 "Cover" of the e-book edition | |
| Author | James Randi (Foreword by Carl Sagan) |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Travis Dick (e-book) |
| Publisher | James Randi Educational Foundation |
Publication date | 24 Aug 2011 (e-book) |
| Media type | E-book |
| Text | The Faith Healers at Internet Archive |
The Faith Healers is a 1987 book by conjurer and skeptic James Randi. In this book, Randi documents his exploration of the world of faith healing, exposing the tricks that religious con artists use in their healing shows to fool the audience. Randi's expertise in performing stage magic and mentalism allowed him to easily identify the same techniques when used by con artists. Randi analyzes the methods used by A. A. Allen, Ernest Angley, Willard Fuller, WV Grant, Peter Popoff, Oral Roberts, Pat Robertson, Ralph DiOrio and others, exposing their tricks. Popoff was dramatically exposed as a fraud by Randi on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Randi expended considerable effort contacting people who were supposedly cured by these faith-healers. He found there was a lot of disappointment and not a single verifiable case of healing. Randi describes the "calling out trick," the "wheelchair trick," the "leg-stretching trick," the "how many fingers trick," the "shotgun technique," as well as methods used to gain personal information about potential victims in the audience. He also describes methods used, often by mail, to convince people to make large donations.
Randi also examines claims of miracles at holy sites such as at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes again finding fraud and no verifiable cases of healing.
Prior to turning his attention to faith healing, Randi spent many years exposing fraud by psychics and mediums such as the famous Uri Geller. An updated edition of this book was released in 1989, and an e-book edition was released in 2011.