The Amazing Kreskin, mentalist.
Born in Montclair, New Jersey, it was during the childhood game “hot and cold” that Kreskin’s remarkable ability to find hidden objects emerged. His ability to read thoughts expanded, and by his teens he also became nationally recognized in the United States as “The World’s Youngest Hypnotist”, resulting in his collaborating in psychological clinical studies extending into the realm of Parapsychology and the Power of Suggestion. By his late teens, this icon of thought transference developed a mental test that has become the highlight of his performances all over the world. This signature piece has Kreskin requesting that his check be hidden somewhere within the venue he is appearing. If he fails to find it, he will forfeit his fee.
Through the decades, audiences of all ages have been drawn to this legendary figure. How many other celebrities can boast their own television series, their own board game, over some sixteen books, their own theme song arranged by the renowned Skitch Henderson at Carnegie Hall, let alone hundreds of appearances on almost every talk/variety show to be had. His performances have been seen all over the world, and he has flown over 3 million miles.
The Amazing Kreskin has also become a training consultant to law enforcement and security personnel throughout the western world in the development in their own powers of observation and intuitive skills. Kreskin continues to offer “$50,000 to anybody that can prove that he employs paid secret assistants or confederates in any phase of his program”. It is an offer that he has held for many, many years.
- "Here's my position. I refuse to become involved in politics. I have much greater respect for organized crime, and I think that says it all."
- "If I'm correct 60 per cent of the time, I guess I'm happy. A lot of people have said in print that I'm 80- or 90-per-cent successful, (but) I don't think so."
He also accurately guessed the unexpected result and final score of this past Super Bowl, and on New Year's Day in 2001, blurted out on CNN there could be a disaster that September involving four airlines.
"Well, needless to say, Bruce, after 9/11, I spent days with the FBI and the CIA, and they were all asking me what in God's name made me say such a thing."
- "It occurred to me that weathermen make predictions every day. You've got these financial authorities giving advice all the time on the air. I thought to myself, 'Heck, I'm traveling all the time. Maybe intuitively I can comment on things.'"
- "I still can't watch it dubbed in Japanese because it's almost a crisis experience. The mouth stops moving but the sound keeps coming out, and neither go together."
In Kreskin's signature feat, organizers of his appearances hide his payment, and if he can't find the cheque, the money goes to a charity. In past performances, he says, he's found his fee cooked in a turkey, curled in the barrel of a gun, and hidden behind a man's upper dental plate. In close to 6,000 appearances, he's only failed to find his fee nine times.
"That's not many failures," he admits, "but I'm still haunted by New Zealand."
- "I met some people from North Korea just recently that say that my name is sometimes used when they're upset," the Amazing One continues, "and I said, 'For God's sake, explain that to me,' and they said, 'Oh, no, we're not swearing. It's just in this strange way.'"
- "In Olympics pre-shows that were done internationally, my name was brought up in them. I'm brought up in arguments on political shows, and on and on it goes. My comment is, 'Thank God I haven't been referred to as a child kidnapper, wife-beater or terrorist.'"
‘Amazing Kreskin’ offers to fix ‘fiscal cliff’
By Lori Montgomery,
Finally, a light at the end of the “fiscal cliff” tunnel: The Amazing Kreskin is here to help.
Kreskin, billed by his publicist as the world’s most renowned mentalist, was a fixture on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” in the 1970s. Now 77, he says he can break the stalemate over taxes and spending that has gripped Washington for much of the past two years.
The goal would be to further reduce long-term interest rates and encourage borrowing by companies and individuals.
All it would take is an hour in a room with President Obama and House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) or their proxies.
“If I can, through mental suggestion and mental conditioning, bring both to a state of mind where I’ve lifted all the pressure, all the threats, all the money being offered and all the fears of the next election, I can bring them together to their unconscious level, and they will start to think in terms of compromising,” Kreskin said in an interview.
Kreskin made the offer via news release Thursday to fly to Washington and help with the cliff after observing what he described as a mounting crisis in government.
“I’m a little bit worried we’re in a crisis psychologically, too,” he said. “We’ve got to start thinking about each other.”
So, how would it work? On television and in his stage shows (after four decades in show business, Kreskin is still performing more than 200 times a year), Kreskin is famous for astounding feats of mind reading and mental dexterity. On former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee’s Fox News show in 2009, Kreskin distributed 52 playing cards throughout the studio audience, and — by encouraging people to “talk to me” mentally about the cards in their hands — tracked down the person holding the very card that Huckabee had plucked from a separate deck moments earlier. (It was the three of clubs.)
“They don’t call you the Amazing Kreskin for nothing, do they?” Huckabee marveled.
Now Kreskin says he can look deep into the minds of Washington politicians and “envision” the “pathway” to a mutually acceptable compromise that he believes is buried there.
“Don’t give me that crap. These people have a sense of what has to be done,” Kreskin said. “I could bring out of them the mind-set to say, ‘Hell. Jesus. We’ve got to start to think together and to give and take.’”
Yes, he said, “partly I will” read their minds. But Kreskin said his gig in Washington would not be a typical performance.
“I do think I will know when they’re revealing and saying something that is true. And I’m going to confront them and say, ‘Let’s continue on this track that you honestly know is the right way.’ ”
Kreskin says he has no “clinical bias” in this case. He says he is neither liberal nor conservative, and that he doesn’t much care whether taxes go up or spending goes down, or how Washington solves this problem. But the problem, he says, has got to be solved.
“This is not as crazy as it sounds,” he said. “The bottom line is, what the hell have we got to lose? This is becoming a three-ring circus.”
Kreskin is aware of both the benefits and dangers of hypnotism and claims that given an audience of 200 people, "I'll have them seeing flying saucers. Take the same crowd to Time Square on a hot evening and you can have them screaming 'fire'."
******, says Kreskin, used hypnotic techniques in his speeches—the torchlight parades and the sombre drum beating being evidence of this.
"Using suggestion, I could never make someone do something he didn't want to do. But it's different in a crowd," says Kreskin. "Psychologists don't know why, but somehow the level of morality is lowered and responsibility is lost."
"If my name is forgotten in years to come, I can only hope that I have taught people to wonder."
George Joseph Kresge
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