Supernatural? I thought it was anyway...

Better yet, have the phychic come to his house so that she/he can't have any tricks, mirrors, cameras in place. If a psychic claims that they can't work outside of their own house or place of business then that should start alarm bells ringing.As a double blind, try replacing the person whom the psychic thinks they are going to take a reading of. Do it while he/she is in the other room, behind the screen or whatever. Never underestimate the lengths a fraud will go to in orer to fool a victim. I wouldn't be surprised to see a private investigator working for one of them. Not so, at least not in my case anyway. I have had enough strange experiences in my life to convince me that there is at least something to the supernatural. I am fascinated by the subject but I am equally convinced that the vast majority of supposed psychics are complete fakes.
If you get a genuine one then they should not mind in the least if you "test" her/him. Nothing to hide!

send James Randi.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

or just listen objectively to what is said and how it is said.Here is one persons experience
psychic reading

just one example...

quote:

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...I once recorded on tape the utterances of a well-known (by police as well as to his adoring admirers) practitioner of the subtle arts of precognition and clairvoyance, Peter Hurkos. He was appearing on a popular evening TV show in one of several bookings, and he grandly "read" members of the audience, reciting intimate details about their homes, their lives, and their minds. Considerable astonishment accompanied his revelations, and when I conferred with several interested laymen the next day I was bombarded with glowing accounts of his fantastic accuracy. I carefully gave the impression that I had not seen the TV program, and let them babble on.

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A few days later, I invited two these persons to my home to put on tape their accounts of his performance. I then played for them the tape recording of the broadcast that I had made, and we discovered by actual count that this so-called psychic had, on the average, been correct in about one out of fourteen of his statements! [...] Selective thinking had led them to dismiss all the apparent misses and the obviously wrong guesses and remember only the "hits".

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from Flim-Flam by James Randi. Any typos are mine.[ABE:]
And for a little essay on how little it takes to fool people:http://www.quackwatch.org/...keryRelatedTopics/psychic2.htmlThis message has been edited by Zhimbo, 08-18-2005 02:55 PM

"Better yet, have the phychic come to his house "Bad idea. The psychic will have the address beforehand, and will have the house itself for clues. A neutral location is far better.Also, re-doing a session with the same person is a bad idea, as the psychic has already gleaned a lot of information from the first session. Will make cold reading far easier the next time around. There should be a suprise person to be read.

When you say "nothing was said" I assume that you mean that your friend doesn't remember saying anything of significance. However that is not necessary - "cold reading" relies more on body language and it is highly unlikely that your friend could fool a skilled operator.And while there are 26 letters in the alphabet several could match (Christian name, surname, nicknames) - and some are more likely than others (if she had guessed 'X' correctly I'd have been more impressed). It isn't a 1-in-26 guess at all. And how could she be proved wrong ?And of course the medium wasn't asked to give a nickname - that would be MORE difficult than what she did ! What she probably tried to do was to guess the name and resorted to saying that it was a nickname when she didn't get a positive reaction. Volunteering these things is exactly what a fake would do - so it's hardly evidence that she has any genuine ability.I'll add that I've had a few short-lived nicknames - and these days we could include names used on the internet (like "iano").I'll further add that you don't know the "hit rate" (all you have is you have your notes based on your friend's memory of the session) - and the real rate was likely much worse. Nor do you know how much "fishing" was used to get the "hits" that were there. And none of the three hits you've listed is in the least impressive. They're all easily within the reach of a fake.

You are missing my point Zhimbo.
I would want the psychic to know exactly where I lived so that he/she could do all the research necessay to make a really good reading.
But when he/she got there and went behind the screen, I would bring in my friend from across town to sit there in my place while I went down the pub or something. Let's see her/him get a good reading then eh? Again, the fact that the psychic thinks he/she has a lot of information about me, the fact that the person sitting there is somebody utterly different should really throw a wrench in the works.

Well, then they'd fail because of the "bad vibes", don't ya know?

Precisely.
A genuine psychic would not be fazed by it at all so anyone making stupid lame excuses is a complete fake. End of story.

Are you kidding? I try every day to reach the supernatural I love to read fantasy novels; the more magic, the better. In fact I play Magic, and Dungeons and Dragons, and all the rest.I love a good ghost story, monsters, vampires, all of it. Love that stuff.Every day, at least once, I try to move something with the power of my mind, or close my eyes and try to sense objects around me, or the future.If the supernatural existed, I'd be the first to know. It'd be awesome. I'd love to kick around in some Land of Fairy, or alternate plane, or bind some demon and make him do tricks. I'd love to discover some secret magic powers. Selling my soul? If some idiot devil was willing to buy what I know I don't have, I'd sell it to him like that.But look, lemme tell you something. I know a few pagans, a few Wiccans, a few satanists. I've looked up the works of Alistair Crowley and poured over Hoyle's Book of Games looking for all that secret occult stuff that's supposed to be in there. You know what? All those pagans and Wiccans and occultists? Their beliefs are as ridiculous and unsupported as yours. "Magic spells" and hand gestures are every bit as useless as praying to God. Crowley was every bit a bullshitter as Jesus, Mohammed, and L. Ron Hubbard were.There's no supernatural. Nobody's buying souls.

quote:

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I believe in God. God of the Bible

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Have you prayed to God and asked him if this woman is for real? Have you listened for an answer?I was once told that people do have gifts like that, they are even stories of them in the bible:
1 Samuel 28We all have gifts from God, and God doesn't take them back.However, I have yet to witness any real power from any "fortune teller".I have had experiences that I have a hard time explaining, including the series of events that led up to me getting blasted by the Holy Spirit. I recieve confirmations all the time.
But all are subjective I guess.We have prophetic services, and training in the prophetic, to see if you are gifted in that area in my church. If anyone wants to learn about it, a good starting place is here:
Home - STREAMS MINISTRIES INTERNATIONAL
they can do dream interpretations for you, and you will know if their interpretations are from God or not.Again this is all subjective, and just my beliefs.
If there is anything I learned in life so far, it's that anything is possible.

One technique I've noticed that seems esp. potent with audiences is the "struggle" to "hear" that psychics/mediums present: Is there anyone here who/whose blah blah...no? Is there anyone here whose/who yadda yadda...all along presenting an affect of great effort and concentration. The great effort both excuses their misses and builds dramatic tension for the inevitable hit.Being well-conditioned viewers, we feel their struggle and root for their success: every dramatic tension requires its release--we clap real hard for Tinkerbell..."Yes! My deceased mother was a woman named Grace!"Then, when they get a hit, their eyes widen, the look of effort disappears, replaced by one of triumph: as though they had been doing some heavy lifting or fine-tuning and are finally there.Yeah. There. In your pocket.

Fair enough. Like I said, this was a poor basis for a post as it was inevitable that an infinite progression of requests for more evidence would occur. And that is reasonablePoor post. My apologies to all

Well, not totally correct. Some co-workers of mine were having a discusion about whether souls existed or not and my friend took the position that if we were all so sure that didn't exist that we should have no problem selling him our souls. So one guy sold his soul to my friend for a quarter. When the guy's fiancee found out she forced him to buy it back. My friend sold it back to him for 50 cents!

SWEET!!!
He should have charged five bucks though.