"Most Queries About Health Says Psychic" by Peter Murdoch
This article originally appeared in the Hamilton (Canada) Spectator, January 25, 1988
Book-lovers passed by the window of a small room just off the central library. Inside they could see a man lying down and about 20 people seated around him. A photographer tried to get a picture of the scene through the window.
“This city’s got everything,” said a man to the photographer and walked off shaking his head. Another came up and suggested that perhaps someone should call an ambulance.
Doug Cottrell’s six-foot, 225-pound frame was flat on the bench. He appeared to be sleeping and his eye-lids twitched as if he were dreaming. He was not asleep, he was in a trance. And for Doug Cottrell, being in a trance is being in business.
“Yes, we have the entity, continue,” said Mr Cottrell after having found a worker on shift at Stelco. One of the 20 pre-registered participants at the weekend psychic workshop had asked him about the medical problems of a friend.
After being told the man was at that moment working at the steel company, Mr Cottrell took a few seconds to locate him. How he did it remains is [sic] a mystery. Apparently, it has something to do with going into the soul where all knowledge is stored and then finding the person there. After locating “the entity,” Mr Cottrell can see the body and then describe what he sees.
“We find some difficulty in the body itself and some degeneration in the bone itself,” began the entranced Mr Cottrell.
His visionary diagnosis can be extensive and his remedies widespread. At various occasions he suggested everything from traction or weight lifting to massaging large amounts of peanut oil into the body or taking doses of a mixture of olive oil and apple juice.
Most of the questions to “The Man with the X-Ray Eyes” as he has been tagged were about health problems. One woman wondered whether her broken right leg would heal well enough to allow her to ride and work again with horses.
After some “introspection” into the bones and leg the clairvoyant’s answer was welcome news: “Yes, you will ride the beast again.”
Mr Cottrell, who says he has had dreams about himself and the famous psychic Edgar Cayce, stayed in trance for about 1 1/2 hours during the morning session and answered all of the questions from “the enquiring minds.”
A former worker in the Toronto Star pressroom, he has been in the trance, channeling and clairvoyance biz for more than 10 years and has focussed on two specialities – health and business.
When asked about the stock market his advice was not to get into it, but went on to suggest that the precious metals market “was soon going to explode.”
At one point he was a millionaire on paper, but ran into some personal problems. Now, he says, he is back on track.
“My problem has always been that I have been ahead of myself. I would say that gold was going to move a certain way and it wouldn’t happen the next day, it would happen the mext [sic] month.”
He gets most of his market information through dreams and in the last year or so has been able to “nail down” the times more accurately.
If he can “nail down” the market as well as he can a parking space he is destined to be a rich man. He told the group he more or less intuitively guided his way to Hamilton central library and on a busy Saturday morning found a parking spot right out in front.
“In my opinion the hardest thing is to locate the person you are talking about,” he said after the morning psychic workout. “Once the person has been located mentally or intuitively or whatever then it seems to be that the information should be specific or exact.”
“I’m an investigator and if someone says to me your back is out at a certain place I can go and have that proven. If I tell somebody that a certain move on the stock market is going to happen even to a certain date, it either happens or it doesn’t happen.”
Certainly the group who paid $35 for the four-hour session seemed to be impressed. Many had tape recorders and note pads at the ready as he answered their inquiries.
“I’m into this stuff and I had a bunch of questions but didn’t ask the one I really wanted to,” said Kathy Spence, 34, one of the registered participants.
“He knew my mind was confused. Hopefully, after a few more sessions like this and a few more books, it’ll get clearer.