A Sad Record of Problems with No Solutions

A total of 97 letters and envelopes, torn in half, showed up in the garbage. Some were the bright red numbered ones, but there were also blue, orange, pink, white, yellow, and beige envelopes—all, we discovered, for different purposes. One envelope contained a letter from a Mary Birchman, a subject who later had been “called out” and “healed” of colon cancer and a swollen leg at the first Fort Lauderdale meeting we attended. This woman was not healed, and her letter, which she had personally given to Grant, contained every detail he later revealed to her during the service. A score or so more letters were similar, revealing specific details that Grant had purportedly been divinely inspired to announce.

The Written Evidence

The big prize from that garbage search was a crib sheet. Grant had met certain people as they gave him the beige envelopes, each containing $20 and a letter. These had been sent out in advance of his arrival in Florida, with instructions to hand them to Grant in person at the auditorium with a “$20 love offering” inside. As Grant met these people, he associated their faces with their first names (on the outside of the envelopes). He had about ten envelopes at a time taken backstage and received in return a 4-by-6-inch data sheet some time later from an assistant. He studied the sheet, adding the new data to his memory or putting it in his pocket for later use. This is the crib sheet we found:

One of W. V. Grant’s “crib sheets.”

  Almost all of the beige-colored envelopes we found contained letters to Grant. These had probably been thrown out because the people who received that color envelope were already entered on the computer mailing list. Most other colored envelopes had no letters thrown out with them, except where no donation had been enclosed. Two contained $5.00 checks that Grant either had missed or discarded because of the low value. In his personal ministry and on television, the Reverend Grant had encouraged his congregation to enclose letters expressing their prayer needs along with their money. He had promised:I will take each letter and anoint it with this holy oil from Israel, and I will pray over your letter back in my church in Dallas.

The callous fact we discovered was that those letters, some several pages long and filled with heart-rending pleas for the minister’s prayers and intercession with God, had been torn up, crumpled, and tossed in with the garbage. They never reached the hands of Grant at all, and they certainly never made it to Dallas. The only oil that got on those letters was snake oil, and possibly some cooking oil from french fries. By piecing together these scraps of the congregation’s hopes, bit by bit, and learning how Grant handled these needs, we were gradually beginning to see the true attitude this pastor held toward his flock.

The “Leg-Stretching” Miracle

At every crusade meeting, Reverend Grant announces that a subject has “a short leg” that needs to be adjusted. He brings the person on stage, and seats him on a chair facing across the stage but slightly turned to the audience. He lifts both legs up, parallel to the floor. At this point, the spectators see that one leg (the one nearest them) appears shorter by about two inches, judged by the relative positions of the heels of the shoes or boots. During some heavy incantations, with Grant holding both feet resting upon his one hand, the short leg seems to lengthen to match the other one. (Grant does this no more than once a show. But back in 1970, Brother Ted Whitesell did a marathon demonstration in Australia, when he claimed that he not only gave sight to a young boy, cleared up several arthritic conditions, and cured astigmatism and stuttering cases, but lengthened 16 short legs as an encore! Furthermore, he said he often raised the dead. Whitesell himself is now dead.) The stunt is similar to one that is still a carnival mainstay. “The Man Who Grows” is the name of the act. In this performance, a man is revealed onstage who seems to fit his clothes well enough. He is seen to go into a “trance” and appears to grow by seven or eight inches, by which time his sleeves are far too short and his pants go to half-mast as well. The gimmick is simple: The man is dressed in a too-small suit, and only has to “scrunch down” while in a standing position. The suit appears to fit him at this point, but as he straightens up and swells out his chest, the bad fit becomes apparent. It is a striking illusion, often enhanced by a popping belt buckle and falling shirt buttons thrown in for further effect. Grant’s trick is even simpler. His subject must be wearing loose shoes; cowboy boots are far better. As the subject sits, Grant merely places his hand beneath the feet, twisting his hand so that one shoe is pulled slightly off the foot (the farther one) and the other shoe is pressed tightly against the sole (the nearer one). By reversing the twist, the farther shoe is pushed on against that sole and the two shoes—as well as the two feet!—are now seen to be the same length. Refer to the photograph section of this book. I have reproduced two leg-stretching pictures from Grant’s own publication. In the upper photo, the far (right) leg appears to be longer than the left one, judging from the position of the woman’s shoes relative to one another. In the lower photo, Grant is praising Jesus for having lengthened the left leg. Simple observation shows that it is not the left leg that has grown, but the right leg that has shortened ! Look at the photos carefully, and you will see that the left shoe did not move at all. The right shoe, pulled away from the foot, has simply been pressed back on again. This is further proved by the fact that the woman’s slacks have stayed in exactly the same position relative to her left foot! If Grant caused her left leg to grow, he also caused her pant leg to grow along with it. Polyester seems to be subject to faith as much as are flesh and bone. There is another trick used here as well. The illusion can also depend upon the fact that Grant swings the two legs away from the audience so that they are not truly at right angles to the audience, while the chair (and the person’s body) remains slightly turned toward the audience. This displaces the feet relative to one another, and they do not meet, the legs thus seeming to be of differing lengths. To cause the “growth” of the nearer leg, Grant simultaneously presses the loose shoe into place and swings the legs into line with the subject’s body. Accurate measurements of photographs of this trick prove that these are the methods used to produce the illusion of the growing leg. As mentioned earlier, cowboy boots are an advantage to the trick. The very fit of such a boot allows it to be pulled away from the foot for some distance. (It appears that Grant’s subjects get the notion about a too-short leg from their chiropractors, who frequently tell them that this discrepancy exists and prescribe a custom-made “lift” for the shoe. In my visits to chiropractors to examine their claims, I’ve had several such devices prescribed, some for one shoe, some for the other.)