To think psychics are all fakes?

[LambinsideaDuckinsideaTrout]

I don't like that they take peoples money when they are in a vulnerable place, lost loved ones etc. It's immoral. Just my opinion.

Thoughts? Opinions?

lovederren I know what you mean, but with me it wasn't breaking fairies' hearts, but God watching me the whole time and judging me. I lay awake at night often, scared to death. God also read my mind and my heart and was unhappy if I had a bad thought or did something naughty. We weren't even feckin Catholic, but CofE! The sunday school I went to just told Bible stories but this included some of the gorier ones from the Old Testament with no suggestion that they were to be taken anything but 100 per cent literally (so plagues of locusts and people breaking out in boils all over).

I was terrified of Hell until the age of about 8, when I heard the vicar explain that hell was not fire and brimstone and screams of agony in the eternal fire, but 'absence of God' - and I thought 'that's ok, I can cope with that!'

Yes, they are all fake. And just out of interest, are any of you incensed that women's magazines still print horoscopes? I find it an affront to rationality and my gender.

Sorry - that wasn't an attempt to hijack.

I'm not bothered about the printing of horoscopes tbh, it's so obviously shite.

Anyone who believes that crap is a fool.

tiktok - I was raised a Catholic and like you remember the terror of God 'knowing' all my bad thoughts and how it was impossible - simply impossible to get through the day without 'sinning'. I had to go to Confession when I was seven to confess all my sins. I remember it being so humiliating. 'I had a bad thought about my friend' or 'I said a rude word.'

Once I said to my mum 'I don't think I've done anything bad this week' and she replied triumphantly, 'Well THAT's the sin of pride!' I was seven years old.

We had Sunday School too. One day we were talking about Original Sin and the teacher asked, 'what should you do if you find a baby by the side of the road?' 'Baptise it!' we all chanted obediently - because unbaptised babies couldn't get into heaven. One brave boy said: 'I'd call an ambulance actually' and got A Look.

And the Stations of the Cross we had to listen to on Good Friday! The fetishisation of torture and death in grim detail. In what world is this appropriate for children?

I will never put my children through this nonsense, this guilt mongering pap, especially as I think the Catholic Church is rotten to the core.

tiktok and frizzbonce how awful for you. It's fucked up.

It's taken me a long time to get over the superstitious bullshit I have been fed, I am still slightly freaked out that it is Friday 13th today...rationally I know it is just another day.

I am really glad that there are people willing to think and not inflict this rubbish on their kids

What pisses me off now is the idea that you need religion to have a moral compass.

What pisses me off now is the idea that you need religion to have a moral compass.

It scares me more than annoys me...

Someone mentioned a 'psychic' called Steve Holbrook as good up the thread. I googled out of curiosity. His website is full of soft-focus photos of a man with carefully tended facial hair, a shirt unbuttoned a tad too far and an Orangina tan, plus wonderful explanations of how his shows are 'for entertainment purposes only', yet also somehow 'a scientific experiment'. Apparently he won't do TV because he doesn't like the spirits being used for entertainment, but this didn't stop him doing cruises...?

Also a description of his 'spirit guide' Archie May, a hairdressing WWI soldier with a bad arm, who makes Steve Holbrook's left arm turn paralysed and blue when he is in contact with him!

The second two google results were illuminating read together. One was from a sceptics website called Bad Psychics and featured an unimpressed account of one of his shows, with SH asking a hall full of people if one of them had lost a parent in the past year (duh), passing on messages from someone's mother about two rings, a locket, a Jack Russell and someone with a tattoo, and trying to convince a bemused audience member that a 'spirit drawing' was of her dead mother despite her saying it didn't look anything like her. Etc etc. The Jack Russell was apparently present in spirit.

The other result was from a website called Spirit and Destiny populated by credulous people who can't spell. One of them also described a SH show, and honestly, reading it was awful, she was so desperate to believe, and so easily thrilled by 'messages' to other audience members describing how they had begged their dead loved ones to come through at the show, or the newly-dead commenting on their own funeral arrangements.

Plus the fact that nice Steve was so down to earth he even consented to sign the book she had bought in the interval, and had been lovely enough to bring along his lovely friends, who sell crystals and incense in the lobby, and best of all someone called Sandy, who for a mere £20 will draw someone you know who has 'passed over'!

At that point, I lost the will to live.

Just dashing on and off because it occurred to me that no one's posted on this thread yet.

Bit of a tradition for it to show up somewhere on our sceptic threads, it's so wonderful. A must see for anyone who hasn't.

The more I think about the whole sick, parasitic, money grabbing business of psychics the angrier I get.

It's the million dollar thing that gets me.

If there was a million dollars up for grabs to anyone who could prove they could do something I was convinced I could do, I'd have a go. Anyone would. I don't care what stupid excuses these people come out with to explain away why they don't have a go. Even if you yourself don't want/need the money are you really telling me that you can't think of ONE good cause to donate the money to? Not a single charity that might deserve it?

If you're one of these deluded people who think you can give a half decent (ie accurate) reading even when the opportunity to cheat is taken away then apply for the Randi millions.

If you're not confident enough to even apply then STFU. You have no psychic powers and more importantly, you know full well you don't otherwise you'd be there like a shot.

Applauds monkeys.

I heard the story once of a very famous charlatan who employed someone to scour the local papers of towns she would be visiting on tours. She would find a tragic death (the example given was a young man who had died in a motorbike accident) and offer the surviving relatives free tickets to her show. Then on stage she would retell the story from the paper, getting the poor relatives to stand up and be her unwitting stooge.
If that isn't a sick, sick business, I don't know what is .

perplexed would that be Doris Stokes? I get furious beyond words when Sally Morgan starts mimicking the voices of dead children on stage. Utterly vile.

On a more light hearted note - why are all spirit guides Native Americans? or do we have some sort of spirit guide exchange scheme where the Sioux get a tyre fitter from Romford as their guide to the spirit realm.

Also, why do those who have 'passed' concern themselves with such trivial things? If the medium is to be believed, they've made it to the great beyond. The prospect of an afterlife and what it might be like has exercised the finest minds on the planet, yet those dwelling within it, seem more concerned with telling those remaining on earth that they are well, they miss them and if they look down the side of the settee they'll find the key to the shed.

Does anyone remember Corrie back in the day?

Ivy Tilsley was spending far too much time and money visiting mediums in the hope of getting a message from dead husband Bert (I think it was) and everyone was getting really worried about her.

Anyway she turns up in the Rovers one day having been to yet another medium and R Bryan says something like "Look mum this has really got to stop" and Ivy says cheerfully "Don't worry, I won't be going again - I finally got a message from your Dad and he told me to pull myself together, get on with my life and stop wasting money on bloody mediums"

I liked that. That's what I'd say if there is an afterlife and any of my family go to a medium - "What the FUCK do you think you're doing wasting money like this when you've just got that gas bill in?? I'm dead and I'm staying dead so bugger off and do something less expensive and more worthwhile".

I was raised Catholic and my experience was nothing like others that have been described. If anything, I found people from other Christian religions quite scary with all their talk of fire and brimstone etc. I would never have been told that I was going to hell for something. We were taught about loving our neighbours and forgiveness and being tolerant of other people - not condemning them because they happened to be a different religion! (Something I encountered when I went to university and met with people from other denominations)

Oh, Tim. I love you, Tim!

[grin]@Compo.
I have a lovely image of Native Americans being guided through the spirit by Julie off the tills at Co-Op.

I wonder why no-one has ever questioned why Derek Acorah's Sam has nowt better to do than tell a middle-aged Liverpudlian ghost stories in various attics.

I dont believe in psychics or anything like that but when I was a student I had a sat job in a gift shop. Two gypsy women came in & went straight upto my boss & said that "Xx told me to say hello & she is fine". She then turned to leave but my boss stopped her and asked her for more information so the woman gave more details & names of people who had passed on. There was absolutely no way she would have known those details as the incidents had happened 15+ years previously. I was more inclined to believe them because they mentioned the past rather than the future, they didnt ask for money & we never saw them again.

Now that is a perfect example of part of the problem.

"I don't believe, but X happened to me and there is no other explanation so...."

X is just the same as all the other events- the gypsies read the paper/knew the shop owner's brother/the shop owner was part of a scam/after 15 years your memory has embroidered the story/ insert other explanation that applies to this as to all other "unexplained" happenings.

Yes, raisah - You can't think of any explanation for that other than messages from the other side? Really? I can think of about 10 without even really applying my mind to the matter.

Some people like to think they know more than they actually do :)

Yes - we call them "religious" & "spiritualist".

"Some people like to think they know more than they actually do "

And some people utterly refuse to see what's in front of their eyes!

YANBU. I had one tell me my nan had passed on a message that I needed to eat prunes . Really? My dear nan who I grew up with and passed away 15 years ago and all she can comment on is how constipated I am . Right.

James Randi has a million dollar prize for anyone who can pass the psychic test www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html

Of course nobody has passed it because despite there being very little that people won't do for that kind of money, there is a lot that people can't do because it is not possible.

It takes a very cruel person to pretend they are talking to someone's dead relative and a very gullible one to believe it. Psychics work through cold reading and taking cues from their subject. Some people make it very easy for them by practically telling them everything, allowing psychic repeat it back to them which is then proof that psychic is 'real'. I actually witnessed that with a friend, 'how could she have known?'..... because you told her!!!

I went to a few psychics when I was younger, they could never read my poker face because I gave nothing away so basically gave their impressions based on clothing, accent and looks while trying to fake dead people by my side, in one case 'it mustn't have happened yet' when told that no such person ever existed. They were all wrong in their perceptions and predictions.