Hits & Mrs. Read online

  How did Gil know that Stephanie was calling to ask about her cheating boyfriend? Claudia didn’t believe he was using psychic powers. Was the producer feeding this information to Gil beforehand? And where did he get off interfering in the love lives of complete strangers? In her line of work Claudia was all too familiar with cheaters, dogs, and players, and she was the first person to advise a friend to break up with a philanderer, but Gil was playing with people’s lives. His detailed description of Stephanie’s “soul mate” sounded impressive on air, but that’s all that the public would ever hear about the matter and he’d never be held accountable if he were wrong. Stephanie would waste her time searching for a tall man named Paul with light blonde hair and grey-colored eyes who works in the healthcare industry and does martial arts, instead of looking for Mr. Right, whoever he was.

  If anyone was “holding her back from her future potential” it was Gil.

  “Now we have Justin from Walnut Creek on the line,” said Johnny.

  “Hey Johnny. Hi Gil,” said Justin.

  “I’m sensing that you have a question about your career, Justin,” Gil said. “I feel you’re unhappy with your current job.”

  “That’s right, Gil,” he replied.

  “I see money all around you, but none of it is yours… Do you work in finance or banking?” Gil asked.

  “Yes! I’m an accountant. I’ve had the same job for nine years,” he complained.

  “…You’re bored with your work,” said Gil. “You don’t like your colleagues and you can’t stand your boss... he’s a jerk. I don’t think you’re cut out to be just another nine-to-five wage slave. That could never be truly fulfilling for someone like you. You have too much drive and too many good ideas of your own... Does this make sense to you?”

  “It sure does, Gil,” replied Justin. “That’s exactly how I feel.”

  “You’re seeking change in your life…” said Gil. “You want to escape the office… You’re considering something completely different…maybe something outdoors, like a park ranger. No, wait…you’re interested in landscaping?”

  “Yes! I want to be a landscape architect. I want to design gardens and parks.”

  “But you’re concerned about leaving a well-paying, steady job to start a new business in this bad economy. Is this right, Justin?”

  “That’s right, Gil,” he agreed. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to make as much money as I’m making now.”

  “I foresee some very good prospects arising from your natural ability to develop opportunities. My advice is that you tell your boss to “take this job and shove it” and pursue your passion,” said Gil. “You won’t be sorry you did.”

  “I’m going to do it right now!” Justin decided confidently. “Thanks Gil!”

  Claudia thought it was very irresponsible of Gil to advise a stranger to quit his job. What if he had a mortgage or a family to support? He would lose his heath insurance and financial security all because of a stupid psychic hunch.

  “More great psychic advice from Gil!” praised Johnny. “Now that we’ve had the chance to hear a few readings, let’s give one away. Be the tenth caller right now to receive a free private reading from world famous psychic Gil Godsend!” he cried with so much excitement he sounded like he was going to piss his pants. “Our next caller is Wendy from Napa.”

  “Hi, Wendy,” said Gil. “I’m getting the strong impression that you have an illness that hasn’t been diagnosed yet. What is it about your health that concerns you?” he asked.

  “You’re right, Gil,” Wendy said. “I’ve put on weight for no reason and I feel sluggish. I’m always sleepy and I have a lack of energy,” she said tiredly. “I’m kind of down too. I’ve lost my zest for life.”

  “Your symptoms are tied in with an illness your mother suffered,” Gil diagnosed. “You harbor a deep resentment towards her because of her sickness, what it did to you, and the fear it left you with. You need to deal with that underlying resentment and fear in order to heal. This is making sense to you, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “That’s true, Gil,” she agreed. “My mother did have a chronic illness and I had to take care of her for the final years of her life. I love her, but I feel like I lost so much time.”

  “Wendy, you need to get in touch with your own body. I sense that meditation and yoga are on the path to wellness for you. Try to find creative or artistic outlets for your stress… I also feel that you may have a chemical sensitivity. Massage is important to rid your body of toxins. Also try an organic, gluten-free diet, and drink lots of green tea. If you don’t feel better within three months I suggest you visit a naturopath or an homeopath,” he advised. “Remember…natural is always better.”

  “Thanks, Gil!” said Wendy with hope in her voice. “I’ll give that a try.”

  Claudia was angry that Gil was giving medical advice. This woman clearly needed to see a doctor, not some sort of quack. She probably needed medication, not massage and a cup of herbal tea. The longer she put off seeing a doctor, the worse her outcome could be. Gil’s advice was useless at best, and potentially dangerous at worst.

  “Thanks for that, Dr. Godsend!” Johnny joked. “So…are you a healer too?”

  “I don’t call myself a healer, Johnny, but others do,” Gil replied. “I’m a medical intuitive so I can diagnose people’s illnesses. I’m also what some might call an empath. This means that I tune into the emotions and feelings of others. I feel what they feel. This ability can be a blessing, or a curse. It means I feel the headaches and colds of people around me. I feel the exhaustion, anxiety and anger vibrations of strangers. But occasionally, I feel the good things that others feel. I feel it when someone’s happy, excited, or even drunk or stoned around me. I’ve had some strange experiences with this ability. Once I was staying in a hotel room and felt the orgasms of the couple in the suite next door!”

  What complete and utter bullshit, Claudia thought.

  How did Gil know the caller’s questions before they asked them? She knew these were all popular questions that people have for psychics. Love, money, and health are the three most common topics clients ask about, so it was possible that Gil was just guessing their concerns. But she had learned not to give Gil the benefit of the doubt. He seemed to know too much. She suspected that the producer was taking the callers’ questions, pumping them for specific information and then sharing this with Gil so it appeared as if he was reading their minds.

  Now it was time to test her theory. Claudia turned off the radio and called the station to get a reading of her own.

  The line was so busy that she had to call several times to get through.

  “K.A.Z.Z. Do you have a question for Gil?”

  “Yes, I do. There’s something I need to know urgently!”

  “Sure, Miss. What’s your name, town, and your question please?”

  Aha! She knew it! Gil was getting the questions ahead of time!

  “Um. I’m… Mary from Moraga.”

  “And your question for Gil?”

  “Was my Uncle Kevin’s death really just an accident, or was it…murder?”

  This was juicy one!

  “Whoa! I totally understand why you need to know that! How did he die?” he asked, seemingly pumping her for more information to feed to Gil.

  “He…ahem…‘fell’ to his death during a hike,” she said dramatically.

  The producer was riveted.

  “What makes you think it might be murder?” he whispered.

  “Well, Uncle Kevin was hiking ‘alone’ in Colorado when he fell 50 feet off a cliff. He had a lot of enemies,” she said mysteriously. “We’re still looking for answers.”

  The producer salivated at the anticipated surge in ratings.

  “Don’t give Gil any information unless he asks for it,” he instructed her. “I’m going to put you on hold until I can connect you.”

  “Okay.”

  Claudia laughed at the producer’s request that she not give up any
information to Gil unless he asked for it. She’d already provided him with everything he needed to give a convincing reading. He would believe she didn’t know the circumstances surrounding the death, which would allow him to fabricate the details. But this was a set up. If Gil fed back to her the information she gave to the producer then she knew he was cheating. Anyway, someone with real psychic powers should know that she wasn’t Mary from Moraga and that she didn’t have a dead Uncle named Kevin, but psychics gave numerous excuses for not being able to see through a ruse designed to expose them as frauds.

  Claudia had been waiting for her reading for about ten minutes before the producer finally got back to her.

  “Hello there, Mary?”

  “Am I next?” she asked impatiently.

  “No, I’m sorry. We’re out of time for today,” he announced.

  “What?” she cried in surprise.

  She was certain that Gil was going to take the bait.

  “But…I’ve been asked to give you Gil’s personal phone number because he’d like to give you a free private reading instead!” he said in excitement.

  “Uh, no thanks,” she said, unable to hide her distaste.

  The producer was shocked by her sudden disinterest.

  “Don’t you want to know who killed your Uncle?” he asked.

  “Nah. I killed him myself,” she said.

  Claudia hung up the phone and turned the radio back on to hear the remainder of the show.

  “The winner of our competition is Dawn of Daly City!” Johnny announced. “Dawn, you’ve won a free private reading with psychic medium Gil Godsend!”

  “Sounds like she lost to me,” Claudia quipped.

  So…back to my guest,” said Johnny. “Gil, you have fans all over the world but how do you deal with the skeptics?”

  Gil chuckled.

  “Skeptics are angry people, Johnny. But they’re angry at their failings in their lives. My approach is to not return that anger but to show them patience and kindness and hope they see the light some day. But I’m not here to prove to the skeptics that psychics are real. I always invite my audience to make up their own minds. Do psychic powers exist? It’s up to you to decide…”

  Claudia was suspicious that she didn’t receive a live reading because they were “out of time for today”, but now they’d moved on to the topic of skeptics.

  Did Gil somehow guess it was her calling into the show?

  “Wasn’t there some crazy lady who devoted her time to exposing you as a fraud?”

  Hmm…

  “Ah, you must be talking about Ms. Claudia Cox,” Gil said patronizingly. “She means well, but she is very misguided. She once believed that I used tricks in my readings, as many psychic frauds do, but I was able to prove time and time again that this was not the case with my abilities. Ultimately, she was unsuccessful and she disappeared.”

  “Well…mess with the best…” said Johnny. “Is she flipping burgers somewhere?”

  “I hear she works for one of those detective agencies that tries to entrap husbands into cheating so she can destroy happy marriages.”

  “She’s a man hater then?”

  “Sadly, yes, although I wish her well...”

  Now Gil was talking shit about her in public. This was the final straw for Claudia.

  There was someone she needed to call.

  She got onto the freeway, put her foot on the pedal and sped off to her appointment. If this massage therapist even looked at her the wrong way, then he was going to be the one needing therapy…

  Chapter 8

  Claudia’s massage the day before confirmed the worst suspicions of the spa manager. All seemed fine at first. She was enjoying a relaxing massage from the therapist and he was behaving professionally, until there was an “accidental” slip of the draping sheets that exposed her butt. He apologized for being “clumsy” but then admired her “great body”. A few times his hands came too close to her nether regions. Then, in the final few minutes of the session he offered to continue the massage back at his place over a drink or two, where her rubdown could become “a little more intimate”. The guy was fired immediately. From now on, he’d have to ply his trade in the personals ads.

  Now there was the matter of Gil Godsend and his return.

  Taking him on was like playing a game of Whack-A-Mole. Every time she’d slap him down, he’d only pop up again somewhere else. Claudia didn’t want to get involved again, but two women had come to her asking for her help.

  She decided to call a friend and former colleague for some advice.

  From a young age, Steve Shaw was fascinated by Uri Geller’s spoon bending and other psychic feats. It soon became clear that Steve was also a psychic superstar who was skilled in prediction, mental telepathy and psychokinesis, that is, the ability to move objects with the power of the mind. In high school he became popular for bending keys and making the school bell go off so the kids could get out of class early. One day he was suspended for bending silverware in the cafeteria so his school changed to plastic tableware until he graduated.

  Steve became famous at the age of 18 when he became a test subject for a paranormal research project at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Founded by a generous grant, the McDonnell Laboratory for Psychical Research was established to study psychic phenomena, and they were particularly interested in children with the power of psychokinesis. The researchers began a search to find a true psychic and Steve was one of two people selected from over 300 applicants, along with 17-year-old Mike Edwards. For four years, scientists closely studied and tested the boys’ psychic abilities, and they both demonstrated incredible paranormal abilities. They bent silverware, keys, and coins, and moved paper and pens with their thoughts. They could identify pictures in sealed envelopes, make stopped clocks work again, and cause images to appear on film just by staring into the camera. Steve astounded the scientists who concluded, “It is evident that he has a full spectrum of interrelated psychic abilities.”

  The laboratory announced to the world that they had found two genuine psychics.

  Little did the scientists know that the young men were amateur magicians who were disguised as psychics. Steve and Mike were part of an elaborate hoax code-named “Project Alpha” that was devised by magician and escape artist James Randi, a modern-day Harry Houdini, who was dedicated to exposing frauds in the paranormal community. It was Randi’s belief that people such as his arch nemesis Uri Geller are really magicians who present parlor tricks as psychic powers. As he once said, “If Uri Geller bends spoons with divine powers, then he’s doing it the hard way.”

  When the scientists started their research project, Randi urged them to have a magician present in the laboratory who could watch out for deception, either involuntary or deliberate, by the subjects or experimenters. They refused, and it became James Randi that they needed to watch out for because his two plants were using sleight of hand magic tricks to create the illusion that they had paranormal powers.

  Randi was later accused of sabotage and trickery, but he believed he was doing good by exposing the flaws in the scientists’ research. You see, the experiments weren’t performed in a controlled setting. The scientists weren’t strict enough with their protocols and that allowed the boys to bend the rules as they were bending metal, but just not with their minds. Also, the scientists weren’t open-minded. They went into their research believing in the paranormal and trying to prove that Steve and Mike were psychic. The researchers didn’t even check out the backgrounds of their “validated psychics”. If they had done so, they would have discovered that they had posed as psychics before. The scientists were too blinded by the fame they thought would follow if they could prove that psychic powers exist.

  If they were ever asked point blank, “Are you using magic tricks?” Steve and Mike had been instructed to come clean and admit immediately, “Yes, and we were sent here by James Randi.”

  But they were never asked.

  Inste
ad, the scientists laughed at the rumors circulating that there were spies in their laboratory. When it was finally revealed that the boys were faking their psychic powers, some of the scientists refused to believe the truth, arguing that the young men really were psychics all along and were now lying about being magicians.

  Project Alpha fooled the researchers into believing that the boys possessed psychic abilities, and showed that even scientists can have the wool pulled over their eyes. Anyone can be fooled. The researchers had egg on their faces and in the wake of the scandal the laboratory was shut down.

  When Project Alpha ended, Steve Shaw adopted the stage name Banachek and went on to become the world’s greatest mentalist. He’s the real deal that all the fictional TV mentalists are based on. Banachek is a mind reader who can read thoughts that no one could possibly know. He can find hidden objects, predict the headlines of a newspaper, and psychically see a word you’ve chosen from a book or the serial number on a dollar bill. Mentalism is a category of magic, but Banachek doesn’t pull a rabbit out of a hat or perform lame card tricks. He accomplishes the impossible. Banachek catches bullets with his bare hands, drives blindfolded, and has been buried alive…

  He has great influence in the magic world. You won’t find a magician or mentalist who doesn’t use some idea, trick, or routine that has been inspired by Banachek’s magic. He is a magician’s magician who invents effects for the world’s best magicians, including Penn & Teller and Criss Angel. Certain ghost hunting shows have asked him to create seemingly paranormal events to dupe their casts, and their audiences, but he was too ethical to do it. Banachek is honest about his deception.

  Like Uri Geller, there are plenty of magicians who insist they are psychic. Banachek doesn’t claim to be a psychic, but he is more psychic than any psychic. He takes all five known senses to create the illusion of a sixth sense and simulate what a psychic would actually do. He can replicate all of the psychic powers using psychology and stage magic tricks.

  Banachek has said, “So far, there is no scientific evidence for psychic phenomena,” and that all psychics seem to be magicians, artists, and entertainers. But he believes that psychic mediums cross the line when they claim they can talk to people who have crossed over.