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?

Keep it up TTWK!
I care a lot about this topic because I don't like to see people,when at their most vulnerable, being fooled and ripped off by these charlatans!

I liked that Youtube link early in this thread which led to a clip of the excellent Orson Welles (close contender for Most Fabulous Voice Ever), who amongst many other talents was a magician. He explained how he learned cold reading techniques from "fakes who retired as millionaires") and spent a happy day being a psychic for hire (but refusing to take people's money at the end). After a bit of practice he became so good at reading clues that he almost believed he really had the power. At this point he knew it was time to stop!

Even when it is clearly explained how these very talented cold readers do what they do, some persist in believing it wasn't a trick. Let's face it, most of us wouldn't have the skill or observation to do it well. That still doesn't make them supernaturally gifted; it makes them very clever. I couldn't do an Olympic sport, but it doesn't make the people who can any more than naturally amazing (mainly due to the vast amount of natural very hard work they put in at getting that good). They don't need aid from the spirits, they did that all by themselves, which is pretty impressive. Can't we just take wonder from that?

Until people start returning from the dead it (evidence) aint going to happen

But isn't "a return from the dead" what some are claiming - if not in actual body, then at least the ability to communicate from beyond the grave?

This is what so many of us would like to see properly scrutinized ... not to expect them to walk on water, square the circle or whatever, just to show beyond doubt that what they claim is possible

Surely it's not that much to ask, for the sake of such world-changing knowledge??

Well, that makes a change -it's usually me who gets accused of dominating conversations like this! I can't answer for TTWK- but there are several reasons it matters to me

1. It makes me very angry that there are people in the world who take advantage, financially and emotionally,of the desperate, the bereaved and the unhappy by pretending that they can do something they can't. If anyone has ever watched, for example, Psychic Sally, the woman is obviously a evil, money grubbing, repulsive charlatan. But people still flock to her, and give her their hard earned money. Most aren't as bad as her- there are many who actually believe what they peddle- but they are still deceiving people.

2. It's very bad for society if people don't think and reason. If they can be delieved so easily by a woman in a flowery frock with a pack of playing cards, somebody clever could make them believe practically anything. Which is scary.

3. We need progress and scientific advancement if we are to make a better life for the coming generations. And we need to know how to think about and assess that progress. For all our good.

Psychic Sally is pretty much the worst since the vile toad who was Sylvia Browne did pretty much the most decent thing she'd done for years, ie died.

Everything Hakluyt said plus it denigrates women. Women are overwhelmingly the believers of this utter tripe and it's to the detriment of the whole gender. It allows the likes of Nigel Short to claim women lack logical thinking skills and could never play top level chess, and threads like this act as evidence for his views.

And to be frank, the lack of logical and critical thinking demonstrated on this thread is quite stunning. Shocking really. Hakluyt, EastMidsMummy and a few others excepted.

That's my view and I make no apologies for it.

I have been reading this thread with interest. As well as the coincidence/coldreading/confirmation bias, I think there is also the fact that many of us have very similar lives. We're all unique individuals of course but in fact most of us experience life in a similar way - we have significant elderly people in our lives, we worry about illnesses, we want/don't want children etc. There aren't that many scenarios out there so a fairly generic description of a life can sound amazingly accurate.

If I said "there is an elderly man (I think he may be a grandfather - I get the sense he used to take you to a special hobby with him when you were a child) and he has a message for a a woman posting on this thread. He says you are worrying about something significant about one of your children but it will be ok so don't worry you are doing everything right. Also he says that although you are happy in life you wonder sometimes about a particular decision you made when you were younger and what would have happened if you had done it differently. He says don't worry, you made the right decision then. Oh and he thinks you definitely should explore that artistic thing you have been thinking about (is it writing, no maybe something with paint?)."

It could probably be that I am describing any number of women on MN

I was telling DS4 earlier (as a result of reading this thread) about a couple of dreams I'd had years ago, both of which turned out to be almost exactly true; I even wrote a poem about one of them which I found again a few years later after the thing had happened. But having said that:

a) The first one (about a pigeon ffs!) could have been one of those random feelings of deja vu rather than a genuine dream I had remembered.
b) The second one (to do with horses) was not random but had been triggered by a family conversation; it could have been purely coincidence that things turned out quite similar to the dream (not exactly the same by any means). It was spooky but not at all conclusive.
c) Neither dream was significant or helpful in any sense at all.
d) I've been dreaming who knows how many different things every night for over half a century, and can point to a whole two that actually, more or less, happened? That's not great odds

For example. One poster on here was defending her point of view, and as proof of a particular psychic's bona fides, put a link to the psychic's website. Even though a little more googling would have shown that she had been outed comprehensively as a fraud.

I would worry about how she would analyze a political party's policies, or an attempt to pull the will over her eyes by big business, or the pros and cons of th latest scientific discoveries..........

Yes, Hak. I can't help look at the sheer credulousness and lack of ability to weigh evidence on these kinds of threads - plus people's willingness, even desire, to have the wool pulled over their eyes - and wonder to what extent it translates to other spheres. Like considering who to vote for.

And I know that in America there is resistance to teaching critical thinking in schools. Not sure what the attitude in the educational world is in this country. But the legal requirement for Christian worship in schools does not fill me with hope.

It seems that only stupid people believe in any kind of after life.....according to the clever ones who never get the wool pulled over their eyes, and will only believe in something if they have proof.

what evidence do you need lipsync?

what evidence do you need lipsync

I can't speak for lipsync, of course, but for me.... well ANY would be good. Convincing readings have had multiple explanations, and there's nothing else!

To paraphrase/ quote someone considerably cleverer than me (not hard):

"That which can be asserted without evidence may be dismissed without evidence"

Well, yes, Sheitgeist, but when I said 'lack of ability to weigh evidence' I actually meant lack of critical thinking in a very ordinary sense - things like linking to a psychic's own self-promoting website as evidence for her claims, and subsequently to a webzine listing of frequently-debunked 'police and psychics' cases with no references.

Rose, it's true that I don't have a great deal of time for ideas of the afterlife, which in the hands of various religions have been used as a primitive carrot and stick ploy to cow people into obedience, but a committed and enlightened follower of a religion in theory works at being good and improving the world, rather than just getting the religion-lite of auntie Susan coming through Madam Doris to tell you about your bladder trouble. It's perfectly possible to think of Jesus as an inspired preacher with some laudable ideas about social justice without swallowing the resurrection.

(You could of course with justice argue that followers of psychics don't run the Spanish Inquisition or start holy wars, but that's not really what we're talking about.)

I had a reading once and i am not a believer. Exgf convinced me to go.

Was told i work in a job where my uniform is all black like a policeman (nope i wear shirt and tie)

There has been 6 years of debt but after you will be financially sound (nope no debt financially comfortable)

You are happily planning a wedding (nope marrying ea ex was never gonna happen)

So all total bull. Now fast forward 8 years. I now do a job where my uniform is all black like a policeman! I had a 6 year iva but now financially comfy again and me and my wife got married 2.5 years ago.

Was a little spooky hearing the tape again 10 years later

I posted earlier I believe in the afterlife after witnessing irrefutable proof. Irrefutable only to me of course because if it was anyone else they would think ( reasonably) I was lying. Yes psychics cold read but that doesn't mean we know everything. A few hundred years ago they didn't understand electricity. I am very interested in the views of those who spend a lot of time around the dying, nurses etc.... What do you think about the afterlife?

Believing in an afterlife is a completely different thing than handing over £40 to a "psychic" for them to tell you you will have 2 boys and a girl, have twins in spirit , have been unlucky in love but that will change and you'll marry a man you've known all along and live in a cottage at the top of a hill and by the way the late great auntie Mabel sends her love and likes what you've done with the garden.

We'll all find out the truth about whether there's afterlife one day, that's for sure

A lot of quite respectable thinkers believe in the afterlife. That's got nothing to do with believing in psychics.

". Yes psychics cold read but that doesn't mean we know everything."

Of course we don't know everything. We do know some things, though!

I don't know what I believe in. I'm not religious at all and I dont believe in heaven/hell. I dont think the soul or spirit goes anywhere, I believe it joins others out there who have passed before them and a part of it stays with us, in our hearts. I dont know how it all works. When my dad died I didnt feel anything spiritual. But when my mum died, so many odd coincidences happened that I wondered what it was. Then I went to a medium and without knowing me, or my name (I hadnt paid for a ticket, just turned up), she spoke to me and knew my brothers name, then said (mums name) is here, she then told me things that happened after mum died, one thing specifically that happened when it was just me and mum (who had died) was there, she told me so many things its hard to question it. I dont do facebook or twitter and only dh and I knew of some of the things that had happened and he doesnt do social media at all. It wasnt general, like oh you have a job working with people or your mum died from heart/liver etc problems. It was just very specific, how mum died, cousins names and birthdays, and she said who has been having a problem with the postman, your mum says something happened twice with a postman recently but hes been moved so it wont happen again..well 2 months previous ds had got cards with money in them for doing well in exams and both cards were ripped open at the top and the money stolen out, eventually I found out it was a temporary postman and he'd been moved on to another job. She also knew exactly how mum died. There were lots of other things, but I dont want to write them all here.

All I can say if it was cold reading she was brilliant. It wasnt hit and miss, everything related to me and mum. I dont know how it happened but it did.

I know people here will rubbish it and say I heard what I wanted to hear. I went with a friend and we both wrote down what she'd said to me the day after the event. I still have it, and it all still rings true. She described dh and my kids perfectly and she used words only my old mum would have used. She said she seen dh involved with the police , in a police car and I said no he's never been involved with the police. Two weeks later he went through a red light and had to sit in the police car when they issued him the fine. Hes over fifty and has never been in a police car before.

I dont know how it works, I really dont. But I knew my mum was there that night.

And can I direct the 'ooh, we don't know everything therefore everything woo is true!' people to another current Chat thread, 'Am I really dense? Eurostar realisation', in which people confess to embarrassing gaps in their general knowledge.

Realising that people with enough education and money to be able to read and write and to afford the technology to post on MN could think that planes take off, hang motionless in the air and wait for the earth's motion to bring their destination into view beneath them, or to have been baffled by the number of Asian actors in Vietnam films because they thought Vietnam was an island off the US, otherwise why were Americans fighting there, suggest that what some people don't know of things that are generally known, provable facts is staggering.

Obviously, it's a light-hearted thread, and in many instances the knowledge gap is funny, clearly down to having been a child who believed advertising (Center Parcs and domes) or minor (that ponies don't grow up to be horses), but there are also some gobsmacking things in it, and it's hard not to come away thinking that some people's knowledge of how the known world works is so minimal that hunan ignorance is a shaky basis on which to erect theories of the supernatural.

Yes, my brother went to one and recorded it, freaky as hell. The guy said "your mum says she's fine and she is holding a baby, she says it's her sister, Hannah or Anne" .My brother wasn't aware that my mum had a sister who was still born and called Anne. That was wierd, then stuff about my brother's relationship with one of his kids was spot on, things that couldn't possibly have been guessed. Some of the things were way off but the majority was uncanny. My cousin went to one and said it was embarrassingly inaccurate. A friend of ours went to a reading with an Irish gypsy years ago when he was 16, he laughed when she told him he'd marry a dark haired woman and have 7 daughters, it came true.