Harry Ingalls Scams Swindles Steals Frauds (and Tells your Fortune!) Crook with a Zodiac Astrological Turban and a Checkerd Past

Like all things not based on sound scientific research,  anything "Astrological" or "Zodiac" is a big fraud, and that the crap continues to appear in newspapers and such is amazing to me.  Not as in "ooh…that is so amazing that my horoscope came true" but as in "Gawd, how many stupid people believe that crap?"  How can a newspaper have any credibility if they run a daily astrology column, even if it IS the first (and only) thing folks turn to?  They might as well give coupons for "psychic readings"or free Tarot cards.   Thankfully, I am sure one can now purchase any number of Apps which will spin the lucky wheel for you.

(Sure enough…the first article I found is "THE BEST" astrology apps for Android.  Suckers.)

Read it here.  It is a scam.  It doesn't even qualify for "pseudo-science" or for that matter an art form.  It's crap.  A lie.  Fraud. In my opinion criminal and actionable.  Which means one could sue their psychic, except that you probably agree not to in the small print.

It is 2013 as I write this.  We've had centuries to weed out those who prey on the ignorance and blind trust of the people, yet still I hear advertisements for psychics and such.  All that has changed is the turban.  Now most are women. 

By all accounts (and there are very few) Harry Ingalls, self-proclaimed "Greatest Fortune Teller in the World" had a normal childhood in a well-to-do family which dated way back to the earliest days of the country in Massachusetts.  So why did he begin a career in scams, swindles and fraud?  Maybe the family cut him off from the old money.  I've gone over the box of cards here looking for the standard disclaimer "for entertainment only" but my third eye fails to find it. 

Harry wrote one book.  Tea Cup Reading: Tell Fortunes by Tea Leaves, which he published himself out of Swampscott, MA around 1930.  Yea…your fortune is shown in your tea leaves.  At that time, he was calling himself "The Master Mind" I guess.   Here he is the same year appearing with "The Checker Girls" whoever they were.  If my understanding of show business is true, one of the checker girls fell under his spell, he started drinking and it ended miserably.

When Harry began turning up with his gimmick on the radio, he called himself "The Wizard of Mental Telepathy" which reminds me to say there are no wizards and telepathy is a scam too.

An article on Harry appeared in 1957 in "The Yankee Seer" which could have been another of Harry's names.  A Seer is a clairvoyant.  There are no clairvoyants either.  Last night I must have had my oracle on, as I dreamed up some lucky numbers of my own!  Number one and number two…fortunately, I woke up and made it to the bathroom.

The deck of cards above are not scarce at all.  Harry sold a TON of them.  Even today, on a "Tarot" website I found a thread of seers discussing them STILL, so they turn up all the time. 

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Spiritualist Medium's License to Steal Mrs. Crocker's Crock of Crap Speaking to the Dead

Now I think science will side with me on this one...you can not talk to the dead. They are dead! But some charlatan, fraud, fake, criminal money-grubbing scam artists think they can. (Well, to be a little more accurate, the thieves only CLAIM they can speak to the dead, they don't actually think they can. They can't and they KNOW it.) So essentially they are fibbers, liars, scoundrels, shysters, confidence men, swindlers, cheaters, mountebacks, quacks, grifters and dishonest deceptive false-posing spurious shysters. Bunch of crooks.



I asked Mrs. Crocker here to respond to my charges, but she failed to reply. She is dead. Not "medium" dead....dead.  Only her fake diploma remains.



Mrs. Addie M. Crocker's Medium's Certificate from the Michigan State Spiritulalist Association
1912 and press photograph Collection Jim Linderman

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Punchboard Scam Easy Money (Keyhole of PROFIT) Girlie Glasses

Twice the fun in every drink you pour! Why? The amazing Key Club (a division of Bear Sales) has figured out a way to serve your guests a fully dressed show girl on the outside, but when they peer through the "keyhole" glass, they see her "hidden talents" through the swill!

Now it wasn't enough for the Bear company to shill the glasses...they also ran a punch card scam! A gambit as old as time, yet as contemporary as Bad Bernie Madoff! Punch one, pay one cent. The next "contestant" punches two, he pays two cents. Each scam nets the card holder a minor fortune AND his own complete set of show girl glasses, yet only one "winner" gets the prize...a lousy set of see-through drinking glasses.

I wrote about "punchboards" before. This is the first time I have seen the scam illustrated in a flyer. Somebody had a "Hidden Talent" all right...a talent for scamming rubes with the promise of ice cubes. One thing these show girls are showing is how easy it is to use the promise of a curvy dame to line your pockets. Click to Engorge...every "secret" is revealed!

Now most of these scams had been busted and found out by the 1950s, but guess who persisted in shilling them right into the 1960s according to Punchboard.com? One Jack Ruby. You might have heard of him.

One-sheet come-on for a punch card scam. Circa 1960. Collection Victor Minx

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Dad Drops a Quarter The Sideshow Bottle Stand Trick 1966

Dad may be good at "knockin' them back" but he isn't going to stand this one up. Can it be done? Yes, and you will often see signs at the booth reading "one win per person per season" to keep that BMX mini-bike hanging on the wall in back. But will YOU do it? Nope. Dad has the wrong thing going here, and I don't just mean his white socks. The pole should be as vertical as possible, not horizontal, and you must "push" the bottle up, not pull it. Complicated? Yes. It will take you a solid afternoon to work it out at home. How many of those who come upon it have done their homework? None. Especially not Dad.

Original Vernacular Photograph, Dated August 1966 Collection Jim Linderman
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Talking Chalk and Talk Chalkers Glenn Beck Hijacks an Art Form to Line his Pockets Chalk Talk

The ill-informed and dangerous charlatan Glen Beck made me concerned enough to look into chalk talk. Before the millionaire fraud hijacked the former vaudeville trick and started using his chalkboard "skills" to foster corporate greed under the guise of patriotism (and convince many of his floundering middle-class audience to act against their own best interests) chalk talking was an art, a skill and for many a profession. Of course, Glenn has nowhere near the skill and talent of the old guys, especially since his accompanying patter is so vile and poorly researched.

Beck is just one more of the swindlers who have taken the all-too-trusting American public for a big money grab in our history, a buffoon and tool who takes advantage of confused and scared masses to line his own pockets. As such he falls squarely into the long line of snake-oil salesmen, carnival barkers, faith-healers and quacks who litter our history. Beck is pretty good at it...His income in 2009 is reported at $32 million dollars. As his viewership hovers around a million per televised episode, that's about thirty bucks each...money which might better applied to individual gold purchases (though that is another of his scams being investigated.)

I'm not sure he even uses the chalkboard any longer, as he has been so soundly ridiculed for it, but the craft was once a quite beautiful thing. The examples here all come from the splendid book "Bright Beams from the Blackboard" by Hy Pickering. No date, but certainly approaching 100 years old. As you can see, Pickering fell into the "tell a good moral lesson" category of chalk talkers rather than, oh...I guess what you could call the "Amos and Andy logic out a financial transaction" chalk practice. You know..."take the 7 and deduct it from the 12...see? You owes me 50 dollars." A slightly racist example from vaudeville history, but still exactly what Beck does when he befuddles his audience with poorly drawn crud and poorly drawn conclusions.

Pickering, on the other hand, is presenting art of the highest order, and with practice, some slate and some chalk, an art available to anyone who can draw a straight line. (Like the straight line Glenn Beck makes right to the bank)

Rather than writing me, any Fox viewers who happen upon this post by mistake are referred HERE where Glenn's many mistakes are documented on a regular basis.

Zallah Knows...But No One Knows Zallah! Psychic claptrap from a Medium Skilled Medium

When I read a non-fiction book about times in the early 1970s, as I have just done, (A true tale of rural Texas when kids were just starting to learn about popping pills) I am astounded at how much credence was given to psychics at the time. I am especially surprised as I thought they had done been debunked decades earlier.

I mean, how stupid... ehh. I give-up. I even have folks around here who believe Glenn Beck.
I give up.

So here is Zallah. An Uri Geller in Drag. A schmatta wearing female fraud. Years ago I learned the way these con-men in skirts make their living is by limping along on the dollar or two stolen from grieving widows, troubled husbands, lonely wives...all while waiting for the one BIG score which usually meant the "go to your bank and draw out your available funds" gambit. (A cop told me this...He said they usually go three or four months in between real scores, and when they hit, the daughter or son takes over the business while they go to Florida and bask a while)

Zallah here appears to have slipped town with her ill-gotten gains. Certainly she is on her way to greener pastures of plenty. There is nothing on the web about this criminal. If I could conjure up some dirt, you would certainly get it. One thing I know...when they took Zallah's fingerprints, be Zallah man or woman...they also got Zallah's real name. Unfortunately, I do not have it.

Zallah! The Woman with the Penetrating Eyes! Tradecard, circa 1930 Collection Jim Linderman

Playing with a Marked Deck

6" x 10" Photograph of marked cards, cropped, dated 1928. Evidence Photograph?
Hand embellished dated 1928
collection Jim Linderman