On April 30th the IIG tested Nick Nelson. After nearly three years of protocol wrangling, Nick drove to the CFI building in Hollywood to create what he calls an “energy vortex.” He failed to create anything. We were patient. We were compliant. We were professional. But frankly, I for one still have no idea what an energy vortex is. If Nick meant the optical illusion created by building off-kilter houses and forced perspective like the Mystery Spot in Santa Cruz or the Haunted Shack that once was the only reason to journey to Knott’s Berry Farm, then yes I know what he meant.

Hours of set-up, conferences and phone calls finally paid off with even more long hours of watching a grown man move magnets around the floor, stand stock still while swinging a pendulum over his hand and listening to albeit some great anecdotes about how his world has so many times “blinked” when he has experienced what he calls the “vortex phenomena.’

Unfortunately when the rules of science are applied, in this case careful measurements (really careful: using engineering calipers) of photographs; first before the creation of the fabled vortex using eight foot high wooden poles, then photos snapped and immediately developed, nothing showed up other than what would be expected from discrepancies consistent with human eye variation that were averaged mathematically and compared.

All this will come out soon in videos and those who missed the U-Streaming will be happy to know that our crack crew of editors will be breaking the whole thing down to a tidy ten minutes or so to fit on Youtube. It’s way too much to go into here. Check iigwest.org for up-coming vortex news. The IIG are DOING SOMETHING.

The best part for me as Lead Investigator was watching Nick get flustered and finally state to all present the he “…felt like a fool” when nothing happened. What did he expect?

It’s a freaking optical Illusion!

Granted, when you see it at specially constructed sites like the aforementioned Mystery Spot and hundreds of other tourist traps across the country, it’s an admittedly compelling visual sight to behold. But such follies fall apart when precise measurements and a non-paranormal explanation is explored.

IIG member Dave Richards deserves a special credit for the protocol he designed and superbly implemented. There was no wiggle room for any woo. It was a simple and direct confirmation that if you move the camera or one of the poles and change the angles of vision, then yes, you might see something “shrink” or “grow” otherwise it’s a “null hypothesis.” More on this at a later date when Dave and I write up the finished conclusion for submission to Skeptical Inquirer.

In his most eloquent Montana Vortex manner, Nick tried his darndest to convince us that he could make physical objects actually shrink and grow by invoking such terms as “vortex energy,” “Fibonacci Number 8,” and other newage buzzwords too numerous to mention including “spin energy.” The only term I was disappointed not to hear was the ubiquitous “quantum mechanics” subterfuge so prevalent in today’s wooverse. Spin energy is right.

Nick tried to spin some truly fantastic yarns in what quickly became recognized by this performer as careful memorized tour guide style shtick. This was a routine, not a paranormal event. I’m sure Nick is a great asset to any tilt-house tour, but such verbal antics literally fell flat when he tried to pepper his pendulum meanderings with conspiracy tinged new age nonsense. Rest assured that I copped a few choice lines here and there that I will be appropriating verbatim to various aspects of my own act when the time is right. This part of any psychic test is always most gratifying for me. I no longer have to make up credible back stories for mentalism effects or steal lines from other magicians and mentalists. Now I have people like Nick Nelson to supply me with enough baloney to last for decades – and it’s only the finest in cutting edge contemporary baloney too. I have never seen anyone anywhere get so much stage time with a pendulum ever in my life. It was enough to warm the cockles of any true carnival barker’s soul.

Since my main task in this session was to watch Nick like a hawk to make sure he never got near enough to the centered poles to jostle or otherwise re-position them in a way that would have affected the photographs, I was reminded of a technique Uri Geller has used on occasion when he would intentionally wear down the attention span of investigators to the point where they become so bored or fatigued they looked away for one brief second – at which time he would bend the spoon or do any dirty work he needed to do. I doubted Nick has mastered such shifty techniques, but I watched him non-stop just the same.

As in most psychic investigations, we soon arrived at that unspoken crux of the issue: Is this claimant a charlatan or merely deluded? Or are these extremes too black and white and can we suppose a “mixed mediumship” explanation for such people? Even in the best of these cases it’s hard to say, but right now I’m leaning towards the showman-tinged-charlatan conclusion. Sorry Nick. Too many excuses and anecdotes were offered to imply a seriously deluded individual.

Best of all and a big hint to where Nick was coming from came when Nick noticed some of the members in the assembled group who were gathered to watch him start to show some body language that suggested they were getting bored. When arms started crossing, heads nodded to chests and sighs and yawns became manifest, Nick trotted out the most tired of excuses to try to bolster his claim. He told us that there was “negative energy” present in the room that was countering his best vortex summoning efforts and offered yet another colorfully delivered anecdote (that several of us would hear spoken again word for word after the test) to suggest this has happened to him in his past. Who let the Spiritualist medium into the room? Oh brother. Did he think we just fell off the turnip truck? Fortunately, we haven’t.

In a attempt to appease an already weak performance and give Nick the best shot we could offer by excluding as much “negative energy” without all of us leaving the room, everyone but the main investigators left. Leaving Nick alone in the room would have been a no-brainer when things suddenly went “vortex” after we came back in. No, we didn’t buy into that dodge.

It went something like this, or as they say at The Magic Castle, it went exactly like this:

55:33

Nick: “I feel like a fool. There is a problem here.”

Jim U: What’s the problem?

Nick: All you you.

Jim: All of us? We could clear the room. We need a couple of people here to observe.

55:50

Nick: “Like I said, I feel like a fool. How many people are here?”

Jim U: “Tell us what you need. You’re in charge of making yourself comfortable. So, do you need half the people to leave? Do you need 3/4 of them to leave the room?

56:15

Nick: “I’m not sure that would work, you’ve all been exposed to me”

Jim U: “Well, we could have them move out for a minute”

Nick: “Could you do that?”

We did it. Adjourning the room of all but the bare bones left myself, Dave Richards and Jim Underdown to sweat through another thirty minutes of magnet shuffling, pendulum dowsing and squinty-eyed pole sighting until Nick finally gave up. We thanked him and he seemed happy that we had not in any way denigrated him or made him feel bad about losing the test. We remained professional throughout and reminded Nick that he could re-apply again for the $50,000 in one year.

After all, truth be told some of us really want to be proved wrong. Having someone win our $50,000 preliminary test could make us the most important overnight scientific breakthrough in human history. It might even garner a network t.v. series.

Nope. Not this time.

Photos by the fabulous Susan “Bunky” Gerbic