Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions - James Randi [85]
Just before my book about Geller was published in 1975, I had appeared on a TV news show and had duplicated the Geller tricks. The next day I received a phone call from a young lady who asked to meet with me to discuss the Geller matter. I met her in New York for lunch, and she told me of her close friend, Katz, who was, as she put it, "mesmerized" by the wonder-worker. On one occasion she had called on Katz at his apartment and found that he was still asleep. A maid was there, and she was let into the apartment. She went to the kitchen and placed in the cutlery drawer a joke item that she had bought in a novelty store—a hinged knife that "breaks" when slight pressure is put on it. She left without waking Yasha, after also planting a package of tricked matches in his ashtray. It was all a gag, she said.
Later that day Katz called her in great excitement. Since she had constantly expressed doubt about Geller's powers, Katz was continually trying to convince her, and he now reported that as he lit his morning cigarette a strange column of ash had grown out of the match! Examining the packet, Katz had discovered that somehow a tricked book of paper matches had been "apported" into his locked apartment. And, declared he, there was no way that anyone could have gotten in. The door had been locked, and Geller was out of town! The girl hastened to assure him that it was all a joke, but Katz was carried away with the miracle and would not listen.
She begged me to meet with Katz, assuring me that he was willing to do so but that he did not want Geller to know. I agreed, and we decided on the China Bowl Restaurant as a rendezvous. Later that day I showed up and was met by the girl, who ushered me into the back room, where I was left alone with Katz. By the time I got there he had already filled an ashtray with cigarette butts and was very nervous indeed. His big fear was that Geller would find out he had contacted me. I assured him that the matter was between the two of us (though that condition no longer holds, of course).
Katz did everything he could to convince me. At one point, he groped around for his lighter, and I produced it from my jacket pocket. He just smiled. His coffee spoon was discovered to be bent rather acutely. Again a tolerant smile. Keys were bent without any reaction from Katz but a sigh, in despair of getting the truth through to me. And then he began telling me stories. I sat and listened, thunderstruck. He related how, on one occasion, Geller had performed a psychokinetic marvel for him. Katz had left the apartment to buy a newspaper on the street. Geller was left inside, asleep on the couch before the TV. When Katz stepped out of the elevator on his return he was stunned to find that one of the apartment furnishings—a heavy decorative planter—was resting against the wall in the hall beside the apartment door. Excitedly, he dashed inside and summoned Geller from a sound sleep, and together they wrestled the planter back inside. "Realize that the door had been locked when I left," explained Katz. "The planter had dematerialized and passed through a locked door into the hall, while Uri was asleep! And that planter is so heavy that Uri strained his back helping me get it back inside. Therefore he could not have moved it himself, even if he hadn't been asleep!" (I wondered just when Geller had strained his back, and I think I know.)
I pointed out that Geller, known to work out with weights, was probably quite capable of such a feat and that he found no impediment in a locked door which could be opened from the inside. Katz was adamant. Why, he asked, would Geller bother to fake such a thing with Yasha Katz? I think it is obvious that Geller's object was to keep people like Katz on the hook. As long as they believed in him they were his slaves, and under control. No amount of effort was too much to keep the peasants in line. But Katz had another miracle to relate.
On returning from the theater one night, Katz