A good mind is hard to read (continued) BY ALEXANDER PROVAN

Raven gives other examples of the genealogy of his profession. In the 1930s, Joseph Banks Rhine coined the phrase "extrasensory perception" to replace the Victorian "psychical research," which, he felt, sounded a little too unscientific. He demonstrated how certain individuals could, in a preponderance of cases, predict or control the outcome when rolling a pair of dice; Raven notes that, as this was before Las Vegas, the experiment had tangible results.

He goes on to mention that Benjamin Franklin spent two years studying Dr. Franz Mesmer, from whom the term "mesmerize" is derived. The inventor concluded that what patients did under the hypnosis performed by Dr. Mesmer had more to do with their own imaginations than with the doctor’s abilities to manipulate them. Raven also recalls how, in the 1970s, it became popular for magicians to perform a trick in which they appeared to bend a spoon with their minds. In the course of a performance, Raven performs variations of all these "tricks," apparently reading thoughts, controlling or predicting the outcome of supposedly random events, manipulating hypnotized audience members, and even bending spoons.

He provides a brief history of mentalism to grant his own performance credibility since audience members used to goofy magicians or dramatic illusionists are often unsure of how to react to Raven. Though his performance comes from an intriguing, if obscure, tradition, the lack of actively performing mentalists these days makes it necessary, at every performance, to convince those audience members who initially roll their eyes and raise their eyebrows when faced with a bow-tied man named Raven who takes reading minds seriously. He has read minds across New England. But like most artists, Raven must supplement his income with a series of mundane day jobs.

I ask him how he responds when people contend that he is psychic, despite his protests to the contrary. "It is creepy," he says, "because there are folks who walk out of a performance thinking they’ve seen a genuine psychic." This response seems to almost offend Raven. It’s understandable that, after spending so much time studying, practicing, and cultivating his art, he would be upset when people refuse to believe that his skills are anything but intuitive.

Raven explains, modestly, "It’s just something I’ve done for a long time." Though he won’t reveal his secrets, he will say that observation plays a large role, as does attention to suggestion and non-verbal communication. Much of his seemingly psychic ability revolves around "knowing people react in certain ways," he says. "People are the same, but different." He was able to tell a great deal from the way I moved my eyes at certain moments, or the way the tone of my voice fluctuated when I said certain things.

The crowds for which Raven performs are, he says, all variations of the same human psychological composite, though he doesn’t believe that all people raise their eyes slightly when they are lying. Knowing that everyone is basically the same allows him to cater his routine to the various minds in attendance while maintaining the same basic methods of insight, observation, and perception. During these shows, Raven demonstrates what seem to be instances of telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition by revealing the thoughts — usually names, dates, and places — of audience members. The audience can also expect a variety of other mind games and a "recreation of a classic Victorian séance piece," which I could not convince Raven to perform on the porch of the Coffee Exchange.

During a performance a few months back at AS220, before a sparse crowd of about 15 skeptics sitting at circular tables in front of the stage, Raven repeats the bit about being locked in a basement with Poe, emphasizing his connection with the fantastic, or, phantasmic, history of Providence literature (which also includes the horror writer H.P. Lovecraft): "From a strange childhood, I grew into a somewhat strange adult, too."

After performing a few perfunctory but impressive pieces for the dubious crowd, Raven approaches the audience member with the most persistent smirk, a man in his early 20s with slicked back hair and a thin gold necklace. The mentalist brushes his bowtie and introduces a deck of cards. Two minutes later, his concentration is visible in the form of beads of sweat trickling over his arched brow and slowly down his face. The man’s smirk turns into a slight smile as Raven presses his hands together and, one after another, identifies the nine cards the man had taken from the deck.

The man has one card left. "Another ace," Raven suggests, rubbing his hands against his temples. "Ace of spades?" The man holds up the ace of spades and, for the first time, the entire audience claps without reservation.

WHEN NOT PERFORMING, Raven acts as an amateur historian. Every weekend in October, for the past four years, Raven has led anxious believers, skeptics, tourists, and interested locals on a tour called "Providence Ghost Walks." After a few years of research, Raven has harvested a collection of ghost stories from the fertile city of Poe and Lovecraft, and he recounts past and present hauntings and paranormal events around Benefit Street (More information can be found at www.roryraven.com). One of the most memorable tales for Raven involves numerous sightings of two phantom women mourning their own deaths from the porch of the Benefit Street house where, more than a century ago, they were consumed by fire.

So does Raven believe in the paranormal, after all? He says he finds ghosts "interesting as a social phenomenon more than a psychic phenomenon . . . I believe in haunted people more than haunted houses."

He says a woman pulled him aside after a tour and claimed that she had once seen the same specter of a horse and carriage Raven had described as floating down Benefit Street on foggy nights. And though this sort of connection with audience members resonates with Raven, he still treats the matter of the paranormal ironically. Asked if he’s ever seen one of the ghosts described in his stories, he answers in an offhanded manner, "I never have. And that’s just fine with me. I don’t need to see a ghost . . . if you’re dead, please leave me alone."

As we finish our coffee, Raven recalls some memorable performances. He recounts the time he performed for students at MIT. "There’s something kind of fun," he says humbly, "about being a college dropout and fooling people at MIT." I wonder what the students at MIT thought of Raven, what he means by "fooling," and how to understand what Raven has just tried to explain. As if on cue, Raven reads my mind again. "My goal," he says, "if I have one, is to have people walking out of a performance wondering, ‘What the hell did I just see?’ "