The mission statement of The Spirit University (TSU) reads as follows: [It is a] “premier learning center, serving people in Sarasota, FL and the world as it provides healing, inspiration, and adventure. Its classes, events, and one on one opportunities are for beginners and experts of all ages for personal and spiritual transformation, guidance on life purpose, empowerment and fun.”
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a skeptic working for such a business? One that not only promotes and sells services such as fortune telling, mediumship, and Reiki but also trains people to learn and possibly sell these paranormal services on their own?
In this article you will be introduced to just such a person. Helen Greene was the former office manager at The Spirit University. She began her employment as a true believer but had a significant worldview change while managing the business. I had the good fortune (see what I did there?) of meeting Helen and hearing her story, and she was glad to be able to share it with my Skeptical Inquirer readers.
Rob Palmer: Helen, I’m so glad you wanted to do this interview! It seems that the “University” is quite a huge place. There are over thirty people listed as TSU facilitators on its website, but does that mean they all work there full time?
Helen Greene: No. A lot of our facilitators had jobs outside of The University. They kind of did it for supplemental income. Most had other things going on: they owned a business, or they worked in some kind of other field too, and they did this for extra income. And it was mostly in the evenings.
Palmer: Most of the names I don’t know, of course, but two in the list stood out. They are quite famous in the paranormal arena: Raymond Moody, the psychiatrist and author who coined the term near death experience (NDE), and Eben Alexander, author of Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife. I remember seeing these two proponents of woo being pitted against scientists Steven Novella and Sean Carroll in an Intelligence Squared debate concerning the existence of an afterlife, a debate in which they were objectively trounced by the way. How did these two get associated with The Spirit University?
Greene: The owner of TSU, Victoria Ackerman, gets prominent people in the psychic circles to come and do mediumship messages, or teach classes, or do lectures and that kind of stuff. She is well connected.
Palmer: When did you work there, and what was your role?
Greene: I was the office manager for TSU beginning in September 2018 for a year and a half, reporting directly to Victoria. I had a small staff that I would give assignments and projects to. Basically, it was my job to keep the University running, planning all our events. I got things scheduled, contacted our guest speakers, such as the mediums who would come in and do lectures, and figured out the payments and sent them out. I got contracts over to my boss, set up classes, did our online newsletter, did the online advertising, and promoted us on social media, such as Instagram.
We held two big outside events every year in Sarasota. One was a fairy-fare held at a park. We had lectures and vendors, and it was family oriented. And we had another one that was called the Mystical Bazaar; it had vendors and psychics. And we also had a show held at one of the municipal buildings; that was a bigger show, and we did that one twice a year.
Palmer: What was your mindset when you first started your employment there?
Greene: I was in my “leaving theology and all ridiculous claims behind” mode. But I was still holding on to that one vestige: psychic powers and stuff like that are real. But I quickly realized, because my skeptical brain was kind of coming in right at that point in my life, that that stuff was bullshit too.
Palmer: Once you had a change of mind about what was being sold and taught there—aided in no small part by you—was it difficult to keep working there? Did you start to openly question what they were selling and teaching?
Greene: It’s one of those things that when you’re working in a place like that as a skeptic, you really want to challenge the claims. But because I was an employee, I couldn’t rock the boat too much. My instinct was to push back against it, but it’s hard, because I had to keep my job. People really believe. Victoria and some of the other facilitators really believe that they have these abilities. I feel like if I had pushed back more, kept asking questions and wanting proof, that I wouldn’t be accepted there.
Palmer: So, you couldn’t openly doubt things to Victoria. How about to other employees? Those who weren’t the psychics or the telepaths or whoever they have working there. Do the office staff wink-wink at each other, acknowledging they know they are selling BS?
Greene: There was a lot of talk within the office. … I and a couple of the other employees kind of knew a lot of it was bullshit, so we would talk amongst ourselves. It was one of those things that, especially if you have your blinders off, you can see the bullshit really fast. And we talked among ourselves about how some of this might not be valid.
Palmer: Did you use your influence to tone down their offerings?
Greene: There were a couple of times, if somebody threw out a planning idea, I was like, “I don’t know if we should do that.” For example, we were going to do a health fair, and it was a lot of alternative health stuff. I said, “I’d just be careful about who we invite, because we don’t want to be selling a supplement that isn’t backed by the actual science.” So, I did some pushback about stuff that I knew could be disproven through science, like alternative medicine and other stuff like that.
The mediumship and psychic stuff are a little bit harder to push back on. I would try to book people that did massage, or yoga, or Tai Chi, and other stuff like that which actually may have health benefits, even if they add some spiritual mumbo jumbo. I was always trying to look for practical benefits for people.
Palmer: Do you have an idea of what the usual TSU customer count would be?
Greene: On a good week, we got upwards of 100 to 150 people, and then off-season about fifty. For the bigger events like we had with Eben Alexander or Raymond Moody we would get a couple hundred people who would buy tickets, because they usually do two speaking engagements or mediumship message events over a weekend.
Palmer: What are typical prices for something like that?
Greene: It depends on who it is. If you’re well known, you tend to charge a little bit more money. If you’re not as well known, the price ranges kind of go down from there. So, if you were to go see Eben Alexander that would cost you probably around $180. But there are different levels. If you’re just doing a gallery that can cost, say, $80 a person. A gallery is when they deliver the mediumship messages in a group, something like, “I’m talking to someone in the room’s dead grandma…” We had a thing about demographics, about who would spend certain ranges of money based on things like where we were doing the event, so that’s always a consideration.
But let’s say they were going to have classes too … let’s say someone was going to teach a class on mediumship, and then also do a mediumship messages gallery thing. Well, that can run you up to $200 to pay for the class plus the gallery.
Palmer: Tell me about your clients.
Greene: They just wanted to believe all of it. Some of them were middle age, in their 40s or 50s … so relatively young. They were financially secure in their career, and they want to do something else. A lot of our clients were older. Maybe they weren’t 100 percent internet savvy. They’re getting to the end of their lives; they’ve maybe lost a spouse or loved ones. Some of them are traditional-religion people, like Catholics and Protestants. But you also have some that were spiritual but didn’t conform to any sort of religion. You get a mixed bag.
Palmer: So, did you or any of your coworkers ever sample the stuff being offered?
Greene: Yeah. I definitely went to mediumship classes, because one of the things we had to do, if there were classes on the weekend, we would have to be on staff to have the facility open. So, you’re there all day and watch the classes, see what the person is saying, and stuff like that. I definitely attended a few on past lives and on astrology too. But it’s weird when you’re doing this as a skeptic. Because, you know what your brain is doing. It’s not something external that’s happening to you. You just know you’re tricking your brain. And especially with the group dynamics, and group psychology, and you have a funny, charismatic person that’s teaching this to you. And, I’m sitting there thinking, “I don’t think so.” But the other people around me seemed to be drinking all the Kool Aid.
Palmer: Did any of the staff believe that the paranormal stuff being promoted was all real?
Greene: You were either somewhere in the middle, or you were like me and thought it was BS. No one I knew dived in hook, line, and sinker. I think it’s because we were behind the scenes, and we knew more of the business end of stuff. When you’re dealing with publicists, and with arranging schedules, and how the facilitators communicate on the phone or in email, and other stuff like that, you get an insight into them. Then when they’re giving you a presentation, you realize they’re just trying to sell you something.
Palmer: So, familiarity takes away the mystery, and you see them as plain people? You realize that they’re not really magical? If they’re psychic, why do they have to write emails to one another?
Greene: Yeah, exactly. You just see them as people after a while. I’m thinking “You’re just a person, you’re not some sage bestowing wisdom upon people. You’re just a dude.” It’s one of those things that when you’re out of it and look back on it, you’re like, “Oh my, oh my!” It really bothers me because unless they’re lying to themselves, then they’re lying to other people.
Palmer: What else did you see at The University that rubbed you the wrong way?
Greene: Have you heard about the Fox Sisters?
Palmer: That’s how the whole spiritualism movement started, I think.
Greene: Yes. So, we had a psychic fair, and someone gave a lecture on the history of spiritualism where they were talking about the Fox Sisters as legitimate spiritualists! And I’m thinking, “One of them eventually came out and admitted it was all bullshit! Do you not know this? So, we’re changing history now?”
Palmer: Did you witness “channeling?” Isn’t this the (I thought) out of fashion act where someone’s voice changes and a spirit supposedly speaks through them audibly? I didn’t think any modern mediums still did that.
Greene: There were a couple of the facilitators who were learning how to channel from Victoria. And I sat in on a couple of those sessions.
Palmer: And their voices changed?
Greene: Yeah, it got deeper. Her voice got really, really deep. But I can change my register too if I want to, and then especially if you’re in a meditative state it may be easier to maintain that. You’re not thinking about it, where you have to constantly think “change my voice, change my voice, change my voice.”
Palmer: And was that act convincing to people?
Greene: Yes. Not particularly to me. But it was to other people, especially if they got messages. Even if you just get a general message like, “Grandma says she loves you,” it’s really easy for people to think “Oh, my gosh, she’s talking to my grandma!” Maybe the facilitator thinks they’re really talking to dead people too. Maybe a certain number of them think they really do have these abilities.
Palmer: Why do you think that?
Greene: Just by having conversations with many of them… these are people whom I actually developed work friendships with. We talked on a regular basis, not just about psychic stuff. So, there was a level of trust that was being built up.
Palmer: I’ve heard speculation that some people who are mediums and actually believe it—especially channelers—have some kind of mental illness. I mean, did that ever cross your mind?
Greene: I have a background in psychology. So, my brain automatically goes, “You honestly believe that you talk to dead people?” And that’s a little disheartening, because I’m seeing it as “Okay, if you’re having auditory hallucinations, then science says that there’s something wrong with your brain.” I think of them as functional but delusional. They can hold down a job, they can have families, be relatively normal, but they have that one thing that is so way out there. And they really believe it.
For the ones who believe that they are really talking to dead people, it may also happen like this: You can infer a lot about someone just by having a conversation with them and getting instant impressions, just by the way they dress and how they speak. … And just by having a five-minute conversation, you can probably make some pretty accurate guesses based on all the different types of people you’ve met, and all that behavior starts adding up, and you think that it’s information that you’re getting from their dead relative. But really, it’s just your brain subconsciously pattern recognizing. And due to your brain’s psychology, it can feel like it’s a power. And if you’re prone to believing in a spiritual realm and that type of stuff, you just put those things together and boom—you think you’re a real medium.
Palmer: So, they get taken in by their success at cold reading! The University taught people to do this? To be mediums?
Greene: Yes. There were classes for that. … If a medium was teaching a class, they would have the students come up and practice doing a messaging gallery. A lot of clients were learning mediumship and wanted to get to the level of the people whom they admired.
Palmer: Who was one of the best or most interesting of the people you saw in a lecture or class?
Greene: Roland Comtois was interesting. We had been trying to get him for a while. He claims to get messages from spirits, and he writes them on these Purple Papers. He has hundreds of messages. So, he’ll do a gallery, and he’ll pull out some of the papers. And he says, “I get the impression that the person that these messages are for will be in the gallery tonight.” Sometimes he hands out five or six of them. Sometimes he only hands out one or two. And during the gallery he would play very relaxing music, which makes you feel safe. You feel like you can trust him. … That has a psychological impact. And when he would speak to the people, he was very animated. And he would look directly at them so they would have eye contact, and he would seem to be sincere. He was trained as an actor before he started taking this up, and that helps him.
But statistically, if you write a bunch of messages on pieces of paper with common names, maybe some dates, and you get an audience, there’s a good statistical chance that at least one person is going to say, “That message is for me!” The messages are never super detailed, but they may be taken as accurate by most people because of the emotional manipulation going on.
Palmer: Did any of the facilitators show “abilities” that were impressive to you?
Greene: There was one. I am blanking on his name right now, but I liked him as a person. He was just a very kind-hearted, nice person. If he was bullshitting people, I’d be kind of surprised because usually I can tell. My Spidey senses will go “Hmmmm?” But he seemed to be very gentlemanly. He would talk to all staff, he had no ego, and he was super friendly. This might be my own bias looking at this, because of the kindness that he bestowed upon me and the other people around me, so I’m aware of that. He would do channeling and he would draw pictures of peoples’ dead relatives. And he was a very good artist. And I knew he didn’t get information from us on who was going to be in the audience; we didn’t give that stuff out. The drawings were fairly good, and there was confirmation from the audience like, “Yep, that’s my dead son” or whatever. So that was impressive at the time. I always say I’ve seen mostly bullshit, but I’ve seen a couple of things I can’t explain. But that doesn’t mean they were supernatural.
Palmer: Anything else besides that one person?
Greene: No. I think that’s the only one. Because for a lot of this stuff, looking back on my memories it’s like, “No, I can explain that. I can explain that. I can explain that.” So that’s the only person that I was just kind of like, “Hmmm, maybe there’s something there.” It just gave me an “I don’t know” moment.
Palmer: Let’s talk about the energy healing called Reiki. They practiced it and taught it there, right?
Greene: Yes, we did Reiki. My theory on it is that it’s a psychological thing. … You’re not really doing anything. I would explain it to people when I would do a session: all I’m really doing is helping you meditate and get in tune with your body. I’m not doing anything magical. I didn’t want to lie to people. That was my major thing. I would tell them the truth.
Palmer: So, you didn’t buy the story of manipulating energy flow?
Greene: I did at first. When I left my religion, I was still thinking “Maybe there’s these powers in the universe we can tap into. But then I just became more skeptical and was looking up how things work … especially studying psychology and how the brain tricks itself. It can feel like something’s happening, but it’s a placebo effect. I realized that’s what I was doing with Reiki. My dad told me when he was in the hospital for cancer treatment twenty years ago that somebody did Reiki on him. And he said it was very relaxing, and he slept very well. He said it felt like something did happen, but he admitted he was also on tons of medication. I always refer back to that story when someone says Reiki is real, and I say, “Or it could have been the drugs.”
Palmer: Did The University teach people Reiki so they could be practitioners?
Greene: Some people would take a Reiki class and use that in correlation with their massage practice … so they would incorporate the two together. Legally, you can’t use Reiki as a replacement for therapeutic massage, but you can add it as part of your practice as long as you don’t touch certain parts of the person. But if you’re doing massage, you’re touching the person anyway. So, it’s kind of a gray legal area.
Palmer: Tell me about the telekinesis training.
Greene: Well, there is some meditation that they get people to do to move objects with their minds.
Palmer: And they convinced people they could really do it? Funny no one teaching or trained there ever won the [now defunct] JREF million-dollar prize for proof of paranormal powers or the $250,000 now available from CFI. Should have been easy money. Do you know if anyone ever applied? Was this even talked about?
Greene: That was never brought up, and I wish I had pushed that a little, like “Maybe you should try to claim the James Randi prize.”
Palmer: One of the other things I saw on their website was scrying. What is that about?
Greene: Let’s say you light a fire, and you sit around a fire pit, and you’ll see the wood burn and you see shapes that they say have meaning. But it’s just pareidolia.
Palmer: Does this have something to do with the other things I saw listed about flames: Flame Journey and Flame Card Messages?
Greene: Yeah, it’s all similar stuff. Flame Card Messages is when you take the white part of an index card and you run it over the top of a candle enough for the fire to smoke the paper but not enough to burn it all the way through. And of course, patterns show up. And the idea is that you do meditation first, then you do your fire-smoke stuff … and then you pick up the card and try to interpret messages that may be on the card. So that’s what scrying is. Just ways to make what you see due to pareidolia seem like it means something significant.
It’s not hard to be fooled about all of this stuff if you don’t have your skeptic brain turned on all the time. Now when somebody presents a claim to me, it’s natural for me to say, “Maybe … let me look that up. I don’t know. Let me go find out more information about this.” But some people need to fill in the knowledge gap with what feels good. They’d rather believe in magic, even if it’s explained, “Here is how it was done. It’s not magic.”
Palmer: Have you contacted The Spirit University folks about all this since you left?
Greene: No, because I have some not 100 percent healthy feelings toward my former boss. I have some strong negative emotions about having worked there.
Palmer: One last thing: I want to make sure you’re OK with your name appearing in this article.
Greene: Yes! In fact, I was talking to my former coworker about doing this interview, and he’s like, “Are you gonna call them out?” I said, “Yeah, I’m calling them out!” The reason is because I know what goes on. And knowing what I know … well, it’s something that’s kind of bothered me since I left.
I feel like I didn’t do enough when I was there. And now that I’m out, I wanted to expose it, but I didn’t know exactly how. The Spirit University has the facade of wanting to help people … help you be more spiritual. They have the facade of goodness, but then when you see the nooks and crannies, and see all the problems, it doesn’t sit well with my ethics, and what I now think is okay. Some of their stuff is relatively harmless, such as learning to read a tarot deck … what the symbols mean and such. That kind of stuff is harmless on the surface; it just depends on the person who’s doing it.
But my major problem is with mediumship. That especially really bothers me. They all are wielding this destructive tool. They give people false comfort about their dead loved ones. That really, really, bothers me and gets me so aggravated. A lot of them are con artists. I think there’s a couple who may have done enough mental gymnastics to make themselves believe it. But even if some have good intentions, they’re still selling a lie. And that really, really bothers me.
Palmer: And you’re not worried that someone at The Spirit University will see this article and they may want some kind of retribution?
Greene: Well, I’m not slandering them. I’m not saying anything that’s not true. And my attitude is that whatever I’ve said here can be held up to scrutiny.
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As of this publishing in July 2022, The Spirit University website, somewhat anachronistically (especially for a business in Florida) states “To help prevent the spread of COVID-19 … We have temporarily closed our building. … We will continue to offer our online events. We will miss seeing you at our Center but we’re still open 24/7 online and on social media, where service remains uninterrupted.” However, the most recent TSU Vendor Events listed were in early 2020, and all online store products and services I found, including even the online psychic readings, are tagged as being Out of Stock. Fortunately, it seems that one can still make a financial donation to the business from their website.
Picture credits: All pictures in the article are from TSU’s website or Facebook page.
Note that this interview has been edited for clarity with Helen Greene’s consent and participation. She has also asked that her email, helenalmedia@yahoo.com, be included here as she welcomes correspondence on this subject.
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Other articles by Rob Palmer pertaining to psychics and mediums:
- Pondering the Published Predictions of Prominent Psychics
- A Psychic Fraud Investigator Weighs in on The Goop Lab
- Belief in Psychics: What’s the Harm and Who’s to Blame?
- Mark Edward’s Psychic Blues
- Introducing Psychic-Busting Private Eye Bob Nygaard
Presentations and interviews by the author on the subject of the harm in having these beliefs: