Can the cynics explain this (mediums)

[Disturbia81]

I've always been sceptical of them and know there are a lot of charlatans.
But have heard stories from people over the years who wouldn't lie. But remained cynical

A friend and I went to a group one, there were about 150 people there. He spoke to 10.
We used fake names on the booking so no research could be done on us.
Didn't talk about anything while there.

Anyway he mentioned a surname that had come to him, it was her brothers so she put her hand up. Then he got all her family names, relationships between them, specific funny things said, how he died, even how he looked when he was found etc.
She was in shock but got so much comfort knowing her was with her still.

He couldn't have known any of this.
I want to believe but also want to see if anyone can logically explain it?

And mine! (Though a nearby railway line seemed in my case a more likely explanation than having been thinking about my beloved granddad on his anniversary. It was a bit of a shock at the time, though.)

@naysayers1 -- but the medium never said she'd 'lost twin babies. That was your mother's interpretation of what was said, through her own recent experience. The medium said she saw her with a baby in each arm.

As she was looking at a woman of childbearing age, that was a classic Barnum statement, which could have been applicable in a number of ways -- it could have referred to two children she had already had, two children she might have in the future, one child she already had and another to come in future, to two lost children, stillbirths or miscarriages, to potential or actual twins, to singletons born at different points, or yet to be born at different points. They need not even have been your mother's own children, just babies that featured in some way in her life.

Do you see what I mean? The medium didn't say 'You have lost twins', she said something very general, and your mother, because of her experience of loss, and because, as you've said, she was a believer in this kind of thing, supplied the 'accurate' interpretation herself.

I agree with you re hot and cold reading, allowances made etc (I’ve seen them in action) but the one I witnessed at the spiritual church was v different. It was offered to my colleague, the cost was a couple of quid on the door, what he was told in a monologue (no q and a) was really specific to him. There was no SM in those days, no names given in advance.

There’s general explanations of how mediums work - that’s not what I asked.

I’m happy to sit on the fence - I am well aware there are charlatans out there. I also know what my colleague was told and the way he was told.

The trouble with anecdotal accounts - which are fine as chat, obvs - is that we can never know what was said, how it was said, what the reactions were or any surrounding circumstances.

So the accounts are great for a bit of entertainment on here, but they’re worthless as evidence - even as slight evidence - of the reality of the paranormal.

Presumably you accept that, for example, whilst what magicians do looks like completely impossible and unbelievable magic, it’s all very clever showmanship and sleight of hand and years of perfecting the technique? And you know they aren’t really pulling rabbits out of empty hats, or levitating, or finding the exact card you marked? Etc etc.

So surely if you accept that, it’s not so difficult to accept that mediums and psychics are also essentially magicians who have spent years perfecting observational reading, are excellent at picking up on very subtle body language, and have charisma and showmanship down pat, rather than actually doing completely impossible things like knowing everything about any stranger who walks through their doors or speaking with the dead?

Yes. I've said this on here before, a million namechanges ago, but my mother used to talk in awe about the 'incredibly accurate' reading she had from a locally famous 'psychic' in the 1970s -- and she used to list, awestruck, all the concrete things this woman had got right or predicted and which later came true.

Then we found an ancient handbag which had my aunt's written notes of this famous session at the bottom, and of course my mother (who is scrupulously honest) had over time hugely exaggerated the 'hits' and minimised the 'misses'.

And most of the 'hits' would have been very obvious to anyone with even the most bog-standard cold reading skills -- a young working-class woman with a strong country accent and wearing a very new wedding ring and a body that suggested a recent pregnancy. .

@BeckyBloomwood3 "@CurlewKate memorising a whole play is very easy if that's all you have to do, and practice lots 😂"

My point exactly. And if you're a "medium" you only have to memorise a few things about a few people before every show.

Yet again, how do you explain the specifics? Can you do that? I imagine not, but if you could that would be much appreciated.

@WhatsTheUseOfWorrying I fully accept that, and that’s what’s frustrating - I was there, my colleagues were there, we all saw something that was different to the usual ‘I’m getting a reading from an Agnes, (Agnes being a very common name here from a few decades ago), she had a wee white dog, she always went to church on a Sunday’ type thing and that was delivered in a very different way.

Derren Brown has given really detailed explanations of how he does exactly the same things as mediums and psychics claim to be doing, including in situations like you describe with your friend, without being a medium or a psychic. I doubt I can explain it as clearly or succinctly as he does, so I’m not going to try - but his explanations are widely available online.

If your friend had been to see a magician and said “SirChenjin, I thought I was a cynic but there’s no way he could have performed all those tricks, I actually believe he must have magical powers” you’d tell her it wasn’t real and provide links to explanations of how magicians do their tricks. If she continued to say “well, that might be how some not real magicians emulate real magic, but this guy wasn’t doing that, he was doing genuine magic, I was sitting so close to him and arching his every move and there’s just no way he was faking it” I doubt you’d suddenly decide you couldn’t possibly think of a non-magic explanation to explain how this magician did it without having magical powers. Because you know magic isn’t real.

@Disturbia81 i totally get it - I have someone close to me that went to a reading with quite a famous medium. Our surname is not usual at all and the medium was able to say all these weird things that nobody would know (it’s not even on social media etc and this deceased relative of this person close to me died far away, so it wasn’t reported locally). There were so many things this person knew - and I just can’t see how it could’ve been a coincidence). This was also in a large audience of a few hundred, and she was a spare ticket for someone else who booked it and couldn’t go, so it was pure chance she was there.

This is really a pretty pointless, if interesting discussion. I can say "Well, no I can't say exactly how your psychic person knew the things she said she knew, but here are some of the ways these things happen. And if you watch Derren Brown, he will show and tell you exactly how he does it." And the other person will say "But my experience was different" Stalemate. But it's always worth wondering - why has nobody ever been able to replicate these things under even mildly scientific circumstances? And why has nobody ever been told anything of any practical use?

Many years ago at a works Christmas party the managers had hired a magician who did table magic. The magician went round pushing cigarettes through tables, doing card tricks, mind tricks and the rest. The act was very, very good.

A colleague told me afterwards that she couldn’t decide if the magician really could do those things or not. She said she couldn’t see a way they weren’t real and how the magician didn’t have special powers.

I regard believers in mediums - or the possibility of their ‘gifts’ - as I regarded my colleague: suggestible and willing to believe, despite everything that shows it all to be illusion, self-deception or fraud.

If everyone on this thread put in a pound we might be able to get derren brown to come on the thread and explain a previous posters guitar thing because I would love to know how you could cold read that a person was going to get a guitar in an unusual way! I wish I was so clever!

Does anyone remember the show where Derren gave ‘psychic readings’ and he told one woman she was thinking of moving abroad or something and he explained after how he’d done it? I really want to rewatch it.

I’ll see if I can find the Derren Brown explanation - sounds like he has the answer.

She clearly had The Gift. Shame she didn’t have the common sense to play the lottery the week you did. It would have saved her a lot of faffing about telling people Auntie Pam treasures her memories of the caravanning holidays in Prestatyn.

https://derrenbrown.co.uk/testing-psychics/

This is a useful piece on a few high-profile psychics’ techniques (some of them passed on to DB by the staff of theatres that hosted both ‘psychic shows’ and DB’s shows), and some amusing links. But YouTube also has a lot of complete episodes of his TV programmes, including one on testing psychics/faking psychic readings.

That’s interesting, I knew sally had been ‘caught out’ but I didn’t know the details. I’m going to read the links to cold reading and the link showing the emails now as well.

I watched a derren brown show on YouTube a little while ago where he spoke to a male psychic/medium and went to his house and I think went to his show, that was really interesting, I’ll have to try and find it again!

Use a Face recognition program as people come in the theatre then a quick trawl on local SM and bobs your uncle - or maybe your brother - well maybe it was Rob. I can sense that it was definitely Rob.

@naysayers1 "So, to all of the sceptics, how would you explain :

A) A medium in 1973, knowing that my Mum had just lost 2 babies?

B) The medium telling my Mum about me moving house, the guitar and the lottery, which were three separate events, all IN THE FUTURE?"

Obviously I can't say exactly how it was done. I suspect the baby thing is the usual "woman with a wedding ring-childbearing age-most women have 2 children-mention 2 children then pick up on nuance/your mother gave the information." And the others? I don't know. Moving house is a safe bet and so is winning something. The guitar is the only one that's unusual. If you could go back in time you'd probably discover that it wasn't as specific as you remember it.

I am a huge cynic. I mean enormous. BUT. I can just about, with a bit of wriggling, make allowances for a low level telepathic field which is what I always credit for those 'moments of knowing' - you know when you just feel you have to say something like 'how's your dog?' or when you think 'her husband smacks her about'; those moments of just knowing something about someone you've never met before.

But mediums? Why on earth do the dead come back and spout some banal nonsense about things that the sitter already knows? Why does not one person come back and say 'if I were you, love, I'd start going to Church because it's not great over here if you don't Believe,' or similar? Or give them the winning lottery numbers? Or try to help them in some concrete way? Why would your deceased grandfather only strain himself to come through a medium to tell you how he died (which you already know) and that your brother's name begins with a D. Or maybe a B?

Sally Morgan won a libel action against the Daily Mail for stating she’d scammed her Dublin audience (after a huge controversy blew up on a well-known national radio call in when two people said they’d heard voices at the back of the auditorium saying things a beat before Sally said them on stage, suggesting she was being fed information via an earpiece, which she refuted). It was huge at the time (I was visiting my parents and remember it), though it’s weirdly largely absent now from the internet, suggesting someone’s gone to some lengths to bury it.

BUT it appears Psychic Sally no longer does dates in Ireland.

Oh, and the other thing I wanted to say is that if you go onto Sally Morgan’s website, as I just did (to see whether she still does shows in Ireland), the live chat asking if it can help collects cookies, which can of course store information like name, phone number, addresses etc as well as pages browsed.

Quite frankly, the number of people who think mediums would research possible attendees of a show, and memorise it all, and then recognise those people in the dark audience, with a spot light in their face, is just crazy. Many people have very old photo's as their profile pic or aren't even on SM

Well, they literally do, so. Check out Susan Gerbic and her Guerilla Sceptics who flood shows and did a nice take down of Thomas John. John recounting a whole load of made up shite that Gerbic had put on her fake FB profile before going to his show. Telling her all about her fake dead twin brother, his fake girlfriend, her fake dog. Gerbic’s fake profile and fake info only existed on FB and so it was conclusive evidence that John did indeed research his audience ahead of time on social media.

I find that really obvious though. She made up all this and obviously made it easy to find. Quite a few 'mediums' I've also heard of similarly go for the easy targets.