Psychics/Mediums -

[Judge Holden]

To cut a long rant short, mediums and psycics along with faith healers are nothing but astonishingly evil and callous vultures preying on the weak, the vulnerable, and the heartbroken by feeding them promises of contacting their lost love ones and then stripping their wallets. In a civilised world they would be raped to death by wild boars after being stung half to death by japanese hornets

Personally I suggest anyone interested in this genre of scumbag look up peter popoff on google and youtube

While I don't think anyone should be raped, I agree with the loathing I have for cowards like Peter Popoff.

The rape thing ws hyperbole to illustrate how much I fucking loathe these frauds, but with Peter Popoff I am dead serious, as the guy is truly and utterly evil and deserves to die screaming

 

[Foulmouth]

It really shits me when I hear of police forces calling in psychics.
If the psychic bollocks works then sack all the cops, Let mystic Meg have their job.

 

[Caddchef]

I once knew a man (family friend) who was widowed in his mid-fourties, he was understandably devastated and in his grief he went to see a psychic to try and achieve some "closure". Obviously the medium agreed to contact the spirit of his dead wife who allegedly told him that she was happy and would wait for him in heaven.

Having heard this he thanked the medium, returned home and hanged himself in his garage.

I don't personally blame the psychic; it's their job to tell people what they want to hear, i just want people to know that doing so isn't as harmless as it often claimed.

 

[Descent]

I don't personally blame the psychic; it's their job to tell people what they want to hear

Yeah no, I'm going to have to disagree. It's not a job. Con artists don't have jobs.

 

[Grand Number of Pounds]

It really shits me when I hear of police forces calling in psychics.
If the psychic bollocks works then sack all the cops, Let mystic Meg have their job.

I remember hearing the US Army had a Psychic Corps during WWII. They were about as accurate as just guessing.

 

[Picklepower]

Nah, I don't believe in supernatural stuff, including psychics. I like these things in fiction stories though, it would be cool if these things were real. Tv psychics are classic con artists, where were these psychics around for 9/11, or any of Americas various school shootings, why weren't we warned!! if these psychics are for real!
I remember Sylvia Brown said something like, she couldn't prove her powers to James Randi because he's an atheist, I think the word she used was, godless, but that is bullshit, if she really had powers she could convince him, or at least leave him speechless.

 

[Javert]

Sylvia Browne failed pretty much every prediction she made and perhaps unsurprisingly, she failed her greatest ever prediction. She died at the age of 70 yet she had previously claimed that she knew the circumstances of her own death and she would in fact die at the ripe old age of 80. She couldn't even die on the right day.

 

[Grand Number of Pounds]

She was 77 and said she would live till at least 87. IT WAS BASICALLY PROMISED!

So the Grim Reaper lied to her as well.

 

[random_pickle]

Normal psychics for simple entertainment? I can deal with that.

The use of psychics in tracking down deadly serial killers? I can't even...........

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychic_detective

In the case of the Long Island serial killer, the psychic said the body would be found in a shallow grave, near water and a sign with a G in it would be nearby. Despite the vagueness of this claim (the body was not in a shallow grave, water is everywhere in Long Island, and no sign with a G was nearby) the New York Post stated that the "Psychic Nailed it!" "More surprising than the psychic's failure is the fact that this information was described as an amazing success on over 70,000 websites without anyone realizing that she was completely wrong."

Many prominent police cases, often involving missing persons, have received the attention of alleged psychics. Following the disappearance of Elizabeth Smart on June 5, 2002, the police received as many 9,000 tips from self-proclaimed psychics (and others crediting visions and dreams as their source). Responding to these tips took "many police hours," according to Salt Lake City Police Chief Lieutenant Chris Burbank. Yet, Elizabeth Smart's father, Ed Smart, concluded that: "the family didn’t get any valuable information from psychics." Smart was located by observant witnesses who recognized her abductor from a police photograph. No psychic was ever credited with finding Elizabeth Smart.

When Washington D.C. intern Chandra Levy went missing on May 1, 2001, psychics from around the world provided tips suggesting that her body would be found in places such as the basement of a Smithsonian storage building, in the Potomac river, and buried in the Nevada desert among many other possible locations. Each tip led nowhere. A little more than a year after her disappearance, Levy's body was accidentally discovered by a man walking his dog in a remote section of Rock Creek Park.

The case of Shawn Hornbeck received the attention of psychics after the eleven-year-old went missing on October 6, 2002. Most notably, self-proclaimed psychic Sylvia Browne appeared on The Montel Williams Show and provided the parents of Shawn Hornbeck a detailed description of the abductor and where Hornbeck could be found. Browne responded "No" when asked if he was still alive. When Hornbeck was found alive more than four years later, few of the details given by Browne were correct. Shawn Hornbeck's father, Craig Akers, has stated that Browne's declaration was "one of the hardest things that we've ever had to hear," and that her misinformation diverted investigators wasting precious police time.

 

[PvtRichardCranium]

They deserve to be sent back in time and burnt at the stake as witches.

 

[haina]

Some psychic fails.

Spoiler

[youtube]hRc4LkBRjIc[/youtube]
[youtube]HMh-Ed9Wbn8[/youtube]
[youtube]cK7j3tB9A6k[/youtube]
[youtube]8kAdZcbfiGY[/youtube]

 

[Caddchef]

I don't personally blame the psychic; it's their job to tell people what they want to hear

Yeah no, I'm going to have to disagree. It's not a job. Con artists don't have jobs.

Perhaps job is not the appropriate wording, what i meant to say is it's what they do.

I've met quite a few people who claimed to be psychic and i don't believe they're all conmen out to make a fast buck at the expense of the vulnerable, some actually delude themselves into believing they're a special psychic snowflower and set out to help or maybe even save the less fortunate like some kind of superhero crusading against grief and depression.

Of course they cause more harm than good so i'm not trying to condone the practice in anyway.

 

[Javert]

I don't personally blame the psychic; it's their job to tell people what they want to hear

Yeah no, I'm going to have to disagree. It's not a job. Con artists don't have jobs.

Perhaps job is not the appropriate wording, what i meant to say is it's what they do.

I've met quite a few people who claimed to be psychic and i don't believe they're all conmen out to make a fast buck at the expense of the vulnerable, some actually delude themselves into believing they're a special psychic snowflower and set out to help or maybe even save the less fortunate like some kind of superhero crusading against grief and depression.

Of course they cause more harm than good so i'm not trying to condone the practice in anyway.

Really there are two kinds of 'psychic', the ignorant and the cynics. The first sort are the genuine believers, as far as they are concerned they really do have psychic powers and they really can tell the future and people's fortunes etc. The thing about the first sort is that they usually aren't talented enough to make it big; they don't use the sorts of methods that the cynics use to be more "accurate" because they would never out and out "cheat". They're mostly harmless, but a few of them will eventually cotton on and become cynics. i'd say that most professional psychics (those who do it as their day job) are cynics, though many of them wouldn't have been that way initially. These are the people who know they are cheating, much like a magician; they use many of the same techniques even. The cynics are very dangerous because they know precisely what they are doing and they are very good at what they do. They've stopped caring about whatever it was they originally believed and are only interested in making obscene amounts of money and they are willing to target the vulnerable in order to do so.

I don't think any of the TV psychics you see are genuine believers. Certainly the ones who make a decent amount out of what they do don't strike me as the genuine sort.

 

[The_Hissing_Vigilant]

I have personally had some psychic experiences, but I think a lot of these mediums are scam artists.

 

[Surtur]

I have personally had some psychic experiences, but I think all of these mediums are scam artists.

FTFY

 

[XYZpdq]

I used to produce a talk radio show for a "psychic". Best story off the top of my head:
He calls about ten minutes before he's on.
Blahblahblah stuff came up he won't be in. This caught him by surprise.
So he wants a particular show from like a year and a half ago. No big deal it's in the bin of old episodes so it's easy enough to get.
Put the disc in and hit play.
Portuguese starts spilling out because somebody from the station nextdoor recorded over it.
He calls up outraged and demands to know what happened.

So you can clearly see how psychic he is.

 

[spaghetti]

I think psychics are some of the worst people. Mediums are the worst.
Anyone who profits off of people's grievances with false information should be thrown off of a cliff. People aren't hard to read and it's easy to tell somebody what they want to hear. I can tell you your family member is dead for free.

 

[Marvin]

Sylvia Browne is a huge bitch.

I'm not the biggest fan of Howard Stern, but this is always fun to listen to:

 

[Tragi-Chan]

I'm a very rational person, so I don't believe in mediums, psychics, clairvoyants or whatever. However, like many sceptics, I'm fascinated by the paranormal activities I don't believe in, so I know that there are a lot of tricks you can use to appear to read someone's mind. If someone thinks they're psychic, bully for them I guess, but it's very easy to fool yourself if you're looking for a particular result.

I had personal experience of this a few weeks ago. I work in a very old building in London, and just before Halloween I was reading about ghosts in the city. To my surprise, my workplace showed up in there as the site of a haunting. I mentioned this to my colleagues, and within days people were spotting evidence of paranormal activity. In reality, these "events" were simple forgetfulness, confirmation bias and leaping to conclusions that no one would have given a second thought to a couple of days previously.

As for psychics who make money off other people's grief, fuck those guys when they're least expecting it. My opinion is that they should be locked in a cell, only to be released once they've detected the password in the guard's mind. Only then can they be allowed to practise.

 

[Surtur]

Sylvia Browne is a huge bitch.

I'm not the biggest fan of Howard Stern, but this is always fun to listen to:

God she was such a horrible person.