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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

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

646 replies

opheliaria · 09/05/2015 22:27

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?

OP posts:
Izzy24 · 13/05/2015 13:24

I reluctantly went with a friend to a meeting she attended most weeks - spiritualist church or something.

After a few prayers the speaker spoke generally and then said 'I have someone here mentioning Izzy24'. I stayed silent.

After the third time of her insistence I reluctantly put my hand up. She went on to tell me some bizarre but specific things which had happened recently and also some less specific things about my Mum who died a while ago.

I didn't respond to anything she said ( which was hard as it felt very rude) because I was determined not to give any information at all to help her.

I don't know how she did it. But I won't ever get involved in anything like it again . It left me feeling very very unsettled and sad.

TTWK · 13/05/2015 13:34

Izzy24, maybe your friend spilled the beans about you to the speaker in advance. Maybe not even knowingly, but you say you were reluctant. So your friend says to the speaker "I'm hoping to convince my friend to come but she's a bit reluctant. I think it would be good for her because X and Y has happened to her recently."

I would recommend that people interested in the whole psychic, true or false, debate watch a Woody Allen film called Magic in the Moonlight, starring Colin Firth.

Lipsync · 13/05/2015 13:35

Izzy, don't let it rattle you. I'm afraid the most obvious explanation that occurs to me is that your friend is in pretty deep with this 'church', if she attends weekly, and that she either innocently shared information about you with someone there (some such organisations have members of the congregation standing up and talking in a fair bit of detail about friends in need of prayer, so you may have come up, especially if you were grieving for your mother) or that someone there encouraged her to 'bring a friend' and cynically pumped her for information.

Did your friend know from you talking to her about the 'bizarre but specific' recent things, for instance?

Lipsync · 13/05/2015 13:35

X-post, TTWK.

TTWK · 13/05/2015 13:44

Great minds think alike Lipsync....(or perhaps fools never differ!)

Claralikessage · 13/05/2015 14:12

biggles50, what is an 'Irish gyspy'?

Izzy24 · 13/05/2015 14:32

TTWK and Lipsync. Yes I think that too about the general stuff to do with my Mum.

But one of the 'specific / bizarre things had only happened that afternoon. I was at a relative's house and it would have been impossible for the psychic to know about it.

The stuff about my Mum was very general and without the other things would just have confirmed my opinion that it's all somehow a con.

Izzy24 · 13/05/2015 14:34

TBH , I still think it's a con. I just don't know how she did it.

Even so, I won't be doing it again.

ssd · 13/05/2015 14:42

I can understand the scepticism and disbelief here, but I can't understand the sneering.

lipsync and TTWK, what do you make of my post from this morning? If someone could explain how she did it if it was cold reading then I'd understand it more, I've tried to figure it out but I cant, there was just too much specific info she couldnt have made a rough guess at, and I never confirmed or denied anything, I was just a bit stunned and sat looking at her as she spoke.

Roseforarose · 13/05/2015 14:43

Clara .......at a guess I'd say someone from the Irish travelling community?

Roseforarose · 13/05/2015 14:54

Ssd I thought your post was very interesting but I'm sure there will soon be some along to give you their rational explanations for what happened. Somethings simply cannot be explained away but many on here will probably be racking their brains to tell you why you shouldn't be taken in with it all.
I'm just a bit surprised tjough that you don't believe in the concept of Heaven, after what you've experienced. After all it shows that there is certainly something.

Lipsync · 13/05/2015 15:08

ssd, I replied to Izzy because she sounded rattled and saddened, plus there was (to my mind) a very obvious possible explanation. I said nothing about your post because you sounded perfectly rational, had thought around the most obvious possibilities of fraud, but had extracted some comfort from the event. I have no doubt there is some non-supernatural explanation, but without having far more information, it would only be vague guesses.

TTWK · 13/05/2015 15:10

ssd, when David Blaine walked thru the great Wall of China, I have no idea how it was done. But I have to ask myself what is the most likely and logical explanation. Was I tricked into believing I was seeing something that didn't actually happen by a highly skilled person at the very top of their game, or were the laws of physics suspended and he actually walked thru a wall. I opted for the former.

My answer is rather predictably the same in your case. It is far more likely that you have been tricked, thru a combination of cold reading, exploiting your confirmation bias, and other well known methods, rather than anything paranormal.

Sorry if this is a boring answer, but I'd stake my house on it being the right answer.

Izzy24 · 13/05/2015 15:20

Thank you Lipsync.

Hakluyt · 13/05/2015 15:25

"Somethings simply cannot be explained away but many on here will probably be racking their brains to tell you why you shouldn't be taken in with it all."

Rose- woild you rather people were taken in?

TTWK · 13/05/2015 15:31

Hakluyt said: Rose- would you rather people were taken in?

Nail...meet head!

ssd · 13/05/2015 15:31

rose, I just dont believe heaven is a place where we go, I believe spirits are somewhere close to us a lot of the time, or they are with family members who have already died, I dont know where they are but I cant imagine theres a place waiting for us where everything is perfect and its called heaven, I just dont see that happening.

Lipsync and TTWK, I really really dont know how she could make guesses that were so spot on, it wasnt like she said oh your mum has passed, her name is brenda/mary/alice and waited for me to nod, she said I've got (mums name) here, she didnt wait for me to con firm or deny that was correct, she then said something that happened in the room when I walked in and mum was on the couch and only mum and I were there, she didnt once say "did this happen", she spoke like she was passing on information she was getting from someone, at the end she kept saying X keeps mentioning a Y, I didnt know this person, but a relative told me later this was a siblings of my mums who had died young that I never met.

It wasnt freaky or upsetting, it felt like I had mum back for the 5 minutes the woman spoke to me, and I felt loved for those 5 minutes.

TTWK · 13/05/2015 15:33

Sorry, got that wrong. I meant Hakluyt has hit the nail bang on the head....again.

Like we should apologise for not being fooled!

TTWK · 13/05/2015 15:39

ssd, obviously it was a very emotional experience for you, and if you were being objective, you might agree that times of high emotion are often not the best circumstances in which to recall what was said.

This is another trick psychics use to great effect, to build an atmosphere of high emotion as confirmation bias feeds off it.

There are many videos online of people convinced this or that was said to them, but when replayed, not half as much detail was given as the person recalled, and wrong information given wasn't recalled at all by the punter.

Why do you think you are immune to confirmation bias and all the other tricks normal human beings are susceptible to?

ssd · 13/05/2015 15:39

and here's another strange one from my experience, when the medium said X (mum) keeps mentioning a Y, as I said I didn't know who Y was but a relative told me mum had a sibling called Y that I never met...anyway, as I said before I went with a friend and we both wrote down what we could remember the woman had said to me, we wrote this the next day, and my friend remembered it as X(mum) keeps mentioning Z, a different name to the one I remembered, but Z was mums dads name..

who knows what its all about, but it did bring me great comfort to think mum was out there somewhere, and not gone totally.

ssd · 13/05/2015 15:42

TTWK, I wrote down exactly what was said to me the next day and my friend did the same, the medium did mention 2 things that didnt make sense, and I told her that.

and I dont think I'm immune to anything, what a weird thing to say.

Lipsync · 13/05/2015 15:43

But doesn't that just suggest the fallibility of memory in situations of intense emotion, ssd? Even compiling written accounts the next day when you were calmer, you and your friend disagreed on a crucial detail.

Lipsync · 13/05/2015 15:44

And I'm sorry for your loss, ssd, and recognise that the depth of people's grief makes it difficult to be at all objective in such circumstances.

Claralikessage · 13/05/2015 15:45

Thank you Rose, I think that is what biggles50 meant.

Abraid2 · 13/05/2015 16:06

*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.*

Evolutionaccepted as true but couldn't be replicated in a lab as it would take too long. Quite a few physics theories seemingly can't be proved in a labeven though we can reasonably think they're true.