For more than 30 years, Ben Alexander has been traveling the world, criticizing Ouija boards and psychics, battling witchcraft and Wicca, finding fault with the likes of Harry Potter and Dungeons and Dragons.
As psychics rise to new prominence, he is finding plenty of targets
Celebrity psychic John Edward claims to speak to the dead on a nationally syndicated television show and commands $45 a person on a national tour. Pet psychic Sonja Fitzpatrick, who appears on cable channel Animal Planet, recently charged as much as $50 a head at an appearance in St. Petersburg. Even Carlie Brucia's parents hired a psychic to try to locate the missing 11-year-old, who was later found dead near a Sarasota church.
Anderson says they are all fakes. But there is a difference between him and others skeptical of spiritualism.
He believes.
He believes in ectoplasm, a substance that some spiritualists say spews from the mouth or stomach of a medium in the midst of a darkened seance to form a spirit. He believes spirits can materialize and speak to ordinary people about extraordinary things. He thinks some people are psychic, possessed of special powers to reach where most can't.
Alexander, who lived in St. Petersburg for 15 years and recently moved to Bradenton, says he has experienced all of it. But he has made it his mission to stop it. He says speaking to spirits is the same as speaking to Satan.
His message has made him a popular speaker in religious circles. He has spoken to tens of thousands of people in every state but Rhode Island, plus 14 foreign countries. He has appeared on several hundred TV and radio shows around the world, including three times on the Christian Broadcasting Network's 700 Club.
Alexander says celebrity psychics Edward and Fitzpatrick aren't really talking to the dead because they speak in generalities. Fitzpatrick, he said, would not ask for a dog's name if she could speak to him. Edward would be more precise when dealing with his audience.
At the altar of a St. Petersburg church sanctuary, Alexander recently knelt with one hand on a mock guitar and the other pumping the air in rock star fashion. In the pews sat 100 middle-schoolers from Central Christian School.
"Your rock stars are the ugliest people I've ever seen in my life," he said in a British accent.
Then he donned a messy, long black wig and a plastic nose with black bushy eyebrows and mustache. For a moment, he pretended to be Alice Cooper as strains of Metallica's Battery filled the sanctuary.
"I remember when I used to use a Ouija board," he told them. "In my circle, there was eight of us. We felt an evil presence and we heard, "All is dark. Pray with me.' Over and over and over again. And the Bible would be raised and slammed against the wall."
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Alexander is considered one of Central Christian Church's missionaries, and he receives about $1,500 a year from the church. This past weekend, he was in Salt Lake City and received $1,500 for speaking to 250 junior high and high school kids. He says he wants to concentrate more on sending his message to kids.
But some say he's just another speaker cashing in on the public's fears.
"It's just a racket," says James Randi, a professional magician known as the Amazing Randi who lives in Plantation.
He's speaking of anyone who claims to have seen a spirit materialize at a seance or remove a shoe from someone in attendance.
"It's an illusion. It's a racket for people to make money on. It's the same as a shell game. It's not supernatural. It's not genuine."
Randi first offered $1,000 in 1948 to anyone who could show him proof of a paranormal, supernatural or occult power, or even psychic phenomena. Today, the educational foundation that bears his name has a $1-million prize to anyone who can offer proof. Randi, author of numerous books, said he has been all over the world investigating claims, but no one has claimed any money in 56 years.
Randi said paranormal claims escalate in the years following wars, and the elderly are particularly susceptible to such potential.
"People get silly when they have needs," he said.
None of this changes Alexander's mind about what he saw.
"I've had people come up and say they don't believe it, and I can fully understand that," Alexander said. "But I've seen it with my own eyes. . . . I can't make you believe. But it happened."
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Alexander grew up in London's east end, the adopted son of a couple who had their share of problems. He said his father gambled, drank and hit his mother. His mother tried to commit suicide a number of times and eventually became a prostitute after his father died.
Alexander's story is outlined in his 1993 book, Out from Darkness.
Eventually, Alexander became a London taxi driver. He recalled taking to the Spiritualist Association of Great Britain an American woman who told him she had participated in seances and spoken to her dead husband. Alexander became obsessed with spiritualism after that and began to participate in a weekly seance.
He says he has seen all manner of spiritualistic phenomena, from objects being moved from one place to another to spirits materializing in the darkened room where the group met every Saturday night for some six years.
But Alexander says the spirits in his group became so terrifying as time progressed that he stopped going.
Soon after that, he moved to California in 1965 with his second wife, Miranda. Alexander worked at a bakery and hoped to become a practicing medium in the United States. But he met an old friend who brought him to her church. He said he read the Bible and realized he was talking with demons, not the dead. He chose a new path with Christianity.
As he went to churches and told his story about converting from spiritualism to Christianity, he became a popular speaker at churches and Christian schools. He began to receive "love offerings" and other compensation for his work, $110 here, $40 there. He called his ministry Exposing Satan's Power.
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Lora Phillips, 39, was at Ozark Christian College in Joplin, Mo., some 20 years ago when she first heard Alexander talking about "spiritual warfare."
Last week, her 14-year-old son, Drew, heard Alexander speak at Central Christian School, where she is a first-grade teacher and Drew is an eighth-grader. Alexander spoke about how his seance circle sat around a Ouija board and summoned information about the dead.
Phillips and a handful of other students who heard Alexander said they accepted his message without question. So did the principal of the 350-student religious school, Rhonna Bodin.
"I've never actually seen that, only in Hollywood movies," Bodin said of a spirit. "But I do believe it's very real. The Bible talks about the spirit world."
Dara Wilson, a 10-year-old fifth-grader at Central Christian, said Alexander's message about Ouija boards was scary.
"I told my brother I was scared and that I didn't ever want to play with that," she said.
Leah Baker, mother of Central Christian sixth-grader Amber Baker, said she was happy her daughter received Alexander's lesson. "This man was involved in it," she said, "so he can teach people not to get involved in it."