– Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred (2011)
One of the most puzzling aspects of Spiritualism, and indeed of psychical and paranormal phenomena in general, is the confusing ways the seemingly genuine phenomena were unmistakably mixed up with the fraudulent shenanigans, and often in the very same individual—we are back to the fantastic and the key moment of hesitation before a marvel encountered as fiction or fact. Nor does it seem to be a simple matter of either-or, as the true believers and professional skeptics both have it. Rather, it is almost is if the real needs the fake to appear at all, as if the fact relies on the fiction to manifest itself, only to immediately hide itself again in the confusion of the fantastic hesitation that follows. Put a bit differently, it is not as if the appearance of the sacred can be reduced to a simple trick, as if the shaman is just a sham. It is as if the sacred is itself tricky. Even the well-documented medical placebo, after all, is a fake that has real effects. What to do? I am reminded here of something the contemporary physicist and psychical researcher Russell Targ once shared with me, namely, that he first became aware of the reality of telepathy when, as a young stage magician in New York, he realized that he was receiving genuine telepathic information from within the mentalist trick he was performing on stage. The trick was a trick, but it was also, somehow, catalyzing the real deal. This I take as emblematic of the whole problem of the fantastic and the impossible.
P. 52