First off, let me say that I don’t want this to be, or become, an arguement about whether or not psychic abilities exist.
Personally, I do believe that some people have psychic abilities, or they’re just more “in tune” with things, if you will. I’ve had some experiences in my life that I would characterize as “psychic”.
I was watching a show this weekend, I think it was on MSNBC, about John Edward & the whole psychic medium thing. They presented views of believers and of sceptics. For a while, I watched “Crossing Over” every night (when it first came on). For those of you who don’t know, John Edward claims to be “in touch” with the spirit world, and he has an audience of people that he gives supposedly random readings to- messages from their loved ones who have passed on.
It fascinated me for a while because sometimes he was right on the money, he’d know something very specific about someone that only the deceased knew, and once he got an unusual name. I agree that the whole, “I’m getting a name that starts with Jo- is it John, or Joanne or Joan?” spiel is kinda suspect.
So here’s my question- have you ever been to a psychic or on Crossing Over & what did you think? Did the experience make you a believer or did it make you sceptical because it didn’t turn out like you thought?
On one hand, sometimes he is incredibly accurate. So was one of the mediums that was on the MSNBC show. But then, they don’t show the times that he had total misses. And one of the sceptics said, “I’d hope that my loved ones would be able to speak to me plainly and not use a game of charades.”
(John Edward says the dead speak to him symbolically- like he’ll “see” red roses and that symbolizes romantic love or something)
So do you believe in psychics/mediums, and what’s your experience been?
I’ve watched Crossing Over a few times and I find it very entertaining. I’m not sure I’d go so far as to say I believe in that stuff, but I do admit that it does fascinate me. I am extremely suspicious of the show at times, especially when he contacts relatives or friends of someone on the staff. Still, there are times when he says things that make me go “hmmmmmmm.”
I’ve never had any contact, that I know of, with anyone who has passed away. My mother claims her father, who’d been dead for a decade, visited her in the hospital after the birth of my sister. She said he stood at the foot of her bed with an armful of flowers and she says she felt an overwhelming sense of peace. He didn’t say anything to her and just looked at her and my sister. I don’t know if it was wishful thinking, some drug induced hallucination, or if he really did visit her.
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I’m extremely suspect of any person who claims to be in touch with the spritual realm, especially with the whole “Jo, John? Joan? Joanne?” spiel.
I was watching it once, and there were these two women holding hands, and it was obvious they were either sisters or very close. So what does the psychic say? “I’m sensing from a grandmother that you two are very close.” You needed someone’s dead grandmother to sense that? -
If he is genuine, why doesn’t he take Randi’s 1 Million? Even if he didn’t want to “compromise his professional integrity”, he could donate that money to charity. Or he could set up his own charity. Or he could use the money for further research in psychic readings, etc. I know if I had the ability he claims to have, I would have done that a long time ago.
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The fact that it’s on the Science Fiction Channel does not inspire a great deal of trust in me. Maybe, maybe if he was on something like the Discovery channel, I’d be a little less skeptical on the matter. But the Science Fiction channel?
The Masked Magician revealed how magicians make large objects disappear. Things like the Statue of Liberty etc. And he said that the audience is ALWAYS in on it. But if you watch those shows they always claim that they aren’t. So they blatantly lie to our face. So why not this guy? Maybe the whole audience is in on it? Anybody here sat in on it?
And if not, was it the Amazing Randi who used to be a psychic himself until one of his skeptical friends challenged him to tell peoples fortunes but to tell them the exact opposite of what he was supposed to say and they still believed him?
Definately he’s good. He has got his own show.
It’s a con, and not even a clever one at that. Any of us could do the same thing with just a little practice. The James Randi Educational Foundation can tell you more. Many of the articles in the commentary archive mention Edward and his show. This commentary in particular gives some details on Edward’s taping process.
The Masked Magician is wrong. A good magician doesn’t need to have the audience in on it, and it would be rather pointless, since most magicians make their money from live shows. Not to mention impossible to keep secret.
Making a large object disappear is simply a matter of putting the audience on a turntable, restricting their view (e.g., using bright lights so they can’t see the stars) and turning it so slowly that no one realizes they’re moving.
Edwards’ techniques have been used by phoney psychics for decades. Plut the people in the audence want to believe (a true skeptic would be shouted down – and, of course, his comments would be edited out).
I have not heard this before about James Randi, and I have read quite a lot about him. He did used to make money as a mentalist - that is, a person who does the exact same type of cold readings, for entertainment purposes only, that John Edward does - but Randi was very up-front about the fact that he had zero “psychic abilities” and was simply reading the clues that people gave him. I am certain he has never billed himself as a legitimate psychic (now that’s an oxymoron).
If John Edward or any of these other supposed “communicate with the dead” people had one iota of true ability, why is it that NOT ONE of them can ever provide a simple, straightforward, verifiable, plain-English statement like “Hello, Audience Member, your grandmother Mrs. Rosalyn Jones would like me to tell you that the combination to the safe in her basement is 96-33-44, and you will find the life insurance policy in there. And she says she loves you and your brother Ralph and she misses her cat Mopsie very much”?
John Edward is a drag. A well known drag. We turn the sound down and say rude things to him.
Is that so, Sunny Jim?
Hehe…I knew you would get it. 
I use that line for anyone I don’t like on TV. I just have to muster up my best George Harrison and it usually describes how I feel…
My reality has been chucked!
As for that other thing I said, if it wasn’t Randi then it was another famous debunker. I read it in S.I., no, the other one.
I just watched Crossing Over last night and my SO and I were discussing it. I don’t really believe in physics but he seemed to have a lot of “hits” and knew things that he shouldn’t know. After reading the various articles linked in this thread though, I’m not so sure it wasn’t just the editing that made him look like he knew what he was doing. I’m a skeptic when it comes to stuff like this so in order for me to believe it 100% John Edwards would have to actually do a reading on me and prove it to me.
[aside] I called a physicic hotline once and they told me I was going to have a career change in the near future and that I was going to have a baby soon. I just laughed at the time but about a month after I made the phone call I quit my job and went back to school and my daughter was born the following August. Maybe it was just a coincidence… I don’t know. [/aside]
You’re thinking of Ray Hyman who is now with CSICOP. He read palms as part of his magic act IIRC, but he came to believe in palmistry. A trusted friend made the suggestion you mention.
If I had a talk show where I communicated with the dead, I’d at least have exclusive interviews with Elvis, John Lennon, Princess Di, John F. Kennedy…maybe even a Hitler vs. Stalin grudge rematch during sweeps. I wouldn’t be wasting my time talking to someone’s Uncle Mortie about “the old fishin’ hole” in Colorado.
He’s a fraud…
Good point, jaimest. One more piece of evidence that these “psychics” are fakes - what, JFK doesn’t have anything to say to anyone? Nicole Simpson doesn’t want to tell the world just exactly who killed her? Right, only dear old Aunt Emily has any desire to “be acknowledged,” as John Fraudward, I mean Edward, likes to phrase it.
Although I don’t believe that any dead people “talk” to anyone still among the living, I have a lot more and tolerance at least for people who feel they have had a loved one somehow speak or send a message to them directly rather than through someone like JE. How could anyone believe that his departed wife of 50 years can’t talk to him directly, but would rather enjoy a gab fest with a complete stranger, the so-called psychic? Frankly, if I had been devastated over, for example, my husband’s death, and after years of mourning and wishing he were still alive, he decided to return from the dead and talk not to me but rather to some guy on a TV show, I would be highly offended, not to mention extremely suspicious.
On a personal note, John Edwards disgusts me. Since I don’t believe his act for a minute, I’m left thinking that he’s playing on the emotions of the audience. That is unless, as has been pointed out, they’re in on it also.
I’ve heard about John Edward’s show on Sci-Fi, but haven’t seen it. He was a fairly popular guest on the local morning radio shows where, so I am familiar with his act. The guy’s a crock and the only way I can see anyone believing in his “powers”, is if they desperately miss their dead relatives. The fact that he plays on this emotion and uses it for entertainment and profit makes me sick. Either that or he’s self-deluded enough to actually believe what he’s saying, in which case I feel sorry for the dude.
The first time I heard him on morning drive radio, he wasn’t doing so well with the callers. He was getting alot of the “I have no idea what you’re talking about” responses to his insights. Totally unflustered, he would give one of his two canned response, which was something along the lines of, “No you’re wrong. I’m sure this is coming through… Do me a favor and right down everything I’ve told you, and ponder it until it applies to you.” His other response was something like, “Well, I’m sure this is coming through, maybe it’s meant for the next caller” Yeah, sure buddy. Milk it. -_-
I have never been to a psychic, and I do not believe in them.
The reason I don’t believe is because I was one. Well, more accurately, I pretended to be one for a while.
It started innocently enough, I had watched John Edwards and Sylvia Brown enough times to pick up the technique they use, and had always thought I could probably do it too, if I wanted to.
One day I was chatting on AIM with a friend, and she wanted to play a trick on a friend of hers, so she asked me for suggestions. After some discussion, we thought it would be funny if we set up an ‘Ask The Psychic’ chatroom on AOL, I could pretend to be a psychic and she could be my shill. She would IM me all the answers to his questions, and tell me things about him. I put ‘amateur psychic’ in my AOL profile and created the room, and she invited him to the chat to ‘see this amazing psychic.’
It was great…since she is my friend, I knew all the answers to her questions anyway, and was able to throw out lines like: ‘Who here is a Chris? Do you have a sister? Does her name start with an ‘A’?’, and making a total believer out of her friend. Since it wasn’t a private chat, other people started coming in. This wasn’t something we had thought of before, but I figured what the hell, I’ll ‘read’ them too using the same technique as Brown and Edwards. I do have to say I was amazingly accurate. My friend asked me if maybe I really was psychic, she was so impressed.
The reason they all believed me was that they wanted to believe. They came into a room specifically to ‘ask the psychic.’ Most people wanted advice, and by asking the right questions, I was able to tell them what they wanted to hear. One girl said she was torn between two men and didn’t know which one to choose. I told her one was fair skinned and one was darker. That’s something that could apply to almost any two random people, but to her, it was me getting a ‘vision’ of them, and cementing her faith in my ‘powers’. I also said that I could tell she knew one of them longer than the other, and yes, it was true. Once again, I was right about something that could really apply to anyone, especially someone torn between two lovers. I then said that I ‘knew’ she’s really attracted to the ‘new’ guy, but she’s not sure if he’s right for her, which is why she wants to hang on to her ‘old’ guy. Once again, I was right on the money. Well, duh … that’s what being torn between two men is. I asked her if she thought maybe there was something the ‘new’ guy wasn’t telling her. Well, obviously, if she knew everything about him then she’d know if he were right for her or not. I advised her to take it slow, to be true to herself, and to be careful not to break any hearts. Not much of an answer really, but to her, the vague warning about not ‘breaking any hearts’ could have meant not cheating on her boyfriend or not leading the ‘new’ guy on. Deep down, I’m sure she already knew the answer to her own question and she just wanted reassurance. My non-answer just helped bring the decision she had already subconsciously made to the surface.
I had a few more good ‘hits’, but this is getting long enough, so I won’t go into it now.
I do have to also say that after a while my conscience was telling me what I was doing was wrong, and while it might have been amusing for a bit, it really wasn’t a nice thing to do to people. I told them all I was losing my ‘powers’ and had to go.
Rose
I’m not sure that John Edward is either a con man OR a real psychic.
James Randi has often said that very few of the people who come to him, claiming to have psychic powers, are out and out frauds. Most, he says, are very nice, very sincere people who TRULY BELIEVE they have supernatural gifts. And when they fail to show any such gifts under laboratory conditions, most are not terribly discouraged. They’ll just shrug and say “The spirits weren’t speaking today,” or “the stars weren’t aligned clearly today” and then go home.
I COULD be totally wrong, but I suspect John Edward is such a person. I don’t believe for a second that he has ANY psychic powers, but he SEEMS like a nice enough fellow, and my hunch (take that for what little it’s worth) is that he truly thinks he’s psychic.
It makes sense that few con artists will take the Randi challenge. They know they will lose and they have nothing to gain from proving that they have no special abilities.
I don’t think any of the famous psychics are unaware of the con. There is no way they could pull it off as well as they do if they thought that they actually had psychic abilities.