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The clever art of cold readings
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The time was not to long ago where you could turn your TV on late night and watch infomercials for psychics like Ms. Cleo, a gaudy woman with a thick Jamaican accent, who would tell you your future for a couple dollars a minute (she was later proved fake, not only her accent but also her so called psychic abilities).
You may have also seen singer Dionne Warwick doing her own infomercials for the Psychic Friends Network (to bad she couldn't have warned her good friend Michael Jackson of his untimely death). Even more recently we had television shows such as Crossing Over with John Edward and Beyond with James Van Praagh. Talk shows are starting to employ psychics now, Sylvia Brown make frequent appearances on The Montel Williams Show. The question is, are these few that have been named really psychic? Or are they just using a clever trick known as cold reading, a technique that has been used by magicians and mentalists for years. Professional illusionists have said the way this works is by simply studying the body language of the person they are reading. When “Psychics“ use this technique they claim to be obtaining this unknown information about the sitter from the spirits of people that have crossed over.
First lets analyze Crossing Over with John Edward and Beyond with James Van Praagh. Different shows but same exact format. John and James stand up in front of there audience and give cold readings. These two men when using this technique seem to baffle the minds of millions of people with there hits and accuracy. Of course to someone who doesn’t know what to look for this would seem amazing. Again the question is, are they really all that accurate? or is it the sitter themselves that makes them accurate. For example one of them may say "I am seeing a male right now". Ok statistically speaking about half of the audience will either want to be visited by a male or female, and by doing this the cold reader (John or James) has eliminated half of the room. Then they will continue to ask vague questions till they hook a person in. It is actually very clever how they can work a person, for example one could say "I am seeing water, lots of water" one person could make the connection that there father died by drowning, and there's a hit for the reader, or one can make the connection that there father loved to fish on the lake, amazingly it would be another hit for the reader.
So either way the reader always has the upper hand. One of the most comedic points when watching these shows are when they are trying to address the name of the deceased. It really is amazing that they get all this "unknown" information from the dearly departed and they can pass on all these messages, but why can't the reader come up with a name? With these types of cold readings they all usually start off in same similar fashion, something like this "I am hearing a J sound, like a Jason or a Joseph". Then someone will raise there hand and say “my father Jerry died two months ago,” again its another hit for the reader because he came up with the J sound. When you get a room filled with people who A. Lost a loved one, B. Want to make contact with that loved one and C. Believe in what the reader is saying, you get people who become blind to facts.
People will totally ignore the 30 to 40 misses and only remember the 6 to 10 hits. They also fail to see how the reader can turn a miss into a hit. An example of this can be seen on the HBO television show Bullshit hosted by magicians Penn and Teller. In this episode titled "talking to the dead" it shows psychic Rosemary Altea doing a cold reading for a man who is trying to contact his mother. At one point she says she his mother is very shy, but after a second of the man showing no response she cleverly says but that is not like her at all, which then triggered a response in the man. The best part of the episode is a scene before the readings start where we see Rosemary walking around talking to potential subjects, and what do we see? Rosemary walks right up to the man who lost his mother and asks him "who would you like to contact?" The man replies "my mother". So when the session starts Rosemary knows exactly who to go to for her amazing reading.
Another "psychic" who also uses the cold reading method is the (in)famous Sylvia Browne. But let's not get into personal feelings on the woman, let's look at the facts. Sylvia claims to have helped thousands of people with her spot on accuracy, but she is rarely right. Her yearly "predictions" are so vague that 100 possible things can relate to make them hits. She is a frequent guest on The Montel Williams Show where the audience can ask her questions and what not. This is where Sylvia has been wrong many many times. One of the most famous foul ups Browne has made was in February of 2003, where a devastated family told a story of there son Shawn Hombeck.
Shawn was kidnapped in late 2002 at the young age of 11. Browne then gave a description of the man who abducted the boy, told them where he may be found and finally she told the parents to most horrible news parents could ever hear, she told them Shawn was dead. The troubled parents asked to meet with Sylvia for more information after the show but she told them that they would have to pay the going rate for her services which was $700 for a half an hour. A few months later Shawn Hombeck was found, but he wasn't decomposing in some shallow grave, to the amazement of the parents he was alive. The description of the man didn't match that of Sylvia’s nor did the location of where she said the boy would be found. Great job Sylvia! On January 3rd, 2006 she appeared on Coast to Coast AM and she started to talk about a mining incident that happened in West Virginia.
Sylvia Browne said live on air that they would be found alive. Sadly 12 of the 13 miners were dead, when they were found. James Randi a professional debunker of the paranormal challenged Sylvia Browne to take his million dollar challenge live on Larry King, in which she accepted. When Randi didn't receive word from Browne he asked what the problem was. Browne’s management responded that she had no way to get a hold of him. After Randi supplied ways of contacting him, she then said he wasn't a godly man and wanted nothing to do with him. Godly isn't a term that should be coming out of this woman’s mouth, that just my opinion though.
So are these few that have been named really psychic? Do they possess the gift to speak with the deceased? Or are they just charlatans taking advantage of people while they are in there most desperate times? Share your thoughts.
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