By the way, if the topic of the MDC comes up at all, she will tell lies and half-truths about the Challenge and Mr. Randi, then move on to the next questioner to avoid rebuttal. In such a controlled situation, bringing it up will do more harm than good.
Since she’s a ‘professional’ I don’t think it’s any kind of invasion of privacy to link to her web site, so here it is. It sounds weird as all hell- a combination of mirror gazing and sensory deprivation and the like.
My friend sees her today so I’m really interested to hear his report. Of course for somebody his age (mid 30s) he ‘knows’ a shocking shortage of dead people; his parents, grandmothers, and other older relatives are all still alive and he’s never lost any family members save a great-grandmother who died of antiquity many years ago (so nothing unresolved there) and a his grandfathers who he barely knew so doesn’t really miss (again, no real reason to send him a message) or any first-tier friends, therefore even if she was Rita Mae from Ghost (after Sam Wheat turns her legit) he wouldn’t be the best case study.
Johnathon Edwards gives great cold readings. He is a master of the art . South Park had a great show on him 'The Biggest Douche in the Universe". They showed some techniques he uses.
my roomie used to work for psychic readers network back in the late 90s [when she lived with us] and she could do a cold reading over the phone like you would not believe… amazing to sit and listen in =)
Common confusion due to the name - John Edwards is the US politician whose career imploded after he had an affair, John Edward is the cold reading “psychic.”
I disagree with this assessment. His technique is, in my personal opinion, shabby, limited and repetitive. Luckily for him, it doesn’t need to be any better than it is. Shabby as his readings are, they are good enough for the people who pay for his services.
Agreed, I’ve watched an episode and parts of others here and there, and he tends to resort to rapid-fire re-tries of new names/new relationships/etc. if he doesn’t get a hit right away. Since he talks so fast when he’s floundering for a hit, then slows down and talks about a lot of easily-generalizable stuff when he’s more “hot”, then it’s easy for the enthralled audience to forget about when he was saying something closer to, “There’s a man who wants to talk to you (pauses for a cue from the person or for them to prompt him)… I think his name starts with a… (pause) J? James, John, Jack? A father, grandfather, brother?”
I suspect that the prof is wrong that she doesn’t do cold reading. She might say she doesn’t, but she probably does. She babbles and waits for cues, or head nods, or says an intial and waits for the mark to fill in the blanks just like the rest of them do.
Princhester’s suspicion that she’s getting info from the prof and doing a hot reading is also very possible.
It’s also possible that’s she will just avoid saying anything falsifiable. “An older lady with white hair says you will meet two men. One of them is dangerous, the other is a friend. There is a career opportunity waiting for you in June, but you have to look for it.” Crap like that. Useless crap.
The best thing to do is to give nothing back at all. Just stare blankly. Confirm or deny nothing. Make no offer to help fill in any blanks. Be a statue.
Personally, I don’t even think I’d have to patience to do that. I’d just flat out tell them they’re full of crap. I see no point in trying to be polite to a con artist. If someone is trying to play you for an idiot, why be nice to them?
Here’s a great primeron cold reading techniques. It starts with a discussion of FBI profiling techniques, and suggests that they are the same as a psychic reading. It goes on to list a few specific techniques of cold reading, and gives specific examples of them being used.
Note - the Ian Rowland cited in the article is Ianzin from this thread.
My friend said that after listening to her talk about her experiences (general Sixth Sense childhood and the like) and about chakras and auras and energies and afouao du aodjf aoiu fiouaoduf aoiuapdiuf ao [insert New Age terms here] and give a couple of readings that he has no doubts that she believes she has powers.
I’ll call my friend Earl since that’s how I usually refer to him on the Dope.
The psychic did do a reading on him and he was as non-responsive as possible, but she did make a couple of scores that surprised him. She told him there were two spirits with him. One was a stocky man with salt and pepper hair who had a message not for Earl but for Earl’s mother. She asked if the man sounded familiar based on his description. He thought about his family members and said ‘I can think of somebody who matches that but I can’t imagine why he would come to see me’; the person who matched that [rather vague] description was his aunt’s husband who died many years ago, to whom Earl wasn’t particularly close (they saw each other at holidays and the like), and of course stocky men with salt and pepper hair aren’t exactly like bearded ladies in ballet tights when it comes to rarity.
Earl is from a- to put it politely and mildly- less than fully functional or socially presentable family- all kinds of dramas and Springer worthy hijinks. Presumably the psychic knew nothing about this, or even if his mother was still alive. Her message was “Your mother is about to move, it will not be by her choice, and he’s telling me the state will be involved somehow- perhaps a nursing home or… some other state run place.” (His mother is about 60 and has been evicted in the past year and is currently living with family, so this kind of surprised him.)
The other person she saw was a very old lady who was “somebody’s grandmother… or great-grandmother… or both” and “her name may have an H in it… not that this really helps” (she said that about the ‘not that this helps’ part) and that she was too faint to really convey anything. Well he had a great-grandmother and her name was RutH, but I would expect we all know older women with an H somewhere in their name. (My own grandmothers didn’t but then my father’s name was StepHen and it would never occur to me that he’d try to identify himself from beyond by saying ‘there’s an H in his name’; my father was also a stocky man with salt and pepper hair though, so maybe he decided to give Earl a message and took one of his H grandmas with him even though he died long before I met Earl.)
So anyway- the part about his mother being moved into a state run place when- to the best of his knowledge- she didn’t know if his mother was living or whether she lived in a BelAir mansion or a shanty-town outside of Cleveland surprised him. She also said “Your mother is having memory problems”, which to his knowledge she isn’t though he only speaks to her about twice a year by phone and hasn’t seen her in about 4 years. His father in fact has early onset Alzheimers. The other stuff she told him wasn’t so much miss as very vague (“don’t take candy from strangers who want you to go to their van” type stuff- nothing remotely specific).
She has another web page about her services and charges $150 per hour for a reading. That would be interesting, but I think I’d rather go to a strip bar where I know I’ll get my money’s worth.
So she does do cold reading after all.
I wouldn’'t exactly call those hits. She basically guessed that his mother was elderly. The old lady with an ‘h’ in her name isn’t even a hit since his mother isn’t having memory problems. Not that it would have been remotely meaningful if she were. What older people don’t?
The guess that he might know a “stocky man with salt and pepper hair” basically amounts to a guess that he may have, at some point in his life, met a man over 50.
I think he’s wrong that she believes her own bullshit. Those are pretty caculated cold reading reaches. If she was really just nuts, she wouldn’t have known how to be so general.
Incidentally, if these dead people can tell her something as specific as “his mama is going to be moved by the state,” then why can’t they ever say their fucking names?
This was a garden variety con artist, not even a sincerely deluded nutjob. The backstory is meaningless. They all have them.
I have always wondered that- are they playing fucking charades over there? “He says is name is three syllables… first syllable rhymes with…”. Her official explanation (because someone asked) was “it’s like channels on a radio- some come in strong and some are very weak and you can barely hear them”, but supposedly when she said her name it sounded like it had an H sound in it (which of course could be Heather, Ruth, Mohawk, Lashondra or even Isabel if great-grandma had a lisp).
My curiosity would be that presumably they don’t have their physical bodies so why would they look old? If I were an old person who died and came back as a ghost then I’d want to look 30 and, if I could, svelter than I ever did in life. And why are they wearing clothes? Do fibers have ghost to? And is it the clothes they died in, or that they were buried in, or can they pick out a new ensemble at an otherworldly GAP?
I share the bullshit assessment and personally I wouldn’t be stunned if she had access to the professor’s class role. While I personally couldn’t google up my friend’s family, I can find him on ancestry.com and there are numerous databases that you can buy access to (some require a P.I. license or collection bureau license) that will allow you to find all matter of info, and his mom has a criminal record (nothing violent or that required jail time, but minor charges) that would come up.
Sorry, I’m not getting it. What were the scores?
Was, also the Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God preacher.
Tell her your psychic ghost friends are ticked off because her psychic ghost friends owe them money and if she would just transfer 5000 dollars into your account temporarily…
A well-done medium is rare.
Recommended questions ? The only thing to recommend about when seeing a medium is means of physical violence.
“Hey, you might think that my fist just hit your nose, but it’s not my fault. Asmazothoth told me to do it. Sorry.”
Pretty much as I expected. Cold reading, despite specific denials of same.
Thing is, a significant portion of the audience has probably heard of Cold Reading, knows it’s something that charlatans do, but don’t actually know what the term means - thus, the medium only needs assure the audience that she won’t use Cold Reading, and many of them will come away believing the claim and the act.
Is it possible that she could be both deluded and performing cold reading?
As in, rather than cynically, she has instead intuitively built up a bank of cold-reading techniques that work, but attributes the mental processes she uses to the spirit world. Truly intuitive (“Blink” style) thinking can often feel kinda spooky. Is that possible?
John Edward is the “psychic”.
John Edwards is the former vice-presidential candidate who had an affair.
Jonathan Edwards is the “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” preacher.
But if you were a ghost, and for some reason wanted to communicate with someone who knew you when you were alive, presumably you’d try to appear in some form that looked familiar to that person. I might not recognize my grandmother if she looked like she did when she was 30.