Page 1 of physic mediums

Having watched a few on living tv, I`m wondering if anyone thinks they are a load of conmen or do you believe them.
What sways me into thinking they are conmen is that, if I was able to communicate with the dead then surely they would give me their names clearly. Not as the medium says "Who`s the `t` sounding name like Tod or tom tommy tony". Then he will go on and describe everything else crystal clear.
Seems false.

I believe that there are a people who genuinely believe they are psychics, and I know for a fact there are many who merely claim to be.

What they do is a technique called cold reading, which if you are really interested in there is an amazingly in-depth guide to called The Full Facts Book of Cold Reading by Ian Rowland.

It is interesting to note that when Mr Rowland competes for accuracy against people who claim to be psychic, he actually gets rated higher.

Personally I find it extremely disgusting that psychics play with peoples emotions by pretending (intentionally or otherwise) to contact the dead.

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You are dead and thats it, I mean your brain is you is it not, and it turns to mush when you die.

I do believe in Ghost but I don`t think there is inteligence behind them, just a replay caused by some sort of energy,low frequency,static electricity or some form of magnetic field who knows.

The idea of old uncle Tom sitting in some paradise with is feet up and sending you messages is a load of tosh! and has Mr Shepherd says they play with peoples emotions and it`s wrong.

Oscar.

Well you lot believe what you want, I believe in Spirits & I`m havin` some tonight.

Fortune tellers and the like are obvious cons, and i was impressed by derren brown in one test explaining the `logic` behind his apparent ability to guess what was happening in 1 experiment where he was hidden behind a screen, and had 2 holes to stick his hands through and then got random people to put thier hand above his and he guessed if it was the left or right each time correctly.

Spiritual mediums, which are the kind you get on living tv, are something else. I always thought that they were a con, but i must say that the ones on living tv seem real. I am going to see Derek Accorah (does most haunted etc) later on this month in his show. Some of the stuff he comes up with cannot be guessed beforehand.. any remaining doubts that i had were wiped by the 3 mediums show that living tv did a while back - he said to one woman that she had glanced in a shoe shop and then seen some blue shoes, and then halfway down the road stopped and gone back to have another look - you can`t guess that! I am sure some cynics would say that she had been followed by a researcher for the weeks leading up to the show, but it seems a little desperate to me! I will reserve final judgement until after i have seen his show..

This item was edited on Saturday, 4th October 2003, 18:29

The whole point about these physic mediums is that they are dealing with people who are desperate to beleive in the other side.

They use phrasing to get information out of these people and if they do not guess right then they say they are nearly right or they were having problems communicating with the dead that day.

Another aspect is that the answers from the dead are allways to do with menial and trivial things like ` Me and old Toby the dog are watching over you`, never more fundimental questions like `what do you dead people do when you are not watching over us` or ` what is the afterlife all about then` or `what is the meaning of life, the universe and everything`

Mind you although I do not take these TV shows too seriously, I have had personnel experience of my dead father reasuring me and my close relatives about life after death.
(You will find this in another earlier thread...Spooky Brittain).

So I feel that there is more to this earth than meets the eye.

This item was edited on Saturday, 4th October 2003, 18:59

Can`t say that i am desperate to believe, or in a particularly sorry state. and if you watch them on tv, the person they give the reading too often says next to nothing....

There was a very intersting program about this on discovery a couple of weekends back when there seemed to be a big buzz about it. But what they did was take an actress, and have her read the same scripted reading to 3 different people, and then interviewed the 3 people, and they all said words to the effect "It was amazing, she knew all about me, i dont know how she can be so accurate!"

I would like to say I believe it, and I suspect that there are probably some of them, who are maybe onto something, but most of them.......

It`s all a load of old bollox if you ask me

`PSYCHIC` not physic BTW

go here for the proof.....

SN

Quote:
I always thought that they were a con, but i must say that the ones on living tv seem real. I am going to see Derek Accorah (does most haunted etc) later on this month in his show. Some of the stuff he comes up with cannot be guessed beforehand.

[list] [*] Go read Rowland`s book on Cold Reading, then go back and watch these programmes, you will see how obvious the techniques suddenly are.
[*] Also go read James Randi`s site where he talks about all the wonderful methods that the TV production crews use to pump people in the audience for information before the act.
[*] See an unedited show, rather than one which has had the less convincing stuff removed.
[*] And watch the repeats (or buy the DVD) of Derren Brown`s Mind Control where he repeatedly comes up with stuff that cannot be guessed beforehand. [/list]

I can promise you all psychics (whether whittingly or unwhittingly) use cold reading and are not psychic. I can also promise you that anyone who understands these techniques (and they really aren`t widely understood, nor are they simply about saying generic things all the time like many assume) can block them and manipulate the user of these into totally wrong conclusions and readings.

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