CrimeCon 2019 VIP Dinner

You’re a true crime fan through and through. You’ve watched countless hours of police interviews and interrogations; you may have attended Steven David Lampley’s session How to Catch a Liar at CC18 or CrimeCon: On The Run; you may not be a trained detective, but you can spy a lie from a mile away.

Except. . . what if you can’t? Entertainer Jason Suran has spent much of his life mastering the skills of illusion -- but this is no magic show. Instead, Suran combines these skills with his expertise in the psychology of deception to demystify those who would pull the wool over your eyes, from charismatic criminals to psychic detectives. At Saturday’s VIP cocktail and dinner event, Suran will put these concepts into action to demonstrate not only how these fantastic feats are performed, but how to protect yourself from them.

Though he’s a self-proclaimed skeptic, Suran is willing to give liars the benefit of the doubt. “I start from the premise that everybody wants to tell the truth,” Suran says. “Even the most practiced liar wants to tell the truth because it’s less work. So the game becomes ‘how do I make it as easy as possible for this person to tell me what I need to know’.” Still, there are those who use the same psychological concepts to take advantage of others.

“I want people to understand the danger of being taken in by a practiced cold-reader. ,” Suran continues. “Psychics and mediums who use these concepts for personal gain often derail police investigations and risk further traumatizing families and victims. Two stories, in particular, spring to mind: In 2003 and 2004, respectively, famed psychic Sylvia Browne informed the parents of missing children Shawn Hornbeck and Amanda Berry that their children were dead. In reality, both children had been abducted and held captive for years. Hornbeck escaped his captors and returned to his family in 2007. By the time Berry escaped, her mother had died, still believing that her daughter was dead.

These cases reinforce the main idea that Suran hopes to drive home during his Saturday performance. “These illusions are effective because we don’t understand them,” he explains. “We see psychics on television and wonder how they knew Grandpa’s middle name or how they knew where a body was buried, but the truth is that there are some very reliable and effective ways they could have uncovered that information. In my show, we’ll examine the methodology that helps them do that and look at what makes us so susceptible to deception in the first place”

Suran promises a highly interactive session with plenty of opportunities to get involved. “There will be lots of audience participation and I may need some victims. Er ... volunteers,” he warns. Fortunately, the evening kicks off at 7:00pm with a cocktail reception to ease those stage fright jitters.