Fortean Slips: Burnt by Burnt Offerings (original) (raw)

Yvonne Cavin's free psychic
readings came to a halt
after strong vibrations
were detected emanating
from her bank account.Burnt by Burnt Offerings

by D. Trull
Enigma Editor
dtrull@parascope.com

The Chinese have an ancient tradition of honoring their ancestors and late loved ones by setting fire to fake paper money and representations of worldly goods, the idea being that the dead will then have these useful items handy in the afterlife. It's also supposed to keep the spirits from getting angry and and cursing their descendants with bad luck. This reverent pyromania is still practiced in some areas today, with the added modern touch of elaborate paper televisions and BMWs being cast into consumer-goods nirvana, along with the conventional play money.

It's a harmless custom, but a couple of Florida con-artists came up with a Western variation on the ritual with one crucial alteration: the kindling required to appease these ghosts was real-life cash money, with a total haul of $200,000 going up in smoke.

The victim burnt by this scam was Yvonne Cavin, a wealthy, middle-aged heiress from Switzerland residing in Key West. In 1995, she decided to seek out psychic help to alleviate a deeply troubling personal problem. Cavin believed that "evil spirits" were tormenting her, and she felt that psychic consultations offered the best hope of ridding herself of their presence. Little did she know she'd end up losing a lot more than those pesky ghosts.

Cavin met and became friends with Paula Marion, a self-styled psychic who operated a Key West Tarot card and palm-reading shop. Initially, Marion offered her psychic readings free of charge, but that policy soon changed, possibly in response to Marion's divining of strong vibrations from Cavin's cushy bank account. Marion told her customer that the only possible way to banish the evil spirits was through a special, supernatural ceremony whose primary ingredient was $15,000 cash.

Cavin agreed, and so they performed an exorcism rite filled with magic and sorcery, which culminated in 15 grand being set ablaze in a ceremonial bowl. But here's the beauty part of the deal: the money was fake. Marion had graciously volunteered to put up the cash offering herself in advance, a sum which Cavin would happily reimburse her for later. Quite the ingenious switcheroo, provided you can find a pigeon willing to play along. Cavin later confirmed that she watched as the play money got roasted, so the stuff must have been a fairly passable counterfeit, or else the only kind of money Cavin was accustomed to handling was plastic.

Cavin dutifully paid the bill for her pricey bonfire of the sanities, but doggone it, a few months later she found that those darned evil spirits were still hanging around. Her faith yet unshaken, Cavin returned for further assistance from her shifty psychic. Marion and her associate Louis George plotted another, more ambitious polter-heist, and this time around they just dispensed with all that complicated "fake money and ceremonial fire" business.

Marion and George gave Cavin a briefcase which they told her contained $160,000. Warning her not to look inside the case, lest she ruin its conjuration of dark energies, the psychics bid her to set the "money" at the front door of a church in Miami and run away. Of course, leaving 160 large sitting on holy ground is one of the best known methods of ghost expulsion, according to all the ancient tomes of witchcraft, right? Good grief... if these psychics hadn't gotten so lazy on the mysticism, they might have gotten away with their greedy scheme.

Cavin continued to compensate Marion for all the dough she claimed to be forking over to the spirit world, never suspecting the least malfeasance. But then one day after she'd just sent off a big payment, saw Marion's husband driving a new Mercedes, and it finally dawned on her that the evil monsters that had been consuming all that money but refusing to go away were very much flesh and blood.

Cavin went to the police with her story, reporting that Marion's scams had cost her a total of $200,000. The authorities promptly brought Louis George in for questioning, but Marion herself was nowhere to be found. The psychic evaded a police search for six weeks before finally turning herself in.

Marion entered a plea of no contest to charges of grand theft. She was released after agreeing to serve two years of probation and to pay back Cavin 50,000immediatelyandanadditional50,000 immediately and an additional 50,000immediatelyandanadditional70,000 later. The total restitution falls short of the amount Cavin lost, but prosecutor Rolando Castineyra was satisfied with the arrangement, fearing that the case was simply too weird to ensure a guilty verdict.

"I felt the victim was really taken advantage of," Castineyra said. "It was nothing but a scam. But can we prove it to a jury?"

Good question. How many people are going to believe a woman who says she's being wronged because someone didn't destroy a big pile of her money, like she'd hired them to do? But then again, some people will believe anything.

There are no reports available on the present whereabouts of Cavin's stubborn evil spirits. Let's hope the lessons she's learned have given the poor woman strength enough to drive out the demons herself, or to seek out a higher grade of professional help. Lost money doesn't have much effect on ghosts, but sometimes it sure can light a fire under the living.

Source: Reuters.