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Sunday May 30, 2004
The psychic and the sceptic
By PHILIP GOLINGAI
He says he can see into the past and the future. And he’s got the big bucks to prove it. But can he tell when PHILIP GOLINGAI will meet his soul mate?
YOU can’t hide this,” said Ronald Bard, pointing at his massive belly. “Lots of hamburgers,” explained the 170kg New Yorker.
If he was really a psychic, I thought, I would not be able to hide any thought from the 45-year-old president and CEO of Psychic Media International, a new visionary media company in the paranormal field. Did he, for instance, know hours before the interview that I had Googled “Ronald Bard”?
There were 69 hits on the name in google.com. Typing “psychic” within the 69 hits resulted in two hits: the resume of C. Brent Ferguson who did freelance work for the Ron Bard psychic website.
Interesting, I thought, that Bard’s impressive achievement as a psychic was hidden from Google, which is the best search engine on the Internet.
Bard, when asked about his psychic abilities, said: “My gift? What can I not do? I find missing kids. I’ve worked with the ATF (the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) in the Unabomber case (Theodore Kaczynski mailed bombs to people in academia and the government). I did a reading for the O.J. (Simpson) defence team, giving advice on what was going to happen in court.”
Despite the lack of information on him in the Internet, I was able to flesh out Bard an hour before the interview when his assistant handed me two clippings on him. One was from Forbes, the business magazine. In the article published on April 1, 2002, Benjamin Fulford wrote that Japanese celebrities and blue-chip executives pay richly for the services of the parapsychological consultant.
“For US,000 (RM19,000) an hour, he tells them what the markets will do and how their careers will end up. Those sessions, plus revenues from seminars and sales of such ‘psychic’ goods as bath oils, come to USmil plus (RM3.8mil) a year. So claims Bard,” Fulford wrote.Sunday May 30, 2004
The psychic and the sceptic
By PHILIP GOLINGAI
He says he can see into the past and the future. And he’s got the big bucks to prove it. But can he tell when PHILIP GOLINGAI will meet his soul mate?
YOU can’t hide this,” said Ronald Bard, pointing at his massive belly. “Lots of hamburgers,” explained the 170kg New Yorker.
If he was really a psychic, I thought, I would not be able to hide any thought from the 45-year-old president and CEO of Psychic Media International, a new visionary media company in the paranormal field. Did he, for instance, know hours before the interview that I had Googled “Ronald Bard”?
There were 69 hits on the name in google.com. Typing “psychic” within the 69 hits resulted in two hits: the resume of C. Brent Ferguson who did freelance work for the Ron Bard psychic website.
Interesting, I thought, that Bard’s impressive achievement as a psychic was hidden from Google, which is the best search engine on the Internet.
Bard, when asked about his psychic abilities, said: “My gift? What can I not do? I find missing kids. I’ve worked with the ATF (the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) in the Unabomber case (Theodore Kaczynski mailed bombs to people in academia and the government). I did a reading for the O.J. (Simpson) defence team, giving advice on what was going to happen in court.”
Despite the lack of information on him in the Internet, I was able to flesh out Bard an hour before the interview when his assistant handed me two clippings on him. One was from Forbes, the business magazine. In the article published on April 1, 2002, Benjamin Fulford wrote that Japanese celebrities and blue-chip executives pay richly for the services of the parapsychological consultant.
“For US$5,000 (RM19,000) an hour, he tells them what the markets will do and how their careers will end up. Those sessions, plus revenues from seminars and sales of such ‘psychic’ goods as bath oils, come to US$1mil plus (RM3.8mil) a year. So claims Bard,” Fulford wrote.
Sitting cross-legged on a sofa in a living room of a suite in Crown Princess Hotel Kuala Lumpur and chain-smoking Kent cigarettes, Bard narrated how he became a multimillionaire psychic.
In the early 1980s, Yolana, his mother, was a famous fortuneteller whose clients included designer Diane von Furstenberg and the late cofounder of Sony, Akio Morita. Bard visited his mother’s house in New York City and while she was giving a reading, the doorbell rang and a woman appeared at the door.
“Tell me something,” said the woman who entered the house.
“I don’t know anything about psychic stuff,” Bard said.
“You are your mother’s son,” she replied.
“Your husband got a blue uniform today,” Bard said, saying the first thing that came to mind.
“It is a miracle! You are like your mother,” the woman said.
Recalling that turning point in his life when he discovered his power to see past, present and future, Bard said, “it turned out that her husband was a Mafia boss who went to jail that day and he got a blue prison uniform.”
From that point, he did tarot card reading for US$5 (RM19) and progressed to having a show on a Manhattan cable TV channel during which he would tell the fortunes of viewers who called in.
Then in 1990, Asahi TV, a Japanese network, offered to pay for him and his mother to travel to Tokyo to do a 90-minute special on being psychic. “My mother and I wanted to get out of it. So I named a ridiculous price, thinking for sure they will say no. But the producer said ‘okay’, and we were off to Japan to do a re-creation of a murder,” he related.
The show was a re-enactment of an investigation of two female teenagers who were missing. Using their psychic powers, the mother and son team led the police to where the bodies were located.
The show, in Bard’s own words, “caught like a boom.”
“It went out of control. It was so popular. From there I met Japanese politicians and stars,” he said.
Apart from famous Japanese, Bard claimed he has read the fortunes of “70% of the Hollywood stars” and world leaders. “Few years ago, I did not have 10 cents for a spaghetti stick and now I am advising world leaders,” he said.
How did you come to have this psychic ability, I asked Bard?
“Everybody has it. You use it in your work. You have instinct. Everybody is given a gift, we are not born naked. Most people just don’t use it (the gift),” he said, adding, “everybody can dance but not everybody is a ballerina.”
“What is your reading of me?” I had been dying to ask this question, of course.
“You are an interesting guy. You are a double sword. You are analytical and therefore you are a sceptic. But the other half of you has an interest (in psychic matters),” he said.
“You will be doing expansive work. You will do screenwriting. Or give it another 18 months without a doubt you will do a book. I am never wrong. You have thought of a concept.”
Amazing. Coincidentally, six hours before my 4pm appointment with Bard, I had told my editor that I was thinking of writing a non-fiction book on a plan to take Sabah out of Malaysia.
“You are right,” I told Bard.
“Then step on the gas,” he said. “Your ability, your talent, you are not using them for your own good. You should work for yourself. Start developing a book. You have a tremendous imagination and creative ability. Your talent is bigger than your work. Take a year and you will have a book proposal or a contract for a book,” he said.
Later I thought that if I predicted all of The Star’s journalists dream about writing a book, I would be 95% right?.
“You have a lower back problem,” Bard said.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Tonight when you go home, lie on the bed and put your feet together, you will find that one of your legs is longer than the other,” he said. He then drew my bone structure to illustrate my back problem.
I still insisted that I didn’t have a back problem. “Eventually, over the next couple of months, you will have a back problem. You must be careful in lifting (things),” he said.
“I hope you are wrong about the back pain,” I said.
“If you are careful, I might be. Just be careful when you are lifting. That is why you go to a psychic, to get a warning so that you are careful about the future,” he said.
“The hearing in one of your ears is dull,” he said.
“Huh, I didn’t know my hearing was dull,” I said, thinking maybe I had heard him wrongly.
Bard told me to close my eyes, then he snapped his fingers next to my right ear and then the left. “Which was louder?” he asked.
“Both the same,” I replied.
“You have wax impaction in your left ear,” he insisted.
Curious to know how he knew about my supposed medical problem, I asked him, “How do you know that?”
“When I am talking to you, I don’t understand what I am saying. If you ask me in three days’ time what I had said to you, I would not remember. This is nothing, something I just throw out. It is fact. Like your back problem, if it has not happened, it will,” he said.
“Where am I going on Wednesday?” I asked, wondering if the psychic would know that I plan on visiting Surabaya in Indonesia then.
“That is not psychic. I go with the flow. When you ask me what will happen on Wednesday, those are games,” he said.
“I like you because you remind me of the Forbes journalist. He (Benjamin Fulford) asked tough questions during the interview but we later ended up like brothers.”
“Do I look or I behave like him (Fulford),” I wondered.
“You behave like him. Not that bad as he was tougher. No face. I would talk and he showed no emotion. But now (since they have become like brothers), his face lights up like a Christmas tree,” he said. “Like you, I predicted Benjamin will write a book and he did not believe me. And now he has written a book.”
“Now I think I am having a back problem,” I said, thinking that the power of suggestion can be powerful.
“See, you have it,” Bard said, grinning.
“How about my past? What do you see?” I said.
“If you come back for a reading, I will tell you,” he said. “I don’t want you to write about what I say.”
“But the readers will be curious to know whether you are right about my past,” I argued, thinking that I was, after all, an expert regarding my past.
“You had a normal life,” was all he said. I wanted to disagree but, then again, my life might be “normal” seen through his New York and Tokyo lenses.
Perhaps sensing that I was not satisfied with this, Bard pointed to my left leg and said, “Something happened to your knee”.
“Nope,” I said.
“You have a scar on your left knee,” he said.
I smiled, indicating that he was wrong.
“Something will happen to your left knee. Anything that I have said that has not happened, will happen in the future,” he said.
“I have a scar on my right knee,” I offered.
Since the psychic was more interested in my knee than my “normal” past, I asked, “How’s my love life?”
“I say that you are with somebody now,” he said.
I gave him my bodoh (stupid) look, as at this moment, I share my four-poster bed with myself.
“You are in a ‘yo-yo’, someone is around you,” he said.
That is true as one particular 26-year-old giga-adorable and mega-endearing woman has been dialling my emotions up and down for a while – why do you think I take comfort in Surabaya?
“But around March or April, you will meet your soul mate. Even if at that time you are with someone, still this person will rock your roots. This person will give you a feeling that you have never felt. Such intensity, that you will be floating on a cloud. You will feel it instantly when you meet her,” Bard said.
“March or April 2005?” I asked, just to be sure.
“Yes, next year,” he replied.
“Will it be a girl or a boy?” I asked, just to confuse the psychic about my sexuality. He just nodded ambiguously.
Wow! A couple of weeks ago, this gorgeous and irresistible woman read my palm and told me that next year I will get married and wifey will bring me good fortune. Coincidence? Probably?.
“This woman who is supposed to rock my roots, is she someone I know now?” I asked.
“She is not around you now. If you did meet her in the past, she is not around you now,” he said.
“If what you said about my love life comes true, isn’t it because of the power of suggestion?” I asked.
“No, you can’t make someone love you on a suggestion. You will know come March and April,” he said.
What is the future of The Star, I asked.
Bard took my calling card and flipped it several times in his right hand. “There are many good and smart people working here. It will grow but there is something going on behind the scenes. The growth is through a merger or an acquisition with or of a media company. The talks will start by October if they haven’t already,” he said.
Hmm.
So what were Bard’s major predictions?
“I saw the first Gulf war. I saw 9/11. If it is in the news, I have predicted it,” he said.
Future predictions?
“Weapons of mass destruction will be found in Iraq. Osama bin Laden will be captured alive. Bush will be re-elected,” he said confidently.
“Huh, Bush?” I said. “I am a (John) Kerry supporter. But take that one to the bank,” he said.
How will Bursa Malaysia perform?
“I see steady growth until November. Then there will be a hiccup when the stock market corrects itself,” he said.
Malaysia’s future?
“In 10 years, Malaysia will be an economic power. Properties to cure cancer and AIDS will be discovered in Malaysia in 2007 or 2008,” he said.
“So much richness here that is untapped. When I arrived here I felt good vibes,” said Bard, who arrived in Kuala Lumpur on May 21 for a one-week visit to see a friend. “One thing about this country is there are many smart people and they are going to make the right moves.”
And, yes, all you four-digit punters, I did ask for four numbers.
“That’s not about being psychic. But since you asked, 4,2,3,7,” he said.
My last question to the psychic was whether he could see his own future.
“No. That is why I call my mother because it is personal. When it involves yourself, you can’t see for yourself because you can’t be subjective,” he said.
When the interview ended, Bard flashed his charming smile and said, “I have a feeling about you, Philip, that we are going to be good friends. That we will meet up again, soon. I can’t wait to know about that girl you are going to meet in March or April,” he said.
I was going to say that only God would know if that’s going to happen, but then again?.
Sitting cross-legged on a sofa in a living room of a suite in Crown Princess Hotel Kuala Lumpur and chain-smoking Kent cigarettes, Bard narrated how he became a multimillionaire psychic.
In the early 1980s, Yolana, his mother, was a famous fortuneteller whose clients included designer Diane von Furstenberg and the late cofounder of Sony, Akio Morita. Bard visited his mother’s house in New York City and while she was giving a reading, the doorbell rang and a woman appeared at the door.
“Tell me something,” said the woman who entered the house.
“I don’t know anything about psychic stuff,” Bard said.
“You are your mother’s son,” she replied.
“Your husband got a blue uniform today,” Bard said, saying the first thing that came to mind.
“It is a miracle! You are like your mother,” the woman said.
Recalling that turning point in his life when he discovered his power to see past, present and future, Bard said, “it turned out that her husband was a Mafia boss who went to jail that day and he got a blue prison uniform.”
From that point, he did tarot card reading for US (RM19) and progressed to having a show on a Manhattan cable TV channel during which he would tell the fortunes of viewers who called in.
Then in 1990, Asahi TV, a Japanese network, offered to pay for him and his mother to travel to Tokyo to do a 90-minute special on being psychic. “My mother and I wanted to get out of it. So I named a ridiculous price, thinking for sure they will say no. But the producer said ‘okay’, and we were off to Japan to do a re-creation of a murder,” he related.
The show was a re-enactment of an investigation of two female teenagers who were missing. Using their psychic powers, the mother and son team led the police to where the bodies were located.
The show, in Bard’s own words, “caught like a boom.”
“It went out of control. It was so popular. From there I met Japanese politicians and stars,” he said.
Apart from famous Japanese, Bard claimed he has read the fortunes of “70% of the Hollywood stars” and world leaders. “Few years ago, I did not have 10 cents for a spaghetti stick and now I am advising world leaders,” he said.
How did you come to have this psychic ability, I asked Bard?
“Everybody has it. You use it in your work. You have instinct. Everybody is given a gift, we are not born naked. Most people just don’t use it (the gift),” he said, adding, “everybody can dance but not everybody is a ballerina.”
“What is your reading of me?” I had been dying to ask this question, of course.
“You are an interesting guy. You are a double sword. You are analytical and therefore you are a sceptic. But the other half of you has an interest (in psychic matters),” he said.
“You will be doing expansive work. You will do screenwriting. Or give it another 18 months without a doubt you will do a book. I am never wrong. You have thought of a concept.”
Amazing. Coincidentally, six hours before my 4pm appointment with Bard, I had told my editor that I was thinking of writing a non-fiction book on a plan to take Sabah out of Malaysia.
“You are right,” I told Bard.
“Then step on the gas,” he said. “Your ability, your talent, you are not using them for your own good. You should work for yourself. Start developing a book. You have a tremendous imagination and creative ability. Your talent is bigger than your work. Take a year and you will have a book proposal or a contract for a book,” he said.
Later I thought that if I predicted all of The Star’s journalists dream about writing a book, I would be 95% right?.
“You have a lower back problem,” Bard said.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Tonight when you go home, lie on the bed and put your feet together, you will find that one of your legs is longer than the other,” he said. He then drew my bone structure to illustrate my back problem.
I still insisted that I didn’t have a back problem. “Eventually, over the next couple of months, you will have a back problem. You must be careful in lifting (things),” he said.
“I hope you are wrong about the back pain,” I said.
“If you are careful, I might be. Just be careful when you are lifting. That is why you go to a psychic, to get a warning so that you are careful about the future,” he said.
“The hearing in one of your ears is dull,” he said.
“Huh, I didn’t know my hearing was dull,” I said, thinking maybe I had heard him wrongly.
Bard told me to close my eyes, then he snapped his fingers next to my right ear and then the left. “Which was louder?” he asked.
“Both the same,” I replied.
“You have wax impaction in your left ear,” he insisted.
Curious to know how he knew about my supposed medical problem, I asked him, “How do you know that?”
“When I am talking to you, I don’t understand what I am saying. If you ask me in three days’ time what I had said to you, I would not remember. This is nothing, something I just throw out. It is fact. Like your back problem, if it has not happened, it will,” he said.
“Where am I going on Wednesday?” I asked, wondering if the psychic would know that I plan on visiting Surabaya in Indonesia then.
“That is not psychic. I go with the flow. When you ask me what will happen on Wednesday, those are games,” he said.
“I like you because you remind me of the Forbes journalist. He (Benjamin Fulford) asked tough questions during the interview but we later ended up like brothers.”
“Do I look or I behave like him (Fulford),” I wondered.
“You behave like him. Not that bad as he was tougher. No face. I would talk and he showed no emotion. But now (since they have become like brothers), his face lights up like a Christmas tree,” he said. “Like you, I predicted Benjamin will write a book and he did not believe me. And now he has written a book.”
“Now I think I am having a back problem,” I said, thinking that the power of suggestion can be powerful.
“See, you have it,” Bard said, grinning.
“How about my past? What do you see?” I said.
“If you come back for a reading, I will tell you,” he said. “I don’t want you to write about what I say.”
“But the readers will be curious to know whether you are right about my past,” I argued, thinking that I was, after all, an expert regarding my past.
“You had a normal life,” was all he said. I wanted to disagree but, then again, my life might be “normal” seen through his New York and Tokyo lenses.
Perhaps sensing that I was not satisfied with this, Bard pointed to my left leg and said, “Something happened to your knee”.
“Nope,” I said.
“You have a scar on your left knee,” he said.
I smiled, indicating that he was wrong.
“Something will happen to your left knee. Anything that I have said that has not happened, will happen in the future,” he said.
“I have a scar on my right knee,” I offered.
Since the psychic was more interested in my knee than my “normal” past, I asked, “How’s my love life?”
“I say that you are with somebody now,” he said.
I gave him my bodoh (stupid) look, as at this moment, I share my four-poster bed with myself.
“You are in a ‘yo-yo’, someone is around you,” he said.
That is true as one particular 26-year-old giga-adorable and mega-endearing woman has been dialling my emotions up and down for a while – why do you think I take comfort in Surabaya?
“But around March or April, you will meet your soul mate. Even if at that time you are with someone, still this person will rock your roots. This person will give you a feeling that you have never felt. Such intensity, that you will be floating on a cloud. You will feel it instantly when you meet her,” Bard said.
“March or April 2005?” I asked, just to be sure.
“Yes, next year,” he replied.
“Will it be a girl or a boy?” I asked, just to confuse the psychic about my sexuality. He just nodded ambiguously.
Wow! A couple of weeks ago, this gorgeous and irresistible woman read my palm and told me that next year I will get married and wifey will bring me good fortune. Coincidence? Probably?.
“This woman who is supposed to rock my roots, is she someone I know now?” I asked.
“She is not around you now. If you did meet her in the past, she is not around you now,” he said.
“If what you said about my love life comes true, isn’t it because of the power of suggestion?” I asked.
“No, you can’t make someone love you on a suggestion. You will know come March and April,” he said.
What is the future of The Star, I asked.
Bard took my calling card and flipped it several times in his right hand. “There are many good and smart people working here. It will grow but there is something going on behind the scenes. The growth is through a merger or an acquisition with or of a media company. The talks will start by October if they haven’t already,” he said.
Hmm.
So what were Bard’s major predictions?
“I saw the first Gulf war. I saw 9/11. If it is in the news, I have predicted it,” he said.
Future predictions?
“Weapons of mass destruction will be found in Iraq. Osama bin Laden will be captured alive. Bush will be re-elected,” he said confidently.
“Huh, Bush?” I said. “I am a (John) Kerry supporter. But take that one to the bank,” he said.
How will Bursa Malaysia perform?
“I see steady growth until November. Then there will be a hiccup when the stock market corrects itself,” he said.
Malaysia’s future?
“In 10 years, Malaysia will be an economic power. Properties to cure cancer and AIDS will be discovered in Malaysia in 2007 or 2008,” he said.
“So much richness here that is untapped. When I arrived here I felt good vibes,” said Bard, who arrived in Kuala Lumpur on May 21 for a one-week visit to see a friend. “One thing about this country is there are many smart people and they are going to make the right moves.”
And, yes, all you four-digit punters, I did ask for four numbers.
“That’s not about being psychic. But since you asked, 4,2,3,7,” he said.
My last question to the psychic was whether he could see his own future.
“No. That is why I call my mother because it is personal. When it involves yourself, you can’t see for yourself because you can’t be subjective,” he said.
When the interview ended, Bard flashed his charming smile and said, “I have a feeling about you, Philip, that we are going to be good friends. That we will meet up again, soon. I can’t wait to know about that girl you are going to meet in March or April,” he said.
I was going to say that only God would know if that’s going to happen, but then again?.
http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2004/5/30/features/8064010&sec=features