"I Don't Make Hocus-Pocus"

For the past two years, I've been doing research on black magic and related weirdness, and since I started nosing around the subject, everybody I've talked to who hasn't giggled has darkly warned me to stay away from it.

As a matter of fact, many of the people who warned me had once been into black magic themselves, and they seemed so frightened they could scarcely talk about it. Warnings tend to make things that much more intriguing to me, but I can't say I wasn't starting to get a trifle worried. Then a friend told me she knew this clairvoyant who was very trustworthy and something of an expert on the occult.

I figured if anybody could tell me whether I was in any danger from black-magical investigations, it would be he. The clairvoyant was a 55-year-old Dutchman by the name of Marinus Dykshoorn, and he was to give a lecture at a Unitarian church on Central Park West. I went to hear him.

•

The lecture is being held in a large room with bleacher seats filled with people of all ages and lifestyles. A member of the church welcomes us and introduces Dykshoorn with a series of self-conscious jokes about clairvoyance. Dykshoorn stands up and begins a very energetic, perky and only partially intelligible explanation of what he does and how he does it. "I don't know what I do," he says in a heavily accented voice, "and I don't know how I do it." He is a stocky 5'6", has electric-blue eyes overshadowed by bushy eyebrows and, as he talks, he strides briskly about and toys with a loop of wire.

He explains that he is not precisely a clairvoyant, but there is no word in the English language for what he is, which is a person with ESP in all five senses. The loop of wire he is toying with is a length of ordinary 15-cent piano wire and it acts as a sort of dowsing rod for him: He uses it to receive vibrations of electrical energy. It also seems to be a kind of lightning rod, as he describes it, because he says that he gets tingly sensations from the wire loop in his hands that would otherwise be received as moderately painful shocks at the base of his skull.

He says that in addition to lectures and private consultations, he helps police departments all over the world solve murder cases. The way he does that is to go to the scene of a crime with his wire loop, tune into the vibrations there and then re-create with all five senses the last five minutes of the victim's life. He hears, sees, feels, tastes and smells everything the victim did at the end. If the death was by strangulation, Dykshoorn usually gets red marks on his neck; if the death was by shooting, he often gets red marks where the bullets struck. He has notarized affidavits from everyone involved in every one of the cases he has helped solve that attest to these feats.

Following a description of what he does and a brief history of how he first realized as a child that he had these powers--until he was an adult, they were much more of a curse to him than a blessing--he says there will be a short question-and-answer period and then a demonstration. Several questions are asked and over many of his replies I hear somebody behind me muttering frequent factual corrections. I turn around and see that the mutterer is an attractive middle-aged blonde woman who turns out to be his wife. As the question-and-answer period continues, she begins muttering, "Demonstration, demonstration...."

Dykshoorn decides his wife is correct and the demonstration begins. He tells us to ask him questions about our lives and he will tune into our vibrations and give us some extrasensory perceptions. A woman in the audience says she is unsure about whether or not she should remain in her present job. What is Dykshoorn's advice?

"OK," says Dykshoorn, mentally rolling up his sleeves, "I work it out." He takes the wire loop between his hands and paces briskly back and forth for a few moments. He stops and closes his eyes. "Your body comes into me now." he says. "I become you now. I am female." He frowns. "You have trouble in the back, is it, madam?" he says.

"No," says the woman.

"You have trouble in the right knee, madam?" he says.

"No," says the woman.

Dykshoorn seems not at all dismayed. "You have an irritation in the thyroid?" he says.

"No," says the woman, by now clearly embarrassed by her apparent robust health; but still Dykshoorn is not upset.

"You have had trouble down here, is it?" he says, indicating his lower belly.

"No," says the woman once more.

People in the audience are beginning to shift restlessly in their seats. "You have never had a Caesarean, madam?" says Dykshoorn.

"No," says the woman, "I'm sorry."

"I don't care," says Dykshoorn doggedly, "I see it, madam, what can I do?"

Suddenly, the lady next to her shouts, "Wait a minute, what you've been saying is true of me--I've had a Caesarean and trouble in my thyroid and my back and my right knee--you've been reading me!" Everybody is immensely relieved.

Dykshoorn returns to the healthy woman and tries to tune in on her office situation. He says she works in a large office. She agrees. He says she works in the third row of desks on the right as you enter. She says the fourth. He says she works in a surveying office. She says yes and is impressed for the first time. He says her immediate supervisor is a very difficult woman and that is why she is thinking of leaving her job. The lady agrees, now beginning to get excited. Dykshoorn says her supervisor may be a difficult woman but that she is a good person, and he says to stay in the job because he sees a promotion and a raise in salary coming soon.

Another woman in the audience, whom he correctly diagnoses as having a low blood count and a history of rheumatic heart disease, is told that she is depressed and should try to get a more positive outlook on life. "Happiness is a state of mind," says Dykshoorn. "When a person says in the morning, 'It stinks,' so is the whole day rotten." He closes his eyes. "Your father." he says, "is this the way he stands?" Dykshoorn adopts an exaggerated stance.

"Yes," says the woman.

"Is this the way he walks?" says Dykshoorn, striding jauntily across the stage.

"Yes," says the woman.

"He is taller than myself?"

"Yes," says the woman.

Dykshoorn coughs. "This is his cough?"

"Yes," says the woman.

"He spends much time in the toilet, reading magazines?"

"Yes," says the woman.

"He has hemorrhoids."

"Yes," says the woman.

"Do you now write something?" says Dykshoorn.

"Well, sort of," says the woman.

"Do you make a thesis for a master's degree?" says Dykshoorn.

"No," says the woman.

"Oh, come off it," says Dykshoorn, "I see it, madam--why do you deny it?"

He tells another woman in the audience that she has a very tall husband. She agrees. "He is five foot, eleven inches," says Dykshoorn.

"No," says the woman, "he's six foot, four."

"Sometimes," says Dykshoorn, "you have to give me a few inches, madam."

He twirls the loop in her direction. "You have no children," he says.

"Yes, I have," says the woman.

"How many?" says Dykshoorn suspiciously.

"One," says the woman, "a boy."

"But," says Dykshoorn, "he is not yours. He did not come out of your uterus."

"No," says the woman, "he's adopted."

Dykshoorn appears satisfied.

On the basis of the reactions he gets from the people he talks to. I judge he is hitting with about 80 percent accuracy. Whenever he is describing anything that could be even remotely embarrassing, he says, "I'm sorry, I have to do this." Whenever he is asked anything about any occult area not directly related to clairvoyance, he says, "I'm sorry, this is not mine field." A couple of times he starts to reply and then says, "I'm sorry, I forget the question." He seems to be getting tired as the demonstration goes on but says that this is no deterrent. "I work best when I am either tired or drunk," he says.

I decide that before he gets either tired or drunk, and regardless of the fact that it may not be his field, I have to ask him what I came for.

"I am researching a piece of writing on black magic," I say. "On the basis of what you know or what you sense, do you think I'm in any danger?"

"No," says Dykshoorn decisively, "you are in no danger. Black magic is phony-baloney."

"Really?" I say, vastly relieved. "You don't believe in it at all, then?"

"No," he says. "You stick a needle into a doll of a man, of course he feels it--you don't need phony-baloney dancing around and mumbo jumbo. Anybody can do it--you don't need black magic."

It is not exactly the sort of answer I know what to do with, but the lecture-demonstration is now over. I drift over to the knot of people surrounding Dykshoorn, having decided I must speak with this man at greater length, about black magic and other things as well. At the fringe of people pressing forward for instant free solutions to their life problems is Mrs. Dykshoorn. She holds a number of her husband's business cards and press kits with reprints of newspaper articles from various parts of the country where he has given demonstrations and helped solve murders. I take a business card and a press kit and make an appointment with his wife to see him.

"After you talk to him." says Mrs. Dykshoorn reassuringly, "you will know everything."

•

Dykshoorn receives me in his modern high-rise apartment in Riverdale and immediately ushers me into his study and closes the door. We sit down, exchange a few pleasantries, and then he stands up, takes a wire loop out of his suit-jacket pocket and begins to twirl it in my direction. "OK," he says, "now I work you out."

(continued on page 167)Hocus-Pocus(continued from page 72)

He stops twirling the loop. "You have had trouble with the left foot, is it?" he says.

"No," I say, "I'm afraid I haven't." And then, almost instantaneously, I remember: When I was 14 years old, I spent the summer at a ranch camp in Colorado and I had excruciating pain of unknown origin all summer in my left ankle. "You're right." I say.

"All right." he says and begins to spin the loop again. "You have had an irregular heartbeat in the past, is it?" he says.

"Yes," I say. "When I first came to New York, eleven years ago, my electrocardiogram showed an irregular heartbeat, but nothing like that either before or since."

"All right," he says. "You are twenty-eight, is it?"

"No," I say, "I'm not."

"Thirty-two?" he says.

"No," I say, "I'm thirty-eight."

He looks slightly piqued.

"I'm sorry," he says, "but I don't give you thirty-eight."

"OK," I say, still fairly certain of my age.

He twirls the loop some more.

"You are not a sexpot," he says.

"A what?"

"A pervert. I am sorry. You are normal in the sex area. You have been married, but not now, is it?"

I say that's right, I was married for seven years and am now divorced.

"You will marry again." he says, "in three to five years." He then proceeds to give me an exceedingly detailed description of my next wife, of her background and family and the circumstances of our meeting. He says my second marriage will be a very good one and will last for 30 years.

"And all this will happen in three to five years?" I say.

"One to two," says Dykshoorn.

"I thought you said three to five."

"The distance is for me difficult," he says apologetically. "Once I says to a lady, 'You will be married in a year's time,' and she was married in half a year's time, and she was happy. But if I say to her it will be half a year and it turns out to be eight months, so she is two months cranky.

"You see," he says, "when I get somebody in here, like you, I work them out. And when I can't see a future for them, it means there is no future. This happened to me already in the United States three times--a man and two women, I have to send them away. I says, 'Would you come back, please, in two months' time?' and one was killed in an accident and the other two drowned. I never lie, but when it is bad, I don't say it. That is why I don't work it I drink. You have been drunk in your life?"

"Yes----"

"I, many times. Once I am in a bar and I have been drinking. A man says to me, 'I hate you, Dykshoorn.' I says to him, 'What do I care--fourteen days.' Then I come back two weeks later and the man is being buried. So I never work if I have anything to drink, and I never drank anything again after 1954."

"When you said, 'What do I care--fourteen days,' did you know it meant he'd be dead two weeks later?" I say.

"No." says Dykshoorn. "This is why I never drank again alter 1954. But I never lie. You see, you are a writer. You like to write plays for the stage, is it?"

"Yes----"

"But you will never succeed in it. I am sorry, I have to say this. I cannot say to you you will have a success if I don't see it, I don't do that. I says to you. you are an excellent writer for feature films, you are an excellent scriptwriter--excellent. But you can't bring that to the plays. For radio you must be very bad, too. I think. But you get next year a prize for writing something. I don't know what it is for, but you have something in your hand and it is tall, like a statue."

"Like an Academy Award?" I say.

"I don't know," he says. "I don't think so. But I think you will never work for Paramount. I am sorry. Maybe Wanner Bros."

He twirls his loop some more.

"Now, I don't see you as a painter, either," he says. "You paint, is it?"

"Sometimes," I say.

"But I don't see it," he says. "I see you as a writer. You are an excellent writer, a genius. I see that, you will be very successful in books, in feature films, in television, but you will get sick of it, and you are lousy in plays."

"OK," I say.

"You are not very good at poesy, either, is it?"

"Poetry? No, I don't guess so."

"I see that. But you have the remarkable ability, the ability to make them cry and to make them loff--now, isn't that fontosteek?"

"Yeah," I say. I am not at all sure how to react to this detailed critique of the totality of my creative output by a man who has never read a word I have written, and yet it all seems somehow to make sense.

"How do you like the newspaper stories about me which I give you to read?" he says.

I say I found them fascinating.

"All very realistic, isn't it?" he says. "I don't like hocus-pocus. I don't make hocus-pocus."

Several of the stories in the press kit stressed that Dykshoorn, whether onstage or in private reading, uses no darkened room or meditation techniques or special clothing, only the loop of piano wire that takes over the sensations that come through his central nervous system and allow the pictures to appear. When he is on the right track, the wire loop starts to twirl, and if the track goes cold, the loop stops twirling, according to the stories. "I don't know how I do it and I don't care--why should I?" Dykshoorn is repeatedly quoted as saying.

According to Russell Felton, Dykshoorn's personable young Australian biographer, the truth about the wire loop and how Dykshoorn uses it is slightly stranger than the newspaper stories suggest. Dykshoorn's early years. Felton tells me, were very traumatic, because he was continuously bombarded by clairvoyant impressions and had no idea of what was happening to him. It was only in later years, when he'd taught himself to focus his extrasensory perceptions on the wire loop, that he was able to turn off the barrage of ESP the rest of the time and lead a less bizarre life.

"You read the story about the woman who was told she couldn't have children?" says Dykshoorn.

I remember the item from the clippings.

"She comes down to me and I work her out. I find that she has so many chromosomes and I says to her, 'Four o'clock on such and such a day, go home and make whoopee, make hanky-panky with your husband.' And she does and she gets pregnant and has a baby. Before she gets pregnant, her doctor hears what I says to her and he tells me, 'Dykshoorn, you are crooked and a phony,' and after she gets pregnant and has the baby, he says to me, 'Dykshoorn, you did a jolly good job.'

"They gave me a woman once and she had terrible headaches. I says to her, 'Madam, your left ovary is upset.' And she says to me, 'I don't get it,' but she goes anyway to her doctor, and her doctor have a look in it and he says to her, 'You don't mind to come tomorrow morning early? I like to take it out.' And he took the ovary out and the headache was gone. Now, that is scientifically impossible, but what is scientific? They don't know, either."

Dykshoorn first sensed his clairvoyant abilities at the age of five, when he saw a man pass by the window with a noose around his neck. Two weeks later, the man committed suicide by hanging.

When Dykshoorn was seven, he went into the kitchen where his mother was talking with a friend. Little Dykshoorn said he saw a baby in his mom's friend's tummy. The lady was embarrassed and Dykshoorn's mom was furious with him, but a few days later, the lady's doctor told her for a fee what the tot had given her for nothing. Dykshoorn was an embarrassment to his parents--"They still think I'm cuckoo," he says--and to psychiatrists, who now sheepishly consult him about their patients' problems, and to the police, who call him in anonymously to help crack their toughest cases.

Before being endorsed by the Dutch government as a legitimate psychic, Dykshoorn had to pass a series of examinations. He was shown blood samples on four slides and asked to identify the sex of each donor. He felt that the first sample came from a man and the second from a woman; the third gave him no impression at all and the fourth made him angry, because he knew he had been tricked--the blood, he said, wasn't human at all but came from an animal with a long snout and a bushy tail. He was right on all four counts. The third slide, from which he'd received no impression, was merely painted to look like a blood smear; and the fourth slide was fox blood.

Dykshoorn got his endorsement. Since then, he's been tested all over the world--in Holland, Australia and in this country by Dr. J. B. Rhine, formerly of Duke University. His passport has Clairvoyant stamped across it.

There are nine heavy scrapbooks in Dykshoorn's Riverdale apartment filled with thousands of articles about him from newspapers in Europe, Australia and the United States, along with thank-you notes from heads of state and Congressmen and notarized affidavits attesting to his accomplishments. He has been named an honorary sheriff in two counties in North Carolina and has been appointed a Kentucky colonel for his crime-solving assistance. Among the framed photographs on his walls is one inscribed to him by Richard Nixon. I have, in fact, heard rumors that he was consulted by the former President and I ask him about this.

"When you are from Europe," says Dykshoorn carefully, "then you respect the President from the United States more than when you are from the United States."

"And did you give Nixon a consultation?" I say.

"No, no, I can't say that," he replies, "I never tell who I do work for--why should I?"

I ask him what he feels is in store for the U. S. He replies that he never gets into political predictions, they are not his field. "Anyway," he says, "it is more difficult to give the future for one person than for the entire country."

•

Dykshoorn's policework is done anonymously and without fee. He refuses to become involved with cases involving organized crime, to protect his family from vengeful repercussions. He prefers to be called in on a case when the police have no clues at all. "When I go to the scene of a crime," he says, "it is like I am replaying in my mind the last five minutes of what has happened. I see the person being strangled. I feel the hands around mine own throat. If he has been poisoned, I can smell or taste the poison. I hear what is said, also, but sometimes is more clear than others. Is particularly clear if the murderer has a mental disorder."

Dykshoorn tells me he prefers to work on murders committed by psychologically disturbed persons. "They are happy when they are caught," he says. "I do them a favor. I had a murderer tell me one time, 'I am happy that they catch me.' He would have an urge to kill someone and then he must do it within the hour. Afterward, he would feel guilty and worried."

Dykshoorn's most famous European case involved not murder but theft. He got a call in Holland from the captain of a boat in Germany. The boat had been stolen and the skipper begged Dykshoorn to trot on over to Germany to find it. Dykshoorn was too busy to schlep to Germany but said he might be able to do the work in Holland and phone it in. He put the receiver on his shoulder and worked the wire loop over a map of Germany, then advised the man that his boat could be found two and a half kilometers downstream, under a bridge. Two days later, the skipper called to say he'd found his yacht exactly where Dykshoorn had said it would be, but a large sum of money that had been on board was no longer there.

Patient Dykshoorn again went to work with his wire loop and described another boat not far from the one in question. "I tell him there is a seventeen-year-old boy on board the other boat and he has taken the money and hidden it inside a cupboard in a brown-leather traveling bag. I tell him go to the police immediately, because the boy is leaving the country the following day. They found the boy and the money, just like I say."

"Sometimes I make mistakes," says Dykshoorn. "but when I do, it is never mine ability, it is myself. I never blame mine ability. The perception is always right, only the interpretation can be mistaken. I have made a lot of friends that they walk out of mine life and later I was right and they come back.

"People say I have a sixth sense," he says. "I don't believe that. It is that mine senses are more highly developed than other people's. I'm a phenomenon. It's up to the scientists and the psychologists to explain me. Me, I don't know and I don't care--why should I?"

When you think about it, perhaps it's not really so strange that people like Dykshoorn have such highly developed senses. Anybody who has ever owned a dog or a cat knows that these animals respond to sounds that we can't hear, have much keener night vision than we do and possess a far superior sense of smell. We say that 20-20 vision is perfect, but all we mean by that is average human sight. Social scientists tell us that we humans utilize 15 percent of our brain's potential at best. Isn't it possible that certain people like Dykshoorn have the capability of far greater sense perception than the norm and that this heightened perception could express itself in ways that seem somewhat bizarre?

There is just one thing that bothers me. If the future really is predictable, doesn't that suggest that everything in life is predetermined? And if that's the case, what am I knocking myself out for? I mean, why shouldn't I just stay in bed and wait for my predetermined life to seek me out and happen to me?

"I think all of the major decisions and movements in a person's life are determined before he is born," says Dykshoorn. "Everything I see comes true--only the time is sometimes off." What would happen if he warned somebody of an impending tragedy--could the tragedy be avoided. "I'm sorry," he says, "but the answer is no." Our lives, he says, are controlled by our inborn urges, and even if we've been warned not to do a certain thing, our inborn urges force us to do it--if we manage to avoid it one time, we won't some other time, and then whatever our destiny is will eventually be fulfilled. I still can't accept this and opt for free will, but go argue with an oracle.

I ask Dykshoorn if he can see his own future. He says he usually can't see anything either for himself or for his family, and he is equally blank when trying to predict anything for personal gain, such as the outcomes of soccer games or pony races. Still, he does have some sense of his own future well-being. "I have no worries there," he says. "I'll be all right. I have always known that, since the days when my mother used to tell me as a little boy, 'Be careful when crossing the road.' I couldn't understand why I had to be careful--I knew I wasn't going to be run over."

•

In the press clippings I've read on Dykshoorn, there's an odd story about him at a lodge picnic. He sees a little girl hurt her hand in a swing and start to scream with great gusto. Dykshoorn hurries over, claps his hand over hers and says, "There, now, the pain's all gone--I've got it." So saying, he winces briefly, as if in pain, and the little girl stops crying.

I ask Dykshoorn if he has the power to heal. "Yes," he says, "but I don't like to do it. It is not my field. When I was living in Staten Island, I was standing one day on a ladder and I dropped a tool kit and I hurt myself very well. I was all bruises. Then I do like this," he says. wiping his thigh, "and it is all gone." He giggles. "But you see, that is not my field."

It is getting on toward dinnertime. Dykshoorn's wife is out of town and he asks me if I'd like to go to a neighborhood restaurant with him. I say sure. We drive there and he has trouble finding a parking space. I kid him about it and ask why he can't locate one by psychic means. He says very seriously that he doesn't like to use his gifts for such purposes. What if it were a life-and-death situation--at a hospital, say, with a sick person in the car--would he locate a parking space psychically then? Oh, sure, he says.

We go into the restaurant, sit down in a booth and order. The waiter brings us salads with huge dollops of mayonnaise. "This gentleman doesn't want mayonnaise," says Dykshoorn to the waiter.

"How did you know that?" I say.

"Don't worry," he says mysteriously, "I know."

I bring the conversation back to psychic healing. I ask whether he is able to heal all of his own physical afflictions. He says he is--there are no ailments he cannot cure, except for sinus trouble. Happily, he's found a remedy for that as well, however.

"And what's your trick for sinus trouble?" I say.

"Dristan," he says.

I ask if he has ever healed anybody but himself, and between disclaimers of how he doesn't like to do it and how it's not his field, he does admit to a couple of shots at healing.

"I was living in an apartment building and everybody knew I could do this," he says. "A young man came to me with a slipped disk. He couldn't walk. He says to me, 'Please, you can help me, sir.' I says to him, 'I don't do that, sir.' He says, 'Please, you did it for others, I know.' I says to him, 'I don't do it, I hate it,' but I helped him. I took away the pain and he walked, and I got it."

"You got his pain? For how long?"

"Oh, five seconds. He says, 'I will pay you later, sir.' Always it is 'I will pay you later, sir,' with this man. Finally, I saw him and I says, 'You have to pay me.' He says, 'Listen, you earned it so easy--why should I pay you?' I says. 'All right.' I give him my hand, you see, and----"

"And you gave him the pain back again?" I say.

Dykshoorn nods. "He got it back and he was in the hospital for three weeks and I never took it away again. And that's not rude. That's fair. But I don't do it anymore. I hate it. I hate pain business."

Speaking of pain business, I recall my original motive in looking him up--the notion that folks in black magic might have a side line in the pain business in some fashion.

"They call it black magic," says Dykshoorn, "but the real black magic is psychokinesis."

"You mean making things move by the power of thought?"

"Yes. And making somebody sick. I don't say that I can do it, but it exists and I don't like it. Has nothing to do with salt and pepper and phony-baloney dancing, around and mumbo-jumbo stuff, though. Has to do only with if somebody has powers of psychokinesis. If he does, and if he says he makes black magic, then he can do whatever he says he can."

"Like what?" I say.

"Like stop a clock. Then you can also stop somebody's heart, you know."

"You really believe it's possible to do such a thing?" I say.

"It's possible. I've done it many times myself."

"You've stopped people's hearts?"

"No, no, the clock. I do it hundreds of times in laboratories and I don't like to do it. You see, when you have this power, so positive that you destroy it, you destroy the clock. I think an electric clock is impossible more than a clock that is on a--how do you call--a spring. I've never done it with an electric clock. When I get very cranky, then I destroy tapes and I upset computers. I try to be never upset, because when I'm upset, everybody around me gets sick, really.

"I got in a quarrel in Australia with a fellow, he was six foot, six, and he was teasing me--'I'm not worried about you, little fellow,' he says. 'I give you one good lick and you on the ground.' I became so cranky I was really upset, and then I get through with him and he is on the ground and he can't move." Dykshoorn giggles.

"What did you do to him?" I say.

"I don't know," says Dykshoorn.

"Did you touch him at all?" I say.

"No," he says.

"You didn't even touch him and he was on the ground?" I say.

"I have abilities that I don't understand myself," he says.

"Like what?" I say.

"I don't know," he says. "I don't know what I have."

I've now been with Dykshoorn for well over four hours and I sense that it's time to wrap up the interview. There is really only one thing more I want to ask him about. The night before going to see him, I watched in fascination as a friend and her daughter put a Ouija board through its paces. Knowing Dykshoorn is an authority on the occult, I ask him about it.

"Do ghosts exist?" I say.

"No," he says, "I don't see it as a ghost."

"As a spirit, then? Do spirits exist?"

"Yeah, that's for sure," says Dykshoorn.

"Really? And can they communicate through Ouija boards?"

"No," he says scornfully. "Ouija boards, this is rubbish."

"I see," I say. "Have you been to any séances?"

"Of course," he says. "Why not? That's mine business I have investigated with fathers and doctors and mediums--I myself am an excellent medium, but I don't talk about it and I haven't done it for twenty-five years."

"Why not?"

"Why should I? I like to do what I do, and I know what I'm doing. Also, there are some real stinkers on the other side."

"Stinkers in the spirit world, you mean?"

"Yeah. Cranky spirits. Poltergeists. But I don't believe in possessing and that an exorcist can come down and exorcise somebody. I don't believe in the Devil, anyhow. Our Lord is the boss, and when you are the boss, you don't want another competition--why should He?"

"That's an interesting point." I say. "So then you'd go for a psychological explanation of people who claim to be possessed, is that right?"

"Yeah, that's right," says Dykshoorn. "I see it very realistic."

We get up to leave.

"When you write about this," he says, "don't make too much of a story out of this part. Just see me as a very realistic man. I don't make hocus-pocus."

"Don't worry," I say.

•

Dykshoorn had asked me several times over the course of our conversations where I intended to sell the piece I was writing about him. My first choice happened to be Playboy, but, knowing that Dykshoorn is a devout Catholic and a man who refers to sex as "making whoopee" and "hanky-panky," I thought it best to tell him I wasn't making decisions about where to publish until the article was finished.

Although I'd been suitably impressed with Dykshoorn's psychic abilities at this point, the journalist in me decided it would be good to check out some of the people he'd done clairvoyant work for. Unfortunately, the majority of these people live in Europe and Australia, where he spent the greatest part of his career. But by this time Felton was able to give me an advance copy of his well-documented book (My Passport Says Clairvoyant, by M. B. Dykshoorn as told to Russell H. Felton) and I started out by contacting some of the people mentioned in the book who live in the U. S.

The first person I contact is a man named James G. Bolton of Charlotte, North Carolina. Bolton is happy to talk with me and has lots to tell.

"Mr. Greenburg," says Bolton in his soft but rather formal Southern drawl, "I would be very pleased to corroborate many of the phenomenal things clairvoyant M. B. Dykshoorn has been able to do, as it has been my privilege to accompany Mr. Dykshoorn on cases involving thirty-one murders.

"One particularly interesting case I am able to relate to you occurred in eastern North Carolina. Well, sir, we had gone to this small town at the invitation of the sheriff to investigate parapsychologically a murder that had occurred two years previously. When we arrived at the sheriff's office, the sheriff opened his files and began to take pictures out. Mr. Dykshoorn said. 'No, I don't want to know anything about the case. Just take me to the location of the murder.'

"We proceeded to a home in a rural area and found the house totally empty and devoid of furniture. Mr. Dykshoorn went into the house, using his divining rod, which he spins continuously, and lay down on the floor, I thought this very peculiar. But Mr. Dykshoorn immediately arose and said. 'This is the position in which you found one of the victims--the husband.'

"The sheriff registered amazement at this remark and replied. 'Yes, that is exactly right.' Mr. Dykshoorn then described exactly how the events of this crime took place: A man came to the door who was known to the victims and was welcomed into the house. The man, said Mr. Dykshoorn, had a crowbar concealed in his trouser leg. Then Mr. Dykshoorn said to us, 'I will now follow the criminal like a bird dog,' and out the back door he went. Mr. Dykshoorn is a very short man, about five foot, six, and I am past six feet, and it was all I could do to keep up with him. I followed behind him and, with his divining rod twirling, he led the sheriff and his deputy and myself through a swamp to a highway, and then down along the highway till we came to a general store. 'This is where the killer lived,' said Mr. Dykshoorn.

"We went inside the store and, upon meeting the owner, Mr. Dykshoorn assumed a posture that looked like his leg was deformed. He asked the owner if he knew anybody who stood like that. The owner looked at Mr. Dykshoorn, who was standing in a very peculiar crouch, and he said, 'If you were black, you would be so-and-so, who used to work for me.'

"Mr. Dykshoorn said, 'But this man lived here, too.' The gentleman said, 'Yes, as a matter of fact, he had a little place back in the warehouse where he slept.'

"Then Mr. Dykshoorn again led us with his divining rod into this huge warehouse, which was empty at the time. We noticed that he was walking very close to the walls. We asked him. 'Why are you walking so close to the walls, with your shoulders bumping up against them?' And he said, 'At the time I'm following the criminal on the night of the murder, this warehouse was filled with potatoes, clear to the ceiling.' The owner corroborated that this was true.

"Next, Mr. Dykshoorn led us into a small room adjoining the larger one and there he found a crowbar, which he said was the murder weapon. Mr. Dykshoorn said, 'Now you can ask me anything you wish.'

"Mr. Dykshoorn was asked numerous questions in a rapid cross fire, as though he had been an eyewitness to the murder. He was able to furnish the police with heights, weights, times, events and other facts relative to the case that he could not have known about, never having been in that part of the country before.

"After the sheriff's questioning. Mr. Dykshoorn was asked to identify pictures of suspects. He said. 'I do not work with pictures, but if you wish to turn them face down, I will point the man out without looking at the pictures.' Taking his divining rod out, he placed it on one of the pictures. The sheriff turned over the picture and found that it was of a suspect who had a deformed foot and the same strange crouch Mr. Dykshoorn had showed us in the general store.

"The police asked where the suspect was. Mr. Dykshoorn took a map of the area, twirled his divining rod over it and pointed out the street where the man lived. The police corroborated this fact and the man is now, to my knowledge, in prison."

Bolton next tells me about a woman he knows who went to Dykshoorn for a consultation and was told. "Please, do not let your son enter the airplane race he wishes to enter." The woman asked why and Dykshoorn just said, "Please do not let your son enter this race." Her son did enter the race, his plane crashed and he was killed.

"Another interesting case I have personal knowledge of," says Bolton, "involves a gentleman I know to whom Mr. Dykshoorn said, 'You are going to break a leg, sir, but don't worry about it, because it will be all right and there is nothing you can do to prevent it.' The man said, 'When is this going to take place?' 'I see it as next Wednesday or Thursday,' said Mr. Dykshoorn. So the gentleman said. 'Well, I'll just stay home from work on those two days.'

"So he stayed home from work, and when he went out for the morning paper--I believe it was a Thursday morning--he fell down his own flight of stairs and broke his leg."

Bolton tells me about one last case. He had introduced Dykshoorn to a wealthy socialite named Anne Parrish Corley, who had a painting by a supposed Dutch master out on approval and was thinking of buying it.

"I suggested to Anne that maybe she should ask Mr. Dykshoorn whether the painting was genuine and whether it was as old as it was claimed to be. So Mr. Dykshoorn got out his divining rod and started checking the painting and told Anne that it was a fake. The canvas, he said, was not woven by hand as it would have been if the painting was as old as it was supposed to be--it was machine-woven canvas. So Anne returned the painting and didn't buy it and saved herself thousands of dollars. You can call Anne and ask her about this, and I think she'd be very willing to talk to you about it."

Anne Parrish Corley is, indeed, very willing to talk to me about Dykshoorn. But her version of the story is somewhat different from Jim Bolton's. She said Dykshoorn had paid her a visit and had, indeed, pronounced the painting a fake.

"But he didn't use any ESP or clairvoyance in arriving at that conclusion, as far as I could see," she says.

"And did the painting prove to be a fake?" I say.

"Frankly, I don't know," says Mrs. Corley. "I was so upset by what he'd said that I just returned it to the gallery."

•

Troy Anne Ross runs a modeling agency in Charlotte. She met Dykshoorn the way I did--at a church demonstration.

"We were sending a bunch of our models up to a beauty contest in New York," she says. "It was the Modeling Association of America convention, at the Waldorf hotel in Manhattan. This was in 1971. I asked Mr. Dykshoorn whether any of our girls would be among the winners. He said yes, we'd have three winners and that one of them would be a short little one.

"Well, he was dead right about the outcome of the beauty contest. We did have three winners and one of them was a twelve-year-old girl."

•

My last contact is a man named Charles Nickens, who lives in Hollywood, Florida. I ask him how he happened to meet Dykshoorn.

"Well," says Nickens, "my wife, Irma, and I ran the Travelodge Motel in Hallandale, which is right north of Miami Beach. Mr. and Mrs. Dykshoorn checked into our motel for a few days, probably because Mr. Dykshoorn had done quite a lot of work for Travelodge when he was in Australia."

"What kind of work?" I say.

"Clairvoyance. Anyway, my wife and I took to Mr. and Mrs. Dykshoorn right oil. One day, Mr. Dykshoorn says he wants to use his divining rod and tell us some things about us. By the way, if he ever says that to you, do it. Because it will work--believe me, it will work."

"Mr. Dykshoorn has already made a number of predictions for me," I say.

"Well, you just see if they don't come true," says Nickens. "Anyway, he starts working us out, as he calls it, and, to and behold, he says, 'You are going to sell this motel.' Well, at this point we had no earthly reason why we would want to sell the motel, but he says. 'No, you are going to sell it. A man is going to walk in here one day at eleven A.M. and within the hour he is going to buy it, and he's going to buy it at your price, without any bargaining.'"

"And that came true?" I say.

"Sure did. Mr. Dykshoorn said eleven, and the man came in shortly before noon. He said he wanted to buy my motel, and the price I named he never, never questioned, never even made me a counteroffer. He took it at my price, just like Mr. Dykshoorn said he would."

"How long did it take Dykshoorn's prophecy to come true?" I say.

"How long did it take, Mother?" Nickens says to his wife.

"Four years," says Mrs. Nickens.

"Three to four years," says Mr. Nickens.

"And did any other things Mr. Dykshoorn predicted come true?" I say.

"There's so darn many of them, I don't even know where to begin," says Nickens. "Well, let's see here. Mr. Dykshoorn told us that my daughter and her husband would move to Tampa and buy a motel in an L shape with three floors to it. Well, sir, it did take two to three years, but my daughter and her husband finally did do just that. And I'll guarantee you, if you look up the Travelodge in West Tampa, you'll find it's an L-shaped building with three floors."

"That's pretty good," I say.

"He's just a phenomenal man," says Nickens. "We just believe in him one-hundred percent."

I ask Nickens if Dykshoorn ever predicted anything of a grim nature that came true.

"When Mr. Dykshoorn was staying with us at the motel," says Nickens, "I got him to speak to our Rotarian group. Well, sir, everybody wanted to ask him questions, of course, but I noticed that there was one particular man that he simply refused to talk to. He just sort of pushed him aside. That didn't seem like the way he usually acted, so after the meeting. I said to Mr. Dykshoorn, 'Why did you push this man aside?'

"Mr. Dykshoorn said. 'This man has cancer and he's going to be dead within a very short time. I didn't want to tell him that, so that is why I shoved him aside.' You see. Mr. Dykshoorn is a very gentle man and he doesn't like to tell anybody bad news."

"And what about the man--did he die of cancer?" I say.

"He did," says Nickens. "Within sixty to ninety days."

Nickens asks me if I've talked with others Dykshoorn has worked for and I tell him I have. He asks if they've all been impressed with his predictions. I say pretty much, with the exception of Mrs. Corley.

"Well," says Nickens, "of course, the man isn't infallible, but to Irma and I, he is a very great man. Like I say, his sense of time isn't always exact--he can't tell you this will happen to you in the month of June or in the year 1976 but just that it's in front of you and it's going to happen at some point. You can't get impatient waiting for the things he sees to come true. Sometimes you look like you can go around eighty blocks out of the way, but then you wind up just about where he said you were going to be in the first place. You think, to yourself, 'There's just no conceivable way that this thing is going to happen,' and then it just somehow does."

•

A short time after my editor at Playboy said he wanted this article for the magazine, Dykshoorn telephoned me. He asked how I liked My Passport Says Clairvoyant and I said that I liked it fine. I was still nervous about what a devout Catholic who called sex making whoopee and hanky-panky might feel about appearing in Playboy, so I avoided telling him the good news. Instead, I merely said that the piece was just about done and that I would soon try to sell it.

"I think Playboy is an excellent place for it to appear," he said. "I just wanted you to know that."