To ask if anyone has ever had an irrefutable experience with a psychic?

[BlueDressingGown]

I'm just going to be really honest and say that the reason I'm asking this is because I'm afraid of death. I really want to believe that there is something after death, and so in the past I've thought about speaking to a psychic. If they could tell me one thing - just one thing that couldn't be explained away - I could say to myself 'Ok, there is something else out there' and be content and not let the idea of 'the end' terrify me too much. Yes I should probably seek counseling.

So my question is - does anyone have an irrefutable experience with a psychic - something they were told that can't be explained away? Mostly the experiences seem to point towards it all being a load of hooey (which is what I believe, but I want to believe it's not). Psychics seem to give very general readings and most are frauds that pick up on things that the person has said and regurgitates them, right? My friend saw a psychic and apparently her dead father 'came through' and told her that she was having her garden done - and it was true! Like your dad would bother coming up from the spirit world to tell you some mundane crap from your own life that you already knew!

My sister saw a medium and she was convinced by it that she'd 'spoken' to our Gran. DSis even ended her relationship based on something 'Gran' had said through the medium. She was adamant she hadn't given anything away and that the medium just spontaneously gave a very specific message - that our Gran was watching over us and was "holding OneEye's baby" (I'd had a miscarriage a year before). She secretly recorded it and I had a listen. Turns out she'd straight up told the woman she was hoping to hear from Gran and had mentioned that she had 3 sisters. With that info and a good guess at DSis's age, I imagine the medium found it pretty easy to make a guess that at least one out of four women might have lost a baby.

DSis thinks I'm massively cynical, she firmly believes in some form of life after death and that our Gran is still here. She mentions that Gran 'visits' her by flickering lights and creating cold draughts.

I don't want to be cynical - I'd love to believe my Gran was still with me, especially in situations when I would have gone to her for advice. I feel her absence as much as ever even though it's been 4 years. But to be honest, I really believe the vast majority of psychics and mediums are really good con artists and I'd have to have a pretty spectacular experience with one to be convinced otherwise. And that won't happen as I refuse to pay for a reading.

To be honest if someone believes then leave them to it. Its not hurting anyone. The only people doing that are those who dont believe pushing their opinions on others which are no better than the fake psychics/mediums out there.

Get to know your inner sense and you may be able to tell for yourself at the times it really matters. If science can explain what consciousness is in atoms and molecules then let it step up and do so. Until then it holds no sense of proof which it relies upon to disprove an afterlife and where we came from beforehand either.

But it is hurting some people.

LucyBabs to question the sincerely held beliefs of people regarding the afterlife is as tasteless and hurtfull as suggesting those who have lost loved ones go see a psychic.

To question the morals, ethics and motives of those who claim to be able to contact the dead is completely reasonable.

"I refuse to believe that we know everything about the universe and find it odd that people can categorically say what is or isn't the case about mediums, religion etc. "

Well obviously we don't know everything! But that doesn't mean we don't know anything. And every time a person who claims psychic powers is investigated under anything like proper scientific conditions, they turn out either to be mistaken, deluded or fraudulent. Every single time. For hundreds of years.

'Its not hurting anyone. '

It is hurting people. Just saw that post now, a person ended a relationship based on what a medium told her. I know bereaved people who have spent a fortune in money, not to mention what they have invested emotionally, in search of 'messages' and following these types of people round the UK, spending money they don't have to spare and getting very invested emotionally and being very hurt when they don't get a 'message'.

Or making decisions based on fortune-tellers and what not.

Fair enough if people want to believe in life after death, or they see one medium and think Gran or Mum and Dad or whoever has spoken to them through the medium, etc.

But it easily crosses the line for a lot of people, especially those who have lost a loved one.

yes I have and I won't share it again because I was scorned last time I shared this.

All I know is I know the information (Palmist) gave me could not have been guessed and I didn't give any clues.

It's the "it's not hurting anyone" point I struggle with, it does hurt people, there's examples on this thread.

The party bookings for a bit if a giggle is one thing, but there is another side, where vulnerable people are taken advantage of and money is made from them and their grief. I've noticed a while back, specific phone in channels now, where you can phone a medium day or night. It must be profitable or the channel wouldn't run and I don't think it's people looking for a bit of a laugh that's keeping them in business,

Just curious, has anyone watched any of the Derren Brown clips and what did you think?

70sisalimit like you I won't share for the same reason. I refuse to be ridiculed, but I know what I know and I would never be convinced otherwise.

I watched the Derren Brown clip and it didn't apply to the medium that my friend saw, as it was at a Psychic Fair, she could have gone to any of the mediums there, there was no line up, there were no random questions etc. Friend was, yes, sceptical - but he came up with the brother thing very quickly (no hints, another friend was with her and verified that she gave nothing away).
SO - maybe he was still a mind reader rather than a psychic; but he was very good at it.

Interesting that someone upthread mentioned about psychics helping the police with cases - there is a tv show on Australian tv where psychics are tested on cold cases, where some information about the murders is known, but not enough to solve them. There are usually 2 or 3 psychics put on the same case, and (ok it's TV so who knows if there is manipulation, probably) but the police have followed up on leads that the psychics have given them. I don't know off hand if they've actually caught anyone or not off the back of the info though.

Not a personal experience but I recently heard about a case in America I think whereby a lady died in a car crash and her rescuers were called by her to her car where they found her child still alive in there, there were 3/4 policemen who were adament they heard this lady calling for help despite the fact that she had been dead for days! One described himself as a complete atheist. I'm a complete sceptic but this story resonated with me,

maybe he was still a mind reader rather than a psychic; but he was very good at it.

Maybe he was a ghost or a telepathic space alien. Or God. All just as likely.

I'm a complete sceptic but this story resonated with me,

For a complete sceptic, you're not very sceptical.

I don't know off hand if they've actually caught anyone or not off the back of the info though"

No, they haven't. HTH

@scottishhegg can you remember where you heard the story? Just I've heard that story too, it was on a Facebook poem type thing on Mothers Day to show how strong Motherly love is. I'd heard it once or twice before that so poked about online and found Itsan urban legend, snopes .com has more info but there's with many versions of the same story at various places online, the rescuers differ from being a rescue service, to a passing couple on a walk, or the country differs but it's always a dead mother, somehow contacting people to rescue her baby from a car accident.

Derren brown nailed it for me. I've seen him do better and more accurate 'readings' than any psychic I've seen, and he states very clearly that he has no psychic abilities at all. I think, often there is very clever tricks and methods involved that can be very very convincing.
I'm not saying that some people don't genuinely believe that they have psychic ability, and I can't personally say for sure that nobody has psychic abilities. But I'm not convinced personally by anyone I've seen.
What sits very uncomfortably with me is that there are definite fraudsters and deceptive people out there professing to be 'psychic' and taking money from people who are in complete turmoil and consumed with grief. How anyone can deceive people like that for financial gain is beyond me, but it happens.

For a complete sceptic, you're not very sceptical

I agree. People who believe they've experienced a psychic reading or a medium aren't really thinking that hard.

It would be like going to see Paul Daniels and saying 'before I went I was a complete sceptic but he really can saw Debbie McKellen in half and produce a dove from thin air.'

Of course he can't do either of those things but there are tips and tricks that can be learned that give the appearance that he can. so called psychics and mediums are exactly the same they learn tricks (cold reading, barnum statements, the fallibility of human memory) to give the impression they have powers they don't have.

dead mother calling for help for her baby

watch from about 2 minutes:

My friend's mum thinks she's a medium. A few weeks after I'd been told I had pcos and a natural pregnancy was unlikely, she told me that I'd be having a baby soon. It turns out that I did get pg naturally a couple of months later. It also turns out that my friend had been discussing my health with her mum for weeks, and what I'd been doing to try and help (vitamins, losing weight, etc) so it wasn't anywhere near as "out of the blue" as it had seemed. I think it was her way of trying to be positive, but it could have been cruel if I'd really believed her, got my hopes up and then been disappointed which could so easily have happened.

I'd also had a palm reading done when I was 18 (because the man was pretty much a beggar and I wanted to help him rather than wanting a palm reading). He told me I'd have 2 and a half children, the half being a miscarriage, and that there would be a big gap between the 2 living children. That's true, I do have 2 children with a big gap and I've had one miscarriage. Strangely though, that's the only thing he got right in the whole reading, I don't have a rich husband, I haven't travelled extensively (although he had a good reason to believe I would, seeing as I was halfway across the world while having this 'reading'), I am not a doctor, etc. So I don't think he was the real deal either.

Just watched the Darren Brown thing that Hazle posted - that's an awful lot of fishing and questionning!

How do the mediums (or whatever you want to call them) like the one I went to see at the spiritualist church come up with very specific stuff without asking questions and without any nodding on the part of the person being given the reading? I'm sure it's easier now that with the internet, but in the days before then? We were just part of a crowd, no-one knew our names before my work colleague was picked.

"How do the mediums (or whatever you want to call them) like the one I went to see at the spiritualist church come up with very specific stuff without asking questions and without any nodding on the part of the person being given the reading? I'm sure it's easier now that with the internet, but in the days before then? We were just part of a crowd, no-one knew our names before my work colleague was picked."
People give out much more information than they think they do. One of my nephews was spectaculaly good at that pairs matching card game when he was little- so good that if you had wanted to you could easily have thought he was using some sort of supernatural ability. Eventually someone asked him and he said that he just watched people's eyes- if they knew where a pair was they always looked at it. He was amazed that everyone didn't do it! What's even more interesting that even after he told us that we still did it, however hard we tried not to.

plenty of explanations, talking to the dead is not one though.

For example, as was described by a previous poster, people only believe they didn't say a thing, like her sister who was adamant she didn't give anything away, but on tape, could be heard saying loads.

Cold reading with very general remarks that don't say anything and could apply to everybody - there's also Derren's horoscope experiment on youtube, where all people agreed it was amazingly accurate. Selective memories as well - some time later, people only remember those couple of lucky guesses that came true (you will have 2 children - well what do you know, quite likely to happen) and not the ones that didn't.

Mediums always comb local newspapers for obituaries and other news - if there's a John Smith remembered by his son Matt, the son could be in the crowd and seriously freaked out when the medium has a message from his dad John.

Basically I'm convinced there's a rational explanation behind all of this - just because we can't think how they did it, it does not mean they have supernatural powers. I can't explain most tricks magicians do either, but they're still not magic.

I've never seen a psychic reading where the person being 'read' sits perfectly still and silent and the psychic just reels off information. It always works by the psychic asking questions and making suggestions and the person being 'read' making some kind of response either verbally or through body language.

For that reason I'm hugely sceptical of people who say they gave no clues or information. Unless you sat rigidly still and said nothing then of course you gave information.

Yep Durris Stokes used to comb the obituaries in the town before she played a gig.

People on this thread have said 'I saw a psychic and he told me I'd have two children and marry a bloke with a name that started with a J'

Even in a short ten minute reading the so-called psychic will have to speak several thousand words and make many more predictions than the 'true' ones. So by the law of averages aided by intelligent guesswork you make enough predictions and some of them will resonate and be remembered whilst the inaccurate speculative guesses will be forgotten.