Bogus psychics taking advantage of the economic crisis

Bogus psychics taking advantage of the economic crisis

By Gin Kurniawan

SURABAYA (JP): Crisis does not always mean sluggish business.
On the contrary, while many are complaining about the protracted
economic crisis, psychics are making a lot of money.

The past two years may be called the boom time for psychics
who practice in modest houses in remote areas to star-rated
hotels in big cities such as Jakarta and Surabaya.

"In this hard and uncertain time, many need something to hold
on to in order to protect themselves supernaturally," said Ki
Sunarto, a spiritual practitioner and an observer of the psychic
world.

However, to psychiatrist Dadang Hawari, the phenomenon
reflects the confusion that has engulfed the community as the
crisis has eroded people's self-confidence. Viewed from the
religious point of view, he said, this is seen as a symptom of
faith erosion, apart from the fact that there is a belief in our
society in the effectiveness of a psychic.

Meanwhile, many people have taken advantage of the phenomenon
by opening a practice as a psychic, which is easy to do as the
service is not regulated.

"You can do so as long as you can talk well to convince other
people," said Ki Sunarto.

Many self-styled psychics boldly advertise their services in
the mass media. They have strange names such as Ki Macan Loreng (
The Striped Tiger), Ki Joko Bodo Si Manusia 1000 Aneh (The
Stupid, A Man With A Thousand Peculiarities), Nyai Kembang Sore
(Madame Evening Flower), Jeng NanikGreng (Nanik, the Fascinating
Lady) and so forth. To convince people further, they,
disregarding all the risks, they claim to have titles such as
Prof., Dr., or even Haj. which upon further investigation, will
prove to be fake.

Generally, they offer the same services: curing all diseases
without surgery, finding your life partner, helping you get a
promotion, getting rid of evil influences, and so forth. Some
have openly said that they are ready to practice black magic.

Advertising is an effective medium of promotion. By exhibiting
their "extraordinary" skills, people are attracted and flock to
their places. This profession has resulted in a list nouveau
riche.

Mbah Lana, claiming to be Kiai Sakti Tuban (someone with great
supernatural powers), has never imagined that he will have enough
to live as he does now. Only in a relatively short span of time,
he has built an imposing house and owns three luxurious
automobiles worth hundreds of millions of rupiah.

"I would like to have five automobiles in my house. I will be
soon getting a BMW," said Mbah Lana, a father of three, proudly
pointing to the three automobiles parked in a row in front of his
house.

"It is nice to be a psychic. Money comes easy," he said
openly. "I should have started my practice much earlier," he
added.

As if taking his revenge on the poverty that he used to live
in, Mbah Lana said he was doing his best to earn as much money as
possible from being a psychic, a profession he took two years
ago. He said he could earn an average of over Rp 200 million a
month.

He said more people started coming to him after he had placed
an advertisement in a number of tabloids and a magazine on
mysticism in mid-1999. "After advertising my services, I have got
more clients. Some of them have placed their order by mail," he
said.

Meanwhile, Bambang Yuwono, a psychic calling himself Si Tangan
Sakti (The Hand with Divine Powers), has turned his house, which
just two years ago had plaited bamboo walls and on the verge of
collapsing, into a three-story structure, the construction of
which he spent a billion rupiah. Bambang, who began to
intensively advertise his services in mid-1988, also has a few
cars worth over a hundred million rupiah each.

Nyi Tantri, who calls herself The Indonesian Queen of Magical
Charm, gave up her job as a civil servant in a government agency
in Surabaya three years ago and declared herself a psychic. In
her new profession, she earns a lot more money and has bought a
number of houses and luxury cars.

Edy Rusmanto, popularly known as Boss Edy, is the self-styled
God of Medicine and The Gatekeeper of the Supernatural Cosmos
from Pati, Central Java. Pot-bellied and dark-skinned, Edy, who
usually wears an earring in his left ear, has made his wife, his
father, and dozens of his followers take up the same profession
too.

Victims

With the growing number of people claiming to be psychics, the
public must exercise extra caution when seeking their services
because many of them are simply after your money.

Mrs. Diah, 43, a young entrepreneur in Jakarta, said she had
been duped by a psychic living in Yogyakarta. Being heavily
indebted, Diah visited a psychic she learned from an
advertisement. "I was told that I must take a ritual kungkum bath
every Thursday night," she said.

The psychic said this ritual bath would work wonders as money
would supernaturally appear. Strangely, the money would only
appear after she had given the psychic some money as "bait".
After she had deposited the money into the psychic's bank account
(possible also through a bank transfer), the psychic gave her a
cloth-wrapped box. This box was for the magic money to appear.

"I was told the bigger the amount of the money given to the
psychic, the bigger the amount of magic money there would be,"
said Diah.

She was convinced that the psychic would help her because she
saw dozens of other people in the psychic's house doing the same
thing. Unfortunately, after a few months of doing this ritual,
the promised magic money never materialized.

"I have become even more indebted and the promised money have
never appeared although I had given millions of rupiah to the
psychic in the hope of getting hundreds of millions of rupiah,"
she said.

She realized that the psychic had duped her. After she
threatened to report this fraud to the police, the psychic
returned the money to her.

Permadi, a psychic who is also a member of the House of
Representatives from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle,
has advised the community to make a distinction between real
psychics and bogus ones. "I wouldn't call people advertising
their services in the mass media psychics. Bogus psychics are a
more apt name for them," he said.