By entering the stage area, you’re agreeing to be “read” by John. John cannot control who “comes through.” So there are no “passive audience members.” For instance, John has read the cameraman, soundman and someone in the next room during rehearsals. If you feel you’ll be too embarrassed, too frazzled, or just not interested, we ask that you give up your seat to someone who’s anxious for a reading.
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that some of us have the ability to speak to the dead.
Heck, I believe all of us have the ability to communicate with the dead. You can do it right now! Say hello to John the Baptist, let Shakespeare know you’ve always admired his work, tell Hitler to f—— off. Give your best to some dead loved ones while you’re at it.
That part—talking to the dead—is easy. It’s the getting-a-response part that’s a little tricky.
For many, the desire to communicate with the dead and to discover some “proof” of a life beyond this world is so strong that we want to believe certain mortals among us possess “psychic abilities.” These so-called mediums act as conduits between this life and the afterlife, receiving signals and clues and messages from those who have passed on before us and are now apparently engaged in some kind of ethereal game of charades.
“I’m getting a ‘C,’” the slick-talking psychic will say as he walks around the room, scanning the audience for someone who was close to someone whose name included a ‘C.’ (Gee, what are the odds?)
“The name could be Charles, or Carol, something with a C, could be a last name like Charles or something with a ‘Ch,’ a grandmother or a mother, she died in the hospital after a long illness . . .”
And then some poor woman in the audience will raise her hand and say, “That might be my grandmother! Her maiden name was Charlton and she died in the hospital after being sick for months!”
Lord save us, it’s a miracle.
Here’s what gets me. If your grandmother wants to let you know she forgives you for that big fight you had just before she croaked, why does she have to go through some jabbering TV host with gelled hair and a perma-tan? Why can’t she just tell you directly?
Oh, that’s right. Because the TV huckster has the gift, and you don’t.
Let me say right here that I’m a believer who doesn’t believe.
I do believe and hope there’s something out there beyond our time on Earth—but I don’t believe that women with tarot cards who work out of their kitchens and men with $120 haircuts who have shows on basic cable channels have some sort of special ability to receive signals from the dead.
I believe their gift is the ability to do either “cold readings” (time-tested questioning techniques) and/or “hot readings” (gathering information prior to a session) in order to glean enough information from their victims, I mean clients, to make it seem as if they’re actually communicating with a deceased loved one.
On some level I hope I’m wrong about this. Because if psychics and mediums have no special gift, and they know they have no special gift, and they’re using tactics to con people into thinking they’re engaging in a dialogue with a dead loved one—often reducing these clients to pools of tears—that’s redefining cynical exploitation. That’s white-hot despicable.
In 2007, I took a look at the work of Sylvia Browne, one of the most successful psychics of her generation. Her numerous bestsellers include A Psychic’s Tour of the Afterlife and Christmas in Heaven. In the latter book, Browne addresses such questions as “Do heavenly spirits decorate?” and “Are there presents and exchanging of gifts?” If the answer to either of these questions is “Yes,” I guess that means they must have Wal-Marts and Costcos in the afterlife. And credit cards. And electrical outlets so you can plug in those decorations.
Browne has been a frequent guest with Larry King and Montel Williams. There’s an infamous clip on the Internet showing one of her less successful readings on Montel’s shows, in which Browne tells a woman, “The reason you couldn’t find [your husband] is he’s in the water.” Browne continues to insist there was water involved in the man’s death—even after the woman says that, no, he was a firefighter killed on 9/11.
“It doesn’t matter anyway, honey,” Browne says in a dismissive, cruel tone, obviously hoping to move on quickly from this public humiliation, “because he’s still over there.”
In another infamous gaffe, Browne told the family of a missing boy named Shawn Hornbeck that the boy was dead—and offered to help find his body for her usual fee of some $700 an hour.
The boy was found alive. Without Browne’s help.
Then there was the time Browne appeared on a live radio show as a report came in that a group of trapped coal miners in West Virginia was alive. Immediately, Browne said she “knew” they were fine.
Sadly, that initial report turned out to be untrue. All but one of the miners was dead.
Unfortunately for Browne, she was still on the live program when that tragic news was delivered.
“I don’t think there’s anybody alive, maybe one,” she said.
This is another gift you’ll find in most psychics: the ability to roll with the punches and shift the story at the snap of your fingers without ever feeling bad about telling parents their missing kid is dead, or being wrong about the number of people dead in a developing news story.
Eerie, isn’t it?
What about those TV stars such as John Edward who seem to have an uncanny ability to tell you things about your dead friend or grandma or spouse that they couldn’t possibly have known beforehand?
As we have learned from shows such as Penn and Teller’s work of genius Bullshit!, professional skeptics such as James Randi, and Web sites such as SkepticReport (www.skepticreport.com), TV psychics employ myriad techniques to extract information from subjects before and during taping sessions and live tour appearances.
One of the favored techniques is to gather the audience well in advance of the psychic’s appearance. You have to be at the studio an hour or two before the actual taping begins, you have to be in line at the bookstore, you have to file into the auditorium long before the scheduled start time.
And what do you do during all that down time? You talk. And what do you talk about? The deceased loved one you’re hoping to contact.
Perhaps there are microphones in strategic places. (In a TV studio, the microphones wouldn’t even have to be hidden. The same mikes used to pick up your applause could be turned on well in advance of taping, to pick up snippets of conversation.) An easier approach would be for the psychic to have a few associates sprinkled through the crowd, posing as regular folks while extracting and gathering information.
There’s also a strong possibility you’ll be asked to fill out a questionnaire—a release form giving permission for your name and image to be used on the show or on the psychic’s Web site. The information you provide might seem quite basic—but in the hands of an experienced reader, every little tidbit helps.
Once the psychic appears and starts his shtick, the game is on. His repertoire will include fast patter, a strong knowledge of demographics and statistical probabilities, the technique of framing questions as statements, and the ability to nimbly step past incorrect guesses quickly. He’ll say things like “This might sound crazy, but is there anyone with a connection to a flood, some kind of flooding?” or “I know this sounds weird, but I’m getting something about someone who was a pilot or loved flying, maybe they were in the Air Force,” or “Somebody here lost someone who lived in Paris for a while?”
You put 150 people in a room, you’re going to get a hit.
Or he’ll throw a date out there.
“I’m seeing the middle of October—it might be October 17 or a date near then—it has great significance for you.”
Let’s say the psychic is addressing a 60-year-old woman with three children, four grandchildren, a husband, numerous aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, friends, and so on, not to mention more than a few deceased loved ones. For crying out loud, it’s almost a statistical certainty that someone in her life had a birthday or died or got married or had something significant happen on or around October 17.
Isn’t it interesting that virtually all psychics get their information in the same manner? It’s never straightforward; it’s always in bits and pieces, with the psychic saying something like, “Okay, they’re telling me something about a fishing boat, a boat of some kind; there was an incident once on a boat. Did you fish with your grand-father when you were a little boy? . . . OK, you took a cruise . . . and that was one of the happier times, and he wants you to know that when he thinks of you, he doesn’t think about the disagreement that happened later in your life; he doesn’t think about when he was in the hospital and he was sick—he thinks about that cruise you took . . .”
They always get their information in drips and drops—making for dramatic television, as the psychic gets warmer and warmer and the “sitter” gets more and more emotional, often tearing up before collapsing in a heap of grateful closure. The psychic often asks for help in “interpreting” his information—a neat trick that turns a semiaccurate factoid into an amazingly detailed scoop.
Another classic technique used by psychics—the old double negative. He’ll say, “Your father didn’t serve in the military, did he?”
If you say, “Yes,” he proceeds quickly, saying, “That’s what I was getting.”
If you say, “No,” he proceeds just as quickly, saying, “No, no, I didn’t think so.”
No matter what your answer, he’s going to act as if he had it right—and he’s just picked up another piece of useful information along the way.
Of course, the actual conversations can also be edited for TV, so we don’t see all the mistakes and missteps made by the psychic. It looks as if he’s as direct and precise as a prosecutor on an episode of Law & Order.
One also has to factor in the “willing audience” factor. The vast majority of people who take the time and effort to attend a taping of Crossing Over with John Edward or a reading by Sylvia Browne aren’t there to “bust” the star—they’re hoping to make contact with someone on the other side. If they’re lucky enough to be tabbed by the medium, they’re going to try to help out by supplying as much information as possible during the conversation.
The psychic will also use flattery to coax the subject. He never says, “Ooh, you’re a cheap bastard and you were always very mean to your siblings when you were growing up.” He says, “You are a very loving, generous person, and you were always the one who looked out for your siblings when you were growing up, am I right?” Flattery will get him everywhere. It’s just another way to get the subject to say, “Hey, this guy is good.”
When psychics are asked why they can’t use their powers to explain where the dead are when they’re making contact or why they can’t use their abilities to predict winning lottery numbers or prevent tragedies, they always say the same thing:
“It doesn’t work that way.”
Why not? Why does it always work the same way? Who decided how it would “work”?
For that matter, why is it that when someone is given “the gift,” he or she turns it into a profit-making enterprise consisting of TV shows and audiobooks and public speaking tours? Aren’t these people freaked out by all those conversations with the dead, and aren’t they a little wary of making millions from those talks?
Many of these psychics say they realized they had special abilities at a young age. You’d think at least some of them would be so blown away by this “gift” that they’d become monks or priests or spiritual gurus, instead of infomercial hucksters.
Unless, of course, the real gift is the ability and the willingness to bullshit the willing and the faithful.
Imagine filling out a tax form or a questionnaire and coming to the “Occupation” box—and writing down “Pet Psychic.”
Now that takes guts.
The amazing thing isn’t that someone can make a living by claiming the ability to communicate with pets—it’s that dozens of people are making a living this way. Google “pet psychic” and you’ll get listings for the famous TV pet psychic Sonya Fitzpatrick, among many others, including:
Amazing. When I was kid, I’m not sure there was a single pet psychic in the world. Now, according to the Internet listings, there are dozens of women—it’s a female-dominated field—who have the ability to communicate with animals, even the dead ones!
Many of these pet psychics don’t even have to meet with you in person to take your money. They’re happy to do a reading over the phone. I guess you just hand the receiver to Tippy or Mr. Fluffers and let the pet psychic take it from there.
This places us squarely in a world where Dr. Doolittle and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective are documentaries.
Do some animals possess remarkable personalities? Sure. Are some animals capable of heroic deeds? Absolutely. Is it possible for a human and a pet to have a special, unique bond? I don’t doubt it for a second.
But the idea that a dead cat can speak to its former owner through a pet psychic or that a crabby hamster can explain to a pet psychic exactly why it’s in a bad mood—that’s less believable than a rerun of Mr. Ed. You can ascribe all sorts of human characteristics to your pet, but that’s not reality—that’s a Disney cartoon.
Wait a minute, I’m getting a signal from your dog . . . it’s getting stronger . . . got it! He wants to let you know that he’d like more table scraps, that you don’t have to do that little voice when you talk to him, and that you don’t have to ask him, “Want to go outside?” or “Do you want a treat?”—because the answer is always going to be “Yes!”
Sometimes my psychic powers frighten even me.