I should add on No. 4 that I would love for a spirit to appear in person and offer guidance. Lurking spirits out there the door is always open and the wine is always pouring at ZPG Zealot’s house. However, the the spirits seem to prefer the more indirect method of working through the brain and nerve passages of my head and influencing my thoughts toward wise conclusions.
Maybe they’d prefer something stronger? Spirits for the spirits instead?
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
Then why don’t you apply for the Million Dollar Challenge? No “psychic” has won it yet, you could be the first!!!
A-ha, now that is the truest definition of cold reading. Few scam artists will own up to the fact that they’re scam artists, so we appreciate your honesty. 
Do you mind if I ask for an example? I mean, someone with bitten-down fingernails who is wearing her inside-out blouse half tucked into her pants and fidgits around would probably lead you to conclude that she’s nervous and distracted about something, I would imagine, but what all do you look for and what does it tell you?
There are so many little things, but here are a few good examples. Women carrying counterfeit designer handbags like to hear that they have “justifiably” high standards and are often under appreciated by those around them. White guys with dreads want to hear the suggestion that maybe they have African or Caribbean ancestory. (There is something hidden in your family. Something no one has mentioned for generations because they are too uptight, too white and upper class to talk about, etc.)
In college in the 80’s, I once made quite a bit of money explaining to young man that the reason he had such difficulty studying our current history course was because he had been one of Toussaint L’ouverture’s lieutenants in a previous life. We were covering the period of his death, so naturally it was painful for him. I’ll admitt that was a scam, but he was a trust fund baby that absolutely deserved it. His real problem was partying too much.
Thanks for answering so many questions. I’d like to ask a bit more about your response above.
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Do you think many of your clients think you can predict the future supernaturally? If they do, do you let them believe that or tell them it isn’t supernatural?
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If you do let them believe that, do you believe it is dishonest?
Do you have an accomplice?
How much of your business is from repeat customers, and how much is one shot deals?
Do you see some people year after year?
Do you get to know the outcomes of much of the advice you give people?
Unrelated: Are you a gypsy?
This is one of the more interesting threads I’ve read lately. I started reading it assuming you were a charlatan, and frankly on some levels I still think that. Because you are.
On the other hand, you sort of play in the same space as Dear Abby, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Some people need to have the obvious pointed out to them. Some, like my children, may have had it pointed out, but won’t buy it unless it comes from a source of their choosing. So I’m prepared to grudgingly admit that you may be providing a valuable service to some.
To answer that question, you have to examine how you define the supernatural and your belief in it. My belief about the supernatural is this: I don’t know if it exists or not. I have never had a ghost, angel, vampire, spirit, etc. tap me on the shoulder and say, “I have some advice for you.” But would a supernatural power actually need (or want) to manifest itself that way? Wouldn’t it just be easier for something that powerful to transfer the ideas and information directly to my head? And how would I know this was happening anyway? Once again I have never had a supernatural manifestation tap me on the shoulder and say, “We need to download some information, put your brain in neutral.”
Therefore, my response is whether or not any of my abilities have a supernatural component, is I don’t know. I don’t know how to measure the supernatural. I tell the client whatever I think will help them and I do not consider that dishonest.
Why don’t you consider that dishonest?
It’s about 50% repeat customers and 50% one-shot deals. Though in that 50% one-shot deals are the party customers which can be very lucrative.
Sometimes, especially people with substance abuse problems.
Yes, with regulars.
Depends on how you define Gypsy. I am Rom and speak Romany. But many times Shelte speaking people are called Gypsies and I can’t understand a word of their language. I don’t have a migratory lifesytle at all. In fact, my family has owned the same house for generations.
When the intent is to help, no.
I’m not sure I understand this answer. Do you mean intent has some kind of impact on whether or not something is true(honest)?
I get lying with the intention to help someone(for money), but it’s still lying, right?
By the way, thanks again for your answers. It’s quite interesting.
Absolutely, to me intention is very important in determining whether or not an action is true or honest.
If I don’t know whether the ideas are purely from me or partially from something else which we don’t have the technology to measure yet using me as a channel to talk to this world, how is it lying not to admit this. Now, about the financial aspect, when every priest and every politician in the country works free of charge or stays hooked up to a polygraph machine every time he or she speaks (though I have heard on the board that’s really not effective to determine honesty), I still stop charging fees. Until then, I am entitled to be compensated for time and effort like anyone else.
That was suppose to read “WILL stop charging fees”. Sorry, I was reading while I posted.
This is a fascinating thread, and thanks for starting it. It’s interesting how many dopers, who generally like to consider themselves intellectually flexible and broadminded are being tied into square knots by the concept of fortune telling as a symbiotic, quasi-therapeutic performance art, and have donned their Batman masks to castigate you for dancing on the thin, bright line of magical thinking without being wholly invested in believing in it.
What’s to be fascinated about? She admits, rather glibly, that her “talent” is no more than a cold reading, she has no shame about fleecing people of their money (especially naive young students with lucrative college grants) and she has no moral compunction against calling the police after a client tells her something confidential. She doesn’t even fake a belief in the supernatural. It’s refreshing, I suppose, to hear a scam artist make no bones about being a scam artist, but still – what’s next, “Ask the Three-Card Monty Player?”
I would submit that, short of the congenitally retarded, people in industrial and technologically sophisticated societies who choose to hire the services of a fortune teller in 2009, are making a very deliberate choice to pay someone to indulge them in their quest to pursue magical thinking against the tsunami of empirical evidence that true fortune telling is impossible.
These are not innocent sheep being led to slaughter by a devious con artist. These are sheep spitting in the face of rationalist modernity to scramble after the supernatural in pursuit of their own personal and emotional goals. That there is a ship willing to meet them at that dock and take them on a tour of fantasia in exchange for a sum of money, IMO that’s more of a mutual exchange of services where someone will indulge their notions than a crime where someone is unwillingly fleeced.
I don’t see a real problem with it, as long as she isn’t fleecing the sheep. If the price is reasonable and she doesn’t pull a true scam (as in, “I think your dear departed father has some words for you… but it isn’t clear… I’ll need another hundred dollars to contact him…”) I don’t see the harm in letting people fool themselves, and it sounds like a lot of people are satisfied and getting, in a way, a real service out of it. I mean, hell, the kids who work the River Cruise ride at Disney pretend you’re in Darkest Africa, don’t they?
How much do you charge for parties?
That “naive” young student did not have a lucrative college grant, he had a fat trust fund from his robber baron ancestors. And the money he spent paying me to feed his delusion that he had some mythical connection to actual oppressed people only stopped him from snorting a little more up his nose. I suppose you could argue I defrauded the cocaine industry of some profits in that situation. As for calling the police, I make no guarantees of confidentiality and would you really want me to protect drug dealers and child molesters.