Are you Happy with Hanussen? I’m not.

Greetings followers. It is I, Hanussen the 3^rd! Formerly the Parallel Viewmaster. I was previously hiding under an assumed name, but it is time for The Truth. A lot of it! Specifically The Truth about a weird film I own a copy of.

Yep, I’m back and warning you: This isn’t my usual kind of article. If you’re looking for weird photos and misunderstandings of basic science, click on something else. Or wait for my next post, when I get bored of this topic and pretending to be a prophet. Instead of posting my photos, I’m going to be delving into the most obscure film I’ve ever seen. Watch it first; it’s only a half-hour long(even if it feels longer). I uploaded it to YouTube because I really don’t feel like describing it scene by scene. Fair warning: if you watch that film, there is a non-zero chance you might be inducted into a cult. I’ve already claimed the name Hanussen, but there are a number of other openings for anyone looking to meet new people.

Background first: During my away time, this sacred time of meditation and self-reflection, I came across an obscure school of knowledge(Twitch streams). There, a wise sage(Stuart Ashen) extolled his knowledge of ancient and arcane texts(VHS covers), and this one stood out.

It stood out because it was hidden(is that a Zen Koan? I think a prophet should know if it is). Neither Ashens nor the chat could find anything out about it, and neither could I. And up until I uploaded this, the film did not exist on the internet anywhere(and now I’m getting confused with verb tenses. What is the tense for in my future but your past? A prophet should know these things). No IDMB listing, no reviews, no clips, only one eBay listing and a few scans of the cover.

And that one eBay listing? I bought it.

I might just have the only copy of Happy with Hanussen still in existence.

So what is it?

…crap. I dunno, and I watched it. You probably watched it by now; what do you think? Biography, new age self-help, shameless self-promotion? All of them? I’m going to say the latter. I’m also going to add merchandising and product placement to that list. And, if you’ve watched it, you know that it fails at all of them.
But that’s obvious. I want specifics. I have no date, no location, and no idea who ‘Hanussen’ is or if he’s even real. There’s no information on the cover other than that the copyright is held by ‘EVD’ (or in the tape’s end credits ‘EVD Wein’)…

…who (spoiler)I have still not found more information about. I doubt they exist anymore, and they were probably just a way of hiding from legal troubles at the time.

Taking the cover out of the box to scan, I found that it actually has more text printed behind it… but nothing useful.

Looking at the cassette itself, I found some very important information: the tape spools are massive, much bigger than normal spools, and take up much more space than the magnetic tape the actual film is on. That doesn’t help with tracking it down, though. It just reiterates how short the video is. Here’s a comparison to a regular blank VHS.

As for the label… nothing, again.

So what do I know? Lets start with something basic. My copy of the film is in NTSC. I know that because it runs on my VHS player without looking like it would trigger epilepsy. It is in English. These are the two major facts that I can prove. That points to one thing. It was probably made for an American audience. America, Canada, and a few parts of the Caribbean are the English speaking regions that use NTSC over PAL. The Caribbean ones are probably too small, and we can eliminate Canada because… well, it’s Canada. No one cares about making things for Canada. So lets start with that fact. It’s American. Except…

It’s not originally English. The lips don’t sync up; it appears to be dubbed. I’m guessing German. There is no way I know how to lip-read German, or speak it, or even recognize it unless I specifically hear ‘Ich Sprachen Deutch’ yelled at me repeatedly, but I do vaguely remember a few words from high school. At one point, the lips do sync up perfectly, such as when the words ‘Father’ and ‘Mother’ are spoken:

Or perhaps I should say… ‘Vater’ und ‘Mutter’.

So maybe German. Except…

I don’t think it was made in Germany. There are no actors listed(for which I’m sure they are grateful), but from the very sparse credits, the names don’t seem Germanic. I was able to find the director Pál Erdöss (1947-2007) and the producer András Ozorai(1945- ). They both were based in Budapest and actually worked together again, on a film called Indián nyár(no, I didn’t forget a capital letter). Like I said, IDMB doesn’t list them for this film, for the simple reason that it doesn’t list the film.

To be fair, if I directed it, I would want to erase that fact too. Erdöss won awards. He could not have cared less about this. I’m guessing it was a good paycheck for two days of work. The film was produced by Neuropa Films, which is based in…oh. Hungary. What a shock.

So Hungarian? Except…

The biggest name is missing. Who is this Hanussen? The VHS seems to act as though he were a household name, and I’ve never heard of him. Neither has the internet. Anytime I search for Hanussen, it leads to Erik Jan Hanussen, who died in 1933. For certain reasons, I suspect that this might be a different individual than the subject in the VHS tape, mainly that I doubt a man who died in 1933 is on a colour VHS tape. This Erik Hanussen was a clairvoyant who apparently worked for Hitler.

I’m not going to get too much into him, because I don’t care. I’m also not going to mock him- sure, he’s a scam artist, but as a Jewish man trying to survive during the rise of the Third Reich, I’m going to cut him some slack.

However, there is mention in Wikipedia that he had an illegitimate son, Gerhard Belgardt, who was raised in the orphanage and apparently later went by the name Hanussen II.

The source?

Ummm….

… moving on. But now German dubbed into English seems more likely. And there is finally a lead. Back to Hanussen II, or as I’m going to call him, Hanussen. Why not? He pretty much gave up the II in most of the material I found, and just took his ‘father’s’ name.

The first piece of extra information that I found is a book by a Hanussen printed in 1997, called My New Predictions. Now, I want to be clear. Although I say ‘by Hanussen’, he did not write them. The books are written in third person, and in fact in the forward of the first book his identity is kept secret for a few pages. His name is on the cover, though, and there is no other author listed anywhere, so just to make this post a bit more coherent, I might just write that the books are ‘by’ him.

This book also has a medallion on the cover, identical to the one in the VHS. This would end up being my first clue. Hanussen was real(or as real as a psychic can get)- I’d already assumed he was, but honestly had no other proof than the mystery VHS. I did find an old listing for it that gives the copyright holder.

EVD again. One more bit of information: based in Vienna… so Austria. It probably is German they’re speaking, but from Austria, not Germany. Wien, as seen in the credits, is German for Vienna. They just forgot any punctuation to separate copyright holder’s name and place. They also forgot that this tape is supposed to be in English, and in English we call it Vienna. It would explain why I’ve found multiple German editions of his books; they were probably first. It might also explain why there’s a graphic childbirth scene in the film- differing cultural norms.

I should also mention that several of his books are in French, so I’d assume he had a following there too.

And no, There’s no ISBN or author on any of these I could find either. He wrote other books with the same cover image(although it looks like the bindings could be collected together to spell HANUSSEN), One exception: the copyright for some books isn’t EVD, but MIT(probably not the American college).

Why did it change? No idea, but I’m hoping it was because of legal troubles and lawsuits.

After this, I found some full-page ads in the most reputable of sources, the Weekly World News. This is the tabloid magazine that broke major world stories such as Bat-Boy finally capturing Saddam Hussein. Notably, the Hanussen advertisement requests you send money to Hanussen International Office, in Las Vegas. Which is in Nevada. Which is in America. Told you. It’s never Canada.

For context, that ad is given place of pride right before this article:

So, finally. Here’s the origin. English dubbed over German, from a Hungarian studio, with the copyright holder based in Austria, and intended for an American audience but eventually bought on eBay by a Canadian wanna-be photographer. I’m going to stick with that, because I’m running out of countries I can name. Except…

Okay, I’m lying. No more excepts. That’s it.

In fact, when looking into this after determining it was dubbed from German, I saw a German VHS with the same cover image for sale on Ebay. The title was Glucklich Sein Mit Hanussen.

Or translated via Google Translate, ‘Be Happy with Hanussen’.

Wait. Remember the credits?

I thought ‘Be Happy with Hanussen’ was just a parting expression at the end of the tape, a cult version of ‘farewell’. Is it the actual title? Did the creators care so little that they put the wrong title on the VHS cover and label? I’m going to say yes.

The German eBay listing shows that the VHS comes with a book. Maybe it could explain the borderline-incomprehensible video.

…or not.

So, that covers the tape. How about Hanussen himself? Another Weekly World News advertisement (next to this groundbreaking piece of news)…

…has a brief biography…

… but his 1975 book ‘How to Light up Your Life’ seems to have the most detailed biographical sketch of him, filling 70 tedious self-congratulatory pages of the 300 or so in the book. It says that he was born in 1926 and placed in an orphanage ‘soon after he was born’. Now, note that the advertisement in above says he was placed in an orphanage in 1938. Wikipedia says he was born in 1922, with absolutely no sources. So, we have three alternate origins for him, two which are clearly wrong and a third which is almost certainly also wrong.

I’m not saying he wasn’t in an orphanage. I strongly doubt it, but I can’t disprove it. I’m saying that I have absolutely no information that would verify that. I am saying that he probably stole an unrelated man’s name. Took his name and claimed to get his psychic powers from him. It’s like he’s metaphorically wearing a stranger’s skin as a suit and saying he’s entitled to do it because the stranger was his secret father. Look. Maybe it’s the ‘cultural norms’ thing again, and I’m sorry if I’m being culturally insensitive, but here in Canada most sons wouldn’t attend an erotic comedy play about their murdered father’s death.

I should also point out that his book never gives his mother’s name and says she gave him away ‘shortly birth ‘soon after he was born’, but also quotes her recollection of his birth.

His mother knew this because she states that the sun reaches it’s highest point in the sky when he was born, Which was… at 5:13 AM. The time and this quote are on the same page, editors! One paragraph earlier! Or does she mean for the solstice, because the birthdate is July 21st, a month after it. No, it’s not a bad translation, it’s in the French version too! Maybe she was just delirious at the time. Or fictional.

I’m guessing the latter; the same biography also gives him a stepsister who happens to be at the same orphanage as him who just disappears a half-page later with no explanation. It claims he never knew his birth name, and was just given a number, and doesn’t explain where he eventually learned of it… except that Weekly World News advertisement shown above states that he kept his ‘real’ name secret for 40 years, which in turn conflicts with the VHS tape which has several people at the orphanage referring to him directly as ‘Hanussen’. The name Gerhard Belgardt(from Wikipedia) never appears once in any of these. Also, several of the past predictions shown in the VHS tape are reprinted in the book in a bit more detail. Specifically, the crashed sled, the lost daughter in Rome, and the ‘finding true love’. All of them occur differently in the book than on the VHS.

Repeatedly, the VHS tape contradicts the book, which contradicts the advertisements, which contradicts the two sentence long unsourced Wikipedia mention, which goes all the way back to contradicting the VHS tape again.

I could go on, but why? I’m not going to spend the effort in separating fact from fiction, because it’s all fiction. Mystical abandoned boy whose inner strength protects him from scorn and abuse until he comes into his powers? Harry Potter did it better. Harry at least has a cool scar. I can’t believe I’m saying it, but I trust the ‘citation needed’ Wikipedia the most. At least with that, there’s a chance that the random contributor might not have an agenda. I feel dumber for having tried to sort it out.

I could keep on this topic and get into the prophecies more, especially because they end with flying cars, but I won’t. I’m trying to keep this on track, so I’m also not going to gripe about of how the predictions promised on the cover of the VHS tape end up being completely unverifiable, mostly relate to unnamed people who cannot be tracked down, and all occurred in the past anyway so by the time the VHS was made were useless even for anyone who believes Hanussen. I won’t dwell on how there’s even more dead and injured children in the book, which I hope doesn’t signify anything about his personality(and also a dead circus dwarf. Just putting that out there).

Instead, lets look at another advertisement.

No, not this one… although yeah, sure, lets look at this one first. It has mention of two more books that do not seem to exist online. It mentions a free send away for a ‘Great book of Truth’ and ‘Positive Life Power through Magnetism’ I really want to find a copy of his ‘Book of Truth’, which seemingly falls into the ‘shameless self-promotion’ category. Specifically, I want to know more about A. Oberlander, and exactly how scared I should be of her.

Ignoring my dream girl for now, this advertisement brings the total number of publications I can attribute to ‘Hanussen inc.’ to at least eleven. ‘How to Light up Your Life’ was the first, but the version on archive.org is a later printing(no dates on it, so no idea when) that mentions it’s one of eight books. My New Predictions, as mentioned above, was released in 1997, and is not in the list. There are these two send-away publications… books, pamphlets? There are probably more books and mail-order forms published in the period between the Light up Your Life reprint and New Predictions, but so far, I haven’t found them.

But I’m getting sidetracked again, and want to get back to the VHS tape. This isn’t the advertisement I’m interested in. The advertisement I’m interested in relates directly to the VHS tape and that necklace that keeps appearing. If you remember the VHS, the climax of Hanussen’s predictions involve a missing child. Maybe you forgot it. Maybe you were laughing too hard. Maybe you closed the YouTube page by then and deleted the bookmark, but it’s that scene where ‘Little Bob’ is lost in the woods and is reunited with his mother. Hanussen II heroically flies into… um…. a place…. and help find a missing child by first telling reporters not to worry and then sitting on his ass in a field until the kid finds his way back on his own.

I’m going to focus on one very specific detail in that scene. Little Bob has Hanussen’s medallion, and drops it when he’s picked up by… his mother, maybe? Why does he have Hanussen’s medallion? Did Hanussen abduct him and let him escape?

No, the truth is much worse.

The Pendant is called a Dracomagnet.

And it’s for sale by mail-order.

God, Hanussen. You complete fraud.

So the kid has a magic Hanussen medallion, calls Hanussen directly using its Hanussen magics when he’s in danger, immediately gets rescued, drops it, than a random lady steals it? Okay. Maybe it used up its Hanussen powers by then.

Lets watch ‘little Bob’ again. I’m starting this clip at 24:00. Unless you you want bonus bad dubbing, then go to the other video and start at 23:15. Go!

… get it now? That isn’t an obscure hymn being sung, it’s a marketing jingle. He’s trying to sell shitty pendants. They don’t even have the name right. Is it ‘Draco’ or ‘DracoMagnet’? I’m going to make up my own name for them and call them ‘lead poisoning’.

By the way, the golden hypnotist pendants that appear throughout the VHS tape? Does anyone want to guess what was being sold via mail order in 1996?

Got it in one. And wait a second. What did I say earlier? Something about the bindings of his books spelling ‘HANUSSEN’ when put in order?

And what colour are those books?

And what does the spine on his real book look like?

I lied. See, I am a real Hanussen! I did buy a book. the very cheapest one possible, in French. It’s a translation of the first book; the parts of the text I compared are the same, but the photos are in different positions. And look at that nice ‘H’ on the spine. Does it look familiar?

Yep. The VHS contains one final, very subtle, piece of product placement, where Hanussen’s books are given a prominent place of pride in a library, and are directly quoted from. In fact, the book taken off the shelf would be the eighth book, ‘The Truth About the Future’, or a German version at least. I haven’t been able to find a copy or scan of this one, at any price, so I don’t know when it was published. The last book I know of, the aforementioned 1997 ‘My New Predictions’, isn’t in the library, and with a con artist like this one, he definitely would have put it there if it had been published at the time. Or if it was even close to being published in the near future. Or even in the early drafts. Or a concept that only existed in the ghostwriter’s mind. And if that’s the case, maybe I was wrong earlier; maybe there were only nine books(excluding the free giveaways). After all, if you need to emphasize only one book in your blatant attempt at product placement, It should be the most recent one. More people would have bought the earlier ones.

…And that probably narrows down the last question I have.The Dracomagnet tabloid advertisement dates from 1994, the pendant from 1996, the film references the Berlin Wall falling, but he’s not shilling the 1997 book. so I’m going to say the VHS was from the mid-90s. I don’t know more, and I can’t be bothered to find out. As some of the advertisement mention sending away for a free catalogue, I’m also assuming that the VHS cassette was mail-order too; there are no prices, barcodes, or anything suggesting that it is intended for retail. No one normal would buy it anyways. They’d have to be hooked on this scam artist first. Maybe through that 1900 phone number?

So, what did Hanussen’s future hold?

…Fuck it. I’m already calling myself Hanussen III; I’ll tell his future with my precognition postcognition. I probably have as much right to the name as the second one does. In fact, I think the first one faked his name too. It’s a family tradition!

Hanussen II, you’re probably dead, but if not, The Truth About Your Future is that it holds…

Absolutely nothing. By 1997, your ads had disappeared, and a couple years later so did you. That New Predictions book from 1997 is the last thing I found. You seemed to have been popular in Europe, but even looking online for information from there I can’t find anything. You probably got away with it and died rich. But…

Your lasting legacy to the world is some advertisements in what is objectively the stupidest tabloid, a dozen forgotten books and catologues that have been been out of print for a quarter century, a VHS tape no one has heard of, a cassette tape just as obscure…

…and two sentences in your purported father’s Wikipedia entry.

Oh yeah, and this article. So congratulations. I might just be the greatest living authority on Hanussen II, and I only cared because it might affect the resale value of this tape.

Hanussen the Third out.