The Leaflet Campaign

Exactly as they did with W. V. Grant, local skeptics groups prepared leaflets that were handed out to all those who entered the Popoff meetings. In Chicago, details of the Johnny Carson show exposure were given and readers were asked to think about whether they should support Popoff. On each sheet was printed:You will be told to tear up this notice. If you do so, you will be responding to the Popoff organization, which takes in $10 to $20 million a year, tax-free, and has every reason to fear your receiving this information. This notice has been prepared, not by “atheists, secular humanists, communists and Satan-worshipers,” as Popoff would have you believe, but by rational, decent people who think you should know the truth. Whether you choose to accept the truth is, of course, another matter. And, be advised of this: Popoff has refused a simple challenge to provide us with just five persons to whom he has brought divine healing through God’s power, persons who will submit to the examination of independent medical doctors. Though he will tell you of miracles he has brought to pass, you should know that those miracles have been examined and found to be without merit. This is Popoff’s show, in which he cannot be challenged about his statements. There is another side that you do not know, and we invite you to investigate it, in the spirit of truth and justice.

Popoff had instructed Reeford Sherrill how to handle this problem of the leaflets. In his warm-up talk before the Reverend Popoff made his entrance, Sherrill told the audience:I’m gonna tell you, that ol’ Devil sure don’t like what we’re gonna do here this afternoon. He’s not gonna come against something that’s not doin’ anything. The Devil’s gonna come against somebody that’s doing something for Jesus Christ. Amen? Amen. And you know (showing the leaflet) they talk about Johnny Carson here. I’m gonna tell you something for everyone to hear. Johnny Carson is embarrassed by this whole situation. He even says he watches our show! Amen? I think that’s beautiful, don’t you? Praise God! So, what I want you to do, everyone here—if you do, I want you to hold it up real high. Everyone that’s got one, I want you to wad that paper up. Let that Devil know you’re not gonna listen to anything he has to say. Praise God! I want you to join hands right now and we’re gonna pray for all these people that’s come against this ministry. We’re not gonna pray that God puts a big ol’ fire under their nose! We’re gonna pray they get saved.

The appeal to discard the leaflets was not very effective. Perhaps those Chicago folks were curious to see just what they were being asked to ignore, because my colleagues reported that not many hands went up at that meeting with leaflets in them.

Revelations

It would be well to go into some detail on how the Popoff trickery-by-technology was uncovered. When I attended my first Popoff meeting in Houston, Texas, I was assisted by the Houston Society to Oppose Pseudoscience, a dedicated group of people who distributed themselves through the audience to test Popoff’s system. I instructed them to allow themselves to be approached, and to give out incorrect names and other data whether they were “pumped” by questioners, asked to fill out healing cards, or both. They were told to supply slightly different sets of information to the two data inputs, so that if any of them were “called out” we could tell from the incorrect information just which method had been used. Now, critics have objected to this plan, saying that it appears we were only out to cause trouble with the faith-healers’ methods, but that is not so. The intent of our system was to show beyond any doubt that the faith-healers were not getting their information from heaven, but from audience surveys. If they actually had been getting that data by supernatural means, God would have warned them when it was spurious. In Houston, as in most other cities, we got very lucky indeed. Several of our people were questioned—by Elizabeth Popoff—and were asked to fill out cards. Three of them were “called out” by Popoff almost immediately. At this meeting, I was personally assisted by Steve Shaw, a young mentalist who is making a big impact in the conjuring business. Steve had been half of the Project Alpha team. (See Skeptical Inquirer, 7, no. 4, and 8, no. 1.) For the Houston encounter with Popoff, Steve had volunteered to assist me, and I knew I had a good man on my side. When Steve and I saw Popoff dashing up and down the aisles calling out as many as 20 names, illnesses, and other data, one after the other, we knew something more than a mnemonic system was at work. I said to Steve, “You know what to do?” He replied: “Yep. I’ll go look in his ears.” And he did, almost bowling the evangelist over as he bumped up against him to get a good look. Steve saw the electronic device in Popoff’s left ear. When he reported this to me, I knew what my next step would be. Popoff was using a receiver to get information from somewhere backstage, information gathered in advance by his wife and others. Popoff was due the following week in San Francisco, and I had excellent allies there among the Bay Area Skeptics. They jumped at the chance to help, and I had as many bodies as I needed to test the Popoff methods. One additional person was enlisted, without whom we probably could not have cracked the Popoff case. He was Alec Jason, an electronics specialist who gladly volunteered his talents to us. He had access to a sophisticated radio scanner that could pick up any transmission from or to Popoff. But the problem was that we didn’t know the frequency being used, and with a radiation-rich civilization surrounding us, we might have to scan for days to get the correct setting.