Evening of Clairvoyance - Thursday 21st January 2010 7.30pm

[donuticus 10]

http://www.sheffieldcityhall.co.uk/events/TJHiggs

 

You owe me a new keyboard. Just spat my coffee over this one.

 

With a bit of luck her and the rest of these con merchants will eventually disappear off the face of the planet.

[Plain Talker 11]

http://www.sheffieldcityhall.co.uk/events/TJHiggs

 

oh! didn't see that before I posted.

 

But, Oh, boy! that raised a chuckle anyway.

[maggi 10]

With a bit of luck her and the rest of these con merchants will eventually disappear off the face of the planet.

 

Am I alone in thinking that she's a bloke?

[go4it 10]

Tell me if I'm wrong but I believe you cannot just turn up to these sorts of events and get tickets on the door, you must book.

 

So you phone someone and give them your name, address, card details etc. Very easy therefore for someone to do some quick research - family history etc. I've also heard of people phoning up people who have booked pretending to be doing surveys, even calling at their house and looking round.

 

So that message 'from Bob who says look after the red vase' doesn't seem that special anymore.

 

Were these events popular before the internet? It's amazing what people find out via the net.

[SSitP 10]

Derren brown isn't a medium and uses mind trickery and whats called cold reading.

 

And so do mediums, whether knowingly or unknowingly. Until a proclaimed psychic can show under controlled conditions that their powers are real (and not one psychic has ever done this).

 

It has, however, been shown by people such as Derren that the appearance of psychic powers can be easily presented by non-paranormal means. It is therefore up to the psychics to provide to provide extraordinary evidence for their extraordinary claims. Figuring out that someone's dead relative's name began with an 'M' and they died suddenly is not good enough.

 

If psychic powers were shown to be real it would be an extraordinary discovery and would be the biggest discovery in science ever.

 

These psychic "experiments" (oh, how I hate the legislation that gave psychics the word experiment to legitimise themselves) follow the same usual pattern of throwing names out to the audience ("I'm getting a Wendy. Who knows a Wendy?"), cold reading ("I'm seeing some sort of back pain or heart condition or possibly arthritis or cancer..." Ah! He nodded when I mentioned cancer), complete guesswork ("It's a round shape, like a B or a C or an S or a Q, maybe a G but there might be a pointy bit too, like an R or a W"), direct questions ("Was he a sailor?"), character reading ("You're a bit of a worrier aren't you?"), statistical guesses ("I feel his death was something to do with his chest") and sometimes hot reading as well (getting the audience to fill out a short questionnaire beforehand - "who do you want to contact?").

 

I would recommend to anyone who is unsure or who believes in psychic abilities to check out this article on the ASKE website here for things to watch out for if you do visit a psychic or medium.

 

In fact Tony Youens who wrote the article and is a founder member of ASKE is speaking at Sheffield Skeptics in the Pub in March for anyone (believers or not) who is interested and would like to come along.

[slimsid2000 10]

How did it go?