"Not yet. What are you going to show me about séance tables and knocks?”
"Well, not a lot. My technique is pretty rough." The table lurched toward Ben, kicking its feet up at me and sending the candle on the tabletop clattering to the floor. I yelped and slid back in my seat.
"Oops," said Ben as the table settled back onto all fours. I ducked down and retrieved the candle, replacing it on someone else's table.
"What do you think?" he asked. "Did that look familiar?" "Sort of. How did you do it?”
Bens smile split his dark beard. "It's almost too easy. This technique was very popular with spiritualists and phony mediums at the beginning of the twentieth century when the Spiritist movement was at its height. A lot of people do it without knowing that they've done anything and then take it as evidence of spirits. That's called 'ideomotor'—the idea becomes motion—and Tuckman, as a psychologist, is certainly aware of it. The technique is the same whether it's deliberate or accidental and it takes very little pressure or strength to do it. You can use a pretty heavy table, but the lighter it is, the more dramatic the effect.”
"OK, I think I get this, but what's the difference between a Spiritist and a spiritualist?" I asked.
"Oh, Spiritism was the movement, and people who adhered to the Spiritist Church or beliefs called themselves Spiritists—so did a lot of frauds. Spiritualist was and is a much looser term.”
"OK. So, yeah, what about this technique?”
"It's all just friction and leverage. See how my hands are flat on the table? So long as I have friction on the surface and can exert force outside the fulcrum point of the legs, I can tilt the table just by pulling my hands toward myself while not allowing them to slide across the surface. See?”
The table lurched again and I noticed that it leaned down toward Ben. I looked under the table. It was resting on the two feet closest to Ben with the other two feet in the air about an inch. Ben eased the table back down until it hit the floor with a bang.
"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 grinned and demonstrated how to make the little table turn and several techniques for making it rise off the floor, including one he called "the human clamp," which involved holding the table between his hand and the edge of his shoe, the same way most of us would hold an object between our thumb and finger, and moving it around without touching the floor. It was a full levitation with only a foot and a hand as tools.
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.”