Original subtitles

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WILLIAM SHATNER: You know, I've been around for a while.

Met some interesting people, done some crazy things.

So you just might think that there's not much that

can take me by surprise.

You'd be wrong.

The world is full of stories and science and

things that amaze and confound me every single day,

incredible mysteries that keep me awake at night.

Some I can answer. Others just defy logic.

NARRATOR: Does the human mind possess powers beyond

our comprehension?

A housewife's psychic vision helps crack

a major murder case.

ETTA SMITH: I never wanted to be so wrong in my life.

NARRATOR: Can crimes be solved with psychic power?

A Californian man remembers every moment

from every day of his life.

BOB PETRELLA: I can remember something so

clearly and then I go wow, that was forty-one years ago.

NARRATOR: Is total recall possible?

And a faith healer cures terminal disease with prayer.

Is it a miracle, or an amazing display of mind over matter?

TRAPPERJACK KELLER: If this was just placebo effect,

you would find a handful of stories.

You don't. You have thousands.

WILLIAM SHATNER: Yeah, it's a weird world.

And I love it.

[♪]

WILLIAM SHATNER: The human brain.

It's the most complex, advanced and many would

say beautiful thing in nature.

But how much do we know about it?

Well here's some facts for you.

Did you know that it can process over 70,000

thoughts a day?

BRAIN: This is actually a cow brain so it's more

like seven thoughts.

WILLIAM SHATNER: Or that it has over 10,000 miles

of blood vessels?

BRAIN: Could you put it back please? I need that.

WILLIAM SHATNER: Or that it doesn't feel pain?

BRAIN: Ouch, that hurts.

WILLIAM SHATNER: But these amazing abilities are

really only the tip of the iceberg.

The big question is what don't we know about this

incredible stuff?

What else can it do? This is so great.

Your brain generates between ten and

twenty-three watts of power, enough energy to

power a light bulb.

Impressive, huh?

BRAIN: This is pathetic.

WILLIAM SHATNER: Weird or what?

NARRATOR: 1980. Los Angeles, California.

A massive police search grips the small suburban

community of local housewife Etta Smith.

ETTA SMITH: I think we were a little edgy because

having things like that happen wasn't the everyday practice.

NARRATOR: A hospital nurse is missing and feared dead.

Astoundingly, Etta was about to find herself at

the center of the investigation -

in the most bizarre way.

ETTA SMITH: I made it a point to listen to the

news during the day about this nurse missing and the

news said they were making a house-to-house search.

At the moment that they said house-to-house

search, everything went haywire.

It was like I was seeing a movie.

I began to see this area.

I saw a trail, I saw a dirt path.

I saw something white through the bushes and I,

I knew where it was.

NARRATOR: For the first time in her life, Etta's

had a psychic vision.

She's convinced she knows where the nurse is.

She's terrified and confused.

ETTA SMITH: I didn't know what to think of it.

There's some things that you just can't explain away.

I'm arguing with myself.

Should I go tell the police?

They're gonna think I'm crazy.

But what if she's there and she needs help?

NARRATOR: Etta decides to drive to where she

believes the nurse to be - a nearby canyon.

Just being there seems to increase her newfound

psychic abilities.

ETTA SMITH: I see a big spray of dirt and tire

marks and I laid my hands into the tire prints, and

as soon as I did I could feel trauma, I mean bad.

By then, my heart is just fluttering and I'm

thinking all I want to do is get out of here.

NARRATOR: Fighting her fear, Etta follows her instinct.

ETTA SMITH: Down the embankment, out the dirt

path, I see something.

There was white nurse's shoes.

And I said oh my God, it's her.

I never wanted to be so wrong in my life.

All I could think of was run, get out of here,

get to the police.

NARRATOR: When the police arrive, Etta's in for a

huge shock.

Instead of thanking her, they're convinced she must

have had something to do with the murder.

To her horror, she's arrested.

ETTA SMITH: It was shocking.

I cried 'til I couldn't cry anymore.

Strip-searched me, put me in a cell by myself.

It was a nightmare.

NARRATOR: After four days behind bars, Etta is

finally released.

Soon after, the killers - three local men - are

arrested and convicted of rape and murder.

Etta sues the police for false arrest, and after

six years of legal battles she wins.

But even now, Etta struggles to make sense

of the whole thing.

ETTA SMITH: I don't know if it was her spirit that

came and touched me to allow me to have the

vision that I had.

I, I don't know. I, it's one of those mysteries.

NARRATOR: What did Etta Smith experience that day?

Did she have a genuine psychic vision?

Remarkably, many psychic detectives claim to solve

crimes by means of mysterious insights.

Is this possible?

JOE NICKELL: I'd say there are two kinds of psychics

- those who have no psychic ability but

believe they do and we call them fantasizers.

The other type also has no psychic ability, they know

they don't and we call them charlatans.

NARRATOR: Joe Nickell researches paranormal claims.

He believes there's no such thing as psychic

vision or extrasensory perception.

JOE NICKELL: The history of ESP has been a history

of self-deception, deception, wishful

thinking, playing games with statistics, and not

one person has been able to do anything meaningful.

NARRATOR: But if psychic ability doesn't exist,

how do psychic detectives achieve such amazing results?

JOE NICKELL: The typical psychic engages in

something we call retrofitting or after the

fact matching.

You throw out some so-called clues -

I'm getting water, I see a tall structure - and then

the next thing you know the search party found the

remains and in comes the psychic saying, you know,

I mentioned water and that body was found near a

creek or a pond or Riverside Drive or a water tower.

Remember the tall structure I mentioned?

And they get by with this.

NARRATOR: Did Etta Smith just make a lucky guess?

JOE NICKELL: It's not so simple that everyone who

claims to be a psychic is a simple fraud.

Some, some of course are.

But some are simply self-deceived.

They're what would generally be called a

fantasy-prone personality.

And they believe that what they imagine seems very

real to them and yet they have no special powers.

The average psychic detective is no use to police.

In my opinion, they provide no real evidence,

they create false hope, and they have done it at

the expense of promoting ignorance and superstition

in our society.

WILLIAM SHATNER: I see a long life full of riches

and a man name Stephen.

Does that ring a bell?

You know many of us have been to palm readers,

fortune tellers, people who claim to have amazing

psychic abilities who are really nothing but fakes.

But Etta Smith wasn't someone performing cheap tricks.

She saw something in her mind even the police

couldn't understand.

Would she do it just for fame and fortune?

Or is she truly psychic?

No Stephen?

What about Harry?

NARRATOR: Are psychics real?

How did Etta Smith help solve a murder?

TANA HOY: Etta definitely had a psychic vision.

She had a clairvoyant vision.

NARRATOR: A Los Angeles woman has a strange and

sudden vision which helps police solve a murder.

Was it a genuine psychic phenomenon?

Popular psychic Tana Hoy thinks so.

TANA HOY: When I first read Etta's story my

reaction that I had was wow, this woman had a

spontaneous psychic memory.

I believe that the spirit was drawing her, pulling

her to go and find her body.

NARRATOR: If anyone can testify to how important

psychic visions can be to the police, it's Hoy.

He's helped investigators solve a double-homicide

and, while on live radio, predicted a terrorist

attack ninety minutes before the Oklahoma City

bombing in 1995.

TANA HOY: A person can hear a word, a phrase, and

it will awaken a psychic memory or a psychic vision

within that person.

She's awakened this vision and she saw the

canyon where the body was.

That's an example of clairvoyant experience:

clear seeing.

And when she placed her hand in the tire tracks

she was making a direct connection with the energy

imprint of the vehicle.

Etta definitely had a psychic vision.

She had a clairvoyant vision.

NARRATOR: But if Etta's vision was for real,

why didn't the police believe her?

TANA HOY: We're going back to 1980 so back then we

didn't have the awareness of psychics that we have today.

Today we see TV shows and we see psychics on talk shows.

I don't feel that she would have been arrested today.

NARRATOR: So given their remarkable successes,

should detectives add psychics to the force?

TANA HOY: A lot of psychics when they work

with police departments they don't do it for publicity.

They do it to help and give back.

So it happens a lot more than we ever hear about.

NARRATOR: But did Etta Smith really see something

with her mind?

Psychology professor Tim Moore thinks not.

TIM MOORE: I think Etta may have overheard

information in the community without fully

processing it at the time that she acquired it, but later

on it registered and prompted her to go to the police.

NARRATOR: Moore believes something in Etta's

unconscious memory triggered what she thought

was a psychic vision.

Psychologists call it source misattribution.

TIM MOORE: Source misattribution - you have

information to which you falsely attribute having acquired

as a result of experience when in fact it's been

suggested to you or provided to you by someone else.

NARRATOR: Etta Smith wasn't the killer, so how could she

have any idea where the body was?

TIM MOORE: My understanding is that the

actual culprits were blabbermouths and they

talked about what they had done in their

neighbourhood, which was her neighbourhood.

NARRATOR: Could Etta's psychic vision be mistaken

for random information she had nothing to do with?

TIM MOORE: If Etta's not concentrating on the

information at the time that she's hearing it

because it's not the focus of her attention,

the information nevertheless gets in but she doesn't

remember the source.

At some later date she hears information on the

news that the police are looking for a missing body.

She recollects somewhat hazily or without

appreciating how she came by that information.

NARRATOR: But how could Etta have known the exact location

of the body - the precise road in the right canyon?

TIM MOORE: I believe she's familiar with the area so

the original information could easily have

triggered a cognitive map.

The canyon roads there, for example, are pretty

distinctive.

She may have intuited, just on the basis of what

she overheard where the body probably was.

I mean that's not a stretch.

NARRATOR: Did the unexpected recall of

a hidden memory lead Etta to the body?

Or did she experience a genuine psychic event,

which helped solve a case the police could not?

Whatever the truth, this story is most definitely

weird or what?

[♪]

SHATNER: You know, the human brain has been

evolving for uhhh - hold it.

How long has it been evolving?

DIRECTOR: 2.5 million years.

WILLIAM SHATNER: 2.5 million years. Got it. Okay.

ASSISTANT: 903 Baker, take 2 marker.

DIRECTOR: Action.

WILLIAM SHATNER: You know, the human brain has been

evolving for two and a half million years but

perhaps one of the greatest things that sets

us apart from any other creature is the power of -

damn!

ASSISTANT: 903, take three, marker.

DIRECTOR: Action.

SHATNER: You know, the human brainas been

evolving for two and a half million years but

perhaps one of the greatest things that sets us

apart from any other creature is the power of our memory.

[Applause]

Where are my keys?

Oh wow.

NARRATOR: They say that everyone has a special

talent, and in Bob Petrella's case that's

certainly true.

But he possesses something so special it sets him

apart from the rest of humankind.

BOB PETRELLA: The reaction kind of varies.

A lot of people are amazed, a lot of people

call it a phenomena that's strange and unusual.

NARRATOR: Even old friends are still shocked when

they see Bob's power on display.

FEMALE FRIEND: Very good. Very good.

MALE FRIEND: May 18th, 1980.

BOB: Oh, that's Mount St. Helens.

MALE FRIEND: Nerve gas attack in Tokyo Subway.

BOB: March 20th, '95.

MALE FRIEND: Correct.

FEMALE FRIEND: Princess Diana's wedding.

BOB: July 29th, '81. It was a Wednesday.

NARRATOR: It may seem that Bob just has a gift for

remembering trivia, but there's much more to his

incredible talent.

He can remember nearly every single moment from

every single day of his life.

BOB: I threw a bowl of soup on the ceiling on

March 13th, '75.

BOB PETRELLA: Sometimes they think you're lying.

They think you're making it up.

NARRATOR: But every fact Bob pulls from his mind is correct.

His memory is somehow perfect.

MALE FRIEND: When's my birthday?

BOB: November 8th.

MALE FRIEND: What's the year?

BOB: Sixty-eight.

MALE FRIEND: What day of the week was it?

BOB: Friday.

MALE FRIEND: What were you doing that day?

BOB: I was at a football game watching Beaver Falls

play Oakville.

Beaver Falls got beat, I think 28 to 7.

NARRATOR: Unbelievable though it seems,

Bob remembers every detail of every experience he's ever had.

FEMALE FRIEND: It's a little unnerving.

BOB PETRELLA: Sometimes I even amaze myself and I'll

remember mundane things about when I got a haircut

or what I had for lunch on a certain day.

A lot of people are like, they look at you and just

totally amazed.

NARRATOR: But how is this possible?

We all know our memory is far from complete.

Words and names stick on the tips of our tongues,

to say nothing of the inconsequential details of

daily life.

MALE FRIEND: May 1st. Let's go back May 1st. Ten years.

BOB: What was that?

Well May 1st, '91 I was wrapping up a job at

Pacific State University.

That was a Tuesday and that was the NFL draft.

Yeah, yeah, yeah and then May 1st '81 I was house

sitting in Laurel Canyon for this woman named Autumn Bond.

NARRATOR: Incredibly, Bob's not the only person

with a perfect memory.

He is part of an exclusive club.

Around twenty people worldwide have what

scientists now call super autobiographical memory -

the ability to remember every single day of their lives.

BOB PETRELLA: Yeah, the amazing part to me

sometimes is I can remember something so

clearly and then I'll go wow, that was forty-one years ago.

I'm not sure how it works.

It came natural to me.

WILLIAM SHATNER: A man with a super memory that can

remember the tiniest detail from every part of his life?

Now that's impressive.

But he's not the only one.

You see I've got some tricks of the trade myself.

For instance I've forgotten where I put my

phone and to stimulate my memory I use another phone

to uh call it.

And then I listen and then I simply head towards the

source of the sound and I should find it in the last

place I was doing something important.

Okay. I know it's in here.

No. Come on. Yeah. No. Ah you see?

[phone rings]

It works every time.

Hello?

The ice cream is in the refrigerator.

NARRATOR: So what explains Bob Petrella's incredible gift?

Could the rest of us have this super-power?

JAMES MCGAUGH: We all have this capacity.

NARRATOR: A Californian man has an incredible gift.

He's able to remember every detail of

every day of his life.

Does he possess a kind of super power?

GARY MARCUS: When I first heard about um this idea

it didn't smell right to me.

NARRATOR: Gary Marcus is a cognitive scientist.

He believes people with super memory might not

be so super after all.

GARY MARCUS: I think what's really happening in

this syndrome is that people are really spending

a lot of time studying their own lives.

People might try to remember the past

because they want to hold on to it.

It's not necessarily voluntary though.

Most of us if we're interested in something

don't obsess over it.

I think one thing that often happens in this

syndrome is people are particularly interested

in the details of their own lives.

NARRATOR: So is super memory just a form of obsession?

To find out, Marcus spent time with other people who

also claim they have it.

GARY MARCUS: I think that people who have studied

this phenomena have focused on what the people

who have the phenomena are good at but with the

person that I tested that had this kind of syndrome

I kind of focused on some things that I thought they

might be bad at and indeed were.

NARRATOR: When given standard memory tests,

like recalling lists of words, Marcus found people

with so-called super memory did no better than

anyone else.

GARY MARCUS: The idea of photographic memory is a

myth and there's no human being that really has the

level of control over their memory that a computer does.

People with superior autobiographical memory

get really good at memorizing the details of

their own lives but it doesn't extend to everything.

If they're not interested in it they're not gonna to

remember it.

NARRATOR: So has Bob simply chosen to

obsessively memorize his entire life?

Not everyone is convinced.

FEMALE FRIEND: See I don't even remember this!

NARRATOR: Dr. James McGaugh was the first

psychologist to study super memory.

JAMES MCGAUGH: The most surprising thing about

this ability to me is what surprises everybody -

the fact that it can be done at all.

NARRATOR: After interviewing more than a

dozen people with super memory, he's convinced

they are not merely obsessive.

JAMES MCGAUGH: One of our subjects made this very

clear when somebody suggested that all that

she does is sit around and re-rehearse all of her

information and she said let me get this straight.

I have a full time job and I have a life and I'm

supposed to be sitting around re-rehearsing all

of those experiences.

Highly unlikely.

NARRATOR: McGaugh feels that people like Bob are

a real phenomena with memories way, way beyond

that of even the best minds.

JAMES MCGAUGH: An average person can learn to do

some memory tricks.

There are individuals who have memorized the number

Pi out to 30,000 places.

But that type of ability is restricted to that kind

of information.

People with superior autobiographical memory

capture their daily experiences and it doesn't

really make much difference what kind of

information it is, they just hold it.

NARRATOR: But if it's not an obsession, how else

would they remember their lives in such detail?

McGaugh is working on an incredible theory.

JAMES MCGAUGH: One possibility is that we all

store all this information about all of our

experiences in our brain someplace.

We all have this capacity and they are able to tap

this capacity in ways that we can't.

NARRATOR: But how come people like Bob are able

to do this and the rest of us can't?

JAMES MCGAUGH: We're beginning to find that

there are some regions of the brains of our subjects

who have this strong memory that are larger

than the same regions in control subjects of the

same age and sex.

NARRATOR: It's believed part of the brain called

the caudate nuclei is seven times larger in

people with super memory.

Could this somehow explain Bob's gift?

JAMES MCGAUGH: If the human brain is capable of

doing that, that tells us that the human brain has

this amazing capacity.

There's something really important here, something

unique and something important.

NARRATOR: Do super memorizers have turbo

charged brains?

Or is there another answer to this mystery of the mind?

BOB: And I say okay and I see the year and I see the

month and then it cues in to the day.

NARRATOR: A man has an amazing ability.

He can remember almost every moment from every

day of his life.

But how?

Dr. Mary Spiller is a psychologist at the

University of East London.

She believes super memory could be explained by a

medical condition called synesthesia.

MARY SPILLER: Synesthesia is probably best thought

of as a crossing of the senses.

So someone with synesthesia, when they

hear music they may see colours or when they hear

words they might have tastes.

So for example, the word tomorrow might taste like bacon.

The word computer might taste like ice cream.

NARRATOR: It's an amazing concept, but how could it

result in super memory?

Dr. Spiller believes people like Bob may have a

rare form of the condition, called

time-space synesthesia.

MARY SPILLER: People with time-space synesthesia see time.

For example, someone may think of the months of the

year as being located in a circle around their body.

So January could be here and then February, March,

April, May and so on around their body and this

can work for years as well.

NARRATOR: Could the ability to see time allow

people to keep their memories perfectly organized?

MARY SPILLER: So if you ask the synesthete where

is this particular Monday in 1978, they always know

where in space that moment in time is, almost as if

they're looking it up in a filing cabinet.

This gives people with time-space synesthesia an

advantage when it comes to remembering

when things happened.

NARRATOR: Sure enough, when people with super

memory are asked to remember an event,

they speak like they are seeing it.

BOB: And I see where May 1st is.

I see the year and I see the month and then it cues

into the day.

NARRATOR: Could this be proof that Bob and others with

super memory have some form of time-space synesthesia?

MARY SPILLER: I think it's definitely possible that

other individuals with highly superior

autobiographical memory could have time-space synesthesia.

Having a 3D sense of time could potentially have

huge benefits for someone when storing memories.

NARRATOR: Does the ability to see time explain Bob's

near total recall?

Or is it because he has a slightly different brain

than the rest of us?

Or, are people with super memory such fans of their

own lives they can't stand to forget a minute of it?

Weird or what?

[♪]

WILLIAM SHATNER: You know it was mybirthday the other day.

As you can see I got some really great presents.

The problem is with this new fangled packaging,

it's a miracle if you can get them out!

Hang on.

This should do the job.

Oh well at least I got it open.

But do miracles, even small ones, have a

rational explanation?

Or are they gifts from a divine and superior power?

Or are they something else?

NARRATOR: In 1993, Julie Spohn was living a happy

life with her children and husband Greg, but one

August night her life was suddenly ripped apart.

GREG SPOHN: We were having a dinner and suddenly

Julie sat down and I heard a cracking sound like a

broken baseball bat and saw her head fall to the table.

NARRATOR: In a horrible freak accident, Julie had

smashed her head on a shelf behind her seat.

GREG SPOHN: And that's the last time I saw my wife

for many years as far as the Julie I knew.

JULIE SPOHN: I'd fractured the temporal bone in the

back of my head and which led to a significant brain bleed.

NARRATOR: It's a very serious injury.

In that moment, Julie's world turned upside-down.

JULIE SPOHN: For the next thirteen years to put it

bluntly my life was pure hell.

I literally had headaches every single day.

I had visual problems.

I couldn't walk. I couldn't sleep.

NARRATOR: Julie visited some of the best doctors

and specialists in the world, but they were unanimous.

Julie's brain injury would leave her in excruciating

pain for the rest of her life.

JULIE SPOHN: I lived at my lowest point.

Part of me was terrified for my life.

NARRATOR: But then one afternoon in 2008, Julie

sees a TV show featuring a controversial faith healer.

Immediately she knows something phenomenal is happening.

JULIE SPOHN: It was just incredible.

I just had a really distinct peace come about

me and I thought I really want to go see this man.

NARRATOR: The faith healer is Ohio-based

anesthesiologist Dr. Issam Nemeh.

He claims to heal terminal illnesses through prayer.

Two months after seeing him on TV, Julie decides

to meet him.

JULIE SPOHN: And when Dr. Nemeh walked in

I started feeling a great deal of warmth in my lower

back and I'm automatically thinking okay wait a minute.

What can be happening already?

NARRATOR: Could the power of Dr. Nemeh's prayer

really be having an effect on Julie?

GREG SPOHN: The life came back into her eyes that

had been gone for all these years and I just saw

a total transformation in all aspects of muscle tone

and colour and warmth and just life.

It was really amazing.

NARRATOR: Incredibly, Julie's pain is gone.

The headaches disappear. Her vision comes back.

She can move normally again.

JULIE SPOHN: And I said I don't think I need this

cane anymore and I proceeded to walk right

out to the car and get in the car all by myself

which I couldn't do before.

It was obvious something major had happened.

NARRATOR: Her doctors can't explain her

recovery, but Julie has no doubts.

JULIE SPOHN: I definitely feel like I received a miracle.

There's no other explanation for it.

NARRATOR: But Julie is far from alone.

Thousands claim that Nemeh's prayers have healed them.

SLABY: The lord took the pain from me, relieved me of it.

DELORES: I had my own personal miracle.

NARRATOR: From cancer to multiple sclerosis,

it appears no disease, ailment or condition

is too powerful for Nemeh's healing powers.

As word spreads, people travel from all over the

world to attend his services.

But what's happening to people like Julie?

Are they really experiencing miracles

at the hands of a faith healer?

Or is their recovery an incredible demonstration

of the power of the mind?

GILBERT ROSS: Is it psychological?

Well of course it's psychological.

NARRATOR: An Ohio doctor claims to cure terminal

diseases through prayer.

Is he really a miracle worker?

Gilbert Ross is the medical director of the

American Council on Science and Health.

Being a skeptic is part of his job.

GILBERT ROSS: Merely because the patient

undergoes a uh miraculous recovery after seeing a

faith healer in no way means that the faith healer

had any actual active role in the, in the improvement.

NARRATOR: Ross has a more rational explanation.

He believes the power of healing comes from the

extraordinary power of the human mind.

GILBERT ROSS: The successful faith healing

is entirely the result of the placebo effect.

It's purely dependent upon the patient's belief that

the faith healing is effective.

NARRATOR: The placebo effect is a recognized

medical phenomenon.

People who believe they are getting treated get better.

Incredibly, in some clinical trials,

placebos have proven more effective than surgery.

GILBERT ROSS: If you give the patient a jar of sugar

pills and you encourage them to believe that it's a,

some sort of medication that will help them,

you can provoke a placebo response, which may have

some actual beneficial effect.

NARRATOR: Nobody knows exactly how it is that

placebos can be so powerful, but it's

accepted that the mind has awesome healing abilities

and that just believing in a cure is a powerful medicine.

GILBERT ROSS: The placebo effect is real in that a

certain percentage of patients will feel better

just from the intervention.

Is it psychological?

Well of course it's psychological if you're

not administering an active ingredient but that

doesn't mean that it's not real and it, it doesn't

mean that it's not biochemical or

physiological either.

NARRATOR: So can this phenomena explain

Dr. Nemeh's success?

Could faith healing be a placebo that cures only

because people believe?

GILBERT ROSS: Patients who have strong beliefs and

spirituality including religion would be more

receptive to all sorts of placebo effects including

faith healing.

It has to do with some kind of ritual and the

patient's sincere belief that what they're going

through with the faith healer is going to help them.

NARRATOR: Can the success stories of faith healers

like Dr. Nemeh be explained by medical mind over matter?

TRAPPERJACK KELLER: If this was just placebo

effect, if it was just temporary you would find a

handful of stories.

You don't. You have hundreds, you have thousands.

NARRATOR: Christian radio host Trapperjack Keller

has no doubt that Dr. Nemeh is performing

bona fide miracles, something he's witnessed first hand.

TRAPPERJACK KELLER: I have retinitis pigmentosa.

I'm legally blind.

It's a degenerative retinal disease but twice

in the eleven years I've known Dr. Nemeh my

vision's been fully restored.

Both amazing dramatic moments that certainly got

my attention.

NARRATOR: But how can someone perform these cures?

Where does Dr. Nemeh's healing power come from?

TRAPPERJACK KELLER: He's not doing the healing.

He takes no credit for it.

God does it all but he gets to be the spectator.

He gets to watch it happen.

He's the connector.

NARRATOR: So how does it work?

What does Dr. Nemeh do at his services?

TRAPPERJACK KELLER: Something happens and it

happens over and over again, thousands of times over.

I've seen people with MS, I've seen people with

blindness, people who've been told they're going to

die of cancer suddenly literally in the blink of

an eye the tumour is gone.

NARRATOR: For Keller, Dr. Nemeh's healings are

part of a tradition as old as Christianity itself.

TRAPPERJACK KELLER: The healing stories are

written about in the Bible.

You know, you take it back to Jesus time and then the

apostles were healing and you realize that it's

always been there.

Absolutely.

There are so many stories about miraculous healings

from the apostles.

Nothing's changed, nothing's changed.

NARRATOR: But why Dr. Nemeh?

Why is it that he has the gift and not anyone else?

TRAPPERJACK KELLER: I believe Dr. Nemeh was put

on this earth to help people find their way to

God, and God gave him an extra portion of faith and

that faith is being utilized beautifully.

Miracles are happening to get your attention.

WILLIAM SHATNER: This is an incredible story.

But is it just that, a story?

Do faith healers hold the power to heal the sick or

the dying in the palm of their hands?

Do they possess something that science cannot

identify, something beyond this world?

Or are they less than angels?

NARRATOR: Is Dr. Nemeh performing modern day miracles?

Should we take faith healers seriously?

TERENCE HINES: Faith healers are either knowing

or unconscious frauds.

NARRATOR: Thousands of seriously ill people

report being cured at the hands of a faith healer.

Some say it's a miracle.

Others think it's all simply the power of suggestion.

TERENCE HINES: Faith healers are either knowing

or unconscious frauds, that they use various

conscious tricks to lead people to believe that

they've been healed when they have not been healed.

NARRATOR: Terence Hines is a professor of psychology

at Pace University, New York.

He takes a rational approach to Dr. Nemeh's

success stories.

TERENCE HINES: The patient's own belief that

they're going to be cured I think certainly plays a role.

Getting people excited so that they won't feel pain

through perhaps endorphin release is another trick.

Endorphins are the body's natural painkillers.

They're released under, under situations of high

stress and arousal.

So the patient will in fact believe, incorrectly,

that they've been cured.

NARRATOR: Hines has spent time undercover

investigating faith healers.

He found that in some cases they relied on trickery.

TERENCE HINES: We went undercover at a faith

healing meeting held in Brooklyn, New York and

about halfway through the healing session an elderly

gentleman was, was brought up onstage in a wheelchair.

The faith healer laid his hands on this gentleman in

the wheelchair and bade him walk and this

gentleman got out of his wheelchair, walked up and

down the stage to great applause.

It was a miracle.

But, in fact, one of the other members of the team

had noticed this gentleman walk into the meeting hall

under his own power earlier in the performance.

As he neared the stage, one of the faith healer's

assistants walked up to him and said sir, would

you like a wheelchair?

So this gentleman sits in the wheelchair.

Forty-five minutes later, he finds himself brought

up onstage and asked to walk.

Well he can walk.

That's how a miracle is performed.

NARRATOR: But why would some faith healers set out

to dupe people?

According to Hines, it's a profitable game.

TERENCE HINES: All faith healers that I've come

across don't charge admission to their, to their services.

It's free.

Uh but at the, during the service they certainly ask

for donations.

At the faith healing meeting I went to, I

became a volunteer usher and I was given a

collection bucket, ye big, and I thought, they're

crazy if they're gonna to get this thing filled

with, with money.

I was the crazy one.

I was pushing the fifty, hundred dollar bills and

twenty dollar bills down into the bucket.

I think I probably cleared about 6,000 dollars.

Now there were twelve ushers.

Twelve times six is 72,000 dollars taken out of that

community in one night.

I would call it a license to steal.

NARRATOR: Hines believes it's easy to hoodwink

people into believing they've been cured.

To prove it, he set up a demonstration of the power

of suggestion.

TERENCE HINES: So we have an actor who will play a

doctor, a healer, and one of the gimmicks that he

has is a neurostimulator.

The patient will be told this will reduce their pain.

NARRATOR: In fact, the neurostimulator is

a classic placebo - a prop that does nothing.

TERENCE HINES: And what we expect to find is that a number

of people, not everybody, but a number of people

will say my God, my pain's really gone, I can feel that.

NARRATOR: The first volunteer reports a pain

in her ankle.

Our fake doctor assures her he can help.

DOCTOR: So I'm gonna turn it on.

I want you to keep breathing and when I turn

it on you're gonna feel the energy coming out

through your head, okay?

Here we go.

Do you feel the difference that this is making already?

WOMAN: Yeah it feels, it's relaxing.

DOCTOR: Phenomenal. Look at that.

She's moving it all ready, right?

WOMAN: Yeah.

WOMAN: I didn't see how it would work but actually

like I had a pain like right at the top of my

foot and now - I couldn't even like bend it but now

it seems to be better.

Like I can move it.

It doesn't hurt as bad anymore.

NARRATOR: Hines' theory seems to prove correct as

volunteer after volunteer are easily deceived by the

fake doctor, so much so he feels it might have been

a profitable day.

TERENCE HINES: The people who, who reported a

positive change probably would've given a donation.

Not a huge amount because again they didn't come

prepared for that.

But yes, I suspect a donation could've been

wrung from them.

NARRATOR: So are faith healers conmen who prey on

the weak and vulnerable?

Or can healers like Dr. Nemeh channel

science-defying miracles into ailing bodies?

Or is it simply that our own minds are so medically

potent that people like Julie can heal themselves

with the power of belief?

Weird or what?

[♪]

NARRATOR: So there we have it, three stories

exploring the untapped power of the human mind.

A woman's paranormal vision helps solve a murder.

Can horrific crimes be solved by psychic powers?

A Californian man can remember nearly every

moment from every day of his life.

Can we all one day have total recall?

And a faith healer cures terminal illnesses

through prayer.

Is it a modern day miracle, or an awesome

demonstration of mind over matter?

You decide.

WILLIAM SHATNER: Join me again next time for more

stories that will undoubtedly be

weird or what?

[♪]