MISTER MYSTERY RESPONDS

Above all, it must be checked that the experiment takes place under controlled conditions, which means that the viewer and the agent must be unknown to each other (although in exceptional cases they can be married). We accompany the agent to West Orange, New Jersey, making sure the viewer doesn't follow us. (If he does, we try to lose him.) Then we rush back to Brooklyn, making sure the agent is not following us. (If he does, we threaten to suspend him without salary. If he persists in following us, we try to lose him.) In Brooklyn we meet with the viewer, who in our presence must guess where the agent is at that very moment. If he says “West Orange, New Jersey”, he is the winner and is given a choice between a teddy panda or a taxi ride. However, before we got that done, we must check that the agent is still in New Jersey. If he has somehow managed to return to Brooklyn, then he is the winner and is suspended without salary. It may also happen that the viewer guesses that the agen...

You have to become a psychologist first and, when no one sees you, add the prefix "para" in block letters to your degree. To this end, speed is essential. While you are studying Psychology, you should start training to acquire the skill and quick reflexes to achieve it. Keep in mind that you will not have many opportunities. The few times you’ll have the official title at your fingertips, there will be people watching you, mostly professors from your University. You must learn to identify the small gaps in attention in the staff. My recommendation is that you practice in the staffroom. Just drop by the place and set a goal: for example, to borrow Professor X's nail clipper without permission. Be on the lookout until you see the nail clipper come out of his pocket. While he cuts his nails there is nothing you can do, don't be reckless, wait until he's done. Then perhaps an opportunity will arise. Indeed, professor Y just said something funny and Professor X leaves ...

On one occasion, the New York’s ASPR (American Society for Psychical Research) wanted to test a celebrated medium known for speaking in trance with hares from the woods of Pennsylvania. To this end, some of its members traveled to Philadelphia where randomly kidnapped a passer-by and led him with his head covered to the forest where the medium practiced as such. As soon as he stood under the tree where the medium was perched, she immediately recognized the man. She gave his name, address and social security number, as well as many personal data that none of those present knew, not even the man himself, who remained hooded the entire time. When the hood was removed, he was very impressed by the experience and wanted to put the hood back on. He then insisted on walking back home cross-country and with the hood on. As the medium had guessed, at the time of his kidnapping the man mistakenly believed himself to be a few blocks away from his home on the West Coast. He was never seen again....

In the thirties, due to the economic depression, paradoxically the show business moved higher. People needed to get away from their everyday worries. The less privileged went to the movie theaters. Wealthy people filled Broadway shows. The lights of Broadway at dusk were already a spectacle in itself. But in 1937 it was scheduled a show titled "I’ve got a stain in my pants" that drove the agency ENIGMA CONSULTANTS S. L. nuts. George Firstein, the show’s producer, contacted Michael and Jacob because of a strange phenomenon that happened at the end of each performance. It turned out that while the audience was leaving the theater, Wagner's “Ride of the Valkyries” sounded. And what was so strange about this?, someone might ask. Plainly and simply, the strangeness lay in the fact that the orchestra had already stopped playing. The pit was empty and yet not only did the music sound but it sounded so loud that many spectators threw themselves to the ground thinking that the naz...

At the turn of the century, New York was the destination of a large number of European immigrants. On February 12, 1897, a steamship of the company White-Star landed among its passengers a native of Transylvania. William Barret, who was among the crowd of onlookers who crowded on the dock, immediately identified this exotic origin because the man wore the typical costume of the region and Barret collected paper figures to cut out with regional costumes from around the world. In fact, since he was a child, he had been interested in that region of Eastern Europe in which so many horror stories were set. His father was very fond of this literary genre and used to read passages to his son before going to bed. No wonder then that little Barret fell asleep in Maths class. Unlike his own bedroom, where he couldn’t sleep a wink, Maths were safe, Maths weren’t scary. From that time, he suffered from a nervous tic consisting in looking continuously at all sides in view of a possible danger. Para...

Don’t get the wrong idea that communication with the dead is an easy thing. Communication with the living ones is already quite complicated, so imagine with the dead! Because we don’t talk about the dead who have followed the advise of any self-respecting death manual (the Tibetan Book of the Dead, for example), which warn you about the necessity of heading for the Light-at-the-End-of-the-Tunnel. No. The dead we are talking about are like the one who is invited to a party and, instead of knocking on his host's door, remains wandering the stairs without knowing whether to go up or down. To put it bluntly: they are a little weird. The minutes of the séances that we find in the archives of the Society for Psychical Research, either in London or in New York, prove it. The following example corresponds to a séance that took place on the night of November 24 in a luxurious apartment on New York's Fifth Avenue. Eight months earlier, a wealthy stockbroker whom we will call Mister Smith...

Did you know that, in the last decade of the 19th century, the Madison Square Garden concert hall remained closed for almost a year for reasons still unexplained? Well, that's right. But those reasons stopped being unexplained not long ago, when the archives of the American Society for Psychical Research were made available to the public. The story is one of the most surprising that is documented on those files, and was as follows. It all started on May 7, 1891, just one year after the original Madison Square Garden was demolished and a new one erected in its place. That evening, Frederic Chopin's Piano Concert No. 1 was being performed by the Russian pianist Igor Ostrgovinski accompanied by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Suddenly, the pianist is mistaken in a note: a major Re instead of an E-flat. It is an insignificant mistake, nobody notices it except Ostrgovinski himself. Two minutes later, a Do sounds instead of a Fa. This time not only Ostrgovinski notices it but a...

Maybe there is not a profession more useful and at the same time more ungrateful than that of inventor. And I'm going to mention a case that exemplifies it. George W. Newton had patented more than a hundred inventions without any of them having brought him the slightest profit. I will enumerate some. A “gender recogniser”: a self-service machine that at the touch of a button informs you whether you are a man or a woman or a mixture of both (this information can be very useful to obtain a passport or any other identification document). A “direction marker” (a kind of compass that tells you where it is below, above, right and left). The "Governor of the State of Texas", a robot designed specifically to perform this task. Or the “pin dispenser”, an extremely versatile device which could also serve to govern Texas if necessary. All of them, inventions with an advanced technology for its time, but that did not find any investor interested in its commercialization. Ah, but th...

The baptism by fire for the American Society for Pchychical Research was a most talked-about event. At that time (the year was 1884), the ASPR had only five members, and all were eager to start investigating. So when the first case turned up, it was the five of them en bloc who got ready to look into it. At that time, the Society already had a small network of spies or informants. You know?, the investigation of paranormal phenomena presents similarities with criminal investigations. One needs informants in the streets, people with eyes and ears wide open to find out anything unusual that is happening. In those early times, however, the network of informants of the ASPR was very small. In fact it consisted of only one man, Jerry Bonanno, although this man was located in the right place. Bonanno was a waiter in McDermont’s Old Ale House, a Lower East Side saloon which was a kind of magnet for paranormal guys. Mediums, clairvoyants, telepaths ... all came together in that place at the e...

Sir William Barret stayed a few more months in New York overseeing the details of the founding of the American branch of the Society for Psychical Research. Among other things, he had the mission to recruit talented scientists willing to devote their research to paranormal phenomena. People with a rationalist mentality capable of "separating the wheat from the chaff" as he used to say. Naturally, when it came to renowned scientists, he visited them personally to invite them to join the project. But also many unknown scientists who aspired to be part of the ASPR passed through his office. He had placed an ad in the New York Times requesting "brilliant minds accustomed to separating the wheat from the chaff", which motivated many peasants to pass through his office. It was necessary to withdraw the announcement and write another one without metaphors that could give rise to misunderstandings. However, at the beginning many screwballs also passed through his office. ...

The first meeting of Sir William Barret with Madame Blavatsky, founder and undisputed head of the Theosophical Society, was most curious. Almost a paranormal phenomenon in its own right. It turns out that at that time William James had joined the Theosophical Society and was impatient for his friend to meet this extraordinary woman. The headquarters of the aforesaid Society were located in New York, where Barret was staying, so he had no problem being introduced to such a famous woman. On the contrary, he had heard wonders about her paranormal abilities, so he felt a natural curiosity. James had not warned of their visit, so when both Williams showed up at Madame Blavatsky's residence, no one was waiting for them. They found the door open and James invited his friend to go inside with the familiarity of someone who knows that he is welcome in other people's home. They walked down a long corridor without seeing a living creature. Puzzled, James began to shout (Barret had the im...

Oh, the psychophonies! At the end of the 19th century, people was enthusiastic about psychophonies. If they had been given a choice, many would have preferred a psychophony to a symphony. People lined up outside the door of the houses where it was rumored that psychophonies were being produced. Most of the time they were false alarms: the meow of a cat that had been accidentally locked in the pantry, a creak of old wood, the spasmodic snores of a husband whose wife had forgotten he existed ... However, there remained a small percentage of cases for which the SPR had not found any explanation. One of these unresolved cases is the one I am going to refer to now. It was William James, who was then residing in New York, who spoke for the first time of this case to his friend William F. Barret, who in 1884 had traveled to New York from London to found the American Society for Psychical Research. When a downtown Broadway office building was deserted at night, you could hear Trickitrickitric...