What does it take for somebody to impersonate a lifeless teenager to the grieving mom of the deceased? For M Lamar Keene, a outstanding Tampa-based medium within the Sixties and 70s, it was a cinch – all it required was a cocktail of crafty, charisma and sheer audacity. In entrance of the congregation of his spiritualist church, Keene would enter a trance state and seem to talk because the deceased 17-year-old, Jack, and ask Jack’s mom, Lona, to donate hundreds of dollars to the church. Sooner or later, Lona requested Jack in regards to the secret identify he used for her, to show it was actually him, and Keene was stumped – till he attended a gathering at her home and feigned a headache. Whereas pretending to relaxation in her bed room, he searched her belongings and located the identify scribbled in a household Bible: “Appleonia”. He pulled it off.
Keene confessed to being a conman in his 1976 e-book, The Psychic Mafia. Jack and Lona’s was simply one among many audacious instances he revealed within the exposé, which shook the world of spiritualism a lot that it led to an try on his life. Somebody took a shot at him on his garden however missed, leaving a bullet within the aspect of his home. Within the e-book, Keene described how mediums shared consumer data in order that they might conduct “sizzling readings” primarily based on strong details. He recounted how they might steal jewelry from purchasers for a couple of months, solely to faux a lifeless member of the family’s spirit had made it reappear (which normally resulted in beneficiant ideas). Finally, he confirmed that mediums shaped an unlimited community to fraudulently monetise folks’s grief. So why did Keene – the so-called Prince of the Spiritualists – select to blow the whistle on everybody?
Vicky Baker, a journalist with a nostril for juicy scandals, knew she had hit the jackpot when she found a photograph of Keene wearing his well-known all-white swimsuit and boots. She had Googled “psychic crime rings” to feed a brand new curiosity about psychic scams whereas sitting throughout the street from a medium’s workplace. Wanting to observe up her 2019 podcast sequence, Faux Heiress (the story of con artist Anna Sorokin, who handed herself off as a rich heiress, Anna Delvey), Baker was excited to make Keene its topic. “Now that I give it some thought, there's a parallel between him and Delvey,” says Baker. “Some folks have been wowed by her and located her actually spectacular, others discovered her fairly uninteresting. Some folks barely remembered Keene, others he left a large mark on … an unforgettable showman.”
Charisma performed an enormous half in Keene’s story (“He had this uncommon method of talking that was very theatrical, like he was all the time placing on a present,” Baker says) and it's illustrated within the podcast by the use of dramatisations that verge on tacky, however match properly with the tone of astonishment. Over six episodes, Baker additionally meets fraud consultants, psychologists and sceptics to unpick this absurd world, in addition to individuals who knew Keene – although it was close to not possible to get to the roots of his story.
Baker knew that Keene’s mom died when he was younger. “There was solely a specific amount of knowledge I might get my arms on – largely from the e-book, and 75 hours of recordings he made for his ghostwriters. Every little thing else concerned numerous digging,” she says. Not with the ability to converse to Keene, who died in 1996, additional fuelled the intrigue. “The e-book begins when he's in his 20s, and the blokes who interviewed him have been extra desirous about urgent him on different folks within the trade, whereas I'd have requested extra about … effectively, him.”
Baker despatched numerous unanswered emails, earlier than her greatest lead linked her with Keene’s half-sister, who crammed within the wild particulars about why he had severed ties along with his household: “There’s a bizarre subplot the place he satisfied an aged girl that he was her son … it’s a complete new twist that comes up in episode 5.” Keene left dwelling to coach as a medium along with his pal Raoul (a pseudonym). He rapidly realised Raoul was an “open-eye” medium, absolutely conscious that he couldn’t contact the lifeless. After turning into licensed as a reverend and opening his personal church, Keene attended the favored spiritualism centre Camp Chesterfield, in Indiana. Researching this camp a few years later, Baker made an thrilling discovery.
Baker came upon about Mable Riffle, who ran Camp Chesterfield, the place determined visitors paid to mingle with mediums and attend seances to attempt to contact their misplaced family members. Baker describes Riffle, who died in 1961, because the matriarch of mediums: “The actual fact there was a vacation camp for spiritualists made me so curious to discover extra. And her cousin Ethel even arrange a rival camp. You possibly can do a complete different podcast on that.”
In 1960, one other exposé used infrared cameras that exposed the figures who materialised in Riffle’s seances to be people, getting into the room by means of a aspect door. For Keene, the camp was an inspiration to go massive along with his scams, utilizing ideas and tips he picked up there. After a few years of success, and some huge cash rolling in, what was it that lastly made Keene crack?
“It was by no means fairly defined within the e-book,” says Baker. “However he had a large run-in with Raoul and felt like he was being pushed out. There was jealousy and accusations on either side. He described it because the ‘largest showdown in all of my medium profession’. In order that’s the argument that brought about him to sever ties.”
It’s unlikely that Keene revealed the slippery secrets and techniques of his commerce for ethical causes. But Baker was deeply shocked by how his life turned out: after the assassination try, he modified his id and devoted his life to good deeds. With out freely giving the revelation dropped at mild within the last episode of the podcast, Baker says: “I might by no means have predicted it; I discovered myself in a very completely different world. Individuals who knew him then didn’t even know he was beforehand a psychic.”
Keene’s world may sound totally absurd, however it nonetheless has robust resonance with folks’s behaviours and beliefs as we speak. The trade analyst Ibis World experiences that the psychic companies market within the US is price $2.2bn, and grew 0.5% a yr on common between 2017 and 2022. At a time of collective mass grief, it’s maybe comprehensible that spiritualism is having a resurgence.
“Individuals wanting to speak with the lifeless is timeless,” says Baker. “At this time, some psychics consult with themselves as ‘intuitive healers’, which is far more appropriate with the wellness trade. Even Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow’s wellness model, appears at them. Kim Kardashian promotes psychics. Drew Barrymore has them on her chatshow. These days, it’s a wellness deal with – reasonably than a darkish secret in a dodgy alleyway store.”
Radio 4’s Faux Psychic is on BBC Sounds from Tuesday 1 February.
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