Magic Stories

Disgusted, We Are: John Edward and Yanna

Yanna a/k/a Christine Evans

Two stories came together as we were assembling the Inside Magic Daily Newsletter. (If you are not on the newsletter list, you can sign up with the box to the right of this article). Either story was disgusting but together, their unsavory parts created a whole sack full of gross that was greater than the sum of the two slimy pieces.

First, Yanna a/k/a Christine Evans, was convicted and will soon be sentenced for duping a woman out of a $100,000.00 and was going for an extra $71,000.00. The psychic is a former convict from Arizona where she faced bad check charges. Ms. Evans is a mother of three and apparently without conscience.

Ms. Evans met her victim at a “psychic party” in a suburban shopping center. She offered to provide services beyond the quick cold read in a store and the two women arranged for Ms. Evans to visit the victim’s home.

Astute readers of Inside Magic or any book or newspaper know where this is leading. Ms. Evans found the house was crawling with spooks and forces sufficient to bring psychic wrong and possibly lower property values unless forced from the structure.

Darn if they didn’t try everything. Ms. Evans even walked around the place with a pan full of steaming myrrh and incense while throwing flower petals around the joint. The image is not unlike a waitress at Chili’s bringing a steaming skillet of fajitas to your table but with flower petals thrown at you.

Still, even these extraordinary measures didn’t do the job.

Ms. Evans convinced the victim she needed to give her a check for $71,000.00 to take the next step because she sensed some of the spirits were violent. That’s not good. Real estate appraisers say next to replacing your bathrooms, driving out violent spirits is the best thing you can do to improve your home’s value.

A law enforcement officer hid in the shower to listen to the exchange between the two women. The victim invited the law enforcement officer into the house (one wonders if this was the ‘violent spirit’ Ms. Evans felt). The check was written; Ms. Evans left the house, and was stopped by assisting officers down the road. When they retrieved the check from Ms. Evans, it was soggy with spit. She had attempted to swallow it as she was pulled over.

At a hearing today, Ms. Evans told the judge she had only $3,000 left to turn over to the victim. She drove to the hearing in a new Mercedes. The judge considered the offer an insult and gave her until mid-May to come up with the victim’s cash. She will receive her full sentence then.

The second story is perhaps more insidious. Regardless of where you come down on the Terri Schiavo issue, we hope you are repulsed by the following.

John Edward is known for his tactless but generally not horribly harmful Crossing Over books and television shows. His name has dropped from the public discourse since his show was cancelled from the Sci-Fi cable channel.

He tried to pull himself up by his bootstraps once before by taping a special edition of Crossing…

Yanna a/k/a Christine Evans

Two stories came together as we were assembling the Inside Magic Daily Newsletter. (If you are not on the newsletter list, you can sign up with the box to the right of this article). Either story was disgusting but together, their unsavory parts created a whole sack full of gross that was greater than the sum of the two slimy pieces.

First, Yanna a/k/a Christine Evans, was convicted and will soon be sentenced for duping a woman out of a $100,000.00 and was going for an extra $71,000.00. The psychic is a former convict from Arizona where she faced bad check charges. Ms. Evans is a mother of three and apparently without conscience.

Ms. Evans met her victim at a “psychic party” in a suburban shopping center. She offered to provide services beyond the quick cold read in a store and the two women arranged for Ms. Evans to visit the victim’s home.

Astute readers of Inside Magic or any book or newspaper know where this is leading. Ms. Evans found the house was crawling with spooks and forces sufficient to bring psychic wrong and possibly lower property values unless forced from the structure.

Darn if they didn’t try everything. Ms. Evans even walked around the place with a pan full of steaming myrrh and incense while throwing flower petals around the joint. The image is not unlike a waitress at Chili’s bringing a steaming skillet of fajitas to your table but with flower petals thrown at you.

Still, even these extraordinary measures didn’t do the job.

Ms. Evans convinced the victim she needed to give her a check for $71,000.00 to take the next step because she sensed some of the spirits were violent. That’s not good. Real estate appraisers say next to replacing your bathrooms, driving out violent spirits is the best thing you can do to improve your home’s value.

A law enforcement officer hid in the shower to listen to the exchange between the two women. The victim invited the law enforcement officer into the house (one wonders if this was the ‘violent spirit’ Ms. Evans felt). The check was written; Ms. Evans left the house, and was stopped by assisting officers down the road. When they retrieved the check from Ms. Evans, it was soggy with spit. She had attempted to swallow it as she was pulled over.

At a hearing today, Ms. Evans told the judge she had only $3,000 left to turn over to the victim. She drove to the hearing in a new Mercedes. The judge considered the offer an insult and gave her until mid-May to come up with the victim’s cash. She will receive her full sentence then.

The second story is perhaps more insidious. Regardless of where you come down on the Terri Schiavo issue, we hope you are repulsed by the following.

John Edward is known for his tactless but generally not horribly harmful Crossing Over books and television shows. His name has dropped from the public discourse since his show was cancelled from the Sci-Fi cable channel.

He tried to pull himself up by his bootstraps once before by taping a special edition of Crossing Over in October 2001, in which he contacted the victims of the terrorist attack just 20 days earlier.

That was pretty tacky, yes? In fact, the network executives — not known for their great taste and decorum — canned the idea. The Washington Post wrote, According to the Post, “production house Studios USA axed the whole idea after reporters and station execs — the two least queasy segments of society — actually cringed.”

So Mr. Edward was faced with an up-hill battle. How could he get his name back in the news without having studio executives prevent his tactless self-promotion?

Apparently he hit upon the idea recently when he appeared on Fox and Friends, a morning show on the Fox News Channel. On the show, he represented that he could not only read the minds of the dead, but also those in Ms. Schiavo’s condition.

From the March 24 edition of Fox & Friends:

DOOCY: You mentioned the Terri Schiavo case. Some might wonder, “Well, you know what, I wonder if he could communicate with her.”

EDWARD: I do believe that the soul, the consciousness, can communicate when they’re in a state, whether it be a mentally incapacitated person, someone who’s in a coma. It’s a consciousness, and the soul has a living consciousness. So whether it’s in a physical vehicle or not, there is still the ability to connect. Many people will have what they call out-of-body experiences, or astral dreams. Two very living people, that are healthy, could have a kind of connection in a dream state that can be validated. So why not somebody who’s in this case?

DOOCY: So she may not be able to talk with her brain, but she can with her soul —

EDWARDS: But she’s clear on what’s going — and I can tell you that she’s definitely clear on what’s happening now around her.

Check out the video clip of this exchange in Windows Media or Quick Time

It could be you are not repulsed by this grand-standing. Boy, we sure hope that’s not the case. Mr. Edward has refused many efforts to have his carnival side-show act tested by actual mentalists or psychic entertainers. His cold-reading is not even that good. But here, Mr. Edward has stooped to the lowest rung, he would cold-read someone who neurologists believe no longer has the brain function necessary to communicate at all.

Why?

Mr. Edward and Ms. Evans are two of a kind. Both appear interested in preserving their career and financial streams without regard to those lives affected by their efforts. How much more pain would the family of Ms. Schiavo or any critically brain-injured person suffer at Mr. Edward’s hands. It is not too extreme to imagine he would lend himself out for communication with brain-injured or brain-dead patients of any age. What parent would ignore the chance to talk to their child through Mr. Edward when medical science has advised there is nothing that can be done to restore brain function?

So what is the harm?

Ms. Evans’ victim is out just a hundred grand. Hopefully, Ms. Schiavo’s family did not hear the offer from Mr. Edward. Won’t the market really return equilibrium? When folks find out Mr. Edward is a fraud, he will go out of business. When Ms. Evans is in jail she cannot cause any more harm.

The harm, though, is substantial and not ethereal. It is also personal.

We perform mentalism effects and our routine is carefully set-up to ensure there is no suggestion of special powers. The only powers we claim are the ability to pick kindly volunteers and either influences their choices in carefully controlled situations or to read their reactions to our suggestions. We cop to nothing more than a poker player’s skills in reading his opponent.

Desperation, though, leaves victims strewn in our paths. There are those who want to believe we have something beyond normal abilities. They want to presume that we can help them reach through the veil of death. We can’t. We tell them we can’t.

Mr. Edward’s performance however gives these poor people hope. He and other psychics are willing to cold-read the emotionally devastated with no knowledge (or concern) as to that cold-read’s effect on the rest of their lives.

There is very real danger in the practice of necromancy — even if that necromancy is a sham. The biblical prohibition of talking to the dead is appropriate not only because it is commanded by God but because even one’s claim that has he had this power, can open the door to horrible emotional consequences for those who believe. The Bible does not say necromancy is prohibited unless it is for entertainment purposes or when performed by someone pretending to have the power.

In a recent article about the incredible flood of interviews of UK Psychic Entertainer Derren Brown, this point is well made. (That’s right, there was an article written about the articles written about Mr. Brown — that’s how you know you’ve made it).

“There are a lot of skills that are used by psychics and mediums, sometimes as a conscious fraud, sometimes unknowingly. We’ve all done it. You read the astrology columns and we know, as intelligent people, you just make your situation fit what you read. So if your mother’s just died and I’m talking to you and trampling all over your private memories of her and replacing them with my own rubbish that I’m trying to make you believe so I look good just for my own ego-boost or for a book I’m trying to promote ? I mean, that’s really ugly.”

He describes a horrible example of the dangers associated with psychic readings.

An Afro-Caribbean man living in Britain went to see a psychic who told him there was a curse on his family and he had to bring ?3,000 with him to the next session. The money would be burnt to release the “bad energy”. “It’s a classic scam,” says Brown. “Somebody puts the money in an envelope, switches envelopes and sets fire to the other one.”

The man was told that if he didn’t bring the money either he or his son would die in the next three weeks. “But he couldn’t find the money and he didn’t want his son to die, so he killed himself.

We are not preaching to the choir. You can accept our position or reject it. You can strip from the rationale the biblical support and consider the wisdom of feigning supernatural powers on its own. But, please take note, if you do claim such powers and you do intervene into the lives of others with the same carelessness and evil as these examples, we will do all in our natural powers to expose you for what you are willing to be.

It is wrong, disgusting, and evil.

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