How To Have A Psychic Conversation
If you’re like me, you discovered your psychic ability at a sports bar in Thailand. Inspired by a poker tournament, some classmates and I created a game in which one person would try to determine something about another only by reading their body language. We had been classmates for a while, so the challenge was to derive something we didn’t previously know. I won by telling a classmate how many siblings he had and where in the order he fell.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I was replicating an experiment by Orson Welles.
Welles is a fascinating character who was always pulling at the threads of society and convention. According to one interview, he even dabbled in playing psychic.
Welles was performing a play in Kansas City and there was no Wednesday matinee. Welles did what any actor with a free day would do. He rented a space, put on a costume, and charged $2 for psychic readings.
Welles claimed that he had spoken with retired fake psychics and learned some of their tricks. Welles didn’t think he actually was psychic, he thought he was a good actor. In no small part, acting is about controlling how you present yourself in a situation and studying how other people in that situation do the same.
Welles would start with what’s known as a “cold reading.” This is a generic claim that feels specific. If I were to say, “between the ages of 12 and 14, you experienced a personal struggle,” most of us could relate to that. But when it’s just you and a “psychic,” a performer of Welles’s caliber, it can feel personalized.
The cold reading makes the subject comfortable, often to the point of unknowingly volunteering information that the “psychic” then uses in subsequent predictions. In many ways, it’s just a conversation with showmanship. One person is conveying information and the other is listening and responding with empathy. A “psychic” simply uses more incense and scarves.
Near the end of his only day as a “psychic,” a woman sat down for a reading. Welles instantly declared, “you lost your husband last week.” The woman began to cry as the claim was accurate. Welles stopped the charade on the spot.
What Welles had discovered was how quickly body language, vocal inflections, and other clues that “psychics,” sales folk, and other performers rely on, can become instinct. With enough practice, connecting with the person across the crystal ball is subconscious, and the “psychic” isn’t even aware of why they make the predictions they do. Welles claimed to not know how he knew the woman had lost her husband in the previous week, simply that he knew it. There must have been something, but Welles lost it in the abstraction of instinct.
I don’t know how I knew my classmate was the middle child of 3 and that his younger sibling was significantly younger, but I was correct.
I don’t want to make a claim about the legitimacy of psychics or psychic ability. What I know is that in this instance, Welles claimed no real psychic ability. (For the record, nor do I.) All Welles claimed is that he was paying attention. With less than a day of focused practice, he was able to replicate the effects of psychic ability. He was able to know and communicate with a complete stranger in a way that seemed supernatural.
The next time you’re having a conversation with friends, play the psychic. Further, articulate your deductions. You might surprise yourself. Even if you miss the mark, I bet it’s a fantastic conversation.
