An Honest Liar Page #3

Hello?

The Carlos Hoax started

when 60 Minutes Australia

called Randi because they wanted to prove that channellers were a hoax.

On that phone call, Randi told them

that you couldn't prove that someone who said that they are inhabited

by a spirit 40,000 years old is a false claim.

What he said to them was, "What we need to do is to create one."

His name is Carlos and you've probably seen him on television

or mentioned in the press.

Carlos is involved in the mystical field of channelling.

Carlos, if you believe him,

is a spiritual messenger who occupies the body of this

19-year-old Puerto Rican artist, Jose Alvarez.

The Carlos Hoax was to show that the media would fall for

most of these stunts if they sounded attractive enough,

and they wouldn't really investigate too carefully.

So, one of the very first things we did to introduce Carlos to the

public, we made up the press package

that we presented to the Australian press.

'What trash this is!'

We even invented newspapers and magazines

that never existed. Theatrical magazines particularly,

announcing the appearance of the Great Carlos

at such-and-such a theatre that didn't exist.

But no-one in the media bothered to check up on one of these details.

They could have picked up the phone and just checked

and they would have found out that they were being deceived.

- 'Hello?'

- It didn't happen.

One man who's been making a name for himself here in the United States

is now doing the same in Australia.

Jose Luis Alvarez is a 19-year-old channeller.

By 60 hours after we had arrived,

we had eight major TV appearances, headlines in newspapers.

Everyone in Australia pretty well knew that Carlos was there.

HE SHRIEKS:

It will be astronomical...in nature!

Frankly, I was just doing it without thinking.

Otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to do it.

Last Sunday, the Opera House Drama Theatre

was packed with a near-capacity crowd of 500,

there to listen to Carlos and to have their questions passed

on to him by his disciples.

Crystals are fossils...of long ago!

I know he's definitely psychic.

It's something that I can feel coming from him.

I thought it was great. Very sincere, I thought.

- Do you believe him?

- Yeah, I do, actually.

The following Sunday, 60 Minutes Australia revealed the whole hoax.

He billed himself as a man of the supernatural,

a man who could do amazing things. And thousands believed him,

making him a celebrity.

But it was all an elaborate hoax.

The most basic fact about Carlos was that he simply doesn't exist.

That's the real teaching of Carlos.

But this doesn't even scratch the surface

of just what a phoney Carlos is.

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