Upland

Peter Popoff and the Earpiece

The televangelist Peter Popoff filled arenas by telling strangers their names, addresses and diagnoses — the Lord was telling him. In 1986 James Randi and the engineer Alec Jason came to a service with a radio scanner and recorded a transmission on 39.17 MHz: the preacher's wife Elizabeth, backstage, reading her husband the prayer cards the congregation had filled in at the door. Popoff had a receiver in his ear. The recording was played on Johnny Carson's show, synchronised with the video of the prophecy. A few months later Popoff's organisation filed for bankruptcy.