The Unpersuadables: Adventures with the Enemies of Science (43 page)

I follow his slow passage into the lounge, where there is a PC, shelves filled with rocks and statues and old photographs of men with black beards and top hats and faraway eyes, books on psychic healing, twin telepathy and British birdsong and a Roland keyboard with a
towel draped over it. A spoon, bent by Uri Geller, hovers in a plastic box that is screwed to the wall.

I sit for a while on a low sofa, while he rummages for his ‘Randi file’.

‘Are the Pressman statements in here?’ I ask when he returns and lays a thick stack of documents on the coffee table in front of me. This is the evidence that Playfair has spent three decades gathering against Randi.

‘Should be, yes.’

I sift through the sheets, which are faded and riven with fine crows-feet creases around the staples. There are copies of
FATE
magazine (‘The World’s Mysteries Explored’), manuscript pages from one of Playfair’s books,
The Geller Effect
, and a typewritten sheet containing a blurry illustration and a caption: ‘James Runty and his notorious DOG-PLOP gang, shown here taking over a train’.

I sigh and pick up another tattered sheet.

‘That is the clipping from 1974 when he got stuck in the safe in Toronto,’ says Playfair proudly. ‘It’s very bad quality.’

I hold it close, and read what I can.

‘
RANDI – THE HOUDINI WHO DIDN’T
. The Amazing Randi, magician by trade, almost died of embarrassment yesterday – not to mention a lack of oxygen – while bound and locked in
The Sun
’s office safe. The world-famous magician was pulled unconscious from the safe nine minutes and thirty-five seconds after he entered it while horrified staffers looked on … Suddenly from inside, came the shout: ‘Oh, oh … help me … get a drill … hurry it up …’

‘You know,’ says Playfair, ‘he was a complete flop as a magician.’

‘… Randi,’ the article continues, ‘looks more like a pleasant but absent-minded professor than the elite magician that he is.’

I say nothing, pushing the document back in the file. I just need to find the Pressman statements.

‘That’s an interesting case,’ says Playfair, as I glance at the front page of another news-sheet. ‘Possibly worth looking into … ?’

The magazine is called
Saucer Smear
. It is the ‘Official publication of the saucer & unexplained celestial events research society.’ It advertises itself as, ‘
SHOCKINGLY CLOSE TO THE TRUTH
!’

‘Possibly,’ I say, slipping it back in.

I get to the end of the file. There are no statements from Zev Pressman.

‘It’s not much, is it?’ I say.

There is a silence.

‘I’ll give you an example of the kind of thing Randi gets up to,’ he says. ‘It was an interview with a Japanese magazine in 1989, claiming that Wilbur Franklin, the scientist who studied Uri, had killed himself by shooting himself in the head because Randi had exposed him for being a trickster. It was pure invention. Uri filed a lawsuit against him.’

‘Didn’t Randi say that he had been mistranslated, though?’

‘I’m sure that’s what he
said
…’

‘Well, do you have the clipping?’

‘I don’t have the original because it never came out in English.’

I stand up to leave.

‘Well, if the Pressman thing happens to turn up,’ I say, ‘will you post it?’

‘You know,’ says Playfair, ‘Montague Keen kept a big file on Randi.’

‘Did he?’

‘Oh, yes,’ he says. ‘He had a huge falling out with him at a TV studio. I was there.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh, yes. Randi said something or other that was a lot of rubbish. It was pretty vicious.’

‘What did he say?’

‘I couldn’t hear.’

‘Oh.’

I watch for a while as he tries to recall what happened.

‘No,’ he says, glancing towards the window. ‘I can’t remember.’

‘Do you think Montague Keen would remember? Do you think he’d let me see his Randi file?’

‘Monty’s dead.’

‘Right.’

‘But you could call his widow, Veronica. I’m sure she’d accommodate you.’

As soon as I get home, I call Veronica Keen.

‘Randi!’ she booms out in her Irish accent, the instant I mention his name. ‘Oh, my God! Poor man. You don’t dare disagree with Randi. We were in the TV studio, Monty and I, and Randi came towards me. I smiled at him and I said, “You’re a fraud, aren’t you, Mr Randi?” He went stark raving bananas. Oh, Jesus, it was fantastic.’

‘How did Randi respond?’

‘I can’t remember. It will be in the file. But he wrote an article in which I was supposed to be huge and fat and all the rest of it. Monty said, “By the way, Randi will never ever …”, I can’t remember the exact words. It’s all in the file. Someone has helped me tidy up and it’s right up near the ceiling. I can’t get up there.’

‘Maybe I can come and have a look?’

‘Did you know Monty has materialised? Several times. He actually materialised at a public seance. He walked down the whole length of the place and kissed me. People went bananas.’

‘That sounds wonderful,’ I say.

‘Oh, I tell you, my life is so amazing. Oh, my God. Monty was the most amazing man. He is bringing too much information. He says that Jesus did exist but he was an Egyptian prince. The Joseph and Mary bit is – ’ she pauses, lowers her voice – ‘excuse me, but there’s a word I’ve got used to using since Monty died …
bullshit
.’

‘Veronica!’

‘I know. My grandchildren are horrified.’

‘Can I see you on Monday, then? For the Randi file?’

‘I’ll pick you up from the station,’ she says.

‘Well, I hope you have a good weekend.’

‘Oh, it’ll be lovely,’ she says. ‘I’m going to an ancient portal.’

‘That’ll be fun.’

‘I’ve got a portal here anyway,’ she adds, with an audible shrug.

‘Where? In your house?’

‘In the dining room.’

‘Under the table?’

‘No! It’s the room.’

‘Where does it take you?’

‘It’s a portal that links you to the other world.’

‘Wow!’

‘Ah, the things that happen in this life, my boy.’

That weekend, I track down
Randi’s account of his meeting with Veronica Keen
. In his JREF newsletter of 15 August 2003, Randi described what happened after the filming of a British TV show,
The Ultimate Psychic Challenge
. ‘This experience demonstrated for me once more just how angry, frantic, and hateful the believers in life-after-death can be,’ he wrote, describing ‘a direct affront, a rude insult, and an uncalled-for accusation from a very obese, unattractive woman coming from the studio audience, a person who had loudly shouted out abuse to me all during the taping. Passing me in the hallway, she stabbed her finger at me, her face red and contorted with hatred. “Mr Randi, you’re a fake and a fraud!” she screeched. I calmly said to her in my best Churchillian tone, “Madam, you are ugly, but I can reform.”’

I also found a rebuttal
from Veronica’s deceased partner, Montague Keen (‘a brilliant psychic researcher, journalist, agricultural administrator, magazine editor and farmer’). ‘I am sure this is how Mr Randi would like to remember the episode,’ Keen wrote. ‘But I was alongside the lady at the time, and observed what went on … [she] smiled at Mr Randi and said quite politely but firmly, with no finger stabbing, and to his obvious astonishment, “Mr Randi, you’re a fraud,” whereupon he staggered back and stammered, “And you, you, you, you’re ugly,” to which the lady responded as he disappeared backwards through the double doors, “But at least I’m honest.”’

That Monday, Veronica picks me up in her small red car from outside the Totteridge and Whetstone tube station in North London. She is seventy-four and un-obese, with coiffed and dyed strawberry blonde hair, scarlet lipstick and a circular crystal on a gold chain around her neck.

‘This is where John Mack died,’ she says, idly, as she turns left on a suburban street. ‘Knocked off his bike, poor man.’

I thought I must have misheard her.

‘Who?’

‘John Mack, you know. The Harvard professor.’

‘You knew John Mack?’

‘Oh, my God, yes. He was staying with us when he died. He always stayed with us when he was in London.’

I gaze though the rear window at the place where this great heretic came to the end of his own fantastic journey of belief, just as I am coming to the end of mine. I might have once thought this coincidence to be haunted with salience. But I don’t. Not any more.

‘Harvard tried to hound him out of his position,’ I said.

‘Well,’ she says. ‘It was the American government who were behind it.’

‘Is that what John Mack said?’

‘Yes.’

An emotional part of me, I realise, is still yearning to discover that Mack wasn’t crazy.

‘But he said that
after
he died?’ I say, hopefully.

‘No, no. When he was alive. He used to sit and talk to Monty and I. The pressure they put on him was huge. It was a cover-up. The American government didn’t want it all exposed. He said to me, “I couldn’t stop what I was doing. I had to do it.”’

We park at a grassy verge in a pretty road and Veronica leads me into her lounge. It is a portrait of ordinariness, a still life of a perfectly happy elderly woman in middle-class Britain. There is a polite-sized television and family photographs and a coffee table and a box of pink tissues. There are net curtains and coasters and a shelf of VHS videos. There is a magazine that has slipped from the sofa arm onto the soft carpet. As I sit in the small dining area I ask what kind of information Monty usually imparts.

‘Monty is one of a team of twelve on the other side,’ she says, calling through from the kitchen, where she is unboxing a Mr Kipling strawberry sponge cake. ‘They’re working on a project.’

‘Is John Mack one of the twelve?’

‘John isn’t. The only one I recognised was Einstein.’

When we’ve finished our tea and cake, Veronica leads me out of the portal and through to the cramped office that used to be Monty’s domain. There are cases of cassette tapes, piles of books and a cluttered desktop with a strange pot next to a crumpled tissue. ‘Those are Monty’s ashes. He hates this place being so untidy. Do you see those bells on the cabinet? They were on top of the pyramids in Egypt.’

I start at a low shelf pulling out box file after box file. I have to find
the Randi archive. As well as the Pressman documents, there could be all sorts of lost evidence in there, perhaps going back decades. Veronica watches me at work, from the doorway.

‘Monty started telling us about Obama,’ she says. ‘He’s a puppet of the Illuminati. And the Queen’s got her case packed. She’s ready to run.’

‘Why?’ I ask, pulling out another dusty box file.

‘She’s the head of the Illuminati. Remember when Diana died? Did that woman shed a tear? She stood there cold as ice.’

‘With her lizard eyes,’ I mutter, absentmindedly, as I check another.

‘You’ve got it!’ she says delightedly. ‘They have a huge place in Colorado, you know. An underground place. It has every luxury money can buy and if you go within fifteen miles of it you’re dead.’

Another file. Nothing. Another file. Nothing. Not a sign of Randi. Not a sign of Pressman. Not a sign, anywhere.

‘Do you have any idea
at all
where this file might be?’

‘Then suddenly the Queen and Obama were visiting Ireland. And Monty warned us – she was going back to the place where all the Irish kings and queens were crowned, to tap her left foot three times and reclaim it. But – ’ she laughs triumphantly – ‘a friend and I got there before her.’

‘And what did you do?’

‘We tapped first!’ she says with a cackle. ‘We reclaimed Ireland!’

‘That’s a valuable service you’ve provided,’ I say, climbing gingerly on a wheely-chair to reach the top shelf.

‘Oh, it’s not the only thing we’ve done,’ she adds, with a coquettish giggle.

An hour into the search, my patience is drying out.

‘Well, I know they’re here because Monty kept everything,’ says Veronica.

I wipe my hands down my trousers and rub my eyes, which are itchy and tired.

‘Well, could you contact him then?’ I ask, thinly. ‘Could you ask him where they are?’

Veronica looks away.

‘It doesn’t work like that. He speaks to me when he wants to.’

‘But you’ve got a bloody
portal
,’ I snap.

‘The problem is, I’m
so
exhausted.’

Veronica yawns theatrically as I open another box to find a long correspondence with a famous parapsychologist from the University of Arizona – Professor Gary Schwartz.

‘Oh, Schwartz,’ she says dismissively, fingering her crystal. ‘He had his run-ins with Randi. But watch out. Schwartz has an evil mind.’

‘You’re not saying that he’s involved with the Illuminati, too?’

‘He’s a Jew and a scientist. Does that answer your question?’

And with that, I decide to go home.

*

I think I have decided to give up. These Pressman documents probably don’t exist. The many decades’ worth of amassed evidence from Guy Lyon Playfair – a friend of and believer in Uri Geller – was thin, sometimes lurid and often mean-spirited. And when you have Richard Dawkins on one side of an argument and Veronica Keen on the other, you … well … I don’t even know how to finish that sentence.

It is not just Veronica Keen that has made me concerned about the kinds of people who criticise Randi.
Some of the past applicants of the Million Dollar Challenge
include a man named Colin who says he can cause a tone to sound by ‘shooting energy out of his eyeballs,’ a ‘human magnet’ who can lift a fridge with his chest and a woman who can ‘make people urinate themselves with the power of her mind.’

It is also impossible to ignore the fact that Sheldrake’s motives for criticising Randi might be suspiciously emotional. He has, after all, been personally attacked by all of the worshipful satellites that exalt Randi. Read the list – they are all there. It was
Nature
’s Sir John Maddox who wrote the editorial that asked if his was a ‘book for burning.’ Professor Wiseman, a JREF adviser, said that his work is ‘messy’ and debased by errors. Steven Novella has condemned his theory as
‘made-up mystical BS
that has no scientific basis’. Professor Dawkins has accused him of being ‘prepared to believe almost anything’ and dismissed his claims against him as ‘outrageous and defamatory.’