• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Are All Psychics & Fortune Tellers Fakes?

I'm not sure i understand "its not a gift if you're charging for it". Both semantically and ethically i can't see the sense of it.

On the semantic side surely you mean its not a gift if you're paying for it. And the medium presumably isn't. The client or sitter isn't said to have a gift. And in the case of the psychic the giver is presumably "god"/"the universe"/"spirit" who is not commonly said to be charging them.
If someone gives me something for free and i sell it to you its still my gift, its just not yours.

That aside the moral argument doesn't really make much sense either. Its surely the only alleged positive talent that people are supposed to be wrong to profit from. Why? Assuming it to be real (or even just believed by both parties to be real) someone who speaks to the dead, sees the future, or heals the sick is surely going to be inundated by people night and day demanding their time and talents. If its taking up all their time how are they meant to pay their bills? How are they meant to reduce the number of people making demands of them? And why are they remotely obliged to do it for free regardless?
 
I am sure most psychics who charge money are fake, but I will use the word “ serendipity “ meaning an moment in time during a happy chance.

My wife as a young girl during a high school fair had a lady playfully reading palms of the students.

My wife said the lady told her the letter that would start the name of the person that she would marry and she would have two daughters which came to be absolutely true.

At a another fund raiser for a local museum a card reader using tarot cards fold my wife and I that the cards were sad and was closing her booth.

One of my wife’s aunts died the next day.

Maybe a few people hide their abilities.
 
gattino said:
I'm not sure i understand "its not a gift if you're charging for it". Both semantically and ethically i can't see the sense of it.

On the semantic side surely you mean its not a gift if you're paying for it. And the medium presumably isn't. The client or sitter isn't said to have a gift. And in the case of the psychic the giver is presumably "god"/"the universe"/"spirit" who is not commonly said to be charging them.
If someone gives me something for free and i sell it to you its still my gift, its just not yours.

That aside the moral argument doesn't really make much sense either. Its surely the only alleged positive talent that people are supposed to be wrong to profit from. Why? Assuming it to be real (or even just believed by both parties to be real) someone who speaks to the dead, sees the future, or heals the sick is surely going to be inundated by people night and day demanding their time and talents. If its taking up all their time how are they meant to pay their bills? How are they meant to reduce the number of people making demands of them? And why are they remotely obliged to do it for free regardless?
Click to expand...
We've had all this. It's 'gift' as in 'talent'.
The person with the second sight (or singing voice, or knack for mental arithmetic or whatever) is the one who has metaphorically received the 'gift'. They can put it to whatever use they like or none at all. Some gifts/talents are more lucrative than others.
 
escargot said:
We've had all this. It's 'gift' as in 'talent'.
The person with the second sight (or singing voice, or knack for mental arithmetic or whatever) is the one who has metaphorically received the 'gift'. They can put it to whatever use they like or none at all. Some gifts/talents are more lucrative than others.
Click to expand...
Your post made me recall someone I knew, he could multiply in his head absolutely any figures, in less than a second.
I would have trouble with it just using a calculator, I could never understand how he did it, neither could he.
 
Ronnie Jersey said:
Your post made me recall someone I knew, he could multiply in his head absolutely any figures, in less than a second.
I would have trouble with it just using a calculator, I could never understand how he did it, neither could he.
Click to expand...
Yup, they tell you they just add X and Y and then multiply the first figure of each and then the second and then add them and carry the X and Y... :dunno:
Escet can do that but he's physicist.
 
escargot said:
Yup, they tell you they just add X and Y and then multiply the first figure of each and then the second and then add them and carry the X and Y... :dunno:
Escet can do that but he's physicist.
Click to expand...
I am in total awe of anyone who can do anything with numbers. I can't even add two figures and make them total the same thing twice.

Even if I use ALL my fingers.
 
catseye said:
I am in total awe of anyone who can do anything with numbers. I can't even add two figures and make them total the same thing twice.

Even if I use ALL my fingers.
Click to expand...
Thing is though, if you use your fingers you're one down. Confuses me NO end. :dunno:
 
escargot said:
Yup, they tell you they just add X and Y and then multiply the first figure of each and then the second and then add them and carry the X and Y... :dunno:
Escet can do that but he's physicist.
Click to expand...
I can't even figure that out at all, and how he multiplied long numbers instantly is just beyond me completely.
Total genius!
And this man was also a Neat Freak, I don't know if genius and neat freak go together, never even had a hair out of place!
 
Ronnie Jersey said:
Having had my own psychic experiences, I have visited different 'mediums' out of curiosity.
One 'Tarot Card Reader' (which I also do) told me to shuffle the deck before she read it, but only gave me 12 Tarot Cards - the deck is actually 78 Cards, which includes death, tragedies, happiness, etc. So in effect, she was cutting out the dark side of life and only going to read the happy cards. I refused and walked out.
Another reader I went to was an elderly woman with white hair, who actually appeared to go into a 'trance' like state, her eyes rolled back in her head, I was very young, she read my palm, and everything I remember came true. This was on the NJ Shore boardwalk, and I have the feeling that she was genuine, and very strange.
Went to a NJ carnival with side-shows, a woman read my palm and, astonishingly, saw a man I was going to meet with black hair, with the initial 'T', who I would shortly marry. Everything she told me came true, I was stunned.
Before that, I was recommended to visit a major psychic, who I had never heard of. I was determined to prove her fake, and pictured a brick wall in my mind, so as to not to allow her to see inside of me.
This woman was furious with me, she told me not to come back, that she knew what I was doing, and that she felt my 'powers' the instant I walked into the room. Once she calmed down, she said she realized I was a 'medium' myself, and wanted to know who in my family had the sixth sense, and I told her my British Grandmother passed it along to me. She told me future happenings that were absolutely on the money, and warned me about a few things, it was obvious that she did not like me.
I don't mean to say that these people are all genuine, in my experience the majority are not, just looking to make a bit of money. But there are a few who know their stuff, you just have to find them.
There is a young woman in my area who is very well-known for being able to 'speak' with dead family members and such, she is extremely popular and very hard to book an appointment with, I have been tempted to see her, but at the same time don't want to open a door that I may not be able to close, not fond of the dead coming to me.
Click to expand...
There are a few variations of laying out cards but as you said, you shuffled the deck and brought the cards you needed for the reading to the surface.

She wasn’t cutting out the dark side of life, as you say, but may have referred to the upside down interpretation of the cards in your reading.
There can’t be many readers who would give you the whole deck as that would just be a confusing mess of stuff that isn’t relevant.
It would be a bit like using a dictionary and reading it all the way through instead of just picking the word you wanted.
 
Ronnie Jersey said:
And this man was also a Neat Freak, I don't know if genius and neat freak go together, never even had a hair out of place!
Click to expand...
I'm not a neat freak.
Well, OK, I'm not much of a genius either, but hey...
 
Ronnie Jersey said:
Your post made me recall someone I knew, he could multiply in his head absolutely any figures, in less than a second.
I would have trouble with it just using a calculator, I could never understand how he did it, neither could he.
Click to expand...
I saw a documentary years ago about a guy who could do this. I'm not sure if it was the chap they based the film 'Rain Man' on, but whoever it was said that they see shapes and colours instead of numbers.
 
Getting back to the original question….

Are All Psychics & Fortune Tellers Fakes?​


Yes. Absolutely. Totally. 100%. Charlatans. Fraudsters.
I absolutely DETEST them.
 
...Surely a genuine Psychic would be able to foresee that they’re about to be exposed as a fraud?...
 
Floyd1 said:
I saw a documentary years ago about a guy who could do this. I'm not sure if it was the chap they based the film 'Rain Man' on, but whoever it was said that they see shapes and colours instead of numbers.
Click to expand...

a form of synaesthesia I think? Variations happen with autism because of the different visualisation experiences.
 
Found this bit of info in the IMDB Trivia section for Guillermo Del Toro's Nightmare Alley:

During a January 2022 interview with Terry Gross on the National Public Radio program "Fresh Air," Guillermo del Toro said that one of the reasons he had long been interested in the subject of grifters and fake psychics who prey on vulnerable and grieving people (like the ones depicted in this movie) was that, in 1998, when his father was kidnapped in Mexico and held for ransom, his family was immediately preyed upon by con artists claiming to be psychics. del Toro recounted, "one of the first warnings that came ... from the [hostage negotiator]--he said, beware of the 'psychics.' They're going to show up really early. And no sooner had I hung up the phone than I went to see my mother, and there were two 'psychics' sitting in the living room telling her they knew and they could lead us to where my father was because they could sense him. And this made an indelible impression. And that cruelty, which I saw firsthand, also is part of the spirit in this movie." When Gross asked del Toro what the so-called "psychics" told his mother, he replied, "they were there very shortly because I kicked them out. But what they were saying is that they could sense my father, that he was trying to communicate with her. And the speech was almost identical to what they - what Stan says in the movie.... the first thing they hooked on was, he loves you so very, very much, and he's trying to reach you, and he knows that you can save him. They use the same hooks. And that was evident to me. But my mother for a moment was harboring hope."
Link

Now THAT's the movie I would like to see (Nightmare Alley was so boring). Pretty disturbing these parasites are able to make a living off other people's misery like that.
 
GNC said:
Found this bit of info in the IMDB Trivia section for Guillermo Del Toro's Nightmare Alley:

During a January 2022 interview with Terry Gross on the National Public Radio program "Fresh Air," Guillermo del Toro said that one of the reasons he had long been interested in the subject of grifters and fake psychics who prey on vulnerable and grieving people (like the ones depicted in this movie) was that, in 1998, when his father was kidnapped in Mexico and held for ransom, his family was immediately preyed upon by con artists claiming to be psychics. del Toro recounted, "one of the first warnings that came ... from the [hostage negotiator]--he said, beware of the 'psychics.' They're going to show up really early. And no sooner had I hung up the phone than I went to see my mother, and there were two 'psychics' sitting in the living room telling her they knew and they could lead us to where my father was because they could sense him. And this made an indelible impression. And that cruelty, which I saw firsthand, also is part of the spirit in this movie." When Gross asked del Toro what the so-called "psychics" told his mother, he replied, "they were there very shortly because I kicked them out. But what they were saying is that they could sense my father, that he was trying to communicate with her. And the speech was almost identical to what they - what Stan says in the movie.... the first thing they hooked on was, he loves you so very, very much, and he's trying to reach you, and he knows that you can save him. They use the same hooks. And that was evident to me. But my mother for a moment was harboring hope."
Link

Now THAT's the movie I would like to see (Nightmare Alley was so boring). Pretty disturbing these parasites are able to make a living off other people's misery like that.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't agree that Nightmare Alley was boring but I'd also like to see a movie based on Del Toro's experiences.
 
Solexman said:
Getting back to the original question….

Are All Psychics & Fortune Tellers Fakes?​


Yes. Absolutely. Totally. 100%. Charlatans. Fraudsters.
I absolutely DETEST them.
Click to expand...
I have a complicated feeling about this. I mean, yes, all those so called psychics who tell mothers of kidnapped children that their kids are still alive, or who pretend to 'help' detectives and all that. But those 'psychics' who tell you that Dad is very happy on the Other Side and is watching over you? What about if that brings a measure of comfort to those who DO believe? If they aren't doing it for any kind of manipulative gain, but just giving some fairly bland 'message from the other side' for those who've lost someone close?

I mean, fake, yes, self-deluding, yes, but are they doing any harm?
 
catseye said:
I have a complicated feeling about this. I mean, yes, all those so called psychics who tell mothers of kidnapped children that their kids are still alive, or who pretend to 'help' detectives and all that. But those 'psychics' who tell you that Dad is very happy on the Other Side and is watching over you? What about if that brings a measure of comfort to those who DO believe? If they aren't doing it for any kind of manipulative gain, but just giving some fairly bland 'message from the other side' for those who've lost someone close?

I mean, fake, yes, self-deluding, yes, but are they doing any harm?
Click to expand...
I agree, as I have said before. I no longer get involved in these "they're all fakes" conversations, no matter where they take place. If the naysayers had my experiences they would take a different view. Hey ho everyone's entitled to their opinion, and perhaps the term "fact" can't be applied to the Fortean world.
 
Like many on here I have read countless books on this phenomena many contradict each other, I actually believe that there are a few that are genuine, however what they are in touch with is another matter

In so called primitive societies and magikal practice the precautions people take are extensive in order to protect against unwanted spirits and the like, it's unlikely in my opinion that Aunty Clara reading a few cards is channeling anything at all

I had a time of attending Spiritualist Churches, I always left so disappointed the biggest mystery we all face is what happens when we die, and all that seemed to happen is I've got someone whose name begins with a letter J, and she's offering you some flowers it was all very bland and uninspiring I guess it gave some comfort to some
 
Robbrent said:
I had a time of attending Spiritualist Churches, I always left so disappointed the biggest mystery we all face is what happens when we die, and all that seemed to happen is I've got someone whose name begins with a letter J, and she's offering you some flowers it was all very bland and uninspiring I guess it gave some comfort to some
Click to expand...
The usual answer to that, and to questions like 'Why are psychics' spirit guides always Native Americans or an ancient shaman?' is that the Afterlife is beyond human comprehension. We an only understand it in terms of symbols from our own experience that represent the relevant spiritual concepts.

So we recognise a Native American or ancient shaman as being knowledgeable and wise, and the flowers held out by J imply affection and respect.
 
escargot said:
The usual answer to that, and to questions like 'Why are psychics' spirit guides always Native Americans or an ancient shaman?' is that the Afterlife is beyond human comprehension. We an only understand it in terms of symbols from our own experience that represent the relevant spiritual concepts.

So we recognise a Native American or ancient shaman as being knowledgeable and wise, and the flowers held out by J imply affection and respect.
Click to expand...
Anyone know who the spirit guides are for Native American psychics?
 
escargot said:
Yes, it is harmful because it isn't done for good reasons and the comfort is false. Even the saddest truth is worthier than a lie.
Click to expand...
But I'd guess those who go to a 'psychic' looking for contact from a loved one are already half believing in the lie. They've bought into the hope that there's something beyond this life, and someone telling them that their loved one is happy might just be a harmless lie that brings them a degree of comfort they wouldn't otherwise have.

Essentially I'm saying, I suppose that, if they are minded to believe the lie, then does the fact that someone is telling the lie really matter? It's basically just confirming what they already think. I know it might be better to say to them 'look, we just don't know. Your loved one is gone and nobody knows how final that really is,' but wouldn't they keep trying other ways? Believing that a fallen feather is a sign, or a butterfly or rainbow is a sign, is it different?
 
If my British Grandmother was still alive, she would be amused by the comments here.
She could shake hands with someone, and see their whole future, it ran in her family, her mother had it also.
When I think about her now, she was a very strange person. She saved her family's life in WWII by knowing the area would be bombed that night, and when she lived with us in the USA, she knew everything that was going on with her sisters in the UK - who was ill and dying, who was getting married, etc.
The last time I saw her in the UK, she told me that I had not yet met the man I would marry, which puzzled me because I thought I was with the right person. But she was right.
And she also told me that I have the same thing, she passed it down to me, my husband tells me I am like a telegraph machine, I always know what's coming.
I just went to a new hairdresser, and when I walked in I saw a little blonde girl around this woman, and while having my hair done I asked if she had any children. She said she had two boys, so I told her about the little girl which upset her - she said I am the second person to tell her this.
So there must be a few real ones out there, not all fortune tellers are frauds.
 
catseye said:
But I'd guess those who go to a 'psychic' looking for contact from a loved one are already half believing in the lie. They've bought into the hope that there's something beyond this life, and someone telling them that their loved one is happy might just be a harmless lie that brings them a degree of comfort they wouldn't otherwise have.

Essentially I'm saying, I suppose that, if they are minded to believe the lie, then does the fact that someone is telling the lie really matter? It's basically just confirming what they already think. I know it might be better to say to them 'look, we just don't know. Your loved one is gone and nobody knows how final that really is,' but wouldn't they keep trying other ways? Believing that a fallen feather is a sign, or a butterfly or rainbow is a sign, is it different?
Click to expand...
The feathers and butterflies are personal superstitions. Nobody's pulling the wool over anyone's eyes, however sad and desperate the belief. Being told lies for comfort is undignified for all concerned.

Besides which, there is never psychic reassurance for the love of it. People profit from it in other ways beside taking payment, not least the emotional kick they get.
 
We also have a young woman in our area who is well-known for being able to speak with the dead. Very hard to get bookings with her, she has been a great comfort to many of those who lost loved ones.
I was thinking of getting an appointment with her, but now I'm not so sure that I want to hear from the dead - I do wonder, though, if my Grandmother would show up with some advice! Lol!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top