Billet Reading is a procedure in
which a question is secretly written on a piece of paper…it is then folded or
sealed in an envelope, and handed to a psychic who attempts to answer the
question…the way it works is the mentalist (psychic) provides paper and pencils
along with envelopes to the audience, who are then asked to write statements on
the paper…then seal them in the envelopes…the envelopes are then usually
collected by an assistant and handed to the mentalist…the mentalist then takes
the first envelope and magically examines it…typically by holding it to their
forehead. After a period of concentration, they announce what is written on the
paper…the envelope is then opened to check that they have read it correctly…the
mentalist will then select the next envelope and proceeds to mind-read the
contents of that one and so-forth…if you have ever seen Johnny Carson do his
Carnac skit, that is almost exactly how it is done…various trickery can be
employed by fraudulent psychics and mentalists in an attempt to fool the
audience into thinking the ‘psychic’ is actually able to ascertain the correct
answer…this often involves having ‘plants’ in the audience to hand in envelopes
that the psychic already knows the answer to…many of these fakes have been
exposed over time…is it possible someone could actually be able to perform
billet reading…who’s to say they couldn’t?...many times, the unbelievable
actually happens.
