Psychic Sally Morgan challenged to prove her powers

[Rational]

Psychic Sally Morgan recently made the news after allegations she was being fed information during her stage shows. She has now been challenged by The Guardian to prove her powers in a test situation. It could be a step towards a claim for James Randi's $1,000,000 prize for anyone who can prove their 'gift' is real, but I doubt it.

My view is that all psychics, mediums etc should have to prove they are genuinely talking to the dead/feeling auras or whatever the hell their claim is, or, be charged with fraud.

www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/oct/27/sally-morgan-psychic-powers-halloween?INTCMP=SRCH

What do you think?

Apparently she's been far less accurate since the "Hidden Earpiece" thing.

Odd, that

Psychics are either a) Deluded and genuinely think they can do what they claim or b) Money grabbing, parasitic, heartless charlatans.

If there is a Hell, they all belong in it.

Sally Morgan is one of the worst, though.

Bad enough that any of them pretend to actually talk to dead children. I mean, let's just think about that for a second. They ACTUALLY pretend to be in contact with dead children and babies.

But anyway.

She goes one step further and puts on a stupid baby voice and actually IMPERSONATES dead babies and children.

Words cannot describe how loathesome I find that.

Not only that, but all her shows are billed - as they have to be, due to the Fraudulent Mediums Act - as "Entertainment Only".

How anybody can find someone pretending to be in contact with a dead child "entertaining" is beyond me.

The whole thing goes past "A Con" and into "Just Sick".

Blimey, I hadn't realised the disgusting woman claims to speak to dead children. That's appalling. Vulture.

And don't forget the miscarriages, she talks to them too.

Good grief, why hasn't she been strung up from the nearest lamppost?

Calamity that is the reason I cannot bear her (see my earlier posts).
I watched one of her programmes and sat open mouthed as she put on that awful sickly voice, head on one side, gurning and saying 'mummy'

Vile.

There are light moments though....

Somehow though, I can never muster as much disgust for any "psychic" as I can for this creature...

Outrage is what is needed here. I know some people think 'people are entitled to believe in what they like' but I'm not too comfortable with that.

Saying that is like saying 'I'm too clever to believe in it but I'm not saying anything in case I offend someone, less clever than me, who does'.

People can of course believe whatever they choose, but if you know it's a fake and they're just being conned don't you have a duty to say so?

I never used to say a word when colleagues etc were paying to go see psychics/mediums, but I do now. It doesn't make a jot of difference though, their need to believe is stronger than my need to save them £30.

That's why I think it'd be great if one of the biggies were shown to be the fakers they are, surely then at least some people would open their eyes.

Edam. Another pet-hate I have is homeopathy, that's a whole other thread though.

The funny thing is that if you proved that the 10 most famous of them were fake many people would say "good riddance. They were giving the real mediums a bad name"

I agree about the duty to speak up. If only believers speak up then it looks to a newcomer that everyone believes mediums are real. As long as on every thread and in every conversation there is one person saying "well of course it's fake" that gives the newcomer a fair chance to choose which to believe or research it more.

@ Onagar's first sentence - exactly.

I think psychics should prove they are legit as they offer a lot of comfort to people & to think they are frauds is very upsetting.

Myself, DP, PILs & SIL all visited a psychic for a palm-reading seperately in December 2009;

• My reading was fairly non-commital, he knew my starsign and a lot of my traits. He was surprisingly accurate.
• The psychic told DP some of his traits & knew his starsign too. He also said DP would soon be in uniform. He was in the process of becoming a Firefighter & was indeed in a uniform by March 2010. He also told him he had a woman with him at all times, like a guardian angel, that she was a relative who died when he was very young or before he was born. DP's Aunt died a few days after MIL told her she was pregnant.
• FIL was told he had lost someone close to a very specific type of cancer (his Sister & DP's Aunt mentioned above).
• MIL was told she was the mother of three children, she has DP & his Sister but has been told by other psychics that she was supposed to have 3 and/or may have lost one without knowing. (SIL has also been told she was "1 of 2 in a twin sense rather than a non-twin sibling", she was born a singleton).
• SIL was told she would meet a blonde haired, blue-eyed man who she would be with. 6 months later she shacked up with a blond haired, blue-eyed man. She was also told someone close to her would concieve a child within the next year, DS was concieved in the October after her reading in December. On a seperate visit, the psychic recalled an incident where she had woken up somewhere "that was a home, but not her actual home" feeling very cold, he told her this is because DP's Grandfather was there with her, she had stayed at our house (we live with PILs) a couple of weeks before & woke up freezing (in August!)

Now I know a lot of that could be put down to coincidence, guesswork .etc but it was fairly spooky all the same. I feel his was legit.

Sounds like a fairly standard cold read to me. I hope none of you paid for it!

WiiUndead

I'm sorry I agree with Kate.

One of the things people do when they have these 'readings' is only remember the things the psychic got right, they tend to forget or put out of their mind all the things that were wrong, or how many guesses it took to get to the correct one. Some of these people are very good at what they do, they can read reactions in you that your not even aware of making, this too often pushes them in the right direction.

You should have a look on Youtube at some Derren Brown clips on this subject, he can explain it all much better than I. He once sent readings to about a hundred different people from all over the world then gathered them together. They ALL spoke about how accurate his reading was, how could he have known so much about them? They were blown away by how accurate he was. He then asked them to swop their readings with each other..... You guessed it! All their 'readings' were identical.

There's a shocker! She's refused to participate, you'd think she had something to hide.

www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/oct/31/sally-morgan-rejects-halloween-challenge

She's a bloody parasitic, heartless charlatan - just like all the rest.

I once went to a psychic reading night as part of a work's night out.

I was told that wedding bells would be ringing for me in the future (I was wearing an engagement ring!) and that a baby was on the way (I was 7 months pregnant and quite frankly HUGE).

I treated it all as a huge joke. The "reader" started to babble a load of nonsense about members of my family and when I looked at her blankly she got quite uppity and said "don't you recognise your own family?" so I replied with "Not the one you are describing, no!".

I just can't abide these people. Making a fast buck on the back of other people's sadness or confusion. I have this argument on an almost weekly basis with a colleague at work who goes to evenings at a psychic church and has been told X,Y,Z by some bent actress and how it "must be true" ... yeah, you remember the bits that match your own experiences and forget the rest!

the late Doris Stokes was good fun on the radio. But she seemed to be making it up

getting away from the personal

1 kind of cove could really believe what they say.(and be deluded or not)

2 Another type could be cynical doing it for the money.

 THE MONEY question is an important one.

let me have a go with you for fun

I have a woman in my mind ; loved red dresses. boght her children stacks of
christmas presents. Belonged to the WI....walked with a slight limp before she passed away. Never made love on sunday the 13th. She had a daughter called Jean, Mary or Jan (this is a bad line. ) One of her sons was called Tim, Tom or Alan (still a badline)

does this ring a bell with anyone?