensed doctor?
If after answering these questions the urge to visit a teller still persists, then
nothing else could possible convince you that "fortunetelling" and "fraud" are
indeed synonymous terms.
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