Psychic Phenomena

A small wooden cabinet went up for auction on EBay. Inside were two locks of hair, one granite slab, one dried rosebud, one goblet, two wheat pennies, one candlestick and, allegedly, one "dibbuk," a kind of spirit popular in Yiddish folklore. The seller, a Missouri college student named Iosif Nietzke, described the container as a "haunted Jewish wine cabinet box" that had plagued several owners with rotten luck and a spate of bizarre paranormal stunts.

There was a time when EBay was just an Internet yard sale frequented by obsessive-compulsives and their enablers, a benign but unstoppable engine of dot-com success. Today, 430,000 Americans earn all or most of their living from EBay sales. Yet, in this, the company's 10th year, EBay is still most infamous as a repository for humankind's most shameless hucksterism.

Margins of Reality: The Role of Consciousness in the Physical World by Robert G. Jahn and Brenda J. Dunne (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: $27.95; 415 pages) "I hope I never see a flying saucer," a friend of mine once told me. "And I certainly hope I never go for a ride in one." "Why not?" I wondered. "Because," he said, "I don't want everybody to think I'm crazy." This conversation came to mind while reading "Margins of Reality" by Robert G. Jahn and Brenda J.

There's a place aboard the Wild Goose where, if you squint your eyes just right, you might feel that John Wayne is staring you down. It's at the top of a stairway connecting the wood-paneled dining room to the dark decks below. Tiptoeing down those stairs at night, you find yourself gazing directly into a dim portrait of the late actor and America icon -- a ghostly face that could give even the most stout-hearted visitor the shivers. Wayne once owned this yacht.

College professor Nguyen Ngoc Hung had spent nearly three decades searching for the remains of his brother, who died at age 20 fighting U.S. troops. Hung had scoured battlefields in Vietnam's Central Highlands and talked to military commanders and pored through archival records, always coming up empty-handed. Finally, in desperation, he went to a psychic here and explained his grief. "This is easy," Pham Thi Hang said. "I can help."

James Van Praagh promises us one hell of a heaven. It's a place with forests and flowers and lakes and boats, and beautiful mansions, too. It's a place where the aged return to their prime and where the young, struck down too soon, can grow into theirs. It's a place where amputees find their limbs restored and those blown to bits in a plane crash become whole again. OK, heavy smokers may still be battling their addiction and the mentally ill may need some counseling.

1. PLUM CANYON Saugus Plum Canyon, a long, narrow rock crevice in Saugus that runs from Vasquez Canyon to Bouquet Canyon Road, is reportedly where a small contingent of Spanish soldiers were ambushed and slain in 1821 by Native Americans during the war between Spain and Mexico. Repeated stories of Spanish ghosts and strange happenings in the canyon keep the tale alive. Since the mid-19th Century, in a spot a little to the west, between Bouquet and Mint canyons, the quiet, unassuming ghost of a Spanish woman in a light satin dress and blue shawl has reportedly been spotted floating along the path.

James (The Amazing) Randi used to be content escaping Houdini-style from locks and straitjackets while suspended over a Manhattan boulevard. But with the rise of popularity in all things paranormal in the '60s--from UFO sightings to Uri Geller bending spoons--Randi began a crusade to show that paranormal claims were nothing more than the results of the kind of magic tricks he learned long ago as a teen-age student of magician Harry Blackstone.

Lightning shot through the telephone and into Dannion Brinkley's body, welding the nails in his shoes to the nails in the floor--and sending his soul on one of the most bizarre near-death sojourns ever recounted. According to his best-selling book, "Saved by the Light," Brinkley traveled to a luminous crystal city where he met 13 silver-blue spirit beings, learned of calamities in store for the Earth and saw his entire life flash before him. Or so the story goes.

After 12 years of not hearing from my dad, I was starting to get worried. I mean, just because he's been dead the whole time doesn't mean he can't stay in touch. With so many talented psychics running around, including several who have their own TV shows, the lines of communication should be wide open. Unfortunately, even though my job as a journalist has required me to interview psychic dogs, psychic humans and the occasional Magic 8 Ball, my father's spirit has never materialized. Until now.

A small wooden cabinet went up for auction on EBay. Inside were two locks of hair, one granite slab, one dried rosebud, one goblet, two wheat pennies, one candlestick and, allegedly, one "dibbuk," a kind of spirit popular in Yiddish folklore. The seller, a Missouri college student named Iosif Nietzke, described the container as a "haunted Jewish wine cabinet box" that had plagued several owners with rotten luck and a spate of bizarre paranormal stunts.

The ghost story: A newspaper reporter researching ghosts in Orange County asks local Native Americans for permission to visit an ancient tribal cemetery, reputed to be the spookiest place around. They say no, it's hallowed ground, and forbid him to pass beyond the graveyard's locked gate. He goes anyway, climbing a fence after midnight to get in. They find him the next day -- dead of a heart attack -- his face contorted in fear, with fingernails bloodied in an apparent attempt to escape.

The legend of the ghost of the Hotel del Coronado has been floating around the landmark seaside resort ever since the mysterious death of a woman garbed in black more than 110 years ago. The famous hotel near San Diego, a glamorous stopover for kings and presidents, isn't the only one with a resident ghost. The Hollywood Roosevelt supposedly has at least two -- Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift.

Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine and director of the Skeptics Society, has an idea for a TV show that would debunk psychics, faith healers and other mysterious phenomena that he deems a fraud or simply explainable in less-than-supernatural terms. So far, no one has bitten. And surveying the TV landscape, it's not hard to understand why--the strange and unexplained having been very, very good to television, providing scant incentive to suggest otherwise.

After 12 years of not hearing from my dad, I was starting to get worried. I mean, just because he's been dead the whole time doesn't mean he can't stay in touch. With so many talented psychics running around, including several who have their own TV shows, the lines of communication should be wide open. Unfortunately, even though my job as a journalist has required me to interview psychic dogs, psychic humans and the occasional Magic 8 Ball, my father's spirit has never materialized. Until now.

While making "The Omen," the 1976 horror thriller, producer Harvey Bernhard wore a Coptic cross on the set for protection. Bob Munger, an advertising executive who'd brought him the concept of the arrival of the antichrist in the form of a cherubic-looking young boy named Damien, had warned Bernhard that "things were going to happen" of a distinct satanic bent on the set. "He warned us that he thought the devil didn't want us to make the picture," recalls Bernhard.

I have had much success in the field of psychic vision, as the reader may remember, by predicting against the occurrence of anything predicted by professional seers. It is my theory that they are all fakes, that they are all wrong about 99% of the time, and that if you simply counterpredict their predictions, you can hardly go wrong.

The Orange County psychic who counseled Robert L. Citron for 15 years said Tuesday that she told the former Orange County treasurer she didn't feel he would be sentenced to prison. Jeannie Smith, 63, said Citron never asked her for investment advice, even as he continued to consult her after interest rates plunged in 1994, causing a $1.64-billion loss in the county investment pool that he managed and forcing the county into bankruptcy.

A memorable episode of "The X-Files" featured a serial killer who preyed upon psychics and fortunetellers. "You really should have seen this coming," he says, almost apologetically, as he descends on one of his victims. While psychics and spiritual mediums may provide a good laugh to skeptics, they are also big business, as the proliferation of late-night TV gurus such as Kenny Kingston and Miss Cleo demonstrates.

College professor Nguyen Ngoc Hung had spent nearly three decades searching for the remains of his brother, who died at age 20 fighting U.S. troops. Hung had scoured battlefields in Vietnam's Central Highlands and talked to military commanders and pored through archival records, always coming up empty-handed. Finally, in desperation, he went to a psychic here and explained his grief. "This is easy," Pham Thi Hang said. "I can help."