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Newsgroups: alt.paranet.ufo,sci.skeptic,alt.conspiracy
Subject: Psychic Detective? From Parascope...
From: PNPJ@db1.cc.rochester.edu (PATRICIA NEILL)
Date: Thu, 23 May 96 15:54:23 GMT

There is an interesting new content area in America Online called
"Parascope." (keyword: parascope). Great graphics and interesting
articles. There's also a webpage, http://www.parascope.com. 

Here's a sample article. The sections are Matrix (politics, conspiracies, etc), Nebula (UFOs etc),
Enigma (paranormal), and Dossier (documentation and FOIA).

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Psychic Detective?

By D. Trull
Enigma Editor
(PSCP Trull@aol.com)

Psychics. Real or fake, they're able to find plenty of employment
opportunities. Some run 900 number ripoffs, others predict Princess
Di's future for the Enquirer, and a select few carry out
mystery-shrouded deeds for the government. And then there are those
who use their purported sixth sense in the name of the common good,
trying to make a real difference through extraordinary means.

For example: psychic police consultant Noreen Renier. For twenty years
she has assisted law enforcement officials in forty-two states and
abroad in cracking seemingly unsolvable homicides and other crimes.
She recently demonstrated her work on prime-time television, and in
the same week lectured at a prominent parapsychology institute. Enigma
Editor D. Trull met Renier at the lecture, where he became a subject
for her psychic readings. Read on for his full report on Renier, her
unique career, and the ESP experience they shared.


"My name's Noreen Renier, and if you can give me the first name of a
victim and something from that crime scene, I can tell you who did it
and how it happened."

With this claim Renier introduced herself on the television special
"Put to the Test", which ABC aired on April 29. The program was the
second in an intermittent series that purports to test the validity of
paranormal claims; the other subjects of this installment were a
psychic doctor and an unconventional hypnotherapist.

Before presenting its challenge for Renier's abilities, "Put to the
Test" described the methods she follows in assisting police work. She
specializes in homicide cases, although she occasionally helps
investigate rapes and other crimes. Most of the time she gives her
readings over the phone, using piece of physical evidence provided by
the authorities.

Sensing the "psychic energy" embedded in the object--normally a
possession of the victim--Renier claims to envision the crime in
bursts of clear detail. "When I touch an object from the body, it's
like I'm seeing a film," she said on the program. "It's not terribly
clear like we see in this reality. It's fuzzy, faded and sometimes
there's spaces that are missing in the film. But I can see."

Renier alternates viewpoints during the course of a reading. She may
float above the crime scene as an objective observer, or enter the
mind of the killer in an effort to identify him, or become the victim
and relive the death first-hand. Because of the stress of these
experiences and the police investigators' exacting demands, she finds
it helpful to sip wine during psychic sessions.

"Sometimes I get killed two or three times a week," Renier said. "I
don't like to get killed more than that because it's too exhausting." 
 
Looking through the victim's eyes, Renier gathers a physical
description of the perpetrator. She says the facial features and
bodily characteristics come to her one at a time, rather than as a
complete picture. Her personal sketch artist works the details into a
composite drawing during the session. 

The staff of "Put to the Test" assembled three California murder cases
that had been successfully solved. Evidence from the crimes was sealed
in three different envelopes and brought to Renier for two days of
testing. One envelope was randomly selected and used on each day. Sgt.
Jon Perkins, the robbery/homicide detective who investigated all three
cases, was on hand to gauge Renier's responses.

The program revealed next to nothing about the first day's test,
noting only that Renier was "accurate on 75% of the facts of the
case," while the artist's sketch from her description was pronounced
"dead wrong." 

Much more air time was devoted to the second test. This case involved
a man convicted of murdering his elderly landlady. Renier was informed
only that this was a homicide case and the victim's name was
Josephine, and she was handed an object belonging to the victim: a
hearing aid. 

Renier began her reading while Sgt. Perkins judged her performance as
she went, saying, "I can confirm that" or "I can't confirm that." She
first described the killer's physical features, speaking in a halting,
dreamy manner, as if struggling to grasp every detail: "I feel wide
mouth... I feel some width to the mouth... might be a strong
overbite... in his... strong overbite... his lips... short, more
short..."

Next she gave details about the house in which the murder took place,
correctly identifying a white house with a noisy front door, near a
church. After making some faulty statements about the killer, she said
that he was someone Josephine knew and that a knife and a second
weapon were used in the crime, which was true. (A knife and a hatchet
were the murder weapons.) She also mentioned that police had had a
hard time finding one of the weapons, and in fact the knife had been
hidden in the victim's kitchen oven. 

Lastly, the psychic composite sketch of the killer was compared to an
actual photo, and Perkins judged the accuracy to be between a seven
and an eight on a scale of one to ten. He and the program's hosts
hailed this test an outstanding success.

Unfortunately, several components of the "Put to the Test"
demonstration do not stand up well under close scrutiny. In his online
newsletter, James Randi offered this critique:

"Let me suggest that a proper test of the 'police psychic' would have
been to have her work one of the three cases, chosen at random,
without anyone present who knew the answers to prompt her--which was
so obviously the case here--and then ask an independent panel to
decide which of the three cases she was talking about. That would
require that clues in her 'reading' identifying anything, be removed.
It wasn't too tough to figure out that 'Josephine' with a hearing aid
was an elderly woman.... It was appalling what the TV hosts oohed and
aahed at. And that drawing looked more like Queen Victoria than the
convicted killer. Amazing." 

Next: Renier's lecture at a parapsychology institute... and your
ParaScope reporter was there.

On May 3, Noreen Renier gave a lecture and informal demonstration at
the Rhine Research Center Institute for Parapsychology in Durham,
North Carolina. One of the country's oldest and most respected
foundations for the study of psychic phenomena, the Institute
regularly offers classes and lectures that are open to the public.
These presentations are generally made by staff members or visiting
academics, although sometimes alleged psychics such as Renier have the
opportunity to lecture. In such cases, Rhine Research Center makes
plain that it does not endorse any psychic or support any claims such
guests make. 

I was part of the audience of about twenty, and was lucky enough to be
one of those for whom Renier performed a personal psychic reading. I
would like to share my impressions and reactions from that
evening--even aware as I am that Renier is the only psychic ever to
win a libel lawsuit and collect damages from an effort to discredit
her. In 1986 she sued John Merrell, member of an organization called
the Northwest Skeptics, and was awarded a $25,000 judgment. I will be
fair with Renier, but her litigious history will not distort my honest
opinions.

Before Renier spoke, a Rhine Research Center staffer handed out about
eight small envelopes to members of the audience. Through no
manipulations on my part, I received one of the envelopes. We were
asked to seal a personal possession inside our envelopes, preferably
something meaningful that we had had for several years. Renier wanted
to collect items from people she had never met, to be used in a
demonstration. 

Her opening discussion of herself and what she does was disarmingly
captivating. By declaring up front that she was once as skeptical as
the average person and had considered ESP a load of hooey, Renier
dispelled any unease in the air and captured the audience's sympathy
right away. She recounted her early meditation discoveries and first
struggling attempts as a psychic, punctuating her tales with humor and
mock grandeur that kept us laughing throughout. Her descriptions of
the police cases she has worked on were chillingly fascinating, and
supported by a good deal of evidence for her claims.


While she is an excellent storyteller, Renier displays a tendency to
go off on colorful tangents and forget what her original point was.
Often she had to back up and supply a crucial detail which she had
overlooked, and other times she would stomp her foot and recall more
interesting story she had to add, as if it took a great effort for her
to squeeze everything in. She seems to possess a deeply imaginative
mind from which fertile ideas spontaneously spring forth, with little
restraint or linear order. 

There were two elements of Renier's introduction that I must take
exception with. First, in discussing the untapped potential of the
mind, she cited the old wives' tale that we only use ten percent of
our brains. She asserted that all scientists know this, and you can
look it up in any book. This is simply not true. While it is obvious
that the human mind has virtually limitless capacities, medical
science indicates that 100% of a healthy person's brain is already in
use, physically speaking. Any attempt to quantify the available
mental potential of the brain is arbitrary and meaningless.

Second, Renier spoke of reading people's auras, and invited us to see
her aura for ourselves. Standing still in front of a white lecture
board, she asked us to gaze at her "third eye" (pointing to her
forehead) and to watch for a colored aura to appear in our peripheral
vision. She told us to keep our eyes on the board as she ducked away,
explaining that her aura would linger behind her. Of course, her
ghostly silhouette showed up plainly on the white board, burned quite
naturally onto our retinas by our long stares. Renier preempted
criticism by saying she knew what afterimages were, and the
aura was something else. Judging the aura affirmations murmured
through the audience, I wondered if everyone was making that
distinction. 

Renier may well be truly psychic, but she should let her abilities
speak for themselves. She has nothing to gain by cheapening her
presentation with pseudoscience factoids and extraneous parlor tricks.

Next: Renier investigates the mind of her scariest psychotic yet: Me!

Following her remarkable biographical sketch, Renier was ready to show
us her skills first-hand. She scattered the audience's sealed
envelopes on the floor before her in an attempt to keep their
"energies" from intermingling. She apologized up front for the less
than ideal testing conditions, explaining that when a group of people
are clustered so closely together, her psychic readings can become
jumbled. 

In each case, Renier took the item from its envelope and rubbed her
hands energetically across it, screwing her eyes shut and tilting her
head  back and rolling it from shoulder to shoulder. She often jostled
in her seat and stroked her hair and face with one free hand, as if
trying to feel the face of the person whose psyche she was connecting
with. Dramatically, she would lock into a broad smile or intense
scowl, seeming to lock abruptly into her subject's emotions.

Her descriptions tended to begin with the person's facial features,
going into exacting detail on eyebrow shape, nose structure and mouth
size. She later explained that this practice stems from police demands
for composite sketches. She would then offer a full physical
description, concentrating on any unusual features such as scars or
aches in limbs. Finally she gave her impressions of the person's
thoughts and concerns and personality, and then came out of her
reverie to ask her subject to identify himself or herself.

She would ask the subject for feedback on how accurate she was--but
since she claims not to remember what she says while in her psychic
state, she has to rely on her observers to supply the details of the
reading she has just given! With concrete information in hand, Renier
then attempted a further reading, encouraging the now-identified
subject to provide input as she went. During this stage, Renier was
capable of flowing seamlessly between the psychic state and normal
conversation without memory lapses, which was somewhat confusing.

So how well did she do?

Renier was very dissatisfied with her very first trial. The accuracy
of the description was so-so, and when the woman subject mentioned
that her husband often used the set of keys Renier had "read," Renier
immediately disqualified the test. Since the psychic energies of two
people were mixed up in the keys, her reading was at an unfair
disadvantage. Renier said she had flashed between male and female
during the test, although she never said so until she heard about the
husband.  

Subsequent tests went more smoothly, as several people remarked with
awe that certain physical and psychological traits Renier detected
were incredibly precise. Among these were such qualities as foot
pains, a recent sadness, and the opinion that one's eyes are one's
best feature. Inaccurate readings were chalked up to the cramped
testing quarters or disregarded entirely, as Renier insisted that she
only wanted to talk about the parts she got correct. She has the
ability to steer a discussion without making it obvious that she is
doing so.  

I myself was one of the last subjects Renier attempted. From focusing
on my treasured pocket knife, Renier was able to gather the psychic
impressions that I have paraphrased below:

--"This person has round eyes; large, round eyes."

--"There is a scar near the hairline, or maybe elsewhere on the body."

--"I sense a lot of change... this person has been through a lot of
changes recently, but is not certain of where to go next. I see the
path clearly lying ahead of this person, but this person is reluctant
to take it. There is a lot of confusion."

--"I see this person's parents speaking another language... maybe they
are from another place, far away."

--"This person is a good kisser. I think this person would be a great
kisser!"

Afterwards Renier asked me how much she got right, and I responded, "A
bit." She snapped playfully that she didn't want to hear "a bit"--she
just wanted to hear what was right. I offered that the part about
change was right, since I recently changed jobs. Then I got one of the
biggest laughs of the night when I announced that the thing about my
parents speaking another language is fairly accurate, since they have
deep Southern accents. As far as the kissing part, well, let's just
say I have a lot of untapped potential in that arena. And I guess I
have somewhat large, round eyes. I don't have any major scars,
although a woman behind me was kind enough to insist that it was her
scar Renier had read by mistake.

Renier attempted to follow up with me by asking about my career and my
love life. I was not very good at this, partly because I felt it was
unfair to give her too much prompting to base further "insights" upon,
remembering how Sgt. Perkins practically spoon-fed her clues on the TV
show. Also, her questions were so metaphysically phrased that before I
had time to formulate a response, she moved on to something else. She
mentioned something along the lines of "you bitch about your weight,"
now that she could see I was a fat guy.

Finally she announced that she would see me again in a year and a
half, but she would not recognize me then. When she handed me my
knife, she asked mysteriously, "Are you going to work?" Puzzled and
kind of scared, I responded, "Um... absolutely!"

My conclusion is that Renier may very well be psychic, but there is no
compelling reason to believe so. The stories I have heard of her
police work--which are presumably only the cream of the crop--are far
more impressive than the demonstration I saw for myself. Any person
with a mind as supple and free-flowing as Renier's could do a
reasonable job of spewing out a string of qualities that sound
specific but could in fact apply to a great many people. She
skillfully misdirected attention from her inaccuracies with
her selective forgetfulness of what she says while "under" and excuses
about cross-polluted energy fields. Again, these may be legitimate
claims about the limits of her abilities, but she uses such rhetoric
to her advantage with the polished skill of a carnival barker.

I have nothing against Noreen Renier and what she does. It is probably
impossible to know if she is actually psychic, but there is nothing
wrong with her assisting on dead-end homicide cases, given that no one
is likely to be harmed by or falsely arrested solely on the basis of
her visions. Even if she and others like her are doing nothing more
than randomly offering police investigators fresh new perspectives
which occasionally lead to real and valuable discoveries, psychic
detectives are providing a service with something to recommend it.


(c) Copyright 1996 ParaScope, Inc.