Reply With QuoteNo but i feel strongly about these rip off merchants.....they prey on the suffering of people who have lost loved ones, this practice needs stopping
Prompted by my daft younger sister telling me about a series on these types which is showing on Netflix (Surviving Death), I have started to watch ha couple of episodes.
I've always been interested in the supernatural and am open minded about such things. However I've never really seen any evidence of a spiritual medium who has unequivocally proved that they have contacted the dead. Many seem to ask very general open ended questions or questions which can be relevant to many people. For example in this series, a medium has asked the following questions:
Does anyone know David?
You dream about this (deceased) person a lot don't you?
Is anyone going on a cruise soon?
All of these questions when posed to a room of circa 20 people who are willing to believe are going to garner a positive response aren't they.
So, on the back of that, has anyone had any experiences of mediums or willing to share their views?
No but i feel strongly about these rip off merchants.....they prey on the suffering of people who have lost loved ones, this practice needs stopping
I have years and years of professional experience, they’re ALL charlatans.
I remember watching a Derren Brown documentary where he was posing as a medium and was frankly head and shoulders above the competition in terms of accuracy. He is no fan of mediums and said they were either misguided or frauds.
James Randi has a million dollars sat in a bank account for 40 odd years waiting for such a person to prove their ability, the fact he still has it in his account tells you what you need to know
I just believe there all con artist's. As you said all they do is open ended questions.
Preying on people's emotions isn't what I call making a honest living.
Pretty much fraud really.
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Seen a few over the years due to a fascination with the claimed supernatural.
Highlight had to be getting myself a "reading" from the late great Derek Acorah of Mary loves dick (and Creed Kafer - google it) fame. This was during a TV show for a spurious Sky channel where he also "read" a house rabbit. A house rabbit. He put words in the mouth of a rabbit.
There's more to that story but to summarise, I think in some instances they bring peace to people in the same way that faith may do. I am sure there are some unscrupulous charlatans out there profiting from those of a slightly more suggestible nature which is nothing short of fraud. There are many I am sure who on a different day would be sectioned and or put on high doses of drugs to block the voices.
A mate of mine set himself up as a palm-reader to raise money for charity at the village fete a few years ago.
To get a sense of how utterly ridiculous this was, he was a retired Unilever marketing director, seldom wore anything that wasn't tweed and drove an ancient Passat estate that had enough straw in the load bay to keep chickens.
On the day, he set his tent up - to much amusement - and placed a sign outside advertising his palm-reading services.
One of the local girls, egged on by the rest of us, was his first customer. She went in laughing.
She emerged ten minutes later looking - there's no other word for it - stunned.
"He's real," she said, "he can actually do this - he can read. He told me loads of stuff about me he couldn't possibly have known - he's amazing!"
The rest of us looked at each other, equally stunned, but word was out. For the rest of the afternoon, there was a queue outside his tent. And when we added up the takings in the pub that evening, his 'stall' had almost made more money than the rest of the fete's attractions combined.
I asked him how he'd done it. Typically, he agreed to tell me if I bought him a pint.
When I handed it over he said, "Simple. I've been reading people for years - that was my job. Ask a few nice, open questions, remember the answers to use later, leave some silences they feel obliged to fill and you've done it. Remember - they want to believe in it. That's good enough."
This is about the size of it . . .
F.T.F.A.
ClassicSent from my SM-N976B using TZ-UK mobile appOriginally Posted by magirus
Don't just do something, sit there. - TNH
Just two trivial little points
1. Randi died 20 October 2020.
2. The fund was more of an underwrite than anything thing else.
However I agree that mediums are just very clever tricksters.
The One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge is still there waiting to be awarded. Randi told me himself only a couple of hours ago.
Don't just do something, sit there. - TNH
Ahh you are a part time medium.
I knew you were going to say that.
Don't just do something, sit there. - TNH
Not sure it counts as a medium but I've been to a fortune teller in Thailand that was incredibly accurate about the future. Bizarrely she also said the month and year she would die and that came true - car accident. I don't think she claimed to be speaking to the dead though - was all based on astrology as far as I could gather.
Re spiritual mediums even if someone did have the ability to talk to the dead if you were going to do that for a living you'd need to be able to turn that skill on at will and if that was the case surely someone would have been able to do a scientific evaluation as the evidence in theory would be able to be generated on demand. The fact no such evidence exists is rather damning. Perhaps some people do have such skills but if so they aren't able to reproduce it on demand.
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You are wasted here.
A medium, rare!
Surely if the afterlife were trying to get in contact with a loved one through a medium they would be more specific. If it were me chatting to one of these shysters from the other side knowing my wife was in the audience I’d be telling them my name where I lived and pointing out my wife in the audience and not giving my initials and some bull crap non specific information that may/may not be related to me.
As someone who is unable to believe in the possibilty of god/heaven/hell/after life etc my head won't compute this either
Charlatans in my view
Con artists and charlatans. That’s why nobody ever claimed the money Randi put up.
He debunked many of them in his time. He also showed how Uri Geller did his ‘tricks’.
He even exposed one so called spiritualist using a radio earpiece, with an accomplice in the audience who had talked to people queuing to go in!
Started out with nothing. Still have most of it left.
There’s a YouTube video about that one.
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Was it a follow-up show where Derren went to meet a medium, one of the misguided variety? That was interesting. I think it wasn't a Derren Brown show as such but more an interview/documentary about him.
I'm with Paddy on this one - I can see that they bring comfort to some people.
I don't believe in it myself, but that doesn't mean it doesn't help some people deal with their grief.
A lot of people believe in Astrology, Christianity, Islam and all the other 'accepted' beliefs - To me, they're all the same.
If they help someone, fine, if not, what's the difference between a Medium and a Priest? The fact that, for example, the Catholic Church has industrialized preying on the fears of the irrational doesn't make it any more acceptable to me, but if it brings people comfort, then it's doing its job.
And if I'm wrong, well, I won't be able to tell any of you, unless you go and see a Medium!
M
Last edited by snowman; 23rd March 2021 at 10:17.
Breitling Cosmonaute 809 - What's not to like?
There's that amazing US series with the young medium Tyler Henry. He does readings exclusively on rich and famous people. It is incredible how he is able to find out so much about such high profile celebrities.....
FTFY
https://www.thrillist.com/culture/7-...e-forer-effect
Started out with nothing. Still have most of it left.
I used to consider myself to be a medium but I've gone further down that road (after much research and investigation) and am now progressing towards being an extra large. I need to get back in touch with my former self! (not that I do, touch myself as often these days!).
I know Marc and when he went on the Jonathan Ross show in Shirley Ghostman character they had the most complaints from viewers about any guest in the shows history, given the type of shock humour he specialises in he was absolutely delighted with this.
The whole character was thought up with the express desire to take the mickey out of mediums, he had the same problem though even though he was massively taking the piss a lot of the audience thought he was a genuine medium at the venues where they recorded the High Spirits show.
Last edited by Vanguard; 23rd March 2021 at 12:39.
The only Pyskick I would ever pay to watch.
YOU’RE SPELLING IT WRONG?
You heard about the 5ft2 psychic who escaped from jail? He was reported as a "small medium at large"
If you don't mind defrauding people you can make a pretty good living as a medium/psychic.
Get invited on TV, they love them on there, sell out halls with very little in the way of expense.
I sometimes wonder if any of these people actually think they have a gift or is it all a giant con trick?
Cheers,
Neil.
This may surprise some. And no, this isn’t another early April 1st post.
For many years, roughly once a year, I used to go to see a clairvoyant in the Isle of Man. Sadly the lady concerned died a few years ago. I haven’t been minded to find another.
Why did I keep going back? Because for £25 or so, I could take an hour from my busy and stressful life, and talk to someone totally neutral who was an excellent sounding board. Was she perceptive? Without doubt. Did she tell me things that made me wonder “how did she know that?” Often. Do I think she had a “special gift”? Undoubtedly. Was she relaying messages from my deceased parents? I hardly think so, but I found the visits useful nevertheless, which is why I must have been back to her at least 15 times.
I know someone who predicted the zebrugge ferry disaster, in detail, about a week before the event. They weren't a medium or anything like that though.
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