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Are All Psychics & Fortune Tellers Fakes?

Anonny:

It takes a lot of courage to 'own' some measure of responsibility and admit you essentially cheated yourself during this period in your life. I'd like to congratulate you as much or more for that as for successfully digging your way out and moving on.

I've seen such stubbornly-maintained and self-destructive situations in a number of 'addicts' (broadly defined) - many if not most of whom never managed to break out of the futile loop - even in light of obvious and self-acknowledged physical or psychological disintegration. I've seen what happens when one fails to back off, break out, and move off to a safe distance.

On a more general note ...

Your experience illustrates the potential toxicity that arises when someone begins to exploit a fortean / paranormal theme for profit. Time and again over the last half-century I've seen quite interesting subjects and incidents devolve into fodder for someone whose livelihood relies upon hooking and maintaining a credulous clientele. This is most disturbing when the clients / readers / followers are seeking relief and / or guidance rather than (e.g.) entertainment, thus making them vulnerable to protracted fleecing.
 
Thanks very much for your illuminating post, Anonny, it sounds like you were horrendously exploited. I would warn anyone away from a psychic who charged for their services, they'll say anything to get the money of the curious, and eventually, the vulnerable. And even take the ones who don't charge with a large pinch of salt. They tell you what you want to hear rather than any truth.
 
Of course I also have to take some responsibility for my actions being an adult which I do. But when you're being told amazing things in a horrible grieving process of a breakup you'll believe anything and are desperate, I'm ashamed to admit.

Being gutted by the ending of a relationship is nothing to be ashamed of. It's human. Desperation and grieving are nothing to be ashamed of either, though they can lead to some bad decisions. Desperate people often feel very cornered and are so fixated on their problem that they cannot see clearly through the cloud of negative emotions. Unscrupulous people can often "cold read" this in others and will stoop to exploit it. I maintain that any psychic reading you need to pay money for is probably not coming from a trustworthy person. As for being taken in by a grifter, that is nothing to be ashamed of at all. It can and has happened to people from all walks of life, even sitting Presidents of the USA, for example Warren G. Harding:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teapot_Dome_scandal
 
Thanks Escargot

Thanks for posting your experience. It must have been pretty hard to relive this but it’s a great post highlighting the dangers of fraudulent clairvoyants.

I dabbled with Tarot years ago and researched the meanings and various interpretations of the cards and symbolism pretty heavily. At first, I started doing readings that surprised me when predictions proved accurate. I once did a reading for a family member and predicted a new job and a new husband who’d have a beard and would be closely linked to the sea. Well that happened. It also became clear doing a reading that the card layout wasn’t referring to the question they were asking but the real reason they wanted a reading. I wouldn’t have a clue about cold reading as I rarely looked for reactions or led people down a conversation which might give anything away.

I gave it up when a friend hurriedly made some excuses and left after I uncovered something I maybe shouldn’t have and started to wonder about the responsibility of the whole thing. Vulnerable people will clutch at straws, that’s perfectly natural but it’s a trait that fraudulent clairvoyants will exploit to get cash.
I later met someone who did Tarot and had a small client list in the area. I didn’t think she was very good but they were regulars. I couldn’t understand why they would need a weekly reading as major events in your life don’t happen or change that much on a weekly basis. But I could understand how the cards would become less important than the knowledge gleaned over regular conversations over a cup of tea.

To continously say your ex is still thinking about you and will eventually come back is a pretty low trick and doesn't stack up in terms of emotional nous or whatever ‘standards’ you’d expect from a reader. If it had been me, I honestly think I’d have been a bit more manipulative in that I’d realise the situation and steer the whole thing around to ‘There’s a chance your ex may come back BUT are you sure that’s what’s really best for you? After all this, would your future relationship together really be a happy one?’

This sort of consultation works to a great degree by planting seeds. The information given creates a path the querent then seeks to follow at the exclusion of a wider range of options.
 
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Of course I also have to take some responsibility for my actions being an adult which I do. But when you're being told amazing things in a horrible grieving process of a breakup you'll believe anything and are desperate, I'm ashamed to admit.
Brave of you to share with us. All of us here have done things we later regret, that's human, but even if you feel you made mistakes, it's still those who took advantage that are the curs, so firmly remind yourself 'it's not you, you're fine'. If necessary, daily.
 
for some strange reason I only saw coals post but thanks everyone of you for your support so much. I thought I'd get laughed at for sharing my experience. It's nice to see understanding open minded people.

Analogue boy I think that there are some genuine mediums out there who have predicted things tools free and picked up astounding facts which werent barnum (needle in a haystack). But I completely agree that using tarot are very easy to get answers out of the customer and makes easy work for the 'reader' indeed.
 
I wanted to post my experience on here with psychic readings and my story in-case someone else is in a similar situation to where I was who reads this forum.

It's rather embarrassing and I'm really ashamed to admit this but I got addicted to psychic readings so much that I got myself into debt and wasted a long time on an ex because readers told me how much the ex loved me and would be back. I even went to top psychics who are five starred about on psychic forums or websites and are supposedly 'genuine and honest'.

I've always gone to psychics because in my family we go to them for entertainment. The healthy way is you'd go to a medium every few years and see what they had to say but you wouldn't rely on it or waste your life on it, you'd carry on your life and it's just nice to hear about uncle John paying a visit or whomever and maybe some 'predictions'. But not take the predictions as gospel and hang on to them.

Because I've been to psychics before who have actually gotten things right and I do believe that there are genuine psychic mediums out there (from personal experience) I thought it'd be a good idea to go to one about my ex and that's how it all started. I also was knocking about with a friend who would get readings on her partner at the time and that was another factor.

I could spend a long time writing out all of the many different excuses I got about my ex not coming back. Like; they're scared/busy with work/with someone now but unhappy and will be back with you soon/scared of coming back and being rejected/hasn't got the balls to reach out to you. And me being so vulnerable at the time I fell for it. I spent thousands on these readers and got myself into huge debt as well as calling from my mobile bill. So sometimes I'd be paying £500/600 a month because I had to resort to phone bill premium lines when I had no actual money left to be able to pay for their services. It was an actual addiction which is horrific looking back.

The reason why I fell for it all was because I guess I was vulnerable and it felt nice to be told they cared but was hiding their head in the sand and the readers appeared to validate things so well. But looking back the validations were very barnum and when you contacted friends who used the same reader the readings sometimes would be identical. One reader in particular I ended up speaking to more than once a week for several months, she never told me I needed to calm down on readings and never refused to read for me.

I am really ashamed looking back about calling these readers over an ex who couldn't give a monkeys about me and it's mad what humans do when they're in bad times. It's embarrassing to think I was calling about the ex when they were more than likely out having a great time and I didn't have a clue and was so naive wasting thousands of pounds on them when they didn't waste one penny on me.

I don't want to tarnish all mediums with the same brush because one private phone reader was the most realistic out of all of them and told me the ex and I would never be together again and we were not meant for each other and it was time to move on. But I would avoid these psychic cheap phone line websites like the plague. The best mediums and psychics are ones in spiritualist churches platforms that would turn you away if you were going to them too often and take their work seriously. So many people who used to be addicted to readings have said also that platform readers are the best.

In being on psychic forums I got to meet some very vulnerable customers. Customers whose partners left them for other men/women and the reader was telling them how much they regret it and will be back and missed them, the list goes on. One woman I got talking to has been waiting for her ex for over 4 years now and refuses to move on because they've planted in her head that he misses her and she believes it. I've heard stories of people being told that the ex would be back and missed them but actually had died months or years before or has gotten married since. I've spoken to people who were told by readers to send them hundreds of thousands of pounds to cast a spell on the ex to bring the ex back and they sent the money and times were being shifted and no spell was ever done. Talking of time scales the readers would tell you an ex would be back in March for example. When March came and no sign of the ex, the time scale just extended and extended with excuses that they weren't god/there's free will/there is no time in spirit.

I just found the phone readers to be very arrogant people who only cared about money and if you said that their predictions did not happen they would turn on you and change from their soft sympathetic voice or push more excuses or time scales on to your situation.

I would strongly advise anybody who ever visits this site and is in a vulnerable place like I was to please do not call up about an ex. If she or he loves you they will make that clear in their actions and wouldn't disappear on you for months (or even years) in some vulnerable customers experience. If you want readings, go to your local spiritualist church but take what they say with a pinch of salt and get on with your life. Don't become like me and many others who got themselves into severe debt over some ex who really does not care for you and hasn't bothered to contact you or has left you for someone else.

Was any reader even close to what ever actually happened? No. I never heard from the ex again and I went to over a hundred readers. How worrying is it that not one got it right? Just to clarify I am okay now and moved on with my life a long time ago and have sorted my money problems out. This happened to me about 2/3 years ago and I thought that sharing my story on here would open up the dark side of psychics. It's very commonly joked about that they're con artists and how pedantic it is that they claim to 'see your future' but it is a serious thing about them conning people and happens daily.
Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Brutally honest, insightful and refreshing to hear that despite all you've been through that you've not been entirely jaded by your experience. More pleasing though is knowing that you've come through with the strength and confidence to share what seemed to be a time of hardship and sadness with your dignity plus a concern for others intact. Good for you and thanks for sharing. Your story has been quite an eye opener.
 
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Thanks all for your support and input.


Onetwothree and Lord lucan I'm glad you enjoyed reading my experience as much as I thought it would be important to share my experience.

Frideswide it certainly is a forum full of supportive and pleasant members. Some forums can have some right twits on.
 
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver : Psychics. Covers cold reading, hot reading and just how awful (in both skill and moral character) some psychics in the US are :

 
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver : Psychics. Covers cold reading, hot reading and just how awful (in both skill and moral character) some psychics in the US are :
Official link not available in the uk.

But here's another copy we can see. The psychic stuff starts at 8 minutes.

 
My wife and I were in a town in Victoria, Australia three weeks ago and on the spur of the moment decided to have a tarot reading.
We went in together with the reader knowing nothing about us aside from our names.
He read both of our palms and then did a tarot reading for us as a couple.
He was uncannily accurate describing our personalities, our families, number of children and my past marriage.
As for future predictions regarding family, health and business, well, time will tell.
I can't help but feel that some do have a genuine ability. I also have no doubt that there are those in it for the money and good at cold reading.
I consider myself a good judge of character with a good perception of people's intentions and sure I could pull off a reasonable cold reading if I tried.
 
Many years ago, I watched a documentary about Doris Stokes where she admitted being a fraud, some of the time, although not all of the time...
 
*looks at floor*
Oh look there's that old chestnut again...
Thing is, Doris Stokes aside, I can well believe that's true. From the few public performance mediums ive witnessed its frequently occurred to me to speculate that if there is a genuine anomalous phenomenon at work the delusion is not in believing you receive information in some paranormal way, but rather in thinking yourself a) in possession of a special power other people don't have and b) able to produce it on demand for a paying audience...and that the yawn inducing cold reading, generalities and skimmed over blatant misses which are punctuated by seemingly inexplicable displays of specific personal knowledge would be what you would expect if someone was faking it till they make it.

That's to say there's a crowd in front of you. They're waiting, perhaps paying, to be impressed...you can't sit there for half an hour going "no, no, nowt yet..." until something genuine pops into your head. So you would surely go into some fairly reliable spiel or say anything that occurs to you until the "real thing" comes out of your mouth..if it ever does. .

I don't know if that is what happens, but if there is any reality to mediumistic abilities at all i'd be very surprised if that wasn't what happens with those brave/foolish/arrogant enough to take their supposed gift on the road.
 
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Thing is, Doris Stokes aside, I can well believe that's true. From the few public performance mediums ive witnessed its frequently occurred to me to speculate that if there is a genuine anomalous phenomenon at work the delusion is not in believing you receive information in some paranormal way, but rather in thinking yourself a) in possession of a special power other people don't have and b) able to produce it on demand for a paying audience...and that the yawn inducing cold reading, generalities and skimmed over blatant misses which are punctuated by seemingly inexplicable displays of specific personal knowledge would be what you would expect if someone was faking it till they make it.

That's to say there's a crowd in front of you. They're waiting, perhaps paying, to be impressed...you can't sit there for half an hour going "no, no, nowt yet..." until something genuine pops into your head. So you would surely go into some fairly reliable spiel or say anything that occurs to you until the "real thing" comes out of your mouth..if it ever does. .

I don't know if that is what happens, but if there is any reality to mediumistic abilities at all i'd be very surprised if that wasn't what happens with those brave/foolish/arrogant enough to take their supposed gift on the road.

This is amusing...
Don Lane was an American who had a variety tv show here in Australia in the 70s and 80s. He was a huge fan of Doris Stokes, even having her on in prime time performing live seances.
James Randi was once his guest and started debunking Doris and her kind. This was the result...
 
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