The Gazette from Montreal, Quebec, Canada • 393

he announcements appeared in the Montreal papers early in June 1977. A Canadian psychic, unknown in his own country, having spent nine years in "scientific labs" cooperating with researchers at the University of Utrecht, Cornell and the Stanford Research Institute, would make a onenight appearance at the Samuel Grover Auditorium in the Saidye Bronfman Centre. Elchonen was his name. In the days that preceded his lecture and demonstration, local broadcasters were anxious to interview this master of telepathy, psychokinesis, precognition and clairvoyance, but his whereabouts were unknown. At the box office, tickets were sold quickly.

On the appointed evening, Elchonen stepped onto the stage of the packed auditorium. A short, slight man, he wore a vinyl mask; in a thick accent, he explained that his recent experiments had been conducted under such strict secrecy that it was still necessary he disguise his identity: "To protect my reputation as a scientist." He gave evidence of the psychic life of plants: an electric light blinked as a small potted plant reacted to the emotions of members of the audience. He demonstrated his mind-reading abilities: as volunteers passed envelopes forward to him, he passed his hand over the enclosed notes and described the lives of the people who had written them. Murmurs of surprise could be heard in the crowd. Just before the intermission, Elchonen presented a display of psychokinesis at work on a heavy, wooden rocking chair about 10 feet from him.

"This is extremely difficult," he explained. The rocker began to move, slowly at first. but increasing steadily. The audience gasped and broke into applause, the chair rocking wildly. Ten minutes later, after the intermission, the houselights dimmed again.

An expectant hush fell over the crowd. But Elchonen did not reappear. In his place, a compact, sprightly figure stepped onto the stage. His carefully brushed grey hair, trim moustache and brisk, youthful, almost mischievous gait were familiar to a few people in the auditorium. "Look," someone said in a loud whisper.

"It's Henry Gordon." He walked directly to the microphone. "How many of you people believed the fraud who was just here?" he asked. A third of the puzzled audience raised their hands. "Hundreds of thousands of people are being taken in by fakes that's why I pulled this hoax," he said. Slowly the light began to dawn.

Henry Gordon was Elchonen. A few people stalked out. But for most of the audience he had made his point: however amazing his illusions, he possessed no supernatural powers. "I'm a magician," he said matter-of-factly. "And so are the psychics." HENRY GORDON IS CANADA'S MOST relentless debunker of psychic phenomena.

In his role as a member of the Canadian branch of the Committee for CRUSADERS Extrasensory Deception himself not so much to magic as to exposing the tricks of 'psychics' Henry Gordon insists that psychics are just magicians like himself By David Macfarlane 1 00 For the last 15 years he has devoted balls from his pocket to his hand to his the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal and as a newspaper columnist, teacher, lecturer and radio and television personality, he has made it his business to take on the gurus, mystics, yogis and psychics who, since the 1960s, have become increasingly adept at catching the public's attention. As one of the country's foremost magicians. he is in a particularly good position to expose trickery. Gordon's expertise in the arts of legerdemain is well documented. Allen Spraggett, a defender of psychic phenomena once offered to pay Gordon $100 on CBC's Morningside if he could do a trick that he (Spraggett) couldn't explain.

Gordon mysteriously passed three small sponge ties, banquets and shows for servicemen. "That's where I got my stage experience." he says. "I've performed in every hospital and old folks home in Montreal." In the mid-'50s he joined the International Brotherhood of Magicians and began to make his first television appearances. Today, after 25 years in the brotherhood. he has been made a member of the Order of Merlin.

In his wallet his membership nestles beside his ACTRA card (the actors' union) and his Mensa card (the international organization for people with high IQs). In 1965 his act began to leave the realm of sleight of hand and lean toward the arts of mentalism, what he calls "sleight of mind." Like most magicians, he is intensely secretive about the mechanics of his tricks. But he is unmysterious about their nature. "All that a mentalistmagician does is use the tools of conjuring to create the impression that he is a true mind reader." When he began his career as a mentalist he was content to "leave it up in the air" when people asked him if he had psychic powers. But soon he became concerned by the number of people who took his act seriously.

"That was 15 years ago, and in the newspapers, on radio and on television all kinds of things were happening that were pointed to as proof of psychic forces. I saw magicians doing mind-reading tricks, old vaudeville routines, and then passing themselves off as psychics." One day Gordon met a business acquaintance on a Montreal street and the man told Gordon of a psychic he had seen who "had the power" he could read people's minds just by passing his hand over a sealed envelope that contained a note or a sketch. "Are you kidding?" Gordon asked. "I've been doing that for years." Abandoning all pretence of supernatural powers in his act, Gordon began his career as a psychic debunker. "I started to tell people when they asked me how I did it that it was out-and-out trickery.

But even then some people wouldn't believe me. They accused me of being a psychic and not admitting it." Gordon laughs as he remembers his dilemma. "I told them that when I'm performing onstage, I'm performing under my own conditions. If they want to see if I'm really a psychic, put me under strict controls and then let's see what happens." Uri Geller, the famous Israeli is an example of a fraud that Gordon often cites. The media hype that surrounded Geller's North American appearances was so extensive that any competent magician in his place would have had a difficult time appearing as anything other than supernatural.

In one of the demonstrations Geller sat on the stage facing the audience while behind him a volunteer from the audience wrote a word on a blackboard. "Then he began to concentrate, and eventually came up with the word. Well, he was getting signals from confederates in the audience. I could see them. It's an old trick." Gordon raises his ring finger to his chin and utters what is half a sigh, half a other hand; at the finale he opened his hand and to the dismay of Spraggett 16 sponge balls exploded across the studio.

"I always invent my own tricks," says Gordon. "But that's all they are tricks. When Spraggett couldn't explain my sponge ball illusion, it illustrated my point. Just because something can't be explained doesn't mean there's some psychic gobbledygook at work." Henry Gordon was born in Montreal in 1919 and exhibited not the slightest interest in magic until he was 21. While stationed in Winnipeg as an airman in 1940, he wandered into a bookstore one afternoon and picked up a book on coin tricks.

"It was a terrible book." he recalls. "but it passed the time." At the end of the war Gordon went into the electronics business but continued to work at magic. By 1950 he was working as a semiprofessional magician, doing par-.