Then why are you claiming so on his behalf?
Can we get a rough estimate of when this will be?
Nitpick: Since when is “Sheikh” a title for a seer or wizard?
True Story: One morning I was at my parents and this was during the D.C. area sniper shootings a few years ago. They had NOT caught the culprit(s) yet and knew nothing about who they were.
Welp, my dad walked out of the room and he sat in his chair, still half asleep, put on his socks and said, as he watched the morning news about the snipers, “I had a dream last night that that guy’s name was Lee and he rode around in a blue car”. At the time they never mentioned a blue car, but were looking for a white van. And my poor ass drove a white van at the time too. Ugh…got a lot of looks. But that’s beside the point.
A few weeks later they announced Lee Malvo (sp?).
No lie, true story. Kinda eerie too.
Predictor:
You will be in a car accident soon and the entire front of the car will need to be replaced
Predictee:
Wow!! I was in a car accident recently and my car was totaled and two people were killed
Even though this seems impressive, because the predictor is right about there being an accident involving the predictee, he is actually wildly wrong about the timing and way off by a huge factor on the extent of the damage. This is not paranormal in any way. This strikes me as exactly the same as:
*
He told another one that he was going to win 200,000 Riyals and the man told him that he already did, but it wasn’t thousands, it was two millions.
It’s quite simple, really: there have been lots of cases involving similar predictions that have turned out to be cold readings, lucky guesses, or outright fraud (cf. Randi’s debunking of Peter Popoff). There’s not been a single confirmed case of psychic powers.
So, based on your description, the only thing anybody can reasonably conclude is that it’s another case of cold reading or similar.
If the event happened exactly as defined, and there was no additional questions asked, and you could prove that no member of this “Sheikh’s”("Sheikh of what, exactly?) entourage overheard conversations between the attendees before the event that would give clues, and the people called on weren’t planted there, and you could prove that this “Shiekh” or his helpers didn’t do a prior background check on certain members he knew would attend, and(most importantly)you could provide a recording(or, at the very least, a transcript) of this event, we would have something to talk about.
I recently woke up in an absolute panic from a drem about fire. That very day, one of our tenants set their kitchen on fire.
Of course, I am absolutely paranoid about fire and a week before my dream had set a plastic bag too close to the stove and it caught fire.
Hey. I’m psyhic!
The reason people are so reluctant to say that it’s possible that your Sheik has paranormal abilities is that there are hundreds of people who can replicate similar feats but who use simple tricks instead of paranormal powers.
The problem is that you simply aren’t aware of these methods, so they seem impossible to you. But you’ve seen stage magicians, right? And they are able to make things appear and disappear, pick cards, open locks, saw ladies in half, and so on. You probably have no idea how these things are done, but when you see a magician saw a lady in half what do you suspect is happening…that the magician is using some sort of paranormal powers to really saw a lady in half, or that he is using some sort of trickery to make it appear as if he is sawing a lady in half?
Of course when you see a magician tell you what card you’re holding, or when you see a magician saw a lady in half, you know it’s a trick even if you have no clue how the trick is done.
And the same thing is true for mentalists like your Sheik. Mentalism is a very well established type of stage magic. It has been practiced for hundreds of years, and while the tricks used by mentalists in their shows aren’t exactly well known, they certainly aren’t secret either.
I know you experienced something you can’t explain and that you believe the only possible explanation is some sort of paranormal activity. But since there are dozens of perfectly mundane tricks that can produce the same result, everyone here is going to believe that the show was done through tricks. It’s only if there were some method of eliminating the possibility of using such tricks that we would believe that something paranormal happened, just like we don’t believe that the reason the magician can tell you what card you picked means something paranormal happened.
Take a look at some of these wikipedia articles that explain how such things can be done. That such things can be done by simple tricks doesn’t PROVE that your Sheik doesn’t have paranormal abilities, but it does mean that there’s no reason for us to believe he does…unless he can duplicate his stunts under conditions that preclude trickery. And the trouble is that since you don’t know much about how these tricks are done, you don’t have a good idea of what would or would not preclude trickery. You might want to consult a professional stage magician who does this sort of thing for a living.
Exactly. He didn’t actually get anything right at all about this prediction, but somehow it’s presented as a hit.
And pyrokinetic too!