By Gary P. Posner
Tampa Bay Skeptics Takes Its
"$1,000 Challenge" to TV: No Winners
The Tampa Bay Skeptics (which I founded in 1988) took its "$1,000
Challenge" (along with three mystery boxes, a
secret envelope, and a blank
check) to the area's most popular TV talk show, "Eye on Tampa Bay" (since
renamed the "Kathy Fountain Show") on January 28. A correct
determination of the contents of any of the four containers would have
yielded an instant $1,000 for any of the "psychic" viewers in the studio or
the live television audience. But, as we expected, no one walked away with
the prize.
Chairman Terry Smiljanich, vice-chairman Miles Hardy and I
represented
TBS on the panel. On a table alongside our chairs were the numbered
boxes and envelope, with my very own "crystal ball" placed behind them to
enhance the atmosphere. Interspersed among the questions about TBS
from host Kathy Fountain and the audience were the alleged "psychic"
prognostications (and admitted "guesses") from studio and home viewers
eager to show just how wrong TBS is about the existence of ESP and other
paranormal phenomena.
In complete secrecy before arriving at the studio, I had placed an object in
box #1 (a coin containing silver that had been to the moon) and in the
envelope (the original artwork of a Don Addis "Psychic Hotline" cartoon
from the St. Petersburg Times). Smiljanich had done the same for box #2
(a figurine of a tortoise hatching out of its egg), and Hardy for box #3 (a
doll used in the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test). Not even we knew what
was in each others' box/envelope until they were all opened at the very
end of the show.
Fountain announced during the program that "We invited dozens,
hundreds [of psychics] and said come in the audience," but only two or so
seemed to have accepted the invitation. One offered an explanation for
why her fellow practitioners might have hesitated to participate in such a
forum: "The psychic ability is a gift
The other "psychic" audience member, wearing a pyramid on her head,
was Sue Wallace, a participant in the September 1992 Discovery Expo at
the Tampa Convention Center, and identified in its program guide as a
"bio-magnetic research scientist." Wallace made two incorrect guesses, but
her forte, she claimed, is the ability to "scan people's bodies and know
what's wrong with them. I can scan anyone."
Only after the show was over was I reminded by Gloria Singleton, a TBS
member and patient of mine who had attended the Discovery Expo "for
fun," that it was Wallace who had diagnosed her there as having "lung
cancer." Singleton tells me that one of her two girlfriends who witnessed
the incident had "turned white in total shock." Fortunately, and
predictably, that "diagnosis" proved to be as off-base as were Wallace's on-air
guesses.
During the show, Fountain had asked Smiljanich about the seemingly
innocuous, "fun" nature of paranormal activities. Although Terry pointed
out quite nicely how such is not always the case, I wish I could have used
the above example to even more vividly illustrate for the vast viewing
audience just how destructive, and downright cruel, this kind of "fun"
activity can really be.
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