A pink ribbon is tied around a tree with a Missing poster of Elizabeth Collins, 8, and her cousin Lyric Cook-Morrissey, 10, who were last seen about 12:15 p.m. Friday by their grandmother as the girls left on a bike ride.The girls haven’t been seen since. Their bikes were found about 4 p.m. Friday at Meyers Lake in Evansdale, Iowa / Register File Photo
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An interesting cultural phenomenon unfolds when children are missing and the trail runs dry.
Psychics come out of the woodwork.
Eighty psychics have contacted the Black Hawk County Sheriff’s department with their “visions” of what happened to Evansdale cousins Elizabeth Collins, 8, and Lyric Cook-Morrissey, 10, missing since July 13.
As interesting to paranormal skeptics: Law enforcement officials openly admit that they listen to them.
“I don’t know if I believe (in psychic abilities) or not,” said Black Hawk County Sheriff Tony Thompson. “But in the absence of any evidentiary leads we are in the process of following up on them.
“We will listen to anybody right now. If there is any corroboration with the paranormal we will follow up. If it was your kids you’d do the same thing.”
Psychic Lea Chapin talked with Thompson earlier this week after she drove 2½ hours to Waterloo from Illinois and joined Waterloo psychic Janine Ambrose to meditate at the lakeside scene where the children’s bikes were found.
Both psychics said they had visions and compared lists. Ambrose saw a man with a scar on the left side of his face. So did Chapin. Ambrose saw the numbers 1, 2 and 3. Chapin saw a highway rest stop.
“I won’t tell you where, but that rest stop she saw is at mile marker 123,” Ambrose said.
Alan Koslow would love it if people had psychic abilities.
“But if you make extraordinary claims you need extraordinary proof,” said the Des Moines vascular surgeon, who is president of the Skeptics of Central Iowa. “If you look at the history of this, not a single case in the U.S. have they helped police.”
In many cases, psychics use vague clues, such as the body is near water, which could be most places in the U.S. except for arid regions, he said. Then they will say it’s near a shrub. “They usually say 20 or 30 different things.”
His organization is the affiliated local testing agency for the James Randi Foundation’s challenge to any psychic: If they can prove they are psychic, they will be awarded $1 million. The contest has exceeded two decades without a winner.
Psychics have long surfaced during these dramas. When newspaper carrier John Gosch of West Des Moines went missing in 1982, well-known psychic Greta Alexander led police to chase her tips, once to a nearby state park. Nine years later, she even appeared on the “Geraldo” show, predicting a major breakthrough in the case.
An East Coast psychic also led police to search a camper in a southern Iowa state park in 1983. It turned out to be a surprised boot salesman from Nebraska. Gosch is still missing.
Yet there were cases when law enforcement thought a psychic helped. Alexander was reported to have helped Johnston police find the body of Ramon DiVirgilio in the Des Moines River in 1979, according to Register archives. Police officials said then, “It was incredible.”
“It’s all about helping. Why are people so judgmental?” said Ambrose, who said they aren’t paid to offer their visions. “Everyone has their own terminology — mediums, psychics or clairvoyants. In religious culture they are called prophets, and Native Americans have medicine men.”
She said psychic abilities make scientific sense because everything emits energy and a vibration, even food. A psychic meditates to slow their thoughts and receive messages, breathing deep because increased oxygen lends the brain more power, she said.
Her psychic cohort Chapin says she sees it no different than the faithful’s prayer or a mother’s intuition.
“I believe all people have this ability,” she said. “We all believe in hunches or feelings.”
Chapin describes the visions as a “movie in my head.” In that movie the two cousins are alive and have been abducted. Law enforcement also said last week they believe the children were abducted.
The sheer number of people claiming to be psychics is growing as around-the-clock television and online news showcases the stories of missing children, said Diana Hammond, who started her blogpsychicsunitedtofindchildren.com in 2007.
Hammond said she tries not to read information about the case but only asks for the name and photograph of the missing child, then is careful about posting and monitoring information from the other 400 psychics on her site.
She claims she once led officials to a lake named after a bird by having a vision of a bird and drawing it for them.
“We have helped. Can I prove it? No,” she said. “But I don’t think law enforcement will admit using us helped solve a case.”
Sometimes, psychics contact parents directly and tell parents their child was chained up in a basement, ask for special possessions from the child that are never returned or for money to do an investigation, said Alison Feigh, program coordinator of the Jacob Wetterling Resource Center, a Minnesota non-profit which assists families of missing children.
“It’s difficult because families want to make sure no stone is left unturned. And it could be someone who really does have information,” she said. “But we let families know that if we hear from a psychic, we just pass it along to law enforcement without getting parents involved. Anyone charging money is scary.”
Even if they aren’t running a scam, Koslow said psychics give false hope. And investigators who use them are “grasping at straws and feeling inadequate that they can’t find an answer.”
Thompson, the sheriff, admitted that the 80 psychics “all had different things to say.”
“I don’t think any of them were lottery winners.”
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