CONFESSIONS OF A NONBELIEVER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: STARGATE
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP96-00787R000200080047-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 4, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 5, 1998
• Sequence Number: 47
• Publication Date: June 7, 1976
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Release01/03/26 :CIA-RDP96-00787R(200080047-3
MyTurn
Dan Greenburg
Confessions of a Nonbeliever
' have something to tell you and I don't images: the young lady described a small
know how you're going to take it. I black-and-white portrait of a woman
don't really know how to take it myself, if with a broad-brimmed hat. I described a
you want to know the truth. religious painting, dark in color, with a
What I have to tell you is that, all those three-quarter-inch white border around
years when we used to giggle at anything it and a glare on the page. We went into
having to do with the occult with the other room and turned over the
ghosts and clairvoyants and faith healers magazine. On one page was a small
and voodoo and mind-over-matter and black-and-white portrait of a woman
whatnot-well, maybe we were wrong to with a broad-brimmed hat. On the facing
giggle. page was a religious painting, dark in
Look, I'm a rational, logical, linear- color, with a three-quarter-inch white
thinking, sensible fella, same as yourself, border around it and a glare on the page.
and if about two years ago I started Our reaction was giddy laughter. It
running around with witches and medi- didn't seem possible. It didn't seem
ums and practitioners of ceremonial frightening either. It was just fooling
magic, it was mostly because I figured around.
they'd be fun to write about. Have a little
chuckle at their expense, and where's PARANORMAL SHENANIGANS
the harm, you know? I certainly never The next time something happened I
expected to encounter anything I was fooling around too. While watching a
couldn't explain away with my rational, ghastly old movie on TV, I half-seriously
logical, linear-thinking, sensible, old be- suggested to my companion that I was
lief system, but that is what seems to going to hurl an invisible bolt at the
have happened. screen and shut the set off. I hurled. The
It didn't happen in the melodramatic set shut off. We laughed that time too, but
situations I found my way into either-it maybe not as loudly.
didn't happen in the spooky home of a The next thing involved a psychic in
black magician next to Loch Ness, Scot- Chicago named Olof Jonsson, who did
land, and it didn't happen in the coven of the by now famous ESP tests with astro-
teen-age witches I hung out with in naut Edgar Mitchell from the moon.
Brooklyn, and it didn't happen during When I 'met Olof he had me hold a deck
lie sinister voodoo ceremonies I got into of ordinary playing cards in my hand and,
Haiti. Where it happened was in although he never came within 15 feet of
fectly ordinary apartments in perfect- me, he caused a card in the deck I held to
f rdinary places like Chicago and New dematerialize.
,efork City and Toronto. There was no I've described this incident to a num-
/ weird chanting, no voodoo drums, no her of stage magicians. They all assure
whooshes of fire, nothing like that. me it's the oldest trick in the book, but
SEEING IS BELIEVING? when I ask them how it was done the best
they can do is mumble something about
The first thing that happened was that how I only thought Olof was 15 feet away
a psychic named Alex Tanous asked me from me the whole time. All I can tell you
and a ladyfriend to participate in a little is that he was 15 feet away. I mean, I was
experiment. He went into a room adja- there and the magicians weren't. (Olof
cent to the one we were in, found a did something else that day of an eerie
magazine, opened it at random so none of nature, but I'll tell you about that in a
us could see it and put it face down on a moment.)
bed. Then he came back into the room Now then, if it isn't satisfying to de-
we were in and, in a semi-meditative scribe such incidents to stage magicians,
process, guided us into trying to "see" it, it's even less so to tell them to physicists.
He asked us to describe the picture in the Most physicists say they don't believe in
other room and, not believing there was paranormal shenanigans any more than
the remotest chance of doing so, we took you do, but don't get them started talking
a. whack at it. shop or before you know it they'll be
We each described entirely different telling you about things like tachyons,
which are subatom-
ic particles which
travel faster than the
speed of light and
arrive at their desti-
nations almost be-
fore they start out.
And don't talk shop
with astronomers or they'll tell you about
black holes, which are collapsed stars
with magnetic fields so strong they swal-
low up even light waves. And biologists
are no better because they'll tell you
about eels that can smell a thimbleful of
rose scent diluted in a lake covering
14,000 square miles.
Anyway, what I did about all this was
write a book called "Something's There"
and, although it's come out, I haven't
stopped my research. I have even tenta-
tively called myself a psychic investiga-
tor a couple of times, just to see how it
sounds.
I must confess that I have also been
doing a lot of chuckling at all my old,
rational, logical, linear-thinking, sensi-
ble friends who don't believe in the
occult-they're obviously threatened by
it. Not like us hip, open-minded psychic
investigators.
EERIE NATURE
Funny thing, though, about us hip,
open-minded psychic investigators-
sometimes we don't act so hip. Remem-
ber my saying that Olof did something
else of an eerie nature when I met him?
What he did was he had me think of a
short phrase, and then he read my mind.
Not once, but three times in succession.
I'm so hip and open-minded that, the
moment it happened, I blocked it out of
my mind until long after it was too late to
put it into my book.
So I guess I'm pretty threatened by the
paranormal after all. There's only one
problem about this field, though-I've
come too far and seen too much to go
back to my comfortable old beliefs. But I
have gone back to giggling a little at the
occult. Laughter is still the best method I
know of dealing with fright.
Dan Greenburg is the author of "How
to Be a Jewish Mother," "Scoring" and
other books.
w3prove or a ease 111'', 1,1 '101 6jo '11,11111111 . r,
June 7, 197
13