I have tried to explain this away with critical thinking, and have come up with a few possible explanations, but I’d be curious as to your take on it.
Long ago, a young lady of 17 was dragged to a psychic by some of her friends. She was a complete non-believer, but went along for the fun. Her friends paid for her reading, so she reluctantly sat through it.
Said the psychic, “When I do a reading, I usually see both good things and bad things, but I always ask the subject if he or she wants to hear only the good things. But in your case, there is a bad thing that I must tell you about, because it is very important. Sometime in the future, your parents will be travelling out west, and will get into a horrible car accident. The doctors will tell you that neither of them will stand a chance, that they will die within hours. They will urge you to withhold treatment. I’m telling you now, you must insist that the doctors do all they can to save them. They will tell you it’s no use, but you have to keep insisting that they keep trying. You are all that will keep your parents alive.”
Said 17-year-old girl blew this off as so much bunk, and pretty much forgot the whole thing.
Some 20 or 30 years later, her parents were in a car accident, not way out west, but decidedly west of their home. The doctors said that both parents would not last out the night, and the humane thing would be to pull the plug. The daughter refused to let them do so. Long story short, the father went home the next week, and the mother came out of her coma 6 months later. Both lived for decades past that.
True story, or at least told to me as such.
So, how did the psychic get such an extrordinary hit?
I dunno. Sure is odd how this one girl managed to remember this one thing for like twenty or thirty years. Never heard the story, myself. Doesn’t have a name attached or anything, does it?
I mean… it has to be true because someone said it, right? Like about the baby in the microwave?
By chance. She probably says stuff like that just to awe the readee, but all the ones for whom the prediction doesn’t come true (a believer would say “hasn’t come true yet”) don’t tell people about it so it can be posted on message boards.
Another factor is that the woman, now in her thirties or forties, may very well not exactly remember a reading she got as a complete nonbeliever several decades earlier. If her mind is as adaptable and mutable as most people’s, she’ll probably forget the stuff that didn’t fit at all, rationalize some stuff that fit only a little bit (e.g. “way out west” became “decidedly west of their home”), and unconsciously add some details to make the reading seem even more accurate. This is easy enough to do when you’re in a normal frame of mind, even easier when your parents are dying and you want to keep them alive.
A couple of questions, out of interest: Who told you this story? Do you know any of the people in it? Are the parents dead now?
So it happened to a friend of a friend?
Not meaning to be snide about it, but that strikes me as the crucial part of this story. There’s no point in commenting about something without knowing the actual first-person unvarnished truth of the situation.
The most probable explanation is that it’s not a true story (no offence meant)
But when I was much younger there was a shop round the corner run by a lady who knew exactly what you wanted before you opened your mouth, every time.
It might be that I was more gullible as a youngster and she was simply guessing because I often wanted the same thing, and that I only remembered the correect guesses. But the psychic rumour was maintained by other people than me.
Cold reading techniques and shrewd guessing with a few specifics thrown out just in case and a lot of vague (in the west) type bullshit…its standard psykic techniques. I’ve seen the exact same thing on accounts by the police of psykic crime finder types…lots of vague stuff that can be interpereted, a few specifics that are essentially guesses just in case, and some other data that is put in and can’t be verrified to make it sound good (the killer is looking at something blue 2 hours before he does the deed, and has tied his shoe in a casual way, blah blah blah…).
If you throw out enough stuff, you are bound to get a few ‘hits’…and only the hits will be remembered. My guess is, if we had of recorded this incident that there was a hell of a lot of meaningless bullshit thats been forgotten in the one lucky ‘hit’. And if we went back to ALL the people that went to this girl/guy for a reading, we’d see a lot more misses than hits.
Anyway, I’m sure the real skeptics will be along later to really do this (again), but you might want to google up The Amazing Randy and see what he has to say about this stuff…its all on his web site, the tactics and strategies of psykic ‘readings’.
As for who told the story, it was told to me by my girlfriend who was told it by her mother, the 17-year-old. So the psychic reading, if it happened, was some 68 years ago. My girlfriend knew her grandparents, and there is no doubt that they were in a horrific accident, and there is no doubt as to its location.
68 years ago. That could go towards explaining a lot.
The old “Friend of a Friend” story is not evidence. Even if you know the person who told the story quite well, a lot of time has passed. Even the most well meaning person can recall things incorrectly. And it is not unknown for people to tell things in a way as to not appear to be fools, perhaps even unconsciously.
What strikes me as odd is the claim the doctors would tell her to ‘pull the plug’ that night. That… honestly, I can’t think of any way to be sure people will be in a coma forever that fast without, uhm, missing a head. I mean, if her father came home in only a week, he couldn’t have been hurt… that badly.
Cold reading is a great way to predict the past, but not so great at predicting the future. And it was a very specific prediction. This would not have been a very good “safe” prediction, such as “something bad will happen to someone you may or may not know.”
One has to wonder if the original prediction bears a lot of – or even a little of – resemblance to the prediction told to me 7 decades later.
I’m not positive about the week, I think I just made that up. (You see how these things get started?!?) The 6 months is a time that was told to me, though.
Good point on doctors being so hasty on pulling the plug. Sounds pretty irresponsible. Then again, the hospitals in that area are sort of notorious.
As well, the “pulling the plug the same night” may have changed in the retelling for dramatic effect. It may well have happened over a different timeline.
Another thing strikes me – The psychic said the trip would be out west. The folks involved lived on the east coast. So “west” is a pretty safe bet, as a car trip “out east” would have been a rather damp one.
If I make a series of predictions, most vague but a few not, in 20 years which ones are you likely to remember? The ones that were wrong, or the one or two that were close to right. Doesn’t take a psykic to do something like that…just someone who understands human psychology. Its their stock in trade. You spend an hour probing the person, during the course of which you throw out a lot of vague ‘predictions’ and a few wild guesses. If your wild guesses are wrong, who is going to remember them at all? If you get lucky and one is even close…voila! You are right! Then you can go back with the vague predictions (like your in the west example…west of what exactly? Western part of the country, west of their house? The psykic is intentionally vague) and you can fit them in with the lucky guess…thats why they are vague.
I’ve seen this kind of stuff before. If you throw out enough ‘predictions’ you are bound to get a hit eventually…and only the hits will be remembered, along with the vague stuff that can be fit to nearly anything.
If he was REALLY a psykic he could have told her the details and the specifics…and he’d be wealthy beyond any of our dreams. Hell, I know where he could pick up a quick million just by doing Randy’s psykic tests and passing it. Not to mention the possibilities with the stock market and gambling, etc…
Why? As soon as I heard the story, I was immediately skeptical. I just wanted to hear what other skeptics have to say on the matter. We do this on snopes all the time.
But the one prediction given was extremely specific (though of course it could have been much more so). So either the prediction was real ( :rolleyes: ), or was a terrific coincidence, or somehow the “facts” morphed over the years. I’m inclined to go with the last one.
Or all of those things (except the fact it was a ‘real’ predictions) factored in. Most likely it was a lucky guess thrown out there along with other guesses (most of which were forgotten as they didn’t happen), along with a fair amount of morphing of the facts (it was a traumatic time for your friend, things in memory tend to get scrambled about at that time), and it was a PLANNED coincidence…i.e. the psykic was probably throwing out a few specific guesses in the hopes one would hit close (and the knowledge that if they didn’t, they would be forgotten, especially if one DID hit close to the mark)…or at least be REMEMBERED to have hit close.
Again, this is a pretty standard technique by psykics, to put out specific guesses in the hopes that they get a hit. This guy just got lucky (if the events as related are close to accurate, and the ‘prediction’ really was as said). Again, not to impune the accuracy or whatever of your friend, but psykics RELY on human psychology and our notorious strange and unreliable memory…a memory that is like a fish going after a shinny object, ignoring the myriad dull objects around it.
The psychic tells an auto accident story to everybody when she gives a reading*. Some standard warnings about doctors, and a plea not to give up are tossed in for good measure. Due to the large number of auto accidents every year, I am surprised that it took 20 or 30 years for the psychic to score a hit.
*At least that’s what I heard from my neighbor’s sister, who once met a psychic at the state fair.
I agree about the pulling the plug problem, but there is an even bigger one. 68 years ago was 1936, and the concept of pulling the plug did not exist then. There were no sophicticated heart lung machines or respirators that kept people alive. Penicillin hadn’t even been discovered. So, if this event happened at all, I suspect it actually was a doctor telling the 17 year old he thought the parents would die, when they actually recovered. That I believe.
Hmm, interesting. I’ve never heard that before. So I wonder if all of the friends of this girl got the same prediction. That would be unwise of the psychic, to make such a dire claim for all of them, lest they compare notes.
Perhaps the psychic made that prediction for only one person in the group.
This might be a case of modern terminology finding its way into an old story. I probably inadvertantly added that bit. If it was possible in that day for doctors to keep patients alive in some way in such circumstances, then your point is moot. But I’d rather have a medical-type person answer that, as I’m not qualified.
Also, remember that the psychic prediction was in the 30s, but the actual accident would have been in the 50s or 60s, FWIW.
I don’t. The central theme of the story is that the girl should plea with the doctors to not give up. It’s the pleading that’s the important part.
Then again, by adding the pleading bit in later, the story becomes one of personal heroism. And knowing the person this happened to, that’s certainly not out of the question.