Ever been to a psychic?

[mamajumps 0]

I have always wondered about the psychics who practice for a living. Ive always tossed around going to one, but have been a bit skeptical (I do believe that Psychics are real, Sylvia Brown is one I do believe). But Im talking more about the ones that you see advertised on TV and in the yellow pages around your town. Have any of you ever been to one, was it accurate and did what they say come true? My mom went to one when I was a baby and im sure most of it came true...

[wmw999 2,147]

My sister-in-law had a friend who used to go to psychics, so we went with her once.

One thing was accurate, but the rest wasn't.

Wendy W.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[BillyVance 34]

Never been to one, but a lot of them are hoaxes that are just in it to take your money. Some have the real ability to see or hear the other side, but not many.

I would bet that a lot of those who have that ability don't even bother practicing it because it's too scary or unnerving. I dunno, I'm just shooting from the hip!

"Mediocre people don't like high achievers, and high achievers don't like mediocre people." - SIX TIME National Champion coach Nick Saban

[shropshire 0]

Nope, never would. I don't believe they are real (otherwise they'd be so rich, they wouldn't need to work)......

Anyway, if they could see me coming, they'd pretend to be out or otherwise engaged.

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[mamajumps 0]

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My sister-in-law had a friend who used to go to psychics, so we went with her once.

One thing was accurate, but the rest wasn't.

Wendy W.

was the one thing that was accurate something that was easy to guess at or figure out?

[Nightingale 0]

The people who work as "psychics" are phenomenal at cold reading and take advantage of the selective memories of human beings. When they say things like "I'm getting something...name...begins with P" and watch your face and get no reaction, they go "no...getting clearer...D" and then you go "Danny?" providing them with a name and something to focus on to lead you through the rest of the reading. By the end of the reading, the "psychic" has figured out what you want to hear and is feeding it to you, and when you leave, you've forgotten all about "P" and everything else she said that was inaccurate and are focusing on "Look towards your work... there will be a promotion soon". And then, you really focus at work because of the suggestion she's just planted, get your promotion, and think "gosh...the psychic was right!"

Cold reading is a technique that can be learned on purpose or accidentally. The people who learn it accidentally start playing with palm reading or cards, and think that they "get better" at it, because their readings get "more accurate" when all they're really doing is getting better at cold reading and vague statements that their subjects can attach to almost anything in their lives. Learning it on purpose is easier, but learning it accidentally is more dangerous, because these people actually believe in their own "powers".

I used to read tarot cards as a party trick in college. Sometimes I'd have people come tell me "OMG you were so right!" and I'd laugh and tell them about cold reading, and that their recent achievement of "Put your personal energy toward what you are struggling for... you will pass the final you are worried about" was nothing more than their own hard work. If you want to know how to do it, there are books on cold reading on Amazon.

If you want to go to a psychic for amusement and to see an interesting parlor trick, go and have fun, but don't deceive yourself into believing it's any more than that.

[shropshire 0]

Ready body language, seems similar.

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[Shotgun 1]

I went to a psychic once for a school research project. I was surprisingly amazed at some of the stuff she told me, but once I got home and had time to think about it, I could see that most of it was pretty general stuff that would be easy for her to guess about. So I don't really believe that she was psychic; I think that she was just really good at reading people. All of the "accurate" things that she brought up were things that were going on in my life at the time. The few things that she mentioned about my future didn't come true.

She said that she saw me doing something with surgery for my future occupation, and I'm pretty sure that will not happen. But I can see that I could have let her put that idea in my head and gone in that direction, because it was certainly along the lines of what I was studying in school (and she knew that because of what I had already told her). And if that had happened, I might have looked back years later and thought, "Wow, this is exactly what that psychic said I would be doing."

[ryoder 1,398]

I went to a psychic once;
I dropped in unannounced just to surprise her, but she knew I was coming.

"There are only three things of value: younger women, faster airplanes, and bigger crocodiles" - Arthur Jones.

[Nightingale 0]

Psychics use a "hook" or a "buy in" to get their subject to participate. They'll say something like "I don't understand how this works anymore than you do. I'm just a tool and the cards speak through me. Sometimes what they're saying can seem fuzzy, so I'll tell you what I see, and together we can work to discover the meaning." At that point, the subject starts nodding, understanding that their participation is required, and they're eager to help, which makes them all the easier to cold read.

[millertime24 8]

"Does your name begin with an A? No. B? No. C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P... OH P my names Peter. Is your name Peter? Wow. You are SOME kind of sorcerer!"

Gotta love that Family Guy.

Muff #5048

[mamajumps 0]

Well what about people like Sylvia Brown http://www.sylvia.org/home/index.cfm I've watched her on Montel several times and really beleive she is legit...

[ryoder 1,398]

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Well what about people like Sylvia Brown http://www.sylvia.org/home/index.cfm I've watched her on Montel several times and really beleive she is legit...

Riiiggghhhttt...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L9hki5Nlyo

"There are only three things of value: younger women, faster airplanes, and bigger crocodiles" - Arthur Jones.

[freethefly 6]

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Well what about people like Sylvia Brown http://www.sylvia.org/home/index.cfm I've watched her on Montel several times and really beleive she is legit...

You only need to do a quick search to see what a scam she is.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&rlz=1I7DKUS&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=sylvia+browne+debunked&spell=1

Do you honestly believe that a person can talk to the dead or see the future? If so... I have a deal for you but first I'll need your credit card number...

"...And once you're gone, you can't come back
When you're out of the blue and into the black."
Neil Young

[Nightingale 0]

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Well what about people like Sylvia Brown http://www.sylvia.org/home/index.cfm I've watched her on Montel several times and really beleive she is legit...

Hoax.

Remember, television is edited. Heavily edited, in the case of talk shows. Sylvia Browne is one of those dangerous people who really believes in her own "powers". She agreed to allow James Randi to test her "abilities" and failed spectacularly.

From James Randi's letter about the situation: "We tested Sylvia Browne in 1989, on live TV, and she failed miserably. On that occasion, she was not allowed to speak to anyone in advance, or to be asked or told anything in advance. The audience was told to only answer "yes" or "no," when asked a DIRECT question, and Sylvia bombed out big-time. She blamed it all on bad vibrations...."

You can see the YouTube video of that failure here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVsNsUBpPrw and read all about it here: http://www.stopsylviabrowne.com/articles/exploringpsychicpowerslive.shtml

There is an excellent article about how to cold read here:
http://www.wikihow.com/Cold-Read

Learn how. Try it on your friends. Once you know the cold reading techniques, it is very, very easy to spot them in someone else.

There is another technique used by "psychics" known as "hot reading". Unlike cold reading, the psychic can't deceive themselves into thinking it's real, because it requires information to be found out beforehand and fed to the psychic. Psychics used to get a name and address for their appointment books, and send an accomplice over posing as a magazine salesman or something to scope out the person, talk to them, take note of cars and pictures on the walls, so the psychic has information to dazzle the person with when they arrive. Now, they mostly use google.

These people are not psychics. They are, in the best cases, deceiving themselves along with you, and in the worst cases, outright scam artists.

[selbbub78 0]

I've thought about going, just for kicks, but never have. Usually i can think of better ways to waste my money. Like on jumps!


CReW Skies,
bubbles

"Women fake orgasms - men fake whole relationships" – Sharon Stone
"The world is my dropzone" (wise crewdog quote)
"The light dims, until full darkness pierces into the world."-KDM

[Nightingale 0]

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Well what about people like Sylvia Brown http://www.sylvia.org/home/index.cfm I've watched her on Montel several times and really beleive she is legit...

Sylvia Browne:

Coast to Coast AM radio show (January 3 2006)
(George) Noory: The election in 2008. Let's jump ahead a couple years.
(Sylvia) Browne: Mmm-hmm.
Noory: Who do you see as the two major candidates?
Browne: Well, strangely enough, I think Kerry and McCain are going to run.

Montel Williams (2003)
Williams: What was all that? Half of you were going to go vote for him, so be quiet. All right, OK. So now, what about, what about, let's talk about people in--in the--in the news. How about Hillary Rodham Clinton? What's going to happen with her?
Browne: She'll never run.

Montel Williams (December 31 2002)
Williams: J. Lo, Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck.
Browne: Yeah, they're going to get married, yeah, but it's not going to last. I mean, they don't have a good track record. You don't have to be psychic to figure this out.
in fact, Lopez and Affleck called off their engagement

Montel Williams (December 27 2006)
Williams: Dang. Is J. Lo gonna have a baby?
Browne: No, no...I think she wants to have one, but there's something wrong there that--I don't know. Either she can't or won't or whatever.
Lopez announced her pregnancy in October 2007 and delivered in February, 2008

Montel Williams (May 24th, 2006)
Woman: I lost my boyfriend tragically, um... a few years ago. (choking back tears) They never found him, and I've had such a hard time since. Every day.
(Sylvia) Browne: The reason why you didn't find him is 'cause he's in water. And, find him in water...
Browne: (to Montel) it's like the girl that's missing in Aruba. (to woman) You can't find somebody...
Woman: (interrupting) Well, it was... September eleventh. There was no... He was a fireman, but... there was no...

Montel Williams (April 29th, 1999)
(Audrey) Sanderford: (Voiceover) On March 25th, 1999, my six-year-old granddaughter, Opal Jennings, was abducted from my front yard and has yet to be found. The past few weeks have been unbearable for me and my family. Even though there is an overwhelming amount of support from our community, police department, the FBI and different forms of media, my Opal is still missing. To this day, I still like to believe she is not (unintelligible). This is too much for my family and me to handle. We want her back. I need to know where Opal is. I can’t stand this. I have made so many pleas to whoever has her, to return our little girl home safely. I need your help, Sylvia. Where is Opal? Where is she?
Browne: She’s… not… dead. But what bothers me – now I’ve never heard of this before, but for some reason, she was taken and put into some kind of a slavery thing and taken into Japan. The place is Kukouro. Or Kukoura. I don’t know anything about it, but…
According to Opal's family after her body was found, “It was determined that Opal was killed by trauma to the head with(in) several hours of her abduction.” She was found 13 miles from where she was taken, in Texas.

Montel Williams (February 26 2003)
Regarding Sean Hornbeck:
Pam Akers: Is he still with us?
Browne: [shaking her head] No.
Sean Hornbeck was found several years later, quite alive. Sylvia Browne charged his parents $700 per hour.
________________________________________________

Edited to add: These are the statements that people don't remember. They remember when she says things that happen later on, but the human memory is selective, and tends to dismiss what's inaccurate due to a lack of association. If she says "George Bush will win the election!" (Montel), everyone forgets that a few months earlier, she was saying the democrats were going to win! The mind thinks back and draws an association with what was said and what happened, not what was said and what didn't happen.

[BillyVance 34]

What was that guy's name who had his own show on TV, I think maybe on the Sci Fi channel - John Edwards or something? Was he for real? He had some compelling encounters but it's hard to tell from TV anyway.

"Mediocre people don't like high achievers, and high achievers don't like mediocre people." - SIX TIME National Champion coach Nick Saban

[MagicGuy 0]

Nightingale is right on about cold reading. There are a lot of magicians, well actually, a sub-division type of magicians who refer to themselves as "Mentalists", who use cold reading. Mentalists do all types of tricks that involve reading people's minds, making predictions etc. They just use cold reading in a different way - as entertainment.

Sylvia Browne is the biggest bullshitter I've ever seen. Not to mention that she has no personality whatsoever. I've been to the StopSylviaBrowne.com website many times. The amount of evidence that goes against her is amazing.

I do, however, believe that there are a small percentage of people out there who do have some type of psychic abilities. There's this lady, Lisa Williams, who has a TV show where she talks to the dead. Of course, with tv editing and whatnot, I'm sure they make her out to be a lot better than she is. But what she does goes beyond simple cold reading. It's a pretty interesting show, to say the least.

[Nightingale 0]

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What was that guy's name who had his own show on TV, I think maybe on the Sci Fi channel - John Edwards or something? Was he for real? He had some compelling encounters but it's hard to tell from TV anyway.

John Edwards. Another damn good cold reader, and the show was heavily edited only to show the "hits" rather than the misses. They tape for EIGHT hours, and only made a thirty minute show. Prior to the show, the audience was seated for several hours (microphones already hooked up!), and of course, everyone was chatting about what dead person they wanted to talk to... and guess who was probably listening...

Below is a letter sent to the Randi Foundation from an audience member on John Edwards' Show:

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I was on the John Edward show. He even had a multiple guess "hit" on me that was featured on the show. However, it was edited so that my answer to another question was edited in after one of his questions. In other words, his question and my answer were deliberately mismatched. Only a fraction of what went on in the studio was actually seen in the final 30 minute show. He was wrong about a lot and was very aggressive when somebody failed to acknowledge something he said.

Also, his "production assistants" were always around while we waited to get into the studio. They told us to keep very quiet, and they overheard a lot. I think that the whole place is bugged somehow. Also, once in the studio we had to wait around for almost two hours before the show began. Throughout that time everybody was talking about what dead relative of theirs might pop up.

Remember that all this occurred under microphones and with cameras already set up. My guess is that he was backstage listening and looking at us all and noting certain readings. When he finally appeared, he looked at the audience as if he were trying to spot people he recognized.

He also had ringers in the audience. I can tell because about fifteen people arrived in a chartered van, and once inside they did not sit together.

[Nightingale 0]

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There's this lady, Lisa Williams, who has a TV show where she talks to the dead. Of course, with tv editing and whatnot, I'm sure they make her out to be a lot better than she is. But what she does goes beyond simple cold reading. It's a pretty interesting show, to say the least.

If what she's doing goes beyond cold reading, she's probably hot reading. Most of those shows have a list of their audience members. You can't just buy a ticket like you can to a movie theater. You have to give your name in advance. All it would take for most of those people is some creative googling around the local obituary pages for "Edna Ross is survived by her son Mark and granddaughter Janet" so she has a history of Edna's life as a horse rancher and how her quilts won at the state fair, and now, all she has to do is say "I'm getting an E name.... Edie... Edna... She wants to speak to a Matt... no, it's Mark. Definitely Mark." And then she talks about how much Edna loved horses and is happily quilting away in heaven while she looks down on her lovely granddaughter Janet.

[MagicGuy 0]

Reminds me of that scumbag Peter Popoff. He was the so-called "healer of God" who would hold seminars where he would touch the person that was suffering from a disease and they would collapse, supposedly healed of all of their illnesses in that instant.

There was a show that completely debunked all of his antics. He would have everyone fill out 'prayer cards' prior to the show, which included but was not limited to the disease they had, what areas hurt etc. He had a little transmitter in his ear and I believe his wife would transmit the information to him. Everything else was a lot of hype and acting, and people that wanted so badly to believe that they were being healed so they would collapse to the ground, as they had seen done by previously healed people.

The really fucked up part about Peter Popoff is the fact that he was claiming to heal people of their life threatening illnesses. Some of those people then refused to get any further medical treatment, thus letting their disease progress even further.

The things that some people will do for a dollar is really frightening.

[MagicGuy 0]

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If what she's doing goes beyond cold reading, she's probably hot reading. Most of those shows have a list of their audience members. You can't just buy a ticket like you can to a movie theater. You have to give your name in advance. All it would take for most of those people is some creative googling around the local obituary pages for "Edna Ross is survived by her son Mark and granddaughter Janet" so she has a history of Edna's life as a horse rancher and how her quilts won at the state fair, and now, all she has to do is say "I'm getting an E name.... Edie... Edna... She wants to speak to a Matt... no, it's Mark. Definitely Mark." And then she talks about how much Edna loved horses and is happily quilting away in heaven while she looks down on her lovely granddaughter Janet.

Very interesting. I'm not familiar at all with hot reading, but your post makes complete sense. Being a magician, as much as I'm a skeptic with anything like that, I have that other side of me that wants so badly to believe that there is some supernatural stuff out there. I guess some people are just better actors than others.

Have you seen any episodes of the show "America's Psychic Challenge"?

[ryoder 1,398]

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John Edwards. Another damn good cold reader, and the show was heavily edited only to show the "hits" rather than the misses. They tape for EIGHT hours, and only made a thirty minute show. Prior to the show, the audience was seated for several hours (microphones already hooked up!), and of course, everyone was chatting about what dead person they wanted to talk to... and guess who was probably listening...

Somewhere a year or two ago, I saw a video of an edited version of his show, followed by the unedited version. It was unbelievable. I can't fathom how such a hopeless fraud can even face people after a fiasco like that.

"There are only three things of value: younger women, faster airplanes, and bigger crocodiles" - Arthur Jones.

[Nightingale 0]

Sylvia Browne once told a woman that she had a "surgical instrument" inside her from a surgery the woman had told her about, and that she should go get an MRI to prove it was there!!! An MRI giant magnet mixed with a left behind surgical instrument?! WTF.