There is a local radio station that brings on a guest-psychic. They usually have one that shows up from time to time. As an aside, this station used to have Jon Edwards on before he bacame famous. He was terrible. He would swing and miss swing and miss swing and miss all the time. They would laugh about him after he wasn’t on the air.
Ok, back to topic…
The current guy is ‘Gary Spivey’ (not sure how to spell it). This guy is definitely acold reader. Much of his stuff I could do…it seems common sense.
However, the quirk with this guy is that every so often he makes what I think are huge gambles…and it always seems to hit. I have yet to hear a caller say not really or no to these gambles (unlike Jon edwards which was the norm). {I am not selectively hearing the hits but really paying attention}
Example:
Today on the way to work he was doing normal stuff. Then a caller called in and said that she moved into her first apartment a few months ago. She was 19 and that she felt a presence in the apartment and it was freaking her out.
Gary immediately said that the presence was a ‘cutting demon’. This is a supernatural entity that tries to get people to’cut themself’. He asked if she ever did this before and she said she had a problem with that at 13 but was able to stop. He then asked her if she had started doing it again since moving in and she said no but that the urge was there and that she almost started doing it again yesterday.
???
Ok…That seems like a solid hit…and an unlikely one. He really put himself out there to get it.
Now, I don’t believe he is psychic…and the station has a rep for laughing at these guys (Jon Edwards)…but the only thing I can think of is:
The station is conning us. They got the info from the caller before and passed it on to Gary.
Some calls are fake.
Girls cutting themselves is much more common than I would think so it isn’t much of going on a limb.
Assuming it isn’t 1 or 2 - that he is really cold reading without info…how does this work?
People who cut themselves or engage in other self destructive behavior often have urges to go back to the behavior. It doesn’t seem like that wild a guess.
What guarantee do we have that this was truly a cold reading? Call screeners could very easily have gotten this information from the caller and passed it along to the ‘psychic’.
What you are saying is that if she had said she didn’t have problems with it then he would have said to watch out for it?
Since he got an unlikely hit he went with it?
That makes sense.
However, when he makes these improbable guesses I’ve never heard no or not really. Maybe I missed it. I will have to listen again closely for these to see if I’ve been missing these.
My #1 in the OP…or that SPivey has fakes calling in without the station knowing. WHen he is doing his normal stuff it is with real callers and when he makes his wild guess it is with his fakes.
I thought of that. It’s possible.
I was wondering if there was a ‘legitimate’ way to do this cold reading.
“Hello, WNUT, what’s your call about?”
“Hi, I wanted to talk to the psychic.”
“About what, miss?”
“I feel a presence and it’s freaking me out.”
“Well, let’s see, have you ever cut yourself on purpose?”
“Well, yeah, 6 years ago, now that you mention it.”
“OK, please hold.”
Bah. If he were really a psychic he wouldn’t need the phone.
Caller: I just started stripping, and I think my boyfriend is back to doing heroin, and I’ve been off my depression pills because I don’t think they do anything for me, but I’ve been drinking instead and that makes me feel better, and…
Adam: Were you sexually abused as a child?
Caller: Well…
Adam: I knew it!
An 18- or 19-year-old woman who moves into her own apartment, and then calls a radio show because she’s “freaking out” due to a “presence” in the apartment, likely hasn’t had a terribly happy or stable home life and is under emotional stress. It isn’t unusual for such a person to think of harming themselves, or to have done it in the past.
What everyone else said, and these thoughts occurred to me:
Was the call live or tape delayed (I’m betting the latter for a morning show)? Something may have been edited out and you didn’t hear the entire call.
Plus I’m willing to bet that “cutting demon” will be a hit for many people. Everyone out there think of whether you’ve been cut in the past week. I’ve been scratched by my cat (the demon made her do it!), got a paper cut (the demon made me do it!), nicked my finger while woodworking (the demon made my hand slip!), cut myself shaving (the demon is in my bathroom!), got cut in the eye in martial arts (the demon followed me a mile and possessed my opponent!)…He’d probably have similar success with a “bruising demon” but that doesn’t sound as spooky.
With the information given, it’s impossible to know for sure, but the two most likely scenarios are the two which have already been the most frequently suggested in this thread.
Either the “cutting-demon” nonsense was a lucky (but not extraordinarily lucky) guess, for which he had a built in escape hatch for a negative answer anyway (“have you had any thoughts of hurting yourself [suggest, suggest]? Well, watch out for those kinds of thoughts”).
The other possibility, which is just as plausible, is that he has plants calling in, unbeknownst to the radio station.
Assuming this was not a set up or that she was pre-screened, if we had a full transcript of the conversation I think it would show that this was much less of a gamble than it seems. The genius of the cold reader is getting you to remember the conversation as having played out a certain way, when in fact there **were ** misses and little probing statements or questions that you don’t remember in the retelling. This is just human nature – our minds hold onto the substance of the narative and gloss over the bits that seem insignificant or irrelevant, when it is precisely these bits that are giving the cold reader what he needs to know.
You say he immediately told her that it was a “cutting demon,” but are you sure there weren’t any little probes before he said this – e.g. “I’m getting that this presence is tied to pain in your past. Maybe even a self-destructive impulse? Does this make sense to you?” Even after he says that it was a “cutting demon”, he could have pinged her for more info while explaining what a “cutting demon” is – “This demon is a manifestation of sharp wounds in your past. Physical wounds, maybe?” At that point, if you’ve gotten her to admit to self-destructive tendencies and a history of physical injuries, cutting doesn’t seem like that big a leap.
Better than that if you extend it to “No? Someone you know, then? Did anyone you know ever commit suicide? Hurt themselves? What about hurt themselves through bad choices, self-destructive behavior?”
or
“Really? Do you have urges to hurt yourself in other ways? Have urges to make bad choices, things you know you shouldn’t do? Do other people question why you do things sometimes, things they don’t think are good for you?”
And don’t underestimate your tendency to remember this one hit and forget the six times he whiffed completely (which is what he’s counting on, of course). We’d need good information on a whole (randomly-selected) group of calls before ruling out “lucky guess”.
“Psychics” are often good at reading people, I think. If this were face-to-face, I’d guess he was reading ‘yes’ from the body language and such.
Since it wasn’t, I’d wonder if he’s aware of statistics, syndromes, etc. Here’s a bit from Wikipedia:
*The best available evidence to date indicates that four times as many females than males have direct experience of self-harm.[1] * Caution is however needed in seeing self-harm as a greater problem for females, since males may well engage in different forms of self-harm which may be easier to hide or explained as the result of different circumstances.[10]
Add to this other symptoms that cluster around it…maybe he recognized a pattern. I bet psychologists would make great ‘psychics’ in that they can often diagnose in a session and make good educated guesses about other details.
I’m sure it’s greater than that when you combine that statistic with the cold-reading cues: (1) she’s young, apparently not away from home in a college town, but not living at home; and (2) she was emotionally unstable enough to call a radio pyschic and report that she was “freaking out”.
I imagine those behaviors correlate (not cause, but correlate) somewhat with propensity toward self-harm. Thus, by Bayesian math, the chance of a hit is much greater than one-third. Add some of the extensions that others have suggested above, and it becomes a near certainty.
I have a math/stat background. I know of the tendency to do it and believe I would notice it. Doesn’t mean I DID though.
In this particular example he did exactly that. She said her thing…and he immediately dived for the cutting demon. He doesn’t do this every call…but when he does it is always this way…he dives immediately for what seems an unlikely possibility. No probing. It literally is the first thing he says. Therefore my thoughts that it is a scam (either by radio station or by plants he has call in) but want to know if there is a legitimate way to cold read it.
I just remembered another one. A woman called in and said that she had felt a presence in her house. It just started though she had lived there several years. He immedietely told her she was pregnant and that it was the future child’s presence checking out the home. The DJ then asked if she really was pregnant and she said yes. Gawd, that seems going on a limb…and if it wasn’t a plant/con I’d like to know how he does it.
I’ll have to listen closer for misses though, but I tried to pay attention.
The stats on self cutting for women is intriguing. He has done the cutting demon before (not often but I have heard him say it a few times before) and always on women. If younger women really do cut themselves often (like 1 in 3) then it isn’t much of a hit though it really seems like one.
It’s too much…my leading theory is he has people call in.
This tells me he’s planting calls. The radio station doesn’t have to be in on it (can’t think of any reason they wouild be, in fact) - those shows are ridiculously easy to get through to.
