Page 86 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - February 2023 Edition

86 Secret Sting to Expose Celebrity Psychic

Inside the Secret Sting

Operations to Expose

Celebrity Psychic

Continued from Page 85

In passing, Biddle explained that one
reason he signed on for this adventure is
that once he was a full believer in the
paranormal. He is a convert to skeptical
thinking. In fact, he used to be a ghost
hunter in Pennsylvania. In 2003, he
started a group: PIRA — Paranormal

Investigative Research Association.

When they went to catch a ghost, Biddle
arrived with lots of camera equipment.
He was really into it. He had protocols —
double cameras so that he would not only 20-year-old woman during the Battle of four rows behind them.
shoot the haunted space but also shoot the Gettysburg, and in 1863, she died by a
camera shooting the space to prove that stray bullet, the only civilian casualty Fraser walked down the aisle and straight
the shots weren’t rigged. He made during those three bloody days. A man to my row. Right off, he said he had a
blueprints of each house and wrote out visiting the battlefield had a picture that vision and asked the dozen or so of us to
lengthy plans to capture the spirits on his daughter took and discovered a stand. I was momentarily terrified, not
camera. He loved the paperwork. “We ghostly image in a window of a woman in only because I had prepared nothing, but
had reports for everything,” Biddle said. period clothes. Certain that he had also because if he asked me why I was
“I was going all Sheldon Cooper, making captured the ghost of Ginnie Wade, he there, I would feel obligated to tell him I

a form for every damn thing possible.” submitted the picture to Biddle, who was there to observe a secret sting
(Sheldon Cooper is the hyper-retentive wasted no time in returning to operation.
perfectionist on the TV comedy “The Big Gettysburg, using the same camera and
Bang Theory.”) “Oh, my God. I think the taking the same shot, revealing how “the The crowd was older, and without much
interview form that I had was 12 pages old wavy glass created an image and trouble, Fraser easily divined the very
long.” made it look like the back of a woman likely fact that someone’s mother on the
dressed in an old Civil War period dress. row had passed. He quickly identified a
But then a funny thing happened. As he And we were able to recreate it and show woman near me and handed her a
got better and better at the mechanical him.” Donna added, “Kenny just crushed microphone. “Your mom is

part of ghost hunting — the photography his dream; he was literally in tears.” acknowledging that I have to speak to my
— he discovered that good photography daughter,” he said, and then let the
was precisely what skeptics used to “This is why I wear a Thor’s hammer,” woman know that Mom was O.K. in the
disprove the physical existence of ghosts. Biddle said, smiling. afterlife. “Your mother says that she
So Biddle started looking into their work. wants you to know that she loves and
He picked up Skeptical Inquirer The Valley Forge Casino in King of cares about you.”
magazine. “I started reading more and Prussia, Pa., is one of those modern
more of that stuff,” Biddle said, “and revenue-enhancement ecosystems whose It was a classic cold reading, all
saying, Wow, you know, this makes carpets ease the crushing of your soul generalized notions searching for
sense. So it was just a gradual shift from with faded earth colors. The wall décor is something slightly more specific to move
there over to the skeptic side. Now I’m best described as bankrupt-dentist’s to. Fraser often nodded his head as if to

learning how to test equipment better, office. Down a football-field length of nudge her to go along. “Your mom tells
learning how to properly investigate sterile corridors is a conference room me that she was angry before she left this
mysteries, looking at every detail, with a poster outside of a beaming world, and you don’t want to talk about
interviewing the witness and not leading Matthew Fraser. that.” Fraser stepped back, held her gaze
them, stuff like that.” and encouraged her, “You understand
To open his show, Fraser deployed some that?” She agreed. As he teased the story
These days, Biddle still goes to self-deprecating jokes, salted with some along, Fraser might, oddly, crack a joke
paranormal conferences and sometimes spicy obscenities, to warm up the crowd. to ease the tension but then take the room
even hosts a skeptics’ table, trying to The audience was sizable and mostly right back to this quiet place. Fraser said,

disprove the claims at every other booth women; the few disgruntled husbands in “I need to apologize to my daughter
in the show. the crowd wore the faces of men who had because every day she deals with the
been blackmailed. Zoe and Ed and the stress and the burdens.”
“Tell the Ginnie Wade story,” his wife, other Guerrillas sat near the front in
Donna, suggested. Ginnie Wade was a hopes of being noticed. I sat alone, about (Continued on Page 87)