Clairvoyant/ Mediums/ Psychics - Real or Rubbish?!

[DobbieFreeElf]

Hi All,

As title suggests, WDUT, is it real or are mediums just exceptionally clever hustlers?!

I recently went to a mediumship event, I'm exceptionally skeptical when it comes to these things and went more out of curiosity than anything else. The medium zoned in on me about half way through the event and started talking to me about a recently deceased friend. Now at first I was thinking, ok this could just be lucky stabs in the dark but she said nothing that didn't specifically make sense to either my friend, me or current situations (neither did she seem to get anything
"wrong" when addressing others in the room). There was just too much for it to be conveniently coincidental. I would like to see the medium again one-on-one but I keep telling myself I'm probably just being a fool!!!

What are your experiences?!

I think it's a load of rubbish, sorry. They're exceptionally good at reading people based on law of averages, body language, reactions when what they're saying either hits or misses, etc. People also tend to remember the handful of hits and forget the several dozen misses which then makes the "psychic" seem even better.

I don't necessarily think that they're all hustlers. I think a lot of them truly believe that they are psychic

Absolute, complete and utter bollocks.

Give these shysters a wide berth.

Charlatans or straight up deluded.

A crock of old shite.

I know it’s always brought up on these threads but watch the Derren Brown episode where he pretends to do readings. It’s all a con.

They are all charlatans (or at best completely deluded) who prey on vulnerable people. It is cold reading and fairly easy to use and very easy to suck people in who are grieving and longing for some kind of closure.
The worst ones are the ones who pretend to know where missing children are and give desperate parents false hope.

I have a friend who goes to psychic shows - she has been unable to move on after the death of her brother in a horrific (and well known) accident. She's never had any kind of contact, but keeps going because she is grieving. Obviously it is not free, and one day no doubt one of these awful people will convince her her brother is communicating (Although I suspect most of the people who 'make contact' are stooges.) It is cruel and immoral.

OP - if it's not too intrusive - what did she say that could only be referring to you and your friend?

Can you give an idea of some of the "specific" things they mentioned as others may be able to explain why they seem specific but really aren't.

I think it was Derren Brown who got a group of people to bring in an object special to them and then without meeting them wrote a page of information about them and it seemed incredibly personalised and accurate. Then when the group swapped they discovered everyone had the same page. He then went on to explain it was just using the law of averages etc.

They're absolute con merchants - that's not saying some of them aren't very skilled at what they do but they're not psychic- they can read the odds in a room, invite people to fill in their names etc at pre event registers, research names up the wazoo etc. Most people at events like these or private readings are looking for something - mediums etc just take a gamble at providing the answers.

I had the very sad experience of trying to help out a relative who had began to get herself involved a bit. Initially she rang for a private appointment/reading. She left a message - leaving her full name, brief idea of why she was ringing (sudden very tragic death of a husband). A quick google, nosy at the death notices in the paper and the very sympathetic medium was reaming off platitudes that could have come from a dodgy summer holiday read.

Very many specific things about my friend, her hair, her body shape, her interests, things about her that I had always thought in length about, how suddenly she died... she got nothing "wrong". She said that there had been some chatter of a new car in my household and specifically something about a BMW... our BMW died about 2 months ago and we have been going round in circles deciding if we should get a new car to replace it...

We took no items with us, in fact I didn't even take a handbag. We gave nothing but our name's on the door. I was wearing jeans and a top and, because I am so skeptical I was very neutral and I gave little reaction. Yet she was still spot on...

I've tried explaining away everything and I can probably accept if it was a proportion of what was said was correct but nothing was out of place...

(As a side note I am a well educated, intelligent woman who runs a successful business. I'm very analytically minded (all science and maths) yet I'm here believing it all!)

Oh and I was sat at the beginning thinking I only knew of 5 people who had passed away (4 of them being grandparents) so the odds of her "predictions" (or what ever you would call them) were minimal. I was also not specifically going to try and make "contact" just pure curiosity!

I'm fairly open minded, although I have no experience of this myself.

But did they say she always loved going to the swimming club at town on Saturday mornings, or she loved the water, sort of thing.

Of course it’s rubbish !

Sadly there's no proof that any are genuine. Some are out and out frauds, others believe they really are psychic.
There's a lot of info online about gold reading and the way psychics massage their information to fit.
You've also got to remember that so many psychic insights will fit almost anyone!
I've a significant family date in every month for example!
Other times I'm sure it's the verbal equivalent of when something be can see faces in clouds, pieces of toast etc, we want to make sense of information.

Cold reading!

I do think there is the odd genuine one.

An acquaintance of a Dsis, who doesn't do it for money, told her a lot of astonishly accurate things about someone who'd recently died, just from handling an object she'd worn for many years.
They weren't things she could possibly have heard about or guessed. Nor were they things that could apply to just about anybody,
She had never met the person, who had lived hundreds of miles away.

Though how to explain it I have no idea.

Real or rubbish? Rubbish!

There are no genuine psychics/mediums/clairvoyants, not even “the odd one”

Some may be convincing, but when you watch a magician on telly you don’t really believe it’s magic, do you?

I saw Darren Brown live on stage about 5 years ago. He did a psychic medium session as part of the show, whilst making it clear it was all bollocks. He told one woman all about her dead father, including his name, hobby, nickname and other things. Woman was amazed and confirmed accuracy.

There is a wealth of info online about how they do it.

My mum has had a really good reading from a medium before and so has her friend.
I can't remember the ins & outs of it all, it was probably 15 years ago.

I recently asked my mum to go to our local spiritualist church with me as they had an open day and had 9 mediums there.
We both booked half hour appointments with the same lady but only gave our first names & paid £15 each.
I was kinda hoping for something from my daughter, brother or dad.
I can honestly say the 30 minutes was filled with absolute crap..... nothing she said made any sense to me.
Said I had 2 kids which isn't true.... talked about my mum wearing pink shoes and carrying a pink handbag, my mum would never wear pink shoes or have a pink handbag..... my nan was from a foreign land, she was English.... how it's a family tradition to drink black tea with lots of sugar, no one in my family drinks black tea.
I could carry on with all the other rubbish she came out with but I don't want to bore you.

When I finished and saw my mum... she also said her reading was also a load of rubbish.
It gave us a good laugh at how wrong she was on everything.
I can see that for some people it might be upsetting as they might be really pinning their hopes on hearing something from a loved one.

Most are rubbish I think. Talk complete nonsense.
Part of me does believe there are some out there with a gift but I've never seen one.

Have you googled your name and location? Is any of the information on there? is your social media open, did you post anything on there about your friend or your car?

Someone on a local Facebook lost and found pet page posted about her lost cat...her Facebook name included Spiritualist and Clairvoyant - there followed lots of posts asking why she couldn't find the cat herself with her special power for which she charged lots of money

@MancaroniCheese That I would say is a valid point!

@MediocreOmens I said nothing online about my friend (I particularly hate when people publicly post about things like this) and I did say something about "does anyone know about fixing cars" but my profile is (should be) private.

She would have to have the most immense memory to remember the faces of the 6/7 people in the audience and information specific to them... After the group sessions there were opportunities to have a 1:1 and a friend did just that, now she wouldn't have had time to do any research before this session and my friend said she was eerily accurate also. Another guy who was at the venue, who hadn't come to the group session, went up on the off-chance he could have a 1:1 at the end, which he did, and again said she was creepily accurate. Now even if she had 5 minutes to do some online stalking for my friend she didn't have any time for the final chap!

Like I say, I'm just trying to make sense of it all! the most of me says that I should know that it's poppycock and forget it... the other part of me wants to book a full 1 hour 1:1 to find out once and for all!

Not rubbish, there is an art passed through generations.
Nothing psychic about it, but part of a culture passed down.
originally a form of counselling, but like everything else, open to charlatans.
Traditionally you went to discuss something that was bothering you, and the wise old fortune teller would tell you what to do.
Nobody would cold read, and make a load of shit up like today.
I opted out, but wished I hadn't now.
My family stopped with the previous generation, non of my female cousins have been involved.

I had a reading at the weekend, my third one, a different medium each time. My message has been the same each time.

DH was the biggest skeptic, he went for a reading last year and now believes based on his experience.

Just give it a try and make up your own mind, I would say.