Poltergeist

"Sorry. I lost my grip. But that wouldn't matter. In the conditions of belief created in most séance circles, the sitters will be as impressed with the sudden thump as with a smooth return, if not more.”

"Drama," I agreed.

"Exactly. And you can do more with a few simple modifications of this same technique. It's easiest with a table like this that has the legs set a bit inside of the edge of the tabletop. The farther the legs are from the edge, the easier it is, and a table with a central pedestal—even a heavy one—is shockingly easy to tilt. Now, watch this.”

He placed his hands flat again and the table immediately slid a bit to the left and eased up onto one leg so the other three were off the floor. It wasn't much, but enough for most people to be impressed with. Once more I looked under the table and this time took a glance into the Grey. Nothing paranormal was acting on the table, even though the restaurant had the usual share of ghosts and memory.

As Ben continued speaking, he demonstrated. "You see that if I pull, the table leans down toward me. If I push, it'll rise on my side instead. Angular change changes the direction of tilt. With a confederate at the table, a phony medium can make the table tilt or even 'walk' in any direction. And if I push forward with even pressure and no tilt, the table will scoot in the direction of push, instead of rising. With a confederate to create or maintain the tilt, the phony medium can remove his or her hands from the table and still get phenomena. The other sitters will join in without recognizing it because of the suggestive quality of ideomotor. Takes a little practice to be smooth about it, but it's not hard. Try it.”

He settled the small table back down. I put my hands down and pushed a little. The table scooted toward Ben.

"Put your hands a little farther out and push down as you push forward.”

This time the table rose slowly about half an inch.

"Congratulations, you're a spirit communicator.”

I gave him a sour look. "What else can you do with this?”

Ben gri

Next, Ben reached into the canvas bag on the floor and brought out a large, stiff loop of heavy wire, which he strapped onto his forearm so the closed end was cupped under his hand like a gigantic hollow spoon. He slid his hands back onto the tabletop so the loop went under the lip. "This is called a crook and the operator uses it to lift the table. There are several kinds and they require a lot of discretion to use, but…”

The table leapt, the legs on my end flipping upward so fast I had to squeeze backward into the bench to get out of the way. Ben waved the table side to side and up and down. It was sloppy, but a little practice would have solved that. He waggled the table so it rotated around the axis of the loop and then put it back down.

By this time, the happy hour crowd was staring at us with varying degrees of boldness. "It's just a trick," I said to the nearest table full of gawkers. One of the men nodded and slurped his beer, but didn't stop looking at the table with suspicion.

I found myself shaking my head and stifling laughter. "Wow. How does anyone blame that on a ghost?”

"They don't get caught. If they do, they say they only did it to encourage the spirits. A stage magician does the same thing, priming the audience with little revelations and ideas that encourage them to suspend their disbelief and buy into the bigger illusions. Quite a bit of psychology goes into a successful magic act." Then he added with a growl, "Or a faked séance.”

I cast a speculative look on Ben. "Is this upsetting you?”

"Only because I suddenly realize how easy it is to fake these things and how many people—including me—have probably been taken in by willful fakes and sincere assistance' by well-meaning believers who make fools of the lot of us.”

I sat back and regarded him in silence a while.

He avoided my gaze and stared at the table.

"Disillusion's a bitch, isn't it?”

He snorted. "Yes, it is. And now I really want something to drink.”

We caught the eye of the waiter, who sidled up with a dubious glance at us as if he wasn't sure what would happen next. I ordered coffee. Ben asked for a dark beer.

He'd stripped off the crook and was rolling his sleeves back down when I noticed red dents on his forearms. I pointed at them.

"What caused those marks?”

"The crook. Pressure from lifting the table. I imagine that if you use a crook a lot, you probably build up some kind of callus or marks.”

I nodded as the waiter returned with our drinks. Mark had had very similar dents on his forearms, according to the autopsy. I'd bet that a closer examination of the recordings would show that he had used a crook a lot in the early days of the sessions. Now I understood why Tuckman thought the heightened phenomena could be faked— the crook was impressive—but I was more sure than ever that they hadn't been. I hadn't seen the same movements from anyone else, but I'd seen Mark make the same hand slides and elbow dips I'd just seen from Ben.

Ben licked foam from his mustache and sighed. "This reminds me of university in Germany. I think the amount of beer I drank then is probably why I still don't speak German as well as I read and write it. I suspect the other guys in the program liked to get me drunk just to hear me butcher the language. I didn't mind at the time—I got a lot of free beer out of it. Damn good beer." He shook his head. "I haven't done anything that stupid in years.”

"There must be something stupid in your more recent past. There's plenty in mine.”

Ben laughed. "I prefer to pretend it's all the folly of youth and not endemic foolishness.”

"I don't have that excuse.”

"Don't be so hard on yourself, Harper.”

I frowned into my coffee and changed the subject.

"Ben, how would someone make a knocking sound?”

Ben picked up the crook again and rapped it on the underside of the table, making a sharp noise. "Like that?”

The rap sounded very much like Mark's first efforts. "Exactly like that. Is that how all knocks are made?" I asked.

"Oh, no. You can use your feet, hands, knees, or a hard object concealed in your hand or clothes. A character in a book once used a tin box strapped to her knee. When she pressed it against her other knee, it deformed and made a cracking sound.”

That rang a bell and I wondered which book I'd read it in but couldn't bring to mind.

Ben gulped some more beer and continued. "The Fox sisters— they started the whole Spiritist movement by accident—used to crack the joints of their toes or rap their toenails against the floor to create raps, and even though people caught them at it and they even admitted it, people wanted to believe. So they did. Investigations of people like the Fox sisters and their imitators led to modern parapsychology.”

"They chose to believe. .," I repeated, thinking. "So parapsychology grew out of fakery?”

"The search for truth in the face of fakery," Ben corrected me, frowning. "A lot of the early investigators were magicians and scientists—Houdini was famous for debunking phony mediums. In fact," he added, reaching again into his bag, "one of the big names in modern skeptical investigation is another magician—James Randi. I brought you one of his books as well as one of Houdini's books. Neither of these guys is shy about showing how the trick is done. And they're both pretty blunt about what they think of the whole field. Although I think they're both wrong in condemning the whole without adequate proof.”