Contact with the Great Beyond--Psychics like Praagh

IF psychics are real, why does it sound like they are guessing? Why don’t they just accurately make statements that can be verified? Why would they be wrong at all?

Why would Edwards see a family member with the letter “M” in their name? Why wouldn’t he just say, “Your grandfather Morise is here to speak to you”.

Why does his act seem like he’s “fishing”?
Their is only one answer that makes any sense-He’s not a genuine psychic. I don’t think their are such things.

Depends on which version you read, everyone had a field day with this. The followup material I read said she had.

I am not sure what to believe. But I do know there is a spirit world and it can be communicated with. I have experience with it, and I believe my experience.

It doesn’t bother me that others don’t believe it.The bottom line is skeptics can’t prove it isn’t real, therefore they have no right to slander psychics. Most skeptics really believe they are of superior intelligence because they are skeptics, strange idea. If you don’t like the psychics, fine, leave them alone. If they are doing wrong God will take care of the corrections. But, then, you may not believe in God either. In that case, nothing matters.

Love
Leroy

If you are really interested in knowing, read some of the books about becoming a psychic. It is not easy trying to communicate a language into spiritual symbolism and back.

Love
Leroy

No, we skeptics cannot prove that it isn’t real. All we can prove is that supposed psychics have been caught lying, cheating and cold reading(some very poorly, like John Edward), and that to date not one psychic has come forward with real evidence of his or her abilities in hundreds of years. I have no thought to changing the mind of a person who would throw out all scientific evidence because he would rather believe his dreams, however. People who openly dismiss science and fact are not even worth trying to convince, imho.

I have to admit, I now have a favorite site right up there with Jack Chick now. It must be odd for him to find demons around every corner. It reminds of the episode when Grandpa Simpson pointed at everything and said “EVIL!!!”.

Slander? Never. Disprove, debunk, enlighten, illuminate, edify, and inform? Sure, but never slander.

If love is being coddled into believing psychics exist, the paranormal is true, and my nose is haunted, then I want to be celibate.
I could go around telling everyone that when they sleep the Care Bears come and watch over in a heart shape chain around their bed protecting them until they wake. And it would make them feel better. And they would feel loved. And I wouldn’t have to prove that it does happen to any skeptics. Why? Because I believe it to be so and isn’t that all that matters?
What I’m seeing done is people trying to convert others to their crazy beliefs so they don’t feel all alone with the Reynolds Wrap on their heads.
YCMV (Your craziness may vary).

lekatt: You say there is “verifiable material”, but you then go on to make an assertion about Houdini which contradicts every source I know of. You base this on “followup material” you have read. You also say that skeptics “should be forced to show proof or shut up”. Well, I’m asking you to show proof: What’s your source for the assertion that Bess Houdini verified that she had received a communication from her dead husband?

Do you think I’m just being mean? What if I said “James Van Praagh”–whom you evidently admire–“has admitted that he’s just a big old fraud”? You’d damned well want me to back up such a claim, right? (Since I know of no such assertion by Mr. Van Praagh, I would not actually make such a statement. I may have strong suspicions regarding the reality of Mr. Van Praagh’s psychic abilities, but I don’t know of any statement by him in which he has admitted to being a faker, or any statement by him that’s remotely like that. You could call not saying things about people which you can’t back up being a “skeptic”; I would call it simple politeness and basic decency.)

Just yesterday I believe, I saw a moment of Mr. Edwards being interviewed by someone.
She said either your a fraud or delusional.
He said, “Well, I’m delusional, because i beleive I really Can do this!”

I confess I went to a phychic once .I was also amazed about the knowledge she gave me.I had never met this person nor had she met me.I purposely said nothing about my past or revealed any information about myself.
She told me about a pin placed in my bothers leg from an accident that took place years before.No 1 .How did she know I even had a brother much less medical information?There are 5 girls and 1 boy in our family.
2.She told me my mother wasn’t well…again she was totally correct…My mother was in her 40ies at that time so old age couldn’t have been a factor.
3.And the biggest,She told me there was going to be a death in the family in the extreme near future.2 days later there was an unexpected death in the family.
People are welcome to opions but please don’t disregard possibilities of it being truthfull

B Williams, can I respond with some respectful questions and a possible explanation? The info revealed to you sounds convincing, but it’s very, very important to look at how you have presented each revelation and how you remember it. Your characterization of the information might not be exactly what happened, and that’s no slam against you personally. You can be sincere about it without necessarily being accurate.

Consider the following questions about your first revelation, for instance.
Did the psychic immediately say “Your only brother has a pin in his leg from an accident years ago” or did she arrive at that nugget in a more roundabout way? If she just sat down and stated that information flat out, that’s pretty damn amazing unless she did some research before you showed up.

Or did she first just mention your brother? Did you affirm that yes, you have a brother? Did she then mention an accident from years ago? Did you nod your head yes? (Nearly everyone has been in some sort of accident.) Did she say it was an injury to his left leg from being struck by a tractor on Uncle Walt’s farm (or whatever the truth is) or did she just take a guess that maybe it involved his legs? (A pretty easy assumption, as many injuries involve the legs.) Did you acknowledge that yes, he had suffered a leg injury by nodding yes, saying anything in response, or even adding to what she offered? Did she then suggest that he has a pin in his leg? (Again, a good guess if she already knows he suffered a serious leg injury.)
You say that you were careful not to reveal anything to her, but does that mean you remained entirely mute and expressionless during the reading? Even if you don’t think you’re providing information, you actually are every time you nod yes or no, seem impressed at what she says, or look unimpressed because she’s wrong. If you actually responded to her queries by saying “Yes, I have a brother” or even offered more information in response to her lead (the way most people do), then she gleaned even more useful material from you. That information helped guide her reading, like a flow chart. She offers one tiny bit of info and if you respond yes, she goes this way. If you respond no, she goes off in the other direction. Before you know it she’s arrived at the amazing information that your only brother has a pin in his leg from an accident years ago.

Also, are those the only three statements she made about your life? Those are the three you remember because they seem like such direct hits. But what else did she say? Did she think for a minute that your brother injured his arm, but then she said it was his leg? Did she say things that weren’t right on, things that didn’t come true? We humans naturally highlight the things that seem remarkable to us and easily forget or explain away the mundane errors. Psychics rely on that, knowing they can toss out a lot of things that generally apply to people and inevitably a few will be true for you. Those are the ones we remember.

If she had told you there was going to be a death “in the family in the extreme near future” and nothing happened, would you remember that as strongly and see it as so convincing that she was a fraud? And look at how that prediction was made. It really isn’t very specific if you think about it. Your family could include distant cousins and in laws and far flung relations, especially if you want to beleive that she was right. Then it’s very likely that someone in that large number of people will die “in the extreme near future.” And what does that mean exactly? A few days, a few weeks, or this year? Even the “extreme near future” is ambiguous. If no one died in the first week, but your cousin died 8 months later, could you say she was right? It depends on how much you want to beleive that she was right and that you had a remarkable, spooky experience.

I’m not suggesting that you intentionally misrepresented anything, rather I’m trying to point out how a lot of a psychic’s skills play right into our natural tendencies when interacting with someone and the way people interpret information. Then when you add a few years distance, our imperfect memories fuzz it all up a bit more and we remember something much more concrete and amazing than what actually happened.

Looking back on it with those questions in mind, do you see it any differently?

The will always be people who believe in psychics and people who do not believe in psychics.
In Ecclesiastes 9 it states
4For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion. 5For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. 6Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun.

So if the dead know not anything under sun how are these people really talking to the dead?

Or is like Ben Alexander has stated, is it the evil spirits pretending to be the dead knowing what these people want to be told.

IMHO there’s no way of communicating with the dead, unless through your subconcious mind you dream of a loved one.

Ptahlis wrote above that you never hear a spirit say where the deed was placed, but one of the most famous cases of spirit communication is the Chaffin Will Case. The old farmer Mr. Chaffin left a will that left everything to the eldest son, to the surprise of the other children and his wife. He then appeared and told somabody in the family that there was a later will he had drawn up that was in the coat pocket of a coat in a mostly unused closet. They found the will where the soi disant Mr. Chaffin said it was and it was a legal will and to everybody’s happiness it divided things up among the wife and children. This is an old case and ALL the best cases are OLD ones as far as I know. The BEST medium bringing back the spirits was Mr. Piper, an unsophisticated housewife who came up with amazingly verifiable messages from the Beyond. She was studied by William James the psychologist and was even sent to London (she live in America) and watched to see if she would go into libraries and find out from newspapers about people, which she didn’t. She still came up with verified communications from the spirits. Other good mediumsnever proven to be frauds were Mrs. Gladys Osborne Leonard, Mrs. Verall, a daughter of hers I think too with a name like Cummins or something, and Eileen Garrett. Mrs. Garrett spoke to spirits when she was only a child and played with them until adults pointed out that they weren’t there and then they kind of went away. She heard from the dead people in an airship disaster of England and they told her why this ship crashed and when they looked at the ruins they realized these technicalities really were the reason!
Also, skeptics must remember that the spirits have to commune through living people and thus what they say is filtered through the consciousness, attitudes, and experiences of these individuals. Most of the mediums have been ordinary people, unsophisticated, and there have been cases of those with no knowledge of the classics, for instance, who came up with names from the classics that used to be studied by all educated people. I’m not ready to give up on the spirit world because there have been frauds. No use throwing out the baby with the bathwater, I always say. There are frauds everywhere, no area of life can exist without being 99% fraud.
What about Lurancy Venom, the Watseka Wonder? This is a case of spirit possession. Although it was a benign spirit more or less and finally left. Most spirits, phantoms, ghosts are either benign or just confused and not as depicted in the horror movies.
Also, I would have thought there would have been more than one person, such as Legatt, who had some experiences with the spirits on this thread. You can’t argue with a person’s experience but you don’t have to believe his interpretation. And as some others have said, I too am bewildered by the fervor like religious fervor stirred up in non-believers. Shouldn’t they just not care instead of trying to talk somebody out of something?
Now as for a psychic saying I see the letter M, that really sounds an alarum to me of disbelief. I don’t know why spirits would be sending letters any easier than they could send the whole word.
We only see the spirit world darkly through a dark glass, but some day, face to face, as it says in the Bible. Not that I believe in the Bible, but it has a lot of good folk sayings in it, etc.
And finally, people who resort to science and reason don’t seem to acknowledge that science has changed over the years. Also, what constitutes proof has to be related to something that is in a person’s background. And the requirement that an experiment be repeatable before we believe in its results is a requirement fine for some things but not for everything. In reputable experiements the attitude of the experimenter is supposed to be left out so the experiment can be objective. However, science does have examples of results that were announced that were actually influenced by the experimenters’ attitudes, and there are examples of completely and even deliberately fraudulent “results” in science. All those FINDINGS you hear from “science” on the news about recent results concerning what we should be eating in our diets, for instance, are PAID FOR BY CORPORATIONS. The news media are owned by a few corporations that also have interests in the foodstuffs and vitamins, etc. made by associated corporations. In other words the news is always and alwayshas been, and always will be payola news. (Recently there is word that the songs played on music radio are still played by the payola system that the industry pretended to get rid of years ago in a big scandal). And besides all this corruption of science, we have the fact that there are still enough different pill makers and food makers around to pay for other studies that show results to the opposite of their rivals… And in addition to this, scientists have become famous for faking experiments in all fields in order to get grants and fame. Science has been exposed as being especially vulnerable to at least as much fraud as mediumship. Fraud and phoniness are everywhere; all is bull. All is bull unless you have had an actual experience with something, and then to you it isn’t.
signed, Expecting the Spirit World Despite All
Oh I forgot to add to the above that in science we try to leave out the experimenters’ attitudes but it is always there. It can’t really be discounted, as I noted above, and one might as well claim that in spiritual things the attitude is all important; since the attitudes can never be the same from one time to the next, the results can’t be repeated, as is required in science. Actually, it mus also be pointted out that although the same things are supposed to happen when the same conditions are repeated, the same conditions can never really be repeated. It’s just that they can be in science repeatable enough.

You’ve drawn an equality that you now need to prove. I just hate turnips. How does that make me ignorant?

How in the world is does this qualify as “verifiable”? Did your dad tell you how he knew this? I suspect that what you didn’t know is that your dad just hung up with your brother a few minutes prior and knew via perfectly ordinary means that your brother would be calling you:


Dadkatt (talking to Brotherkatt): Well it was nice talking with you. Why don’t you give your brother a call, he hardly every gets to hear from you!

Brotherkatt: Will do, dad.

Dadkatt (to lekatt): Don’t go go bed just yet, your brother will be calling soon.

lekatt: huh?

lekatt’s phone: RING!

lekatt: Amazing!


It probably didn’t happen just like that, I’m just pointing out how easy it would be for some perfectly normal chain of events to result in some imagined “extraordinary” experience.

And even if there was no obvious cause for effect, we still need to rule out pure chance. One person gets a premonition from dad that comes true. What are the chances- one in a million each year? How about one in a hundred million. If you are willing to agree that it’s possible for something like this to happen one time in a hundred million by chance, well, there are 300 million people just in the US. Therefore you must be willing to accept that such apparently extraordinary things happen purely by chance at least 3 times a year. If we use the world population, we get 60 such happenings a year. They’re all perfectly normal ocurrences, because such things are bound to happen eventually by chance.

Miss Cleo was nailed for fraudulent business practices, not for being a fraudulent psychic. I’d like to see some cites from unbiased sources that document the “psychic community” going on record about Miss Cleo’s shady billing practices (before they were discovered by her customers, that is).

Slander is a false and malicious statement about someone. In order for your slander charge to stick, JVP or JE need to prove their abilities to show that the skeptics statements are false.

I’m sorry, but the bottom line is “psychics can’t prove it is real, and therefore are fair targets for skeptical consumers who’s money they are attempting to get hold of”.

There have been a few occasions in my life when I exhibited “psychic” ability. Let me give a couple of examples.

Once in High School, while playing in the pep-band at a basketball game (a small group from the band that played between JV and Varsity games and at half-time) I correctly predicted several pieces of music before the director chose them. )We all had sheet music and he would choose each piece just before we played them. There wasn’t a planned play list.) I just pulled out 3 or 4 pieces in a row and showed them to the guy next to me, and a moment later the director picked the same ones. There was no communication between us and I had no way of seeing his music.

Another time, playing cards with some friends, I correctly predicted 3 cards picked from the deck. I hadn’t shuffled and there were several witnesses.

There have been other occasions like this. So, obviously I’m psychic, right?

Or maybe…maybe they were explainable. Maybe my familiarity with the band director unconsciously clued me in to what he would be likely to choose at a particular time, and I was right on that occasion. (On many other occasions I was wrong, but there’s no need to take failures into consideration, right? The TV psychics don’t show their failures after all) As far as the cards, well, maybe that was just a random chance. I’ve tried that again and been wrong far more often than right. That I would happen to be correct 3 times in an hour is perhaps better than the odds, but hardly supernatural.

Of course, to somebody seeing only correct predictions, or well phrased guesses that sound like information being pulled out of thin air, it might seem supernatural, but if they saw all the errors and considered the total ratio of correct to wrong guesses, they might just come to a different conclusion.

Lekatt, I recognize that you’ve had experiences in which you believe. That’s fine. They’re your experiences, and nobody else can truly share them, so we can only explain them based on similarities to others. The problem is, you seem to equate anecdotes with testable, repeatable, verifiable evidence. It’s not. Anecdotes are starting points in investigation. They can provide a basis from which researchers can start, and can even suggest lines of study, but they aren’t proof.

Hmm, I’ll keep that in mind, but since I’d need proof that spirits exist first before I’d be able to discern that this filter is what’s causing the problems.

Hmm, well this IS A DEBATE. If you wanted opinions strictly, maybe you should have placed this in IMHO or MPSIMS. As for me, well it gets my dander up that people propagate B.S. as truth and on top of that, take money for it.

Houdini is a bad example if you want to believe that psychics are real.

Houdini spent a good deal of the later part of his life debunking spiritualists. This occurred after a medium told him she had established contact with his dead mother, to whom he was devoted. Said contact was established when the medium, in a trance, drew the sign of the cross and began speaking to Houdini in English.

Houdini’s mother was Jewish, and spoke almost no English.

Source is an excellent biography of Houdini, whose author I cannot remember at the moment. I can dig it up if anyone would like.

Regards,
Shodan

I believe the scientific community would take issue with that statement. What is an “area of life” anyway?

If a psychic hasn’t proven himself, he is assumed to be a fraud until such time as they prove themselves genuine. If I declare that I’m a psychic, and nobody bothers to prove me a fraud, does that mean I’m genuine?

This is not an unfair “guilty until proven innocent” stance. Do we need to prove each and every perpetual motion machine a fake in order to safely know that they are? There are simply too many. If there is a true PM machine (or psychic) out there, it/he needs to come forward and prove itself/himself.

When we’re talking about fraud here. Go look up fraud in the dictionary and then come back and tell us that it’s okay not to care.

How can you not understand that this is a good thing? This is exactly why we know that science can be trusted: It’s verifiable and it corrects itself. I invite you to read all about the story of N-Rays.

But the thing that really bothers me about your “resort to science” remark is, if not science, then what? What are we supposed to use to measure and explain the world around us? Hunches? Gut feelings? Pure emotion?

Few and far between. That is why results must be published for peer review. And that is why (contradicting your previous statement) results must be verifiable through repitition.

Now you’re just starting to creep me out with all of this conspiracy theory stuff. There’s nothing I can do for you there.

No, they have been found out by their peers and discredited, never to be worthy of an ounce of respect from anybody ever again.

News flash: corruption exists, some people are dishonest. Film at 11.

I would like to expand on Attrayant’s already excellent reply to this.

lekatt, If your brother had called a year later, it seems you would have thought that “normal,” not “psychic.” But if he calls 5 minutes later, that is “psychic,” not “normal.”

So all we need to establish here is, how long after event #1 happens does event #2 need to occur before it becomes “normal”? 6 minutes? One hour? One day? One month? And just how would you reach this decision? And would all of us agree with you?

Remember, the exact number is very important! The precise definition and recognition of psychic phenomena is at stake!

—Why would Edwards see a family member with the letter “M” in their name? Why wouldn’t he just say, “Your grandfather Morise is here to speak to you”.—

As what’is name has pointed out, it just isn’t the case that if you can get one letter, that you can’t simply be given the whole name, letter by letter. It doesn’t matter how “noisy” the transmission is: if you are able to pull single bits of information out of it, there are definately ways to pull longer strings of information out as well, simply by repeating whatever process you used for the first bit. Yet Edward always fishes for more from his audience… and when it STILL isn’t right, he moves on to something else.

It’s even more ridiculous that Edward claims to get only vague, often wrong, letters from first names, playing a goofy game og hangman to get even a single sylable right… but then he seems to easily spit out whole messages from the dead word for word.

—They’re all perfectly normal ocurrences, because such things are bound to happen eventually by chance.—

An excellent summary of Dawkin’s concept of a PETWHAC (Population of Events That Would Have Appeard Coincidental): We can show, via sound deductive math, that, by chance alone, a certain number of people in a certain population MUST experience any given highly improbable event. The problem for the believer, then, is not to simply relate one occurance of an improbable event, but to show that it happened to more people in a given population than chance alone would suggest. In Attrayant’s example, it’s not good enough to note that some highly unlikely premonition from dad came true. Instead, you have to demonstrate that THIS specific occurance happened to MORE than 3 people in the last year, in the U.S. That’s an almost impossible burden of proof, but unfortunately it’s the only thing that would demonstrate that we are dealing with anything other than chance alone.

The end result is simply this: while it continues to be highly improbable that any one, pre-specified event will occur in a given year, it is extremely improbable that NO such highly improbable events will occur: in fact it is nearly certain that some such events will occur to almost everyone at some point, because there are so many different ways for things to be coicidental. Because we are personal beings, we try to find great significance in the fact that, “sure, it might have been inevitable for someone in the population to experience this weird event… but that someone was ME! Isn’t that significant?” The reality is that it isn’t: you are just one of the people in the population, and, as we’ve already derived, it would be MORE unlikely that NOTHING seemingly extrodinary happened to you.

Dawkins also notes how easy it is to rapidly expand a PETWHAC just by loosening the constraints: was the call five minutes after… ten? How loose should it be? The more you expand the PETWHAC, the easier and the more inevitable it is for SOMETHING to fall into it for SOMEONE at some point.

Unless of course your dad is dead, well, I guess that would be different. :dubious:

:dubious: “What’is name”? The name, Apos , would be Meatros, king of the brave Meatriarians! :smiley:

I agree, no matter how “noisy”, it doesn’t make sense that the voices would seem so much like “guesses”. Also, why does he go “cold”, the spirit he’s talking to changes to someone else? Do spirits have limited floor space or something?

That’s another good point. When it comes to specifics, Edwards plays a guessing game; but when it’s time for general statements, he spits out entire sentences. IF there is “spiritual static” why can he say the entire sentence? If it’s a case of him getting a few of the words right and figuring out the rest, then why can’t he just say the approximate name instead of a letter?

Lekatt -if you would, and if it isn’t too much trouble, can you tell me why the “messages” would come in, in such a poor manner?