Hidden Gems: Psychologist Pankratz reveals 'mysteries and secrets' of deception

Readers in Northwest Arkansas and the River Valley might not recognize the name Loren Pankratz. His home is in Portland, Ore., his teaching career at Oregon Health Science University, his doctorate in psychology, his most recent work in forensics. But Pankratz has close ties to -- and an able marketing representative in -- Fayetteville. His daughter is harpist Beth Stockdell.

"I was lucky enough to read the first draft when he was finished writing and read the book in its final state earlier this year," Stockdell says of her dad's new "Mysteries and Secrets Revealed." "I think you will find it as fascinating, surprising, interesting, and laugh-out-loud funny as I did. My dad's epic wit and intelligence are evident throughout."

"'Mysteries and Secrets Revealed' explores various ways that curious individuals confronted confusing situations throughout history," Stockdell writes in an email. "The journey begins with investigations of speaking statues and the divination of sealed messages by priests at the ancient Greek oracle in Delphi. Then we encounter early church forgeries, Renaissance gambling secrets, and tricks with magnets that were attributed to the devil. ... There is a host of other fascinating historical and recent characters you will meet as well as a review of the secrets of clairvoyants, mesmerists and spiritualists in America and abroad. Why do people believe lies and how do they get tricked? How can you evaluate new information and what does science tell us about the process? And other especially important questions in today's society."

Obviously, she had me at "clairvoyants, mesmerists and spiritualists," so I reached out to ask Pankratz some questions. Here's what he had to say.

Q. Where did you grow up?

A. I was raised in Gresham, Oregon, a suburb of Portland, near where my mother was raised on a homestead. I picked berries and worked in a berry-processing plant each summer; life was simple in the 1940s and '50s. After high school, I was eager to explore a wider world, so I drove all the way down the Willamette Valley to Oregon State University. I owned a car and paid my way through college with those summer jobs.

Q. Tell me about your career and your travels, please. How did either or both help inspire this book?

A. For 25 years I was a consultation psychologist at the Portland Veterans Administration Medical Center and a professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Oregon Health Science University. After that, I maintained a forensic practice.

Early in my career, I discovered that certain patients told false stories to get admitted to the newly opened psychiatry unit at the VA. I could understand why people might lie to get out of a hospital, but these patients lied to get in. I published an article on these deceivers that was subtitled "Summering in Oregon." This experience bent the twig of my professional career, and I began to study situations in which patients were not honest with their medical care providers. I subsequently published articles on malingerers, false claims of post-traumatic stress, patients, drug seekers, Munchausen Syndrome, Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, and other unusual medical and psychiatric syndromes.

I started collecting information about the history of deception, and I now have a library of about 9,000 books that chronicle the spectrum of fraud and humbug. My travels throughout England and Scotland provided access to forgotten bookstores with hidden treasures. These books provided the inspiration for "Mysteries and Secrets Revealed."

Q. How did you begin to collect rare books? Tell us about some of your favorite finds, please.

A. The pleasure of collecting books is finding something you did not know existed, finding something you never thought you would see, something that brings new insight, and finding a book that brings different topics together. I can provide some examples: In 1836, a girl named Maria Monk was rescued from a Catholic convent in Canada and brought to the States. Her horrific story became a popular anti-Catholic book which has remained in print since that time. But the whole story is a hoax. She knew about the convent in Canada because she had been cared for in a home that helped prostitutes, managed by the nuns she slandered. I now have an interesting collection of abused nun stories, some of which are based on bad experiences, but most are frauds that promote an anti-Catholic agenda.

I have an extensive collection of books by people who claim they visited heaven or were directly informed about heaven by angels or departed spirits. Almost all of them mention that flowers smell sweeter there, and the birds are more beautiful. Beyond that, they disagree about so many facts that the reader is left with the impression that these reports are fantasies about the authors' view of a Utopian world. Many of these books are associated with clairvoyance, which emerged from mesmerism, later called hypnosis. If people can endure painful operations under the anesthesia of mesmerism alone, then certainly clairvoyance might be similarly possible. The facts, fallacies and frauds are disentangled in my book.

Mesmerism and clairvoyance set the stage for the spectacular rise of modern spiritualism, which began in New York in 1848 with the Fox sisters. Spiritualists attempted to prove that the spirit world could be demonstrated by manifestations here on earth. For example, spirits revealed themselves through mysterious raps, turning and tilting tables, writing on slates, the clairvoyant visions of mediums, and other intrusions into our world. But when carefully examined, the mediums were using methods of trickery, some of which fooled the best magicians of the day. I have an extensive collection of books and pamphlets that tell the story of how these secrets were unraveled.

Q. What was the inspiration for this book? And how did you start the process of writing it?

A. Magicians were occasionally baffled the first time they observed some of the spiritualists' tricks. Ordinary people had no chance; they were overwhelmed. I got to thinking: what was it like to face a confusing situation that no one had previously seen or investigated? Who were these inquisitive people, and how did they approach the challenge?

I decided that the adventures of these individuals would make interesting reading. Maybe their stories would come together for a book. And, indeed, things wove together in surprising ways as I progressed. For example, a French scholar who lived right after Galileo made significant comments on Galileo and the ancient Greek oracles, drawing those chapters together in an interesting way.

Q. What's your favorite among the stories you tell?

A. My favorite story is the one in front of me when you ask. OK. Remember that French scholar who brought together the oracles and Galileo's telescope? Bernard Fontenelle was the first person to inform common people that the earth was going around the sun, contrary to what you see when you look up. Galileo had just been censored for promoting this belief that seemed to contradict the Holy Scriptures, and Fontenelle was not eager to face those Inquisitors whose minds were made up. His strategy was clever. He wrote about a natural philosopher who told his lover how the heavens moved as they stood out in her estate garden at night, looking at the stars. The romance and tension are palpable. Fontenelle's tactic worked. We can thank him for changing the way the world now accepts the true arrangement of sun and planets.

Then there is C.F. Durant, who was unable to convince his colleagues that clairvoyants were engaged in trickery. Thus, he pretended to believe as well, but he hoaxed them by giving hilariously absurd explanations that stretched credulity. But his colleagues were so fixed in their belief that they could not catch his jokes. Durant gave up. He when off and started conducting research on seaweed. What should one do if your friends are firmly attached to bogus beliefs?

Q. What's next for you as an author and rare book collector?

A. I am still collecting books, always looking for the unexpected. I have enough material to write for years to come. I just finished a second edition of my earlier book, "Patients Who Deceive," which should be available [this summer]. Then I will be publishing "Modern Swindles," a book originally issued in Chicago in 1913. It was written in German to warn new immigrants about the follies they faced in America. A colleague translated the book, and I added an extensive introduction, footnotes, illustrations from contemporary books, and a massive bibliography of related books of that era.

Almost 50 years ago, I wrote a book for my daughter, Beth, about a polar bear. ... We decided to release "Polar Bear on Ice" to the public because polar bears now need all the friends they can get. We are looking for an illustrator, someone who can draw an appealing polar bear who goes ice skating with a little girl.

Beth and I are working on a movable, pop-up book that we call "The Illusions and Delusions of Schrodinger's Cat." This will be a whimsical display of optical illusions that are given nonsensical explanations by the cat himself, all cloaked in metaphysical and quantum physics doubletalk.

I am currently compiling "The Facts, Fallacies, and Frauds of Hypnosis." This will be a pictorial history of early claims associated with mesmerism and hypnosis. And that's just a start of my current projects.