Aliens Moved My Cheese
Chapter 32: What Would Houdini Do?

Harry Houdini and I have similar takes on spiritual mediums contacting the dead. Case in point: We both believe it to be fabricated bullshit. Harry’s crusade was to debunk mediums claiming to contact dead relatives wherever he went. His hobby began after a medium tried to convince him they were contacting his much beloved dead mother. He caught the medium faking it and was unsurprisingly incensed. I have taught myself to cold read and have convinced people at parties that I am a psychic who can speak with the dead. I am not a psychic and I can’t speak with the dead. I’m glad I can’t. I hear ghosts are generally assholes with no sense of humor. It is remarkably easy to pull off. You make vague statements about the deceased until you register a hit or tell. Their body language and statements inform you if you are getting warm. If they become really excited and into it then often they will help fill in the blanks for you and you can embellish on that. I have never taken any money for doing this and I always tell the person what I did afterwards, so they grasp the concept that spiritualism is all a short con. I may be a lot of things not all of them positive but I am not a scumbag that preys upon the grief of people who have lost loved ones. The easiest spiritualist cons to pull of are fortune telling and contacting dead people the subject does not know. Fortune tellers can claim something is going to happen to you a long time down the road, so nothing they tell you seems like an immediate line of bullshit. The subject may even turn the prediction into fact through a self-fulfilling prophecy and credit the medium with predicting the outcome. The mediums who contact people you don’t know usually claim they are talking to dead famous people or people the subject couldn’t possibly know personally. It’s an easy con because how are they going to debunk you or accuse you of scamming them? You can’t tell if they’re putting you on or not.

What do spirit mediums have to do with aliens you might ask? In the 19th century there existed a small group of mediums that specialized in talking to dead famous folks. The most notable of which was a medium with the stage named Helene Smith. She claimed that her ability included talking to the spirits of dead Martians. I couldn’t have made that shit up if I tried *shakes head. She had me worried there for a second. I thought she was going to claim that she was speaking to the dead of the lost continent of Atlantis like Edgar Cayce. That would just be crazy. Now I can’t tell you for sure whether or not Helene was running a con or on the level. I wasn’t there to witness the séance and I’d have a hard time debunking her without more information. If you ask me my honest best guess the lady was either a loony or somebody looking to make money on the grift as most so-called mediums are. The primary reason I think this was a hustle is that choosing dead aliens on another planet to talk to in the 19th century would have been the perfect unbustable scam. Nobody had any way of checking out her story about life on Mars let alone dead Martian spirits talking to her. Anybody could have accused her of being full of shit but there was and is no way to confirm it. The crowd of onlookers already believed in spiritualism or they probably would not have been there. To these people what she was claiming seemed entirely plausible and believable. Oddly enough you might still be able to find individuals gullible enough to accept that Helene was talking to dead Martians today.

All skepticism aside we still don’t know if there is life on Mars or if a sentient Martian civilization once lived there, so Helene still technically has not been debunked to my satisfaction. It would be some kind of cosmic joke if we went to Mars and found out that Helene was right and a civilization once existed on the red planet. It might be a lucky guess or just a strange coincidence but it would be none the less eerie in a “Mystery Machine” kinda’ way don’t you think? I really am not interested in knowing if Helene was really psychic and talking to dead Martians, That’s irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. I’d just like to know if she was right about the existence of Martians. If we discovered that was a fact, it would be a bombshell announcement. Think about it in these terms. If sentient life or any life at all existed on a planet next door to us, that would be a very strong indication that Drake’s equation was right on the money and the universe is teeming with life. If the universe was teeming with life then the logical conclusion would be that there was at least a fair amount of sentient beings that exist in the universe. It would also make the likelihood of us having been visited by aliens at some time increase. That would increase the odds that aliens abducted some of us for study and or sexual party favors. The Ufologists the world over would be creaming, their pants, like a nerdy teenager with a supermodel who wants to bang him. However, even then we would not have conclusive proof that Drake’s equation was correct. We could just consider the possibility it is accurate as far more likely. The spiritual connection to dead Martians makes for an interesting story, that we’ll probably never be able to confirm or deny. If it’s a fabrication, the story is completely ingenious and speaks well of the creativity of mankind or in this particular case womankind. I find it interesting because it doesn’t sound like the standard cookie cutter version of alien contact. Sometimes a lack of fitting a pattern is what sets a story apart and makes it worth a second look. If everybody else is reporting greys with probes and you suddenly hear a story about a psychic friends network that includes the undead of Mars, which story would you immediately find more interesting? If somebody told me an alien walked in their house, opened their refrigerator, stole a Dr Pepper and then left without a word while the resident was just sitting there watching TV, that’s the son of bitch I want to interview. Not the 20,000th grey abductee ass rape incident victim or the drunk farmer who saw lights in the sky near Mingo County, West Virginia after consuming an entire jar of moonshine. I’m not sure which case Houdini would be into if he were alive today but I’m betting the alien Dr Pepper thief would be at the top of his list as well. WWHD?

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