An EXTENSIVE background story re Allison ‘DuBois’ published by The Phoenix New Times in 2008… everything you wanted to know about the ‘head tapper’ and more:
http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/content/printVersion/804266/
Included in the PhoenixNewTimes article is this:
“… DuBois says she’s used to law enforcement denying her involvement in cases, as police officers in Texas and Arizona have.
“I don’t want anyone getting an appeal because I’m in a courtroom,” she says. “Which is why I don’t do it anymore. I’m a celebrity. I could throw a jury one way or another, and you can’t do that. They’d be, like, ‘She’s here. He must be guilty.’ Which I’m okay with. But it’s not lawful.”
Part of the reason her involvement isn’t widely touted could be because, as in the Baseline Killer case, she’s just one of many tipsters who call the police. And she’s not the only medium calling in. On high-profile cases, the cops get hundreds of so-called psychic mediums coming to them with information.
Regardless of what really happened in Texas, after working the Jennings case, DuBois felt called away from her dream of becoming a lawyer. Instead, she wanted to find out if she could be a medium.
She heard about Gary Schwartz, a professor at the University of Arizona who was conducting research on mediums in his lab. Schwartz had garnered national attention after appearing in the 1999 HBO documentary Life After Life. (The cable television network totally funded the research he conducted in the documentary and also supplied him with the mediums he tested.)
Allison decided to pay him a visit.
“It came down to the laboratory. I said, if I can do something in the lab that makes me great — better than most — I will give up my dream to do my calling,” she says. “That was a turning point.”
And she proved a force to be reckoned with in the lab, leading Schwartz to declare her “the Michael Jordan of the mediumship world,” something he stands by today, though the two are no longer on speaking terms.
Schwartz’s experimental designs are criticized by the scientific community, and his work is not sanctioned or paid for by either the university or the government. Still, within the context of his laboratory, DuBois was clearly a superstar, shining as brightly as established psychic luminaries like John Edward and Lorie Roberts.
In 2001, Paramount Studios contacted Schwartz’s lab to talk about a new show it was producing. The show, which would be called Oracle, would feature five people with psychic abilities who would give readings for members of the audience, similar to John Edward’s hit Crossing Over. Paramount wanted to know if any of Schwartz’s research mediums were interested in auditioning.
DuBois was.
She auditioned by giving a reading over the phone for one of the show’s producers before flying to L.A. to audition in person. She was competing with 118 people, hoping to become one of the five oracles.
“I don’t play well with others,” she says. “The producer pulled me aside and said, ‘We’re like a family here.’ I said, ‘I don’t get along with my own family. Don’t ask me to do that here. I’m here to smack down and do what I do.’ That’s just my personality.”
Though DuBois made it to the final five, the pilot never aired.
“I could see why it wasn’t picked up,” she says. “They didn’t follow my advice.”
But DuBois had made quite an impression on one of its producers: Kelsey Grammer. A year and a half later, Grammer’s assistant called DuBois to see whether she’d be interested in working with him on a show based on her life. It would be fictionalized, but the characters would be based on her and her family.
She agreed.
Shortly after Medium debuted in 2005, Schwartz came out with a book provocatively titled The Truth About Medium. Really, it’s the truth about Schwartz’s research methods, but he does frame each chapter around DuBois, whom he calls a powerful medium.
The book showed DuBois in a positive light, but she was pissed. She says she asked him not to write it and that when he did, she stopped allowing him to test her. They are no longer on speaking terms. She says it angers her that someone would try to profit from her abilities.
Schwartz will not comment on DuBois, even to defend himself, preferring to talk only about his experiments.
He’s not talking, but her naysayers are. Though she has many fans, she also has many people who have devoted their lives to debunking her. DuBois describes them as “angry, old white men with abandonment issues.”
And they, in turn, describe her as a “hypocritical asshole” and the “queen of questionable mediums,” while her fans are “credulous ass-hats,” loons, and nut bags.
One organization of skeptics, the Two Percent Company, even declared an “Allison DuBois Week” in 2005 during which they published a different article each day of the week debunking her. James Randi (a.k.a. “The Amazing Randi”), a magician and professional skeptic, has offered DuBois, or any other psychic, $10 million if she can prove her abilities in a test that he would design.
She hasn’t accepted the offer. No one’s ever passed his test.”
