to ask if anyone has had a psychic reading that was extremely accurate?

[opheliaria]

One that could not be down to cold reading. For example, giving out very specific details such as exact dates, unusual names, basically precise facts that cannot be fished for or guessed and are not vague?

Take a minute.

What is Cold Reading? Am so interested in this topic at the moment - am currently immersed in Jodi Picoult's "Leaving Time" which involves a Psychic helping a young girl.

It has given me the bug to want to visit a Psychic just to see what it is like.

I have been a strongly skeptical person and so so agree with the above about only recalling the "correct" comments.

I need to put my skepticism to thw test and see a Psychic I think.

I have written proof from a medium I went to see a almost a year ago. She gave me my dads name, she didn't ask she TOLD me. The things she told me made the hair on my neck stand up. I believe and that's all that matters..

If you are a sceptic then good for you.. however you can't prove or disprove the after life. Same as myself

If you make an extrodinary claim you need to supply extrodinarily solid evidence and be prepared to defend it. It is not rude to ask for this proof especially when the claim is so mind bogglingly massive.

But the claims are only mind boggling to you, because they go against what you believe. No one has yet supplied extraordinary evidence to prove the existence of God. But Christians believe there is enough cause for them to have faith in him. If you choose not to believe, that is your right, just as they have a right to believe.

It is not rude to ask for proof, but it is rude to demand proof just because what the person is claiming is not what you believe in.

But the claims are only mind boggling to you, because they go against what you believe

No it goes against every piece of evidence we have. If I say "the earth revolves around the sun" I can point to five hundred years worth of science to back me up and observable evidence.

If I say "the earth resolves around Jupiter " I'd need hard and fast evidence powerful evidence verified by others and compelling enough to overturn half milenenium's worth of scholarship, I couldn't just say"well that's what I think" and expect it to be taken at face value.

These aren't different versions of the truth, one is right, one is wrong. Youbseem to think that all statements are relative and they really aren't.

Nope there are three versions.. my truth your truth and the actual truth

Ok tango sorry I guess that does make sense (re the appointment).
How did you hear of the psychic btw, to make the call (sorry if you've said already). Were they a local one?

In fairness arent there quite a lot of things that can't be replicated in the lab, but are still generally accepted to be true? Or is that very naive of me?

I don't want to go to a psychic, rather averse to the idea.

I just don't quite see how anyone can say definitely that no one has ever had the ability to pick up odd things in a way that cannot possibly come down to cold reading, confirmation bias etc. Same as I don't see how that you can definitively say that it does. It's not as in-your-face-obvious as a lot of facts, by definition!

kua it might be nice to think there is something 'more' ... depending on what the 'more' is, ofc.

In fairness arent there quite a lot of things that can't be replicated in the lab, but are still generally accepted to be true? Or is that very naive of me?"

I honestly can't think of any- I would be interested if anyone else could.

And on the "you can't say for definite" thing- well, I suppose you can't, no. But if every single piece of evidence that has ever been looked at points one way, it would be a bit perverse to believe the opposite.

I can't be 100% sure that the sun will rise in the East tomorrow, or that if I let go of my coffee cup it will fall to the ground, to take two examples. But I can be as sure as is possible that they will. If tomorrow they don't, then we will have to rexamine all we think we know. And the same goes for the paranormal. If there was suddenly evidence then everything changes. Which would be INCReDIBLY exciting. I really, really wish it would happen. Which is why I can't understand why at least a significant number of the people who are sure about their own powers aren't queuing up to be tested. They can't all be shy, retiring, publicity shunning types with no need for dosh, can they? (Although obviously I can see why some are) I can certainly name a few that aren't!

Oh, and to whoever is reading that Judy Picolt book---OOH, you just wait......

the sun rising in the east is highly obvious though. I mean, it's right in your face. It's dark or it isn't. A lot of these comparisons fail for me because they -are- solid, dependable and reliable.

if (if) anything like psychic ability exists then it's going to be nebulous and intermittant at best, presumably. At least I guess so, simply because it's not highly reliable and replicable. it also seems such a woolly and ungraspable thing. So it is a very different thing to say, gravity or the far-out but reliable conclusions of some of the Cochrane reports eg the report that suggested giving antibiotics to mother with GBS during labour is considered to have saved some babies' lives. Iirc that wasn't picked up til the meta analysis because it is a relatively rare occurance (iirc, my memory is hazy, must read Bad Science again). It's a rare situation but it is replicable, unlike psychic 'readings'.

I don't believe it really exists but I can't rule it out entirely simply because not quite everything can be measured and replicated. Seems to me that saying it definitely doesn't exist is as much an article of faith as saying it definitely does.

I was living in Scotland with my 3 DCs and an abusive XH. I hadn't admitted to anyone let alone myself how bad the relationship was and I went with a pal to a psychic fair. I had a reading with a Geordie bloke who recorded it and insisted I said nothing, no murmurs, yes or no's, nothing. He did a reading with his eyes shut not even facing me. He described all my children and their personalities (they weren't there), he told me I'd had a tattoo the week before and where it was - I had and it wasn't a visible one, on the back of my neck so really not common then. He told me that I would be happy and would come home to the NE - I am English but not from the NE. And that I'd be happier with nothing than what I had now and that it would get worse before it got better. I would also end up with money, always able to find £50 but never be a millionaire.

A couple of years later and the abuse did get worse, I did eventually get the courage to leave. I now live in the NE and have never been happier. The DCs as exactly as he described, my DP is as he said, my career is. I have also come into a substantial amount of money so I am comfortable but not quite a millionaire.

I was very 'woo' before, I'm cynical now but there is a part of me that thinks 'how the hell?!' His words would come back to me as the abuse wore on and I would take comfort in thinking there 'could' be something in it and out there for me.

Just a thought, (looking out the window at the pouring rain) wouldn't it be nice to think there was something more out there?
Why shouldn't you keep that happy thought, I believe there certainly is.

Finally caught up with all the new posts, rough as a badger's arse today (ironically predictable.)

Thanks to all the posters supporting my views. To the person who asked about finding a medium I'd suggest contacting your local spiritual church. They don't charge the earth and seem to be more in it for the right reasons.

I was thinking about something that happened to me a few years ago. I was working in elderly care and there was this lovely but quiet lady that didn't really seem to pay me much attention. There were around 50 people came into the centre on a variety of days before anyone talks about the 'odds' of this happening.

This lady appeared to me one night, I couldn't actually work out if I was awake or asleep. She perched herself on the edge of my bed and I sat up and asked her what she was doing here. She said that she had come to thank me and to stay doing this type of work as she felt I had made a difference in the centre. I thanked her and she said she was off now to see her husband. I said goodbye and that I'd see her tomorrow.

At the meeting the next morning we were reading through the list of clients to pick up on the bus runs. When we got to this lady's name the senior said, 'no, her daughter called in this morning, C passed away in the night.' I was so shocked that the senior asked me if I was ok, I went white as a sheet apparently. I said I was fine and she said that she hadn't thought we were all that close. I let her believe that, the dream seemed to woo to say. I have had other dreams like this too.

I totally respect everyone's right to have an opinion, I do love a good debate and a ranty post against me doesn't put me up nor down. But thank you to all the people sending me messages of support.

You can't prove a negative so no-one can say psychic powers don't exist or conversing with the dead is impossible. Likewise no-one can say Santa doesn't exist.

What we can say is that there is no evidence to believe any of these things.

An old lady died and you dreamed about her. What are the odds, eh??

I'm really interested in your posts fackinell

I wouldn't say that I'm a believer or a non believer, but I am open to the possibility

I wondered, have you ever had a premonition about yourself?

Fackinell, I appreciate that you have been cheerful and gracious throughout the thread, but I really think that this instance is a classic example of something that, as EastMidsMummy said, isn't that unlikely - you remembered the dream because of the death, but dreaming/daydreaming about a woman you work with isn't wildly unusual, and if she was elderly, her death must have been on your mind as an inevitability, sooner or later. These kinds of losses must happen with regularity if you work in elderly care, surely?

It would have been a lot more surprising if the woman in question was twenty and in perfect health.

Another poster talked about a very accurate and insightful psychic she saw regularly, but didn't seem to make the connection between the regularity of the sessions and the 'accuracy' of the readings - of course a 'psychic' will be able to 'predict' with far more accuracy when he or she sees their client regularly, and inevitably picks up a certain amount of knowledge about thir life.

Yes, a friend and I were planning to go away on holiday over Christmas and new year. She was online looking at locations and being unable to reach me had filled in everything for one in the Maldives. She was hovering on the 'book' icon when I called her back. When she told me I felt a surge of panic and told her no, don't book. She asked why but I didn't know all I knew was I felt sick, dizzy and totally panic stricken. That was the year of the tsunami in the Indian Ocean. She totally freaked out after.

I am aware that I sound utterly bonkers to many on here. I absolutely promise you all that I am making none of this up. You don't know me of course, but I've been here years and am a regular poster.
On cats usually.

Honestly, Fackinell, if a friend hadn't consulted me properly about the specifics of what sounds like a very expensive holiday and had gone ahead and filled in online details and was literally hovering over the 'book' button that was about to commit me to some considerable expenditure in relation to a holiday I hadn't had enough time to think about in detail, I probably would have felt panic-stricken and told her not to as well!

Do you see what I mean? You had an understandable response which was entirely explicable by the immediate circumstances, not as a mysterious intimation of a natural disaster, and because of the tsunami, you now remember the panic-stricken feeling as a premonition.

I was at a summer school in the west of Ireland years ago, and made friends with a woman from NI who was in a similar field to me (both postgraduate students). She invited me to go home to her parents' house in Tyrone with her for a few days after the end of the summer school, and I was about to accept with pleasure when something made me refuse instead. If I had gone with her, I would have been in Omagh the day of the Real IRA bomb in August 1998 that killed 29 people and injured hundreds.

I could say that it was a premonition that stopped me, only it wasn't. There was no way I could have known what was going to happen. I didn't go to Omagh for reasons I can't now remember - I probably had other plans at the opposite end of the country, and I wanted to see my own family, and had very little money. It was that banal. And her parents lived outside the town - the chances of my actually being in the town centre at the time of the bombing if I had actually gone were small. We both liked walking, and would probably have been out in the country on a long hike. I only remember the refusal now because of the bombing. She wasn't hurt, and neither were any of her family.

I offer this non-story as an example of how, with a few probably unconscious tweaks over time, I could have - with no intention to mislead - made it into a story about a premonition that saved my own life. Whereas it was just an awful coincidence.

*You can't prove a negative so no-one can say psychic powers don't exist or conversing with the dead is impossible. Likewise no-one can say Santa doesn't exist.

What we can say is that there is no evidence to believe any of these things.*

Absolutely spot on EastMidsMummy. Plus there's also a mountain of evidence to show that psychic readings are trickery. Just Youtube Derren Brown to see him debunk the most convincing readings.

I despair at the lack of logical and critical thinking on this thread. It plays right into the hands of people like Nigel Short who says a woman can never play top level chess because they lack logic. (see the feminism chat section of MN). Reading thru some of the deluded tripe on here makes me think he may have a point.

Thoroughly depressing. You would never find this level of support for claptrap woo on a forum that was predominantly male.

I believe that was your gut instinct actually. It's a primal thing, like when animals sense a storm coming. Slight changes in the atmosphere and that feeling of foreboding. Very similar happened to me about the London bombings. I didn't know what, where or when I just knew something was about to hit us in London (I lived there at the time.)

I saw fire, explosions and the number 8 over and over in my dreams. I was convinced it was Live 8 but it turned out to be the day of the G8. It all made sense after but I wished it could have been clearer. Mind you, how can you explain THAT to the police?

Re the holiday, my friend knew the budget, it was a very cheap deal and I knew she was doing it that day. Not a shock at all.

Why is it that "psychics" nearly always identify extremely common names? It always seems to be names like John or George or Anne that "come through." Now if someone happened to say, "Your grandfather was Ambrose Aloysius Bullfinch," that might be quite impressive. I still wouldn't believe in the existence of psychics but I'd think the guessing was quite inspired.

I have two friends who visited the same psychic. She had no idea they knew each other. She told both of them that "someone called Michael" was important in their lives in some way or another. (Neither of them had any connection with anyone by that name beyond a few acquaintances.) Obviously that was simply her go-to name since Michael is a very common name in the English-speaking world.

Animals use their senses to sense a storm coming, not a feeling of foreboding. They use hearing, smell, sensitivity to atmospheric pressure, which due to evolution, are in many cases more highly developed that ours.

Your dream of the 7/7 bombings (which is very vague anyway) is classic confirmation bias. I bet you've had loads of dreams about terrible events, most of which you don't even recall because they don't come to pass. But after the bombings you taken your dream and made it fit the event.

Number 8, the day of G8. Come on! If it had been another number you dreamt you would have found something else to fit it, the number of the bus blown up, the number of dead, the time of the bombs, etc etc. Or the gap between 2 of the bombs.

Give me any number from 1-100 and I will google the events of 7/7 and find a way of making it fit.

Finding the constant criticism quite draining today actually. I may bow out of this thread soon but I will honour what you asked and give you no 78.