The Weird NJ Interview

Late last spring, Weird NJ interviewed possibly the most voluntarily trance-inducing member of the Garden State: TheAmazing Kreskin. For our Weird NJ readership that may not know of the legend that is Kreskin, here's a little history. Bornin Montclair, Kreskin had early practice as a magician during grade school. In his teens he was billed as "The World'sYoungest Hypnotist," and from there he became the self-professed "World's Foremost Mentalist," doing a nightclub actinvolving mind-reading and other parapsychological activities around the world. He was a frequent guest onthe Carson-era Tonight Show and many other talk shows, where he'd do elaborate card tricks and putcelebrities in trance-like states. You may also know him from the Dante Tomaselli movie Horror,

where he played the elder Reverend Salo, or maybe you recognize him as the guy who hypno­tized the AFLAC duck in commercials a few years ago. And as a fan of Weird NJ, Kreskin wasable to find time between the 300 or so appearances he makes around the world each

year to undergo the Weird treatment at his large home in North Caldwell.While we took care of a few photographic formalities before the interview, Kreskin

immediately opened the Weird NJ book to the page that features the Caldwell MysteryThread, which is somewhat coincidental, given that we were in a Caldwell at that very

moment. Spooky!Kreskin had a lot of stories to share, and we've excerpted the weirdest stuff for you here.

were· not in a trance in any way.

They were wide awake. We knew how serious it gotbecause I didn't give a time limit, and we saw an eld­

erly lady start to leave. And we were watching her.She was slowly walking off the stage, and we sawher start to approach the officers. It was clear at acertain point that we would have to end this becauseshe was about to grab a gun and fire point blankbecause the UFO had landed and she was seeing

aliens coming out of it. It was really chaotic. Butthere was nothing there. So, it's ironic because two

years ago I got international publicity, it was justincredible, networks and what have you.

Right.Because I predicted a sighting in Las Vegas

[where he also a staged mass hallucination]. Andthe UFO people have scathed me for it, which is kindof sad, very sad commentary, because if they knewme well enough they'd find out that I do believe inextraterrestrial intelligence. God forbid we are the

only intelligence in the universe. It would be a dis­aster in life.

And I know too many pilots who have seen sight­

ings. But I do not believe in aliens. Most alien sight­ings seem to take place in a swamp with two menwho have been drinking heavily! And I can't imaginewhy if the aliens have got a message, why they don'tdecide that the White House would be a nice place

to get things in order?

AMAZING LV WEIRDBY JOANNE AUSTIN

Kreskin: So, you want to ask about New Jersey orme?

Weird NJ: Yes, well, kind of a combination of the

two things.New Jersey is interesting to me. I've spent my life

here. In 1988, that was the anniversary of The Warof the Worlds, of course - the 1938 Orson Wellesradio show that paralyzed part of the nation. I got toknow Welles over the years - of course I had a greatadmiration for him. So you know, the story - H.G.

Wells's story - is unlike the new one, the Spielbergone that I'm sure is going to be a masterpiece. ButThe War of the Worlds was located in Grover's Mill,

NJ. And the way it happened, as Welles explained it,was that one of the writers was driving in for

rehearsals one night, and he had written the show to

take place in New Jersey, but he didn't know wherethe aliens would land. So he stops at a gas station.In those days, you could get a map for nothing.Today, I think you can get a map at a gas station andit will probably cost you twenty-two dollars, theywant you to give away part of your life savings. Butanyway, he opens the map in the car and drops hisfinger down, and that's how Grover's Mill cameabout as the location.

It was exciting in 1988. The state of New Jerseycame to me and said, "Kreskin, would you want to

do something?" That was the day in Grover'sMill... the fiftieth anniversary. I appeared on stage

before thousands of people. The stage was in themiddle of the grass and the police were standingthere, keeping things in order. I guess there wereabout 18 housewives and kids on stage with me. I

asked them if they had ever seen a UFO. Most ofthem said they thought so - some believed, somedidn't.

As I'm talking, I took out a handkerchief. I stoodthere - they didn't know what was going on - and Idropped the handkerchief. Within three minutes,they were sighting UFOs in the sky. I planted this intheir minds through the power of suggestion. They

Back in 1999 Kreskin did a publicity stunt inMontclair for a few local charities and to promote

a Broadway play called "Art. "A few years ago, there was a play on Broadway,

and they wanted some publicity. Joe Morton wasacting in it, and I said, "Where does he live?" Andthe publicists said he was in New Jersey, so whydon't you pick a city and we'll hide him anywhere foryou to find him? I said, "I want a committee to helpme whose integrity is just unquestionable." So whatwould be a better committee than a rabbi, a priest,

and a minister? I mean, good Lord!

And they put me in jail in Montclair, searching me,while they took the actor and hid him. And they said,"Where are your boundaries?" And I said, "Well,anywhere in Montclair." God, I forgot how largeMontclair is. I was out of my mind! These guys wereall old-timers, and I was leading them, and they're

not talking to me. They're just concentrating, and Iread their thoughts for two miles. And the poor

police were stopping traffic. So I walk right into astreet, cars are coming at me because I'm not think­

ing about where I'm going, and it was crazy. Butfinally, I saw that the minister was really exhausted,so I went down a side street, and I saw that there

were no businesses and I came by a podiatrist'soffice. I said, "Gee, that's a funny place to have abusiness like that, we're in a residential area." And I

open the door, and there was Mr. Morton reading.There's a library in Bernardsville that's consid­ered haunted. It was a bar years ago. During the

Revolutionary War, I believe. Do you know whatI'm talking about? It's in Bernardsville.

Yes. It was a tavern but now it's a library, so InsideEdition came to me two years ago. We held a seancethere for Halloween, not the kind where we would be

communicating with the dead because they neverdo answer. Houdini never ahswered the call [laugh­

ter]. People were sitting around card tables, and thetables starting moving around based upon people'sunconscious concentration and energy - it was not

spirits.Before the seance took place, a young man came

with his mother. He was walking around the library,and the librarian came back and said, "Do you real­ize what this young man did?" He was seven oreight years old. I don't know where he was from inNew Jersey. He had seen someone at the back of the

library, and he asked the librarian about the person,because the person seemed strange to him. And thelibrarian told him to describe the person, and shewent to a rare book. This was a case where a galwas in love with a man that was in the army or

r62 WEIRD NJ • OCT 2006

something, and it turns out he was spying. They didaway with him, and unbeknownst to her, he was

brought back to that tavern and put into a chest. Shewas a barmaid, and that night, she opened the lid

and saw him and went mad. And that's the theory:even though it was a bar that turned into a library, itwas haunted.

I This young man saw something, and when the

lady went and got the records, she said, "My God,this is what he was describing." His mother said, "I

idon't come to this library, and he doesn't readbooks like this." So it was a bizarre situation and we

have no explanation for it.So my place, here I have twenty-two rooms and

I nothing's haunted [laughter]. You've got to under­

stand something. Ghosts don't do any harm: peopledo harm. They're more intriguing, more interesting.Do I believe in the survival of the spirit? Of course.We were taught in physics that energy could neither

be created nor destroyed. So I think houses carrysome atmosphere of a strong person, or a strongincident. .. 1 really think that.

In the process of setting up a card trick, we starttalking about the Weird NJ book. Kreskin has a

huge library and is a notoriously fast reader.I want to know how fast you will read that book.

I read four books a night.Fifteen minutes per book, about?

Howard Stern got into an argument with a guywho called in and said Kreskin can't read that

fast. .. it takes me about 12 minutes to read a novel,25 minutes to a half-hour to read a technical book.

Were you always able to do that? Or is it more like

a mentalist sort of a thing where you train yourselfto do that?

I trained myself.What do you like about Weird Nfl.

News has become tabloid journalism. I think

tabloid journalism is reaching a point where peopledon't buy gossip columns any more because itbecame so common, thanks to Rupert Murdock,that it's no longer a selling thing. And this is hap­pening to our regular news, our TV news today. TVnews is mostly tabloid journalism. So it's getting tir­ing. We're being over-inundated, and the spark ofnews stories is starting to disappear. And Weird NJis a breath of fresh air. I say to people that once in awhile, you just need a departure and want to have alittle touch of history, because this is what it is.Edgar Allan Poe is no longer alive, but he wouldprobably be working for you folks, if he were stillalive. He was also a newspaperman.Do you want to talk about the movie "Horror,"directed by Dante Tomaselli, who is also from

New Jersey?When they came to me with the premise of

appearing in the movie, I said, "I'm not an actor." I

actually went to Robert DeNiro's acting coach, and Isaid, "I don't act, but I'm a performer, and we haveme in this role I where I'm playing an evil character."

And we spent part of the day working and the guysays to me, "Play yourself, be yourself." And the

other premise was, I said to Dante, "Every scenewhere I influence people, let's do it for reaL" Andthat's unheard of. So I was not an actor, it was not

trickery. And I told Orson Welles that I was going todo this some day. And that was the irony. He said,

"You know, you would make it really happen." I justplayed an evil hypnotist. I had that man [in themovie] fall to the floor, and he ended up on the floor

and for about 14 minutes he could not getup, because the impact was so great.

In November 2004, shortly after ActingGovernor Richard Codey came into office,Kreskin offered to sit in on state meetingsand read thoughts to determine who wastelling the truth and who was not. He even

considered running for public office ...But then I thought to myself, my life is in

show business. The problem with politics is

that it's another level of life - not a very highlevel - and I'm not prepared to handle the

scandal that would not only be apparentlyfound, but also created. And to try and go

back to public performance and expect my audienceto embrace me the same way ... it's not fair to them,it's not fair to myself. I don't have that kind of a - I

don't mean skin - I'm not that cold blooded for pol­itics. So I did make a statement, and it applies herealso. The question, would I ever consider holdingoffice? My answer is this ... 1 refuse to become

involved in politics. 1 have far greater respect fororganized crime! [Laughter] Sorry folks.

Kreskin volunteers a lot, including for ReadingAcross America, an annual program that schoolsuse to encourage kids to read.

I've done Reading Across America, you know, theDr. Seuss day.Yes, that's when school kids wear Cat in the Hat­

style hats, and volunteers read to them.Three years ago I said, "Gee, let me read to the

kids because the book that I love is The 500 Hats ofBartholomew Gubbins.

And I'm reading, but of course I'm working as I'mreading. This became real. The story is about this

young man in a kingdom, and the king went by andthe young man took his hat off ... but the guards gotexcited because he still had a hat on. He kept takingone hat off and another would appear. And it wassome magical thing. So they finally took him toprison and the hats are allover the place, comingoff. They were about to behead him, but the execu­tioner said you've got to take your hat off before Ican do anything.

And of course that's when the king befriends the

young man, and he gives him gold to take home.But as I'm reading - and the teachers couldn'tbelieve this - about halfway through, most of thekids were seeing hats, seeing them on the floor,describing them, 70 kids hallucinating on the floor.

One kid picked a hat up and said, "See." Theyweren't playing; they were hallucinating. But that'show I show how powerful the imagination is.

I try to look at everything. You can find the strangeand the weird in almost anything. But here in New

Jersey, a man I quote is the late Albert Einstein, who

spent so much time at the university ...Princeton.

Princeton: beautiful area there. But he warned us,he warned the world, and I repeat this now. He said

there's going to be a time when information is goingto be so accessible, so overwhelming, that there'sgoing to be a great danger that we will lose theimagination. He said imagination was far more

important in life. We lost that. Kids are sitting inside,playing a Nintendo game for eight hours as I hearthat they do. The one difference I notice in NewJersey, in other parts of the United States, is that

when I come into a town for two or three nights,there are no kids playing on the street. It's a verysad, pathetic, harbinger of the time. I would ratherthat they be given a box, a ball, a bat, or chalk tomake up a game. Make it up, because information isnow cheap. The great entrepreneurs in history did

not do it just by information. They did it by their cre­ativeness, using their imagination so much.

Kreskin discussed the different media mentions

his name gets: TV shows, movies, comic strips,even plays. He's a true pop culture metaphor formind-reading abilities. But he's still true to hishome state.

This is my life, growing up in New Jersey. I'venever lived anywhere else. I collect things and I talkabout things changing around the world and in theend I'm still interested in the unknown and theweird.

Kreskin did a few card tricks with us. He also

talked about how he won 23 hands of Blackjack in arow in Atlantic Gity. It's the only card game that casi­nos will let him play, because since the dealer does­n't know what the down card is, Kreskin can't readhis mind.

When we finished the interview, ,Kreskin broughtus to a small side kitchen where he and his assistant

set up coffee and donuts for us. We talked a little off

record, and Kreskin gave us the leftover donuts ANDmilk to bring back to the WNJ office. Did he know

that earlier that morning, we had been back at theWNJ office talking about how we needed to restockthe milk in the office fridge? He then led us back into

the early summer heat, still overwhelmed by whatwe'd seen and experienced. If you're interested in

finding out how he does what he does (or even whathe does), go to amazingkreskin.com. He has a newDVD out, where he gives the secrets to some of hismost famous effects.

OCT 2006 • WEIRD NJ 63