Lou Savage: Lottery Article

Psychic Wins Lottery Again: Authorities Baffled

Lottery officials are baffled at how a local Mahoning Furnace, Pennsylvania psychic and lawnmower repairman has managed to win the Pennsylvania lottery for the sixth time in as many months. "Let me be frank... " Said perplexed lottery official, Frank Slemenzoliak. "This has never happened before, and I can't even imagine how it happened twice. But six times... that's downright uncanny. I'm stumped."

Local psychic, Spartacus Vishnu Bibbs has baffled statisticians all around the country with his unusual ability to beat the odds of the state lottery. "The possibility of winning the Super Six is 39,959,158 to 1. I don't have to tell you that this guy is an animal." Says Slemenzoliak. "The only other time anyone hit odds like this before was... well there never was a time like this. It's like the odds that you'd be as good a golfer as Tiger Woods. Actually, you'd be more likely to win the lottery six times than to be born as good an athlete as Tiger Woods. But winning the lottery six times... I don't know."

"It goes without saying that that this guy's lucky. He just seems to know which numbers work. Go figure." Much speculation has been made as to the reason for Bibbs' success. Some point to his cultural past - he's one of ten children who immigrated to the US from Haiti in 1979. "Maybe it's a Haitian thing." Said Bibbs' next door neighbor, who asked not to be named. The neighbor, Jim Frankel, told reporters that Bibbs seemed to be a lot like the other people in the neighborhood, rarely drawing attention to himself. He said that Bibbs was also typical in many ways to other Haitians in the community, other than the fact that Bibbs is white and wears a turban. "I think he's either sensitive to the sun or he's got something wrong with his hair," said Frankel. "I think he's bald."

"He'll sharpen your lawnmower blade for $15.00. Then when he'll look at the dirt on your spark plug, and his eyes roll back in his head and starts to tell you things about yourself, and I'll be darned if they aren't true too. It's kind of spooky. He sticks out his lower lip and starts talking like Alfred Hitchcock, except that he's got kind of a lady's voice. He wears a dress and has painted fingernails too, but that's not as weird as that fortune-telling thing."

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University converged on the town of Mahoning Furnace last month, taxing the tiny hamlet's almost nonexistent resources. Armed with various diagnostic tools: EKGs, EEGs and litmus paper, they were simply unable to unscramble any clues to the mystery of Bibbs' secret powers. Frustrated, researchers even tried attaching an engine analyzer to Bibbs at a local gas station, but with little success.

For now, Bibbs will continue to stump the experts as they speculate about his lucky streak. "We've ruled out any kind of cheating or illegal manipulation of the lottery system," Says Slemenzoliak. "This psychic guy is just one lucky fella."