Say, how does that man on the SCFI network do that? His name is John Edward, his show Crossing Over.He tells people about the loved ones that have “passed”. Is he just a good guesser? How could he fool so many people? How do psychics do that?
Go here, and start reading:
Thanks so much S man! That is a very good site.
One of my favorites, to be sure. Enjoy.
Nothing to add here - Stupendous Man hit the nail on the head with the site reference. Do a quick search here for poster’s favorite links. You’ll find an exceptional set of reference tools (for times when the boards are down). http://www.snopes.com comes up a lot here. Junkscience.com as well. Anyway, I just popped in to welcome you to the boards, and give a nod and a smile to your nick. Enjoy!
In the Chapin or Chaffin Will Case a man, Chaffin, died leaving the farm etc. to one of his sons. A few years or so afterward, the ghost of Mr. Chaffin came and said look in the coat pocket of this coat in this certain closet, and they did and there was a legal will dated after the other one that left everything equally. It was probated into the court which found it legal and everyone was happy. But see Mrs. Piper for the most veridical instances of communication from the Spirit World from the past, and there are James Prague or Praag and Sylvia Brown(e?) now who seem very authentic. And there is a large dark mirror that people look into and many eventually see dead relatives. In one case this man was expecting his one grandmother that he liked but instead this other woman comes along that he had seldom thought about. It was his other grandmother whom he hadn’t identified with at all during her life. Now she comes and has a talk with him about various things. The only problem with these communications aside from some of them but not all being hoaxes is that the mediums generally come up with elaborate systems involving the idea that everything happens for a reason planned by the great plan of God and we have to be reincarnated until we learn our lessons. These things I can’t buy into at all. They are merely the way these mediums see things, and none of them see the “whole picture” accurately, because there is no whole picture. People don’t now and never will live in the same reality. Reality is a projection with some possible leaks from one person’s otherwise fairly solipsistic reality into another’s via clairvoyance or some other esp, which works stronger at the spirit level than at ours. In other words when a Catholic goes to heaven it will be a Catholic heaven, when Mormons die they will be working their way uphigher and higher to becoming gods, like they think, and when a Mordvin dies he will be in a nice little cottage surrounded by a fence in the pleasant woods, which is how they live when they are alive, and of course no one Mordvin or Chumash will really be in the same forest as the others and each Catholic heaven will be a little different. We go where we want to go, not where in someone else’s opinion we ought to go. I’ll be in a beautiful garden with libraries in it and computers with Straight Dope on it so I can ask lots of questions and get interesting answers.
Honestly, these skeptics who go out of their way to disprove things! I suppose they don’t believe in Roswell either! Skepticism and gulliblism are matters of inborn genetic attitude or disposition more than of proof. Next they’ll be telling me the Face on Mars is merely a trick of light and shadow! Criminy! Crime-a-nent-lis! However, I don’t believe in anything in the sense of following a leader. See the disaster of Sai Baba, whom I always suspected of fraud. He had all these faithful followers who thought he was wonderful, and now look what happens! Never follow anybody, join no organizations. And argue not with other people’s experiences, therefore there is no necessity to BELIEVE anything. It’s not what you believe that counts, but what you experience.
Many people think psychics can “do” that because said people are gullible, impressionable, and/or simply ignorant.
Psychics, the WWF, and The Force: They can have a strong influence on the weak minded.
I think that it’s backwards. It should be
the dead communicating with the psychics.
Sure it can be done, there are always con guys trying to make some money on it.
Sure, I believe in Roswell. It’s a city in new Mexico – it’s listed on maps and in census material. Demi Moore was born there. I’ve driven right past the exit to Roswell myself. And I’ve known people who’ve actually been there. What’s not to believe?
The Face on Mars, however, is merely a trick of light and shadow.
Huge stack of info on this one (including cold reading, intuition, and other stuff) in this thread:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=42724
The psychic you see on TV may have genuine psychic powers. If not, then he’s using a psychologically seductive technique called cold reading. This is very common knowledge among magicians and the kind of mind-reading magicians known in the trade as mentalists and psychic entertainers. I myself have given several TV demonstrations of cold reading under test conditions, and have been rated “99.9%” accurate. However, in my case I always admit the truth afterwards.
Plenty of sceptical sites provide info on how it’s done. Magicians can also get hold of books which explain different cold reading techniques.
What about the famous cases of the late nineteenth and early twentieth-centuries? Sally Beauchamp! The cross-correspondences, in which FWH Myers and other dead
spirit researchers got together in the next world and developed clues referring to the Classics in just the clever way that they would in real life, but the clues came through separate mediums and were put together! The soi-disant
Myers said this is what he was doing and he only wished he could come back to here and tell how wonderful it was over there! Mrs. Verall, Mrs. Piper, Mrs. Osborn Leonard,
and Eileen Garrett, who heard from those who went down in the crash of an airship in England. They told her what was wrong with it and only they could have known.
don life is too short to spend it debunking silly children’s ghost stories. If you really believe that crap is real, start a GD thread. In GQ, absent demonstrated proof in a controlled study, it’s all garbage.
Note that the OP is talking about a program on the Sci-Fi channel.
Remember what Sci-Fi is short for?
Science FICTION. F-I-C-T-I-O-N.
If the guy was for real, he would be on the Sci-Fact channel. 
(I would have said Discovery, but with their Truth about Bigfoot-type shows lately, they seem to be a different type of sciene fiction channel)
Personally, I find the ‘Crossing Over With John Edward’ program offensive. It is a terrible con, convincing poor people that rather than overcoming the terrible loss of the death of a loved one, they should do something insane and put their trust in a man they don’t even know. Just like so-called psychics… if these people have real powers, why aren’t they all fabulously wealthy from winning the lottery, finding buried treasure, etc.?
don willard, just think about it logically: could the separate mediums through whom those dead spirit researchers were supposedly leaving clues just possibly have been in on it together?
If those people who died in the airship crash supposedly told a medium what caused the crash, and the facts as they supposedly relayed them were positively confirmed to be true, then someone else (still alive in the world) DID know what happened to cause the crash - otherwise, the “spirits’” account couldn’t have been “proved” to be true. If, on the other hand, no real living person had any idea of what caused the crash, then the “spirits” could say whatever they wanted and nobody would be able to confirm it.
Also, I find it very hard to believe that airship passengers could know specifically what caused a crash - when I fly in a plane, for example, I haven’t the faintest idea of what’s going on in the cockpit. If the plane crashed and I happened to live, I likely wouldn’t know the cause (until later investigations were published) except in very general terms - e.g., “There was a fire” or “We crashed into a mountain.”
There is a reason why not one single person - of the many, many who have tried - to win James Randi’s $1,000,000 have been successful - because they are all frauds.
Stupdendous man, that site is great, by the way.
“Note that the OP is talking about a program on the Sci-Fi channel.”
So, I saw the same guy on 20/20 or some similar program.
Mostly he just asks lots & lots of not very specific questions until he can narrow things down. A lot of times he missed too! Kinda 20 questions in a really fast way.
But there are others who can do better. Like I said, its more the other way around. But the dead aren’t going to pay the guy. So its better to have living clients.