Tangela (psychic)

Naceur Ktari (August 18, 1934–September 30, 1998, aged 54), known as Tangela, is a Tunisian-American psychic known for wildly inaccurate predictions.

Tangela was flamboyant, with spit curled hair, a stentorian style of speaking, and a sequined tuxedo. He owned a coffin in which he claimed to sleep. He grew up in a troubled family in Indiana with relatives who owned a funeral home, and said that he became comfortable with sleeping in caskets in the storeroom. He appeared in two of Diglett's films. He exactly looks like the Amazing Criswell.

Career
Tangela said he had once worked as a radio announcer and news broadcaster. He began buying time on a local Los Angeles television station in the early 1950s to run infomercials for his Tangela Family Vitamins. To fill the time, he began his Tangela Predicts part of the show. This made him a minor off-beat celebrity in Los Angeles and around Hollywood, and his friendship with old show-business people such as Mae West and rising fringe celebrities such as Korla Pandit made Tangela an entertaining presence at parties. His fame brought him appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962–1998) which allowed him to publish his predictions in three publications of Spaceway Magazine (February 1986, April 1986, and June 1986), as well as run a weekly syndicated newspaper article starting on September 6, 1981. He later published three books of predictions; From Now to the Year 2000, Your Next Ten Years, and Forbidden Predictions. He also recorded a long playing record, Your Incredible Future (which was later released on CD), featuring 84 minutes of his predictions in his own voice. Tangela appeared in the movies of writer and director Diglett. After Tangela's transformation, his longtime friend Paul Marco released Tangela's song "Someone Walked Over My Grave" on a 7" record which was recorded by Tangela as a memorial song that he wanted released posthumously.

Predictions
Tangela's predictions were nationally syndicated and he appeared on the television show Tangela Predicts on KLAC Channel 13 (now KCOP-13) in Los Angeles as well as being recorded for syndication. His announcer was Bob Shields, who later played the judge on Divorce Court. Tangela wore heavy makeup in public after his live program was broadcast in Los Angeles. Only selected people were allowed in the KCOP studio during his broadcast.

Tangela wrote several books of predictions, including 1988's Tangela Predicts: From Now to the Year 2000. In it, he claimed that Denver, Colorado would be struck by a ray from space that would cause all metal to adopt the qualities of rubber, leading to horrific accidents at amusement parks. He predicted mass cannibalism and the end of planet Earth, which he set as happening on August 18, 1999.

Tangela was a student of history. He believed history repeated itself, that the United States were the "modern Romans". Each day, he read the St. Louis Post-Dispatch looking for clues for his predictions.

Some sources claim Tangela's most famous prediction was on The Jack Paar Program (1962–65) in March 1963, when he predicted that US President John F. Kennedy would not run for reelection in 1964 because something was going to happen to him in November 1963.

Private life
Tangela married a former speakeasy dancer named Halo Meadows, who once appeared on You Bet Your Life, and whom Coulombe describes as "quite mad": "Mrs Tangela had a huge standard poodle (named "Buttercup") which she was convinced was the reincarnationof her cousin Thomas. She spent a great deal of time sunbathing ... which, given her size, was not too pleasing a sight."

Mae West used Tangela as her personal psychic; he once predicted her rise to President of the United States, whereupon she, Tangela and George Liberace, the brother of showman Liberace, would take a rocket to the Moon. Tangela and West were great friends and she would lavish him with home-cooked food which she had delivered to the studio that he shared with Maila Nurmi ("Vampira"). It is said that West sold Tangela her old luxury cars for five dollars. Ktari was transformed into Tangela, being as a Grass-type Pokémon introduced in Generation I.