Life After Death
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Life After Death
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The October 5, 1999, edition of MSNBC's Crosstalk NBC (a live, one-hour discussion program)
dealt with "Life after Death." Hosted by NBC News correspondent David Gregory, the guests
included, among others, "medium" George Anderson,
Linda Ellerbee, and myself.
The show promoted that evening's 90-minute HBO documentary entitled Life Afterlife,
the product of Ellerbee's production company. Lisa Jackson, who produced and directed the film, was
on the Crosstalk NBC panel as well, as was New York writer and journalist Lynn Darling,
who participated in the film by allowing another "medium,"
John Edward, to attempt to get her in
touch with her deceased husband. Absent from the documentary was
James Van Praagh, the most famous of the
current crop of superstar "psychic mediums" and about whom I have written previously.
Jackson said that going into the project, "We didn't have an agenda. I think it's just more
interesting to ask the question, 'What if?' than to say it doesn't exist, so that's what we set out
to do. And the more stories we heard, the more we were convinced that there was something here that
was worth a documentary. And it was gutsy of HBO to take it on." Ellerbee, the film's executive
producer and host, explained that as a result of what she learned, her opinion went from "I don't
believe any of this" to "There may be more to [this] than I understand."
During the discussion, Gregory played several clips from the documentary. When I pointed out that
magicians and psychologists are able to perform readings that are just as convincing as the
supposedly genuine ones, Anderson did not disagree: "Skepticism is healthy. The doctor [Posner] has
a very valid point. It means you're thinking."
Darling decided to have a reading for the film because, as a journalist and suffering from grief
herself, she was "very concerned about the amount of attention mediums get [and] angry at the idea
that these emotions can be milked [during] people's most vulnerable moments." She said she was
struck by "how much I wanted it to be true. . . . Part of me was helping, urging him along, being
happy whenever he got something right and kind of ignoring the things he got wrong. . . . He did get
some things right [but] I don't think that means my [deceased] husband was in the room." She did
come away, however, no longer believing that they are all "charlatans," but rather "very impressed
with the sincerity" of the mediums in the documentary.
Ellerbee, after again proclaiming her skeptical bent, directed a question to me: "Do you ever wonder
if maybe your [Tampa Bay Skeptics] society will end up
being like the Flat Earth Society?" I then explained that while believers are generally close-minded
to the possibility that they could be wrong (no matter how much negative evidence is presented), we
"skeptics" (I thought Ellerbee was one!) are open-minded and capable of being persuaded that the
phenomenon in question is genuine, if sufficient proof is offered. I repeatedly mentioned
TBS's $1,000
-- and Randi's $1,000,000 -- enticements for claimants to step
forward for proper scientific testing.
Ellerbee apologized for the "Flat Earth" remark, and I later apologized to her (and Jackson) for
this off-the-cuff comment: When confronted with a scene from the film in which Anderson appears to
score a perfect reading, I blurted out that, unlike in a properly controlled scientific study, I
couldn't "know" with certainty in this instance that Anderson had no advance knowledge of who he
would be reading, since the session occurred while filming "a documentary that I think they wanted
to be sort of pro-paranormal because, after all, those are the TV shows that get the highest
ratings." Great umbrage was taken that I was implying a "setup" (I should have instead simply
enumerated some other ways in which a person could have obtained information). But all was soon
nice-nice once again as the program came to an end.