Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
I recently wrote about an amusing article I'd read about people who bury statues of St. Joseph, the patron saint of real estate, in order to make their home sell. I got an email from a guy named Phil Cates, founder of St. Joseph Statue LLC, a company that sells those statues. And despite the fact that I roundly mocked him and every customer he has ever had, he pretends to have liked my article and comes on all friendly in the email. This is so reality averse as to be almost creepy. Here's the full email:
Hi Ed, I enjoyed your article on the tradition of St. Joseph, it was very well done. As the creator of the first, St. Joe kit, St. Joseph; "The Underground Real Estate Agent" ™ kit in 1990, I realize the opinions about St. Joseph are as diversified as those of, music, art, movies, politics, the Bible, or even science.I find it very interesting how the simple act that took place more than five hundred years ago when Sister Teresa of Avila Spain buried a medallion of Joseph, who she saw as a cool guy, and asked him for a little help to get land in order to build a home for poor women, could be labeled everywhere from devil worship to holiness.
Just as Teresa understood, St. Joseph is merely a tool to allow us to think outside or limited abilities. If you're interested in hearing more about what I've learned from my clients over the last 20 years, I'm happy to share with you.
All my best,
Phil Cates
Founder
StJosephStatue, LLC
www.stjosephstatue.com
888 BURY JOE
Perhaps I didn't make myself clear, Phil. Despite your transparent bullshit about the St. Joseph statues being "merely a tool to allow us to think outside or (sic) limited abilities," you are a con man and a fraud. You are selling snake oil to the credulous and making money off their ignorance and inability to think rationally.
What you do is neither devil worship nor holiness, it's plain old fashioned fraud. You sell something that doesn't do a damn thing to people who think it does and their inability to understand the difference between correlation and causation and their will to believe and to cherry pick anecdotal evidence rather than actual data pads your bank account.
I'll tell you what. I repeat the test that I proposed in my initial post. We take a few hundred homeowners and control as best we can for all the other variables, matching up similar homes in similar neighborhoods at similar price points, etc, and have half of them bury your statue in the ground and half not. Then we can have real data on whether those statues do anything at all to help a home sell.
I'm sure I can get my friends at the James Randi Educational Foundation would be happy to put up their million dollars and design a test that would be mutually agreeable for everyone on what would constitute a successful outcome establishing the efficacy of the statues.
And here's the kicker: if you win, you get a million dollars. If you lose, you close up your business, sell off all its assets and donate it all to the Randi foundation.
Do we have a deal? Or would that be "outside" your "limited abilities" to understand?
Politics
Comments
I like the way he through 'or even science' in there as if it's anything similar to the other items in that list.
What a dishonest douchepickle. Fraud is too good a word, IMO.
Posted by: FastLane | March 11, 2010 9:30 AM
Here's one data point for you, Ed:
When we sold our house in Florida in 2007, my wife chose to bury St. Joe. She didn't want to spend money on a new one, so she took one from the x-mas decorations (placed in a plastic baggie so we could recover and use it again).
After 8 months of his hard work* the house sold. A MIRACLE!
*and our dropping the list price $55k
Posted by: Mr. Upright | March 11, 2010 9:43 AM
and our dropping the list price $55k
Nothing price won't fix.
Posted by: Eric Lund | March 11, 2010 9:53 AM
I always have mixed feelings about these kinds of stories. On the one hand, capitalizing on the gullibility of others is not what I’d call honorable. On the other hand, I do love to see a bold bluff pay off.
Posted by: Abby Normal | March 11, 2010 9:56 AM
I think this is probably a mass-mailing of some sort. After all, he doesn't mention anything in there that shows he specifically read Ed's previous blog-post. He probably just used google to find references to his company and then wrote everyone a friendly e-mail in the hopes that some clueless idiot somewhere will print a glowing review of his company in a local newspaper.
Posted by: Valhar2000 | March 11, 2010 10:15 AM
If it's St. Theresa who has the influence with Joseph, why not bury an amulet of her? Or an amulet of Joe? Where did the statue requirement come in?
Posted by: kehrsam | March 11, 2010 10:21 AM
Our house was on the market for 6 months and we had over 90 showings...nothing we did seemed to work. Then, on a dark and stormy night during a new moon, I buried a statue of Cthulhu in the NW corner of the yard and chanted:
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
...and the next day I woke up covered in slime.
The good news is that two creepy looking dudes in overcoats bought the house...in cash! Their elbows and knees seemed to bend the wrong way, but, whatever...the house was sold!
Kenbo
Posted by: Kenbo | March 11, 2010 10:33 AM
800 BURY JOE? I'm sure God is pleased.
Posted by: Owen | March 11, 2010 10:35 AM
What about simply burying a guy named Joe? Wouldn't that have the same effect? What if it's a religious guy named Joe? A priest named Joe?
Posted by: dogmeatib | March 11, 2010 10:36 AM
Am I the only person who is tempted to make cheap St. Joe statues out of paper towel rolls and egg cartons to cash in on this superstition?
Posted by: catgirl | March 11, 2010 10:43 AM
dogmeatib = "What if it's a religious guy named Joe?"
Finally, a good use for Joseph Farah*. - Dingo
---------
*There's no requirement he's gotta be unconscious or dead is there?
Posted by: DingoJack | March 11, 2010 10:44 AM
Hope you didn't forget anything!
Posted by: Mithrandir | March 11, 2010 10:50 AM
Just another take on selling pieces of the cross. Religious frauds will always be with us. As long as religiousity exsists these types of shams will continue to florish.
Posted by: fishnguy | March 11, 2010 10:56 AM
"Radix malorum est cupiditas". - Dingo
Posted by: DingoJack | March 11, 2010 11:00 AM
Despite your transparent bullshit about the St. Joseph statues being "merely a tool to allow us to think outside or (sic) limited abilities," you are a con man and a fraud.
And I, for one, couldn't care less. If people are gullible enough to believe burying a statue will affect how their house sells, I have no problem with someone making money by supplying the statues. I wish I'd thought of it first. It's not the same as selling fake cures.
Posted by: Taz | March 11, 2010 11:07 AM
Just playing devil's advocate, but what if we look at it from another angle? People who buy those statues apparently believe the Saint will help them. The fact that the seller does not share their faith should be of any concern to them: If the Saint exists and is propense to help, the fact that the pedeler of his images do not believe he will intervene does not really matter, does it?
Suppose an atheist sells religious wares but do not claim a thing. Would that be ok? I mean, people who buy those products very often expect a whole lot more from it than help to sell real estate: They sometimes pin the salvation of their very imortal soul on it, for crying out loud!
Posted by: Antifia | March 11, 2010 11:28 AM
I'm with Taz. This ain't no big deal, Ed. Why get excited about this shmuck selling statues when the Pope and even the little church down the street are doing much bigger scams?
Posted by: Jon | March 11, 2010 11:37 AM
It's better than the time I was having trouble selling a little statue of St. Joseph.
Do you have any idea how much trouble it is to bury a house?
Posted by: Modusoperandi | March 11, 2010 11:40 AM
Your proposed test doesn't really test anything. His claim doesnt seem to be that the statue itself has mystical powers, but that the act of deciding to use the statue is part of the process of "out of the box" thinking about house selling.
It might might sense to structure a natural experiment where you match those willing to do anything to sell their house (including a statue) with those who think the house will sell without yard decoration. But your suggested random asignment tests nothing other than a straw man.
Posted by: gary carson | March 11, 2010 12:08 PM
If only there were some way to get their customer list -- I'm guessing that's a pretty desperate bunch, on average.
Alternatively, you could go the PZ Myers route and tell them "Sell me this house at a steep discount or the wafer gets it!" Probably pretty much the same demographic.
Posted by: xebecs | March 11, 2010 12:30 PM
The thing is, he’s not simply supplying statues to meet a demand. He’s marketing the statues to create a demand. If he’d add something like a "For Entertainment Purposes Only" stamp on the kits and web site, I’d gladly throw it in with Ouija boards as harmless fun. But he promotes it as a real service, with things like a Believers Club and testimonials. To me this elevates (lowers?) his actions to active deception. So, I’m afraid I’ll have to bump him to mostly harmless instead.
Posted by: Abby Normal | March 11, 2010 12:37 PM
I found one of these that had worked its way out of the earth a few months after moving in, so yes, people actually do buy and bury these things. The house had been on the market for nearly a year, here in cloyingly Catholic Maryland.
Posted by: Mike Doughney | March 11, 2010 1:13 PM
I don't think Ed is making a big deal about it -- he called a con man a con man, said his statues were fraud. The guy responds by saying -- thanks?
Ed calls him a fraud again.
This has all been highly proportional. It's not going to go away or stop anytime soon, but shedding light on these guys is never a bad thing.
Posted by: debaser | March 11, 2010 1:21 PM
Similar 'bury-the-magic-trinket' behaviors would have got this guy burned at the stake at one time.
Posted by: Jon H | March 11, 2010 3:42 PM
Funny story (I hope):
My wife and I married a couple years ago. She and her family are Catholic (I'm not). Anyway, we had her house on the market for some time, and some of her family was pressuring her to put a statue in the yard. She's not the type to buy into that thing much, but she bought one and put it on a book shelf. Maybe to appeal to other Catholic buyers I guess. We sold the house about 8-9 months later. Of course that silly thing didn't have anything to do with it, but what's funny is should someone think St. Joseph indeed help us, then he's most likely responsible for the fact the buyers were a gay couple.
Posted by: MartyM | March 11, 2010 6:41 PM
MartyM,
On the shelf?! You gotta bury him! The magic doesn't work unless ol' Joe is 100% completely covered by good clean American soil. America is God's land, you know. It doesn't say nothing about god's "shelf."
Posted by: James Hanley | March 11, 2010 7:22 PM
Mike Doughney "I found one of these that had worked its way out of the earth a few months after moving in..."
So, what you're saying is that you witnessed a miracle (and failed to capitalize on it for fun and profit)?
Posted by: Modusoperandi | March 11, 2010 7:30 PM
Well, one could always go for the Archie McPhee version.
http://www.mcphee.com/shop/products/St.-Joseph-Patron-Saint-of-Real-Estate.html
This is the prayer card that comes with it.
"Most holy Saint Joseph, I beseech thee to intercede on my behalf to help me find a worthy buyer for my home, preferably one who will pay full price and waive inspection. Amen."
Posted by: Don Cates | March 11, 2010 9:36 PM
The test would have to be made to exclude any impacts on the motivation of the seller - a blind trial is needed.
Send half the sellers opaque, sealed cylinders containing statues, and the other half opaque, sealed cylinders containing an equal weight bricks of equal distribution. Now they don't know if they have buried a saint statue, or a brick.
Posted by: Suricou Raven | March 12, 2010 7:46 AM
James Hanley:
If I remember correctly, the package said you didn't have to bury it. Even if you do, then questions came up about how. Upside down? Facing the street or the house? Maybe all these things matter, so if we did it wrong or one buries it wrong, then I suppose that might render the effect null and void. Is there a warranty on these things?
Posted by: MartyM | March 12, 2010 9:33 AM
MartyM:
At least your statue was not hidden in a closet. And apparently the two buyers were also out of the closet.
Posted by: DavidK | March 12, 2010 7:15 PM