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?

I don't know that much about psychics but I would never expect anything to be too explicit. From what I've read they often get jumbled messages coming from many different spirits at once. It can't be easy.

Yep- if psychics could give the police accurate information why not use them all the time? Why isn't it just a routine part of police work? And what about the missing AirAsia plane. You would have thought that the anguish sent out by those poor people would have alerted every psychic on the planet. And Madeline Mccann? the Brady/Hindley victims?

You can't have it both ways, Rose. They are either out there pinpointing the locations of murder victims for the police, or getting confused and jumbled messages from crowds of spirits.....

The trouble with this thread, and all arguments re the supernatural, god v no god, ghosts v no ghosts, is that on one side you have logic, reason, science and rationality, and we're up against make believe, superstition magic powers and total nonsense. And with make believe and nonsense, you get to move the goalposts all the time, whereas we're stuck with those pesky laws of physics and nature.

So we can never win, because the psychics can say the spirits don't work that way, or ghosts don't come out when the tv cameras are there, or god put that false evidence there as a test of faith.

Arguing against stuff like this is like trying to nail jelly to a wall.

Meerka, I knew someone who didn't claim to be psychic but could tell you things you weren't saying. It was really clever and I suspect a part of what cold reading is. An example would me saying to him something like "I've got a friend Jim I sometimes meet for a drink in the pub down the road" and he'd be able to tell you that Jim was ginger and very slim and had trouble with his bunions...and it would all be correct but random and nothing to do with what you were saying other than the subject person.

He said that by the tones and vibrations of the voice he could read into that a description of the person being talked about.

I reckon Derren Brown is able to do something similar.

Much of the skill is in the way things are said.
"your dead father, his name wasn't John was it?"
"yes it was." "I thought so."
"no it wasn't" "I thought not"

I once saw Sally Morgan on tv. She waved her hand from her neck to her waist and said "he died form something in this area." Very good. That includes heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, stomach, in fact about 95% of everything people die from!

But the women said "no, he had leg ulcer that went septic!" So Sally paused and then, waving her hand aver her midriff said "but he had trouble breathing, at the end." And the woman was ecstatic. "Yes he did, he really did!"

Well of course he had trouble breathing, he was dying ffs! Trouble breathing is a pretty standard symptom of death!

Honestly, you couldn't make it up. And the audience, sadly 95% women, were lapping up the drivel. Embarrassing.

It's true we'll never know for certain whether there is an afterlife or not. That is to say, when we get there we'll find out, or if there isn't one we'll never know we didn't So you might as well go on believing there is one and it's good, as there's not a lot you can do about it either way. You can't make it exist by believing, nor cause it to disappear through lack of faith.

So believe what you like by all means, but clinging on to belief in something that is proven to be false is just delusional. And those commercial "psychics" have been debunked, their techniques exposed, over and over. Sorry. I don't know, will probably never know, whether anyone really can talk to the dead, though logic suggests not, but I do know those people on the telly aren't. And chances are that anyone you pay money to who offers to put you in touch with your late parent can't either. It's quite disrespectful to their memories IMO.

"It's true we'll never know for certain whether there is an afterlife or not"
A simple, and conclusive experiment would be to observe a dead person, and see if their condition improves. Previous studies have shown that sadly they remain dead. No talking, no moving furniture or predicting the future, nothing.

Exactly, Annie. Someone posted above that she knew for a fact there was an afterlife. Maybe it was just a turn of phrase not intended to be taken literally, but obviously no one can know such a thing "for a fact." One can believe strongly in an afterlife but knowledge and facts have nothing to do with that. And indeed, that's what faith is all about anyway.

There was a famous case in the US when a self-styled psychic publicly declared that a young girl who had gone missing was actually dead, and her body was somewhere in water. (As an aside, why are they always "in water" or "near water"?) Actually, she had been abducted by a lunatic and spent a decade captive in his house, together with two other women who were also kidnapped as teenagers. They finally managed to escape. But I can only imagine all the additional pain that this woman's family had to go through based on an inaccurate "psychic" reading if they believed that the "vision" was true.

I don't know about scarily accurate.....MIL went to a psychic when I was pregnant and paid £25 to find out what sex my baby was. She was told it was a girl. To be called after her MIL.

DS2 was, er, a boy. It's 50/50 and said psychic (located in Druid's Heath, Birmingham ) still got it wrong. MIL still consults psychics. I still despair.

Why are the messages from the other side always nice?
"I wasn't in pain when I died" "I'm at peace" "don't feel you are in anyway responsible for what happened."

Why do the dead never say "I died in fucking agony, and I blame you for not taking me to that first hospital appointment. It's your fault I'm dead."
"I fucking hate being dead, I'm miserable and lonely."
"You think I died of natural causes, but your mother poisoned me because I found out about her affair with Bert from next door."

You'd almost be forgiven that the punter is told exactly what they want to hear, perhaps so they will come back again, with more money!

Which makes the psychic actually dangerous, because the authorities might stop looking or look in completely the wrong place. Good thing they don't use 'em for official investigations in that case.

dominogocatgo No, the bits you can see definitely don't do very much after death! As for the incorruptible soul, as by its very nature it wouldn't be measurable, proving that such a thing exists is likely to be... problematical. This also makes the moving of furniture, along with any other physical manifestation, unlikely.

*I don't know about scarily accurate.....MIL went to a psychic when I was pregnant and paid £25 to find out what sex my baby was. She was told it was a girl. To be called after her MIL.

DS2 was, er, a boy.*

Be fair...she was close!

She could have saved £25 by just waiting.

Whether or not it does exist, I am amused by the arrogance of the people here who say it CAN'T exist. People used to think the earth was flat because there was no scientific evidence that it was round. In fact, there was even no science as we know it now, back then, with which to prove or disprove. Who's to say there won't be the rise of another equally important concept as science? Relying on science to explain, prove or disprove the afterlife/spirit world might turn out to be as useless as asking Geography to prove or disprove all Mathmatical concepts.

I expect people from the tenth century would have scoffed at the notion of modern developments photographs, telephones, the internet and space travel.

Who knows what will be proved over the next millennium regarding the spirit world? Afterlife and the spirit world is not a new concept. Stone Age people believed in an afterlife. The Ancient Egyptians believed in an afterlife. It's not some new-fangled concept from the 20th century, or a random post on MN.

"People used to think the earth was flat because there was no scientific evidence that it was round"

They didn't, you know!

FromSeaToShining - I think the psychic in the case you're referring to was Sylvia Browne (a more revoltingly callous, arrogant, unpleasant woman you'd be hard pushed to find).

The girl's mother died never knowing that her daughter was alive and robbed of all hope because of Browne.

She also wrongly assured Shawn Hornbeck's parents that he was dead.

Monstrous woman.

Who's to say there won't be the rise of another equally important concept as science?

Who indeed - and that's why so many of us would love even one of the self-proclaimed psychics to share their knowledge at a higher level. If they really have "lifted the veil" so to speak, they're wasting a heck of an opportunity for us all to advance our thinking

Of course you're right about those 10th century people who'd have marvelled at TV, space travel and all the rest; they might even have put it down to the paranormal

Doesn't mean it would have been, of course ...

Stone Age people believed in an afterlife. The Ancient Egyptians believed in an afterlife.

One would hope we would have moved on since then. But no, people are still clinging on to the same old nonsense we believed thousands of years ago, despite the complete and utter lack of any verifiable evidence.

How depressing.

In your opinion it's nonsense TTWK.

Why should you possibly expect evidence TtWK
Until people start returning from the dead it aint going to happen.
There's no evidence as such. You either believe or you don't. Simple.

I cant understand people here saying they know for sure psychics are all a load of crap.

How can you possibly know that?

I went to a medium and was told things no one else knew, except me and my mum.

I just dont really care if people dont believe me, I'm not out to convert anyone, but the insistence that its all baloney nonsense just becomes annoying.

No-one else knew apart from you, your Mum, and the medium.

I cant understand people here saying they know for sure psychics are all a load of crap.

Because proving psychic power would be very easy to do, and no one has ever been able to do it, never ever. Despite $1m waiting for anyone who can demonstrate their powers under properly monitored conditions. But when they don't have access to their tricks of the trade, they cannot do it!

That's why I know for sure it's a load of crap.

Why do you care about this topic so much, TTWK? You are dominating the discussion and at times so unpleasantly that one of your posts had to be removed by MNHQ.