I was sitting in the audience next to a woman whose sister claimed that she'd been cursed by a witch, waiting my turn to appear on a talk show focusing on psychic fraud. Already onstage were the cursed woman, a well-dressed attorney's wife; her current psychic, a flamboyant bleached blonde with an excess of cleavage; and a 300-pound man—also a clairvoyant—who owned a psychic phone line that doubled as a sex line during off-hours.I was mortified. When I agreed to appear on the show I had imagined a panel of regular people, each of us describing the potential for fraud. Not this circus! Worse, I was to appear last as the so-called expert, commenting on what each person had said, tying the show together. Recognizing the awful spot I was in, the cursed woman's sister squeezed my hand sympathetically and sighed, saying, “Honey, good luck.”Until that moment, even with all the work I had done, my exposure to psychics who were such blatant caricatures was minimal. It mattered less to me at this point whether they were authentic or not.
