The Psychic World of Peter Hurkos

Rating:
Summary: This book is complete bunk!
Review: The author of this book was completely hoodwinked by Hurkos and accepted his self-serving fictions as accurate accounts of his cases. In fact, his record was one of continuous failure. In at least three major cases (the Jackson Family murders, the Boston Strangler murders and the Michigan Coed murders) he falsely implicated innocent parties. In the Jackson family murders he caused an innocent man to be incarcerated in a hospital for the criminally insane. The man was only released after the FBI caught the real murderer -- without any help from Hurkos. Hurkos's involvement in the Michigan Coed murderers was even more tragic. When Hurkos went to Michigan to investigate the murders the murderer committed yet another as a challenge to the great psychic sleuth. I am currently working on an article about the Jackson family murders and have found that most of Browning's statements about the case are contradicted by contemporary news articles in major newspapers.

Rating:
Summary: HE'S THE REAL DEAL...
Review: This book is not really about Peter Hurkos. It is about Peter Hurkos, the psychic. If one measures this book by whether or not Peter Hurkos is revealed as a charlatan or a true psychic, then it succeeds admirably, as it leaves little doubt that Peter Hurkos was an individual with a highly unusual gift. If you measure the book by whether or not you get to know Peter Hurkos, the person, then it has not succeeded, because the reader comes away with very little feeling as to who Peter Hurkos was. The book, while interesting, suffers from being somewhat one dimensional. Notwithstanding this limitation, it is still a thought provoking read.

Peter Hurkos is the famous Dutch psychic who enthralled the world during the nineteen fifties and sixties with his psychic gifts. Uncannily clairvoyant, he was not always so. Born in Holland to a working class Dutch family of simple means, his youth was relatively uneventful. Interestingly enough, however, he was born with the caul which is often taken to mean by those who are superstitious that the individual may have been born with the gift of telepathy or clairvoyance.

Though his youth was relatively uneventful, this changed in 1941 when he fell off a ladder and fell four stories, landing on his head. He miraculously survived, but as his friends and family put it, the old Peter had died, and a new one seemed to have taken his place: one who could foretell the future, as well as describe past events, with uncanny accuracy. In the nineteen fifties, he left Holland and came to the United States, where he prospered as a well known psychic.

Peter used his gifts commercially, for which he received much criticism. He also became known as a psychic detective for helping the police solve numerous cases. Some of the cases in which he assisted were high profile cases, such as that of the Boston Strangler. For many years, Peter Hurkos astonished the world with his psychic gifts. He performed best through the process of psychometry, the divination of information by touching an object belonging to the subject of the reading.

I have to admit that some of the documented stories are truly amazing. So amazing that the author, an investigative reporter with a reputation for exposing frauds, became a believer. I do not doubt that the reader will likewise succumb and join the legions of those who believe that Peter Hurkos was, indeed, psychic.