Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions - James Randi [151]
Peter Hurkos has survived (though he has assumed a very low profile recently) in spite of the almost uninterrupted series of failures for which he has become famous. He has wrongly identified a number of persons as murderers, and when he has been right the people were already in custody. He claims to have identified the famous Boston Strangler. He did not. A few days after Hurkos's Boston Strangler consultation had been completed, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested a man who had claimed to be one of its agents. In his car was discovered a collection of police badges and an assortment of pistols and rifles. The paraphernalia seemed ideal equipment for putting up the front necessary to obtain information about police matters. He was put on trial on charges of impersonating a federal agent, found guilty, and fined $1,000. The man was Pieter Van der Hurk, otherwise known as Peter Hurkos.
The baseball and football predictions offered by Hurkos have been pretty bad. He "found" a fabulous gold mine in Colorado which never produced the wealth he predicted, and when the promoter ran off with Hurkos's wife the Dutch "psychic" took another swallow. In 1950, he concocted a story about having been rushed to England by Scotland Yard in utmost secrecy to help them find the stolen Stone of Scone, which Scottish nationalists had swiped from Westminster Abbey. Hurkos claimed to have been responsible for recovering it. He was not, and the Yard officially denied all connection with him. He still has not reversed himself on his declaration that Adolf Hitler is alive. Wrong. Henry Belk, heir to the Belk department stores, was a great fan and supported Hurkos. Then the "psychic" steered him into a disastrous uranium venture, advised that two of his stores would do well, and told him not to worry about his missing daughter. The stores failed, the uranium fizzled, and the girl was found drowned. Even Charles Tart, the California parapsychologist, tested Hurkos officially in a laboratory and was unable to find any psychic powers. If Tart can't find such powers, they certainly aren't there! Yet Hurkos claims his powers are "87.5 percent accurate"!
There is at least one prediction that a good predictor should be able to come up with, and Peter Hurkos has even failed to do that. He prophesied that he would die on November 17,1961. Today, nineteen years later, Hurkos is still alive and making bad predictions. But Dr. A. Puharich, who gave us Arigo the Psychic Surgeon and Uri Geller, and who believes in all wonders from UFOs to mind-reading horses, has referred to Peter Hurkos as one of "the greatest telepathic talents of modern times," so how can we doubt it? In the face of superior judgment, we must simply discard the awkward facts.
In April 1978 I received a letter from a Rosemary DeWitt, representing "Research Associates, a private research group." The letter informed me that I was about to have my $10,000 snatched away due to a demonstration of "a paranormal talent impossible to replicate." I was assured of the group's integrity by the statement that "as scientists with research backgrounds ourselves, we employ the most advanced scientific techniques known to us in our methodology."
I replied immediately and heard nothing until August. I sent Ms. DeWitt a preliminary test by mail, since her claim seemed to lend itself to such treatment. She had described to me her ability to "dowse" a map to locate ancient ruins and artifacts, whether the map was marked with coordinates or not. I agreed that such a talent was indeed eligible for my award and told her that