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Are All Psychics & Fortune Tellers Fakes?

Heckler20 said:
I read Tarot as well and I totally concur with the above point. People have often said 'Oh so and so says you read tarot, can you read for me?' and then proceeded to assail me with their problems to which I have attentively listened and offered advice ...
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Heckler, thanks so much for this very sensible post. It is great to hear from someone else who has done readings.

And, I have no doubt, you also have the experience which I remember from my days when I read cards. A woman of a talkative and fiery disposition, asked me for a reading, saying she wanted to know if it would be a good idea to go with a young man of her acquaintance, for a weekend in the mountains. Lots of talk about this relationship, which I duly heeded, as I encouraged her to shuffle the cards. One did not really need any cards, to see that the weekend was a bad idea, and the relationship in general was a walking disaster. However ...

I duly set them out. Visconti tarot - lovely artwork. But there was a whole series of disastrous images. You would read it with more expertise than I. Three of swords ... Wheel of fortune up side down ... The falling tower (I never liked that card.) Like a cavalcade of disaster.

So, with all due sincerity, I was able to divine by the cards, what I already thought as a matter of common sense. No, it was not a good idea to go on this trip.

Some time later, she rang me to get sympathy, because she had gone on this trip with her moody young man, and it was all frightful. It was just as I had predicted, but she did not thank me for the accurate prediction. She wanted more readings, although it was obvious that she would not take any advice that was given.

People do as they like. There are some who will not necessarily take advice, even if they ask for it. And that, I suppose, is human nature.
 
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I learned the tarot as well - partly because I'm a huge fan of the artwork, have to say! And also its history. But I was several years into doing readings for self and friends when my dad told me his grandma had read the cards (ordinary playing cards) and was thought to be very accurate. She was that WW1 generation who lost sons in the War, though, so I think in that context, maybe many people turned to things like reading the cards and spiritualism. due to their grief.

I used to see it as a sort of Jungian thing - just a way of accessing parts of people's own thought-processes; drawing out what their subconscious mind probably was trying to flag up to them. I was perfectly capable of cold reading if I went blank too. I think one of the happiest people post a reading was someone I felt nothing from so sort of cold read her as an experiment to see if I could... (She was a very woo person, too). I did one reading that seemed to have a dramatic effect on the people present (again only for fun no money although I ended up with a rather wonderful payment). I was on a Virgin train for a few hours and, bored, I pulled my Rider-Waite deck out and started reading for myself as I was alone in the carriage. Those were the days! One of the steward type people went past, and asked if I'd come to the bar and read for the employees on the train as they were bored, too. He said there'd be a free drink in it so I went.

They all decided ahead of time to say nothing, give me nothing to cold read. Fine, I thought - I'll never see them again. Doesn't matter if I'm crap.

So they took turns to sit alone with me and I kept seeing the same thing; a certain rather unpleasant person trying to manipulate them. (Not Richard Branson! I'm sure). Turned out they had asked me as an experiment to see if I could pick up anything about their manager, who was a nasty piece of work and making their lives hell... And they felt I had picked it up. They promised me free drinks whenever I went on that train if one of them was on, ever afterwards! (And I used that train a lot in those days).
 
I like the Jungian idea above, he wrote some interesting stuff, ahead of his time perhaps and there might be something in the idea that we have a collective process or mode of operation that can be accessed somehow, possibly by the use of symbols or symbols allied to a type of process.

I'm interested in such things and am in the 'want to believe' camp, but until someone can pull off real 'psychic' ability in a controlled double blind scenario, I'm going to stay firmly in the camp of the skeptics.

If I had the money, I'd offer a £100K prize to anyone who could prove psychic communication in an experiment devised by me to a p <.02 level at least a couple of times.

Entry fee £1000. Good odds, no?

As for the demonstrably false 'psychics' who appear on stage and television duping people for money, they have my unending contempt for the exploitation of the gullible and desperate. If there are real psychics, how pissed off must they be by the charlatans?
 
I've been reading tarot for many years, which I do in good faith - I don't consider myself a psychic and frankly, I'm no good at making predictions out of my own head. I lay out the cards and interpret what's on them, which is exactly what it says on the tin, as far as being a tarot reader is concerned. If I were to say "give me so much money to prevent this bad thing from happening (or to cause something to happen)" - or to give the impression that I could cause something to happen by any means - that would be fraud. Even insisting to the querent that only one outcome is possible and that anything is set in stone, to me smacks of dishonesty.

I have my own theories as to why the cards behave the way they do. I used to take the more practical view that it was simply psychological principles at work, but after so many years of witnessing patterns I've had to change my beliefs on that

When I did readings for the public, I did charge a small amount for my time (not the reading) mainly because it was tough to carve out an hour of time from my schedule and also to prevent a client from becoming too dependent. Some people are needy for advice and will become overly reliant on someone they feel has "the answers". I'd much rather they learn to use their own intuition and even learn to do their own divinations of that's their thing.

The hardest part of tarot reading is managing the interpersonal issues, like - I'll know when the client is lying, or hiding something - it will be right there in the cards. It becomes tricky, because how do you say "you asked about your finances, but what about this extramartital affair you're having?" You can't, so you have to work around it, very delicately, until they are willing to talk about what they really want to know.

It can be difficult also when a person wants a reading as a lark (especially in groups, that's the worst) and something very difficult turns up in the cards - say, there's a traumatic event in their past, and they probably didn't expect to talk about it, and definitely don't want to talk about it a group setting - yet I can't skip over it and still give them a decent and (to my mind ) accurate reading. I think some people don't realize how much a tarot reader sees when they lay out the cards.

I also try not to encourage anything that might become a self-fulfilling prophecy. That one is really tough, because people do want answers - it's why they came in the first place. I'm more interested in the client making the best decisions for themselves than I am in being "right" about my predictions, so I try to lay things out as potentialities rather than certainties, even if that looks vague.

In short - reading tarot is easy, mastering diplomacy is not.
 
The worst Psychic in the world must be a brit called Colin Fry, he just yells at the poor audience members until they give in and say that they were wrong about their own mothers name and he was right! :D
 
TimBuck2 said:
The worst Psychic in the world must be a brit called Colin Fry, he just yells at the poor audience members until they give in and say that they were wrong about their own mothers name and he was right! :D
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If it's possible to speak to the dead, he's doing so for sure now.

Colin Fry, medium - obituary
 
TBH I have never had a reading whether it be tarot, medium, psychic, etc. that I have found convincing - and I must have had about 20 over the last decade or so. I am, however, pretty good at cold reading other people, and despite the fact I tell people I have no psychic ability at all, they often comment on how accurate and insightful I am. Make of that what you will......
 
TimBuck2 said:
The worst Psychic in the world must be a brit called Colin Fry, he just yells at the poor audience members until they give in and say that they were wrong about their own mothers name and he was right! :D
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He is dead, as someone pointed out above, but he always struck me as someone who genuinely believed in his 'gift'himself.
 
escargot1 said:
No he didn't. He was an out-and-out trumpeting fraud.
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I'm sure I should have more respect for the dead, but I'm deeply disturbed that he was proven to be a fake, and therefore making money through fraudulent means, yet rather than going to pris ended up with his own TV show, continuing the fraud.
 
I've never been impressed by most cold readers though I have encountered two who were right on target when they singled out me under the pavilion/pagoda at that Spiritualist camp in Lilly Dale, NY.

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One said that I grew up in a large grey house with red flowers planted in front of it... that was absolutely correct.

Another one said the man with dark hair and blue eye's will never marry you... and that was absolutely correct too. So there are some authentic ones out there but they are far and few in-between.
 
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I haven't found any that have been really accurate, except with small things like " I can see you in a place where there are a lot of bushes and trees".
A couple though have named my sister and said that my Mother had a message for her.
One was that her husband was sick and needed to go to the doctor because he had liver cancer.
They did so and there was nothing wrong and as they were sceptics to begin with, I guess they thought I was around the twist.
 
I have been accurate with the cards but I tend not to do it much.
In October we are going back to W.A. and hope to visit the Fremantle market.
Last time we went a few years ago there was a maori psychic there with chin tattoos who was accurate on some things.
I had asked her if my youngest would marry and she said that she would marry a Nordic man.
The man she married was Aussie but he looks rather like Thor in the movies- tall, blonde, long hair and beard so I guess she was kind of right.
 
I forgot about the time I used the madam what's it (can't remember) cards. And I got the combination that pointed to the death of a mother figure. This did worry me at the time. But eventually I forgot about it. Then I found out a friend's mother I had known really well had died very unexpectedly around the time I had done that reading. :eek:
 
Mag-ona said:
I've never been impressed by most cold readers though I have encountered two who were right on target when they singled out me under the pavilion/pagoda at that Spiritualist camp in Lilly Dale, NY.

e7c86063e7e9e2799d2b1939c925f846.jpg


One said that I grew up in a large grey house with red flowers planted in front of it... that was absolutely correct.

Another one said the man with dark hair and blue eye's will never marry you... and that was absolutely correct too. So there are some authentic ones out there but they are far and few in-between.
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Yeah sorry about that you're just not my type.
 
I met a medium yesterday while out doing my day-job as a meter reader. He lived in a big fancy old house which the Lyle sisters, from Tate and Lyle, apparently owned, and I made the mistake of asking if it was haunted. He went on to tell me for a good twenty minutes about his beliefs and time as a "medium".
All well and good. Each to their own.
But he mentioned Colin Fry and I said, well, hang on, he's been proven to be a fake. My medium got quite angry and I had to change the subject but it really got me thinking.
Colin Fry, John Edwards et al, they've all been PROVED beyond a doubt to fake their results. They are liars.

So why do other so-called "real" mediums, like this guy I was talking to, defend them? Are they ALL just liars?
To me, this guy seemed genuine, but the fact he defended a proven liar made me dismiss him completely. Are they all just scam artists who know what they're doing is a lie?

I met another "psychic" years ago, a famous one who has been on Most Haunted. He came to the castle I worked at and demanded I tell him all the ghost stories so he could spin it for an article in the local paper (who were there with him for that exact purpose). When I refused and told him "You tell me, you're the psychic," he got quite angry and couldn't come up with fuck all.
 
I'm getting quite pissed off here. This guy spun me an entire line about the two Lyle sisters from Tate & Lyle who lived in his house in Rhu, Helensburgh and got the ferry over to Greenock for their sugar plant. One was into art and built a new wing which he showed me, so she could paint with the sun coming in the windows. So he said.

But it seems the Lyle guy had three SONS.
I can find no connection to Rhu.
 
escargot1 said:
Wait, what?
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Dumbarton Castle.
I had a pretty big article published in a paranormal magazine about the ghosts there. I keep meaning to re-do it and re-publish it but never get around to it. The magazine is long defunct and I never got paid for it so f*** 'em.

I had some scary experiences there.
 
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Iris said:
I have been accurate with the cards but I tend not to do it much.
In October we are going back to W.A. and hope to visit the Fremantle market. ...
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That is similar to me - I do tea leaf readings, and coffee cup readings, but not very often. I have made accurate readings - perhaps it is just a coincidence - I don't make any great claims. Sometimes I can't see anything, so I have to tell the person that it is not possible to do a reading at present. I never take money. It is just a pass time.

Good luck in Fremantle, it is a lovely area.
 
Oh, excuse my sweariness last night. I was steaming. :drink:

I should also add, I didn't realise Colin Fry had died. Maybe that contributed to "my" psychic's irritation. Oddly enough, it seems as if this local guy calls his company "Sixth Sense"....I can find very little out on the internet about any of his story.
 
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On a different note - can anyone recommend me a good, SIMPLE introductory book on mentalism? I had 13 Steps To Mentalism years ago but it was too dense and detailed.
I am finishing up my Robin Hood novels next month and plan on writing a new trilogy about a warrior druid in post-Roman Britain. Seems like I need to figure out some of Derren Brown's secrets...
 
XEPER_ said:
I should also add, I didn't realise Colin Fry had died.
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Colin Fry was an interesting psychic/fraud. He was lambasted on the Bad Psychics site over the Trumpet Affair, well worth a read. I read a couple of his books. (Used to do cardio on treadmills, I'd read anything to receive the boredom.)

Fry was a dedicated smoker who died of lung cancer last year at 53. He reckoned he wasn't worried about the terminal diagnosis because death held no fear for him.
 
escargot1 said:
Colin Fry was an interesting psychic/fraud. He was lambasted on the Bad Psychics site over the Trumpet Affair, well worth a read. I read a couple of his books. (Used to do cardio on treadmills, I'd read anything to receive the boredom.)

Fry was a dedicated smoker who died of lung cancer last year at 53. He reckoned he wasn't worried about the terminal diagnosis because death held no fear for him.
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I had no idea he'd died. Interesting that he still had a career after the fraud with a spirit trumpet.
 
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