A look at psychic readings

[Fake Messiah]

I wanted to take a look at the psychic readings and analyze them how psychic they really are, but the only ones I have are from celebrities. So I looked into a few autobiographies and analyzed those. Now, of course, you can give your opinion about my analysis or some other comment.

The main problem is that those are not objective recordings but an interpretation by the person relaying the story, but we can still try at least for entertainment purposes.

Testimonies are under the hide tags so that the post doesn't look too bloated.


Michael Crichton was in London making the movie "Great Train Robbery" (1979) when he decided to visit a slew of psychics.

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She saw me working in a room like a laundry, with huge white baskets, and there were black snakes coiling in the baskets, except that they weren’t snakes. And she heard this terrible sound, repeated over and over again, a kind of Whaaaa-whoooo, whoooo-whaaaa, and she saw pictures going forward and backward, forward and backward. And something about hats, or high hats, or old-style fashion.

This was what she couldn’t put together. And she found it unpleasant, these sounds and snakes and things. She said, “You are the most peculiar person.”

I, of course, knew exactly what she was seeing. She was seeing the place I had been virtually living in for the last two weeks, the editing room where we ran the film back and forth to the accompaniment of those hideous sounds. The film was The Great Train Robbery and the actors all wore high hats.

There was absolutely no way this little blind lady with swollen ankles could have known about that. No matter how I might have failed to control my body movement, my verbalizations and grunts, no matter how much she might have feigned blindness as she did a “cold reading” on me, I knew damned well I couldn’t have conveyed to her images of what an editing room looked like—images she would misconstrue as a laundry with snakes. I hadn’t tipped her off about that. It wasn’t possible.

So where had she gotten the information?

I could think of two possibilities. One was that she had been informed. I had made my appointment by phone under a different name, but when I walked in the building, I might conceivably have been recognized by someone at the desk, and this person might have somehow told the woman who I was, that I had something to do with movies. There wasn’t any phone in the psychic’s room that I could see, but you never knew. Being informed would explain everything.

The other possibility was that she was psychic, and the phenomenon was real.

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Crichton is trying to rationalize how the psychic could know all that stuff about him, but she gave such a metaphorical reading that it could apply to almost anyone. She said that he works in a room with black snakes in baskets, that there are strange noises, that there are pictures going around, and that there are old hats, and that it looks like a laundry room. So Crichton took it to mean a film editing room: black snakes are film roles, there is strange noise, pictures are pictures of the movie being projected with people wearing old hats, and apparently it all looks like a laundry room.

But many people work in a place with strange noise. Black snakes can also be all sorts of cables (computer or TV or those that hold lamps from a ceiling), or if you work in a clothes store, they can be ties or socks, etc. Old hats—maybe someone has photos of people with old hats or who wear "strange" hats in the workplace (as many people do). Pictures going forward and backward—if they have a TV in the office or workplace, that would also work or maybe they have a calendar with pictures that they change or in the classroom they have things that project pictures and text on the blackboard, etc.

The second psychic Crichton went to. This time he had to give the psychic his watch to hold and read from it

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“Do you believe in spiritualism?” he said.

“I don’t know.”

“Was your grandfather a soldier?”

“I don’t know.”

“I see, you’re one of those who say the same thing all the time, are you? Don’t want to give me any help, is that it?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I was following my plan, but it seemed stupid.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Please yourself. I see your grandfather riding on a horse; he looks like a soldier. I see your grandfather working with stone. I see chips of stone on the ground; he works with stone.”

My grandfather died in the army, in the influenza epidemic of 1919, before my father was born. My grandfather had worked as a gravestone cutter. I had seen photographs.

“Your father is dead,” the psychic said. “Recently passed over?”

My father had died eight months before. “Yes,” I said.

“He’s all right. Your mother is grieving too much. You should tell her that your father is all right and he wants her to stop grieving so much. Will you tell your mother that?”

“Yes.” Thinking, Oh brother, sure. I’m going to call my mother up and say, Some obnoxious little creep held my watch and said that Dad is on the Other Side and everything is fine, Mom. Sure I am.

And also thinking this was a stock situation. Once this guy had guessed that my father had recently died, then he could say, without much fear of contradiction, that my mother was grieving too much and that I should tell her Dad was okay. It was a stock situation and it didn’t mean anything.

“Your father did some good things and some bad things.”

Another stock comment. Applicable to any dead person. I was unimpressed.

“Your father feels bad about what he did to you.”

I said nothing.

“Your father did the best he could with you, but you see, he had no father of his own to teach him.”

That was true. And not easy to guess.

“Your father didn’t know how to behave around you, and you of course intimidated him. So you and he had difficulties. But he knows he injured you, and now he feels bad about it. He wants you to know that. He wants to help you now.”

I said nothing.

“Often at night you walk in the city. At those times your father is close to you, and he wishes to help you.”

In London, I had been seeing a woman who lived near my hotel. I would often walk home at night, enjoying the cool air and the light London fog, and during those times I would think of my father.

“I get that your sister is a lawyer,” he said suddenly. “But she is American. Why is she in England?”

My sister and her husband were at that moment on vacation in England. Somewhere—I hadn’t seen them yet, and wouldn’t until they arrived in London at the end of the month.

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So this time a psychic guessed that Crichton's granddad was a soldier—which is not so hard to guess. He also said that he worked with stone, which is also not far-fetched for people living at the beginning of the 20th century.

Then he guessed that Crichton's dad is dead—to which even Crichton is not that impressed. Indeed, he asked him if his dad is dead, to which he said, "Yes."

What fascinated Crichton was that he guessed that Crichton's grandfather wasn't there for Crichton's dad and that Crichton felt like his dad wasn't there for him. But that is not only not fascinating, it's also a trope. For example, in Chuck Palahniuk's novel "Fight Club," in the prologue or epilogue, Palahniuk writes how he discovered that almost every guy feels like his father let him down and that even his own father feels like his father let him down.

Then he says that Crichton walks around at night. That doesn't seem like a hard guess.

What is perhaps most fascinating is that he guessed that his sister is a lawyer and is currently in England. But then again, we don't have the objective transcript, and how could he have known that or if she's really a lawyer or something related to it, or maybe she is a law school dropout.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

In my youth (back in the Bronze Age), I dated a girl who was heavily into psychics. She had a reading once in which the psychic told her that she was romantically linked to a tall man with an eye patch. It wasn't all that impressive, considering that during her session I was in the waiting room, leafing through magazines.

Boru

[awty]

I was shocked to find out that my sister-in-law went to a psychic to see how her brother was doing. (my first husband who died in a drunk driving crash) The psychic told her that she saw him sitting at a table, smiling, and drinking a beer. For some reason this contented my SIL that he was doing well. It would appear that you can carry on your addictions into the afterlife.

I really thought that particular sister-in-law was the smart one of the two prior to hearing that story.

[The Valkyrie]

I KNEW this thread was coming.

[Angrboda]

[Fake Messiah]

What's your opinion on Lewis Black's psychic?

Lewis Black talks about his relationship with a psychic called Michael that started in 1998.

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In 1998, I got a call from Tamara Nerby, a terrific comedienne and a wonderful friend who lives in Minneapolis. She had recently seen a friend of hers named Michael who happened to be a psychic. He didn’t know who I was. I wasn’t on anyone’s radar yet, unless you were a complete comedy junkie, and Michael wasn’t one of those.

In the midst of a conversation the two of them were having, Michael said to her, “You know, you have to stop worrying about your friend Lewis. He’s going to do just fine. He’s going to have a spectacular career, so you don’t have to worry about him anymore.”

That’s when Tamara called me. She assured me that she had never mentioned me to Michael, and therefore I should take this seriously.

Michael, it turned out, looks kind of like a surfer dude. He’s just a regular guy. Well, a regular guy who happens to see ghosts.

That’s right, he sees dead people. DEAD PEOPLE! At least the ones who are still hanging around.

Michael now makes his living as a psychic. He gives readings and clears homes of unwanted ghosts. My favorite of his stories is when a young man called to have his house cleared of a female demon that he was having sex with.

Since I met Michael, he has called me out of the blue a few times, as if he knows full well what is happening in my life. A few years ago as I was literally walking out the door of my apartment, on my way to Los Angeles to shoot a pilot for CBS, the phone rings. It’s Michael. He tells me that he knows that I’m going off to shoot my TV show and that I shouldn’t sweat it as it’s going to go well, and even if it doesn’t make the schedule, not to worry, more is on the way.

I can’t imagine, knowing Michael as I do, that he’s tracked my career development online. And as I had no website then that announced what I was doing, the explanation I keep coming back to is that he just knew. One of his ghost secretaries must have told him.

Even more amazing, I came home one night after a discussion with friends over dinner about whether or not I would ever have children. Michael left a message for me at home saying I shouldn’t dismiss the idea of having children. That it just might work for me. It was as if he had been sitting with us.

Now, whether or not I believe what Michael said, I was stunned. And this was not the first time such a thing had happened with Michael. At our first meeting, Michael said something that truly changed the way I thought about psychics.

He spoke to me about my brother’s cancer.

It was like getting hit by a bus.

I remember sitting there, trying to catch what little breath I had left. There was no way in hell Michael could have known about my brother’s condition. Ron had been diagnosed with cancer only a few months before. The diagnosis was not good, though Ron spoke as if it was under control and felt that a cure was imminent. I don’t know if that’s just what Ron was telling us or if the doctors really felt confident, but Michael alerted me to the fact that my brother’s condition was more serious than I was being led to believe.

This information was an absolute eye-opener and it made me more attentive to my brother and his needs.

I certainly should have looked into alternatives to the traditional treatments my brother was receiving. But I did what I could at the time, and as I have learned, you can always do more—you just can’t ever do enough. Michael helped me understand that lesson, and I can never thank him enough for being so fearless as to share his amazing abilities and that heartbreaking information with me.

About a year after my brother passed away, I visited Michael again. We sat around his house. He told me that Ron was there with us, which seemed to confirm what I had been feeling—that Ron was always around. Michael said that Ron wanted me to do movies. Hell, he wasn’t alone there. I certainly wanted to do movies as well. Michael said I would be doing movies. And a few years later, I was doing movies.

One thing you should know about psychics: They are never quite sure about the timing. In my dealings with Michael, he is pretty right on about what’s going to happen to me. He just can’t say if it will happen in October or May, or even in two years. Oh well. We take what we can.

Oh, by the way, for those of you who are wondering: I have never paid Michael a dime. He is my friend—a friend with an extraordinary gift.

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It begins with Lewis claiming that this psychic simply knew about him while talking to his friend, but then he admits that he was already a public person. What also surprised Lewis is that this psychic foretold that he will have a spectacular career—whatever that means—but then again, by 1998, Lewis was already in several movies and TV shows, like Woody Allen's movie "Hannah and Her Sisters," Jacob's Ladder, Law & Order, Mad About You, etc. So that doesn't sound like a spectacular guess. 

Then it struck Lewis as a miracle, the ability of this psychic to know that he is filming a TV pilot. But filming pilots is hardly a secretive thing and could have been in newspapers/on the internet. Plus, the psychic had access to his friends, like that Tamara.

The next "miracle" was when Lewis came home and discovered a message from the psychic telling him not to dismiss the idea of having children after he talked to his friends about kids. That could have been a lucky guess, probably among other things he mentioned that Lewis ignored.

Then he had an official psychic meeting with Michael, where he told him that his brother has cancer, which, according to Lewis, he couldn't know. But then again, they were already very close friends at this time, so he could have told him, or the psychic had access to his home and similar personal things where he could have learned about it (it is his job to know these things, and they will go out of their way to get the info), or he could have learned it from Lewis's friends that also go and visit the same psychic. Plus, it looks like the psychic was telling him that his brother will be cured, but his brother died, which Lewis doesn't see as a psychic's miss but rather blames himself for not sending his brother to alternative medicine "healers," and that the purpose was to help Lewis get through it psychologically.

At the end, Lewis claims that he never paid him anything, but then again, that's how these psychics frequently work. For example, it is said that psychics in the Philippines who perform psychic surgeries don't charge anything, but if you go there, you will see that they expect donations. So maybe Lewis borrows him money that this guy never returns or just gives him monetary gifts—since they are "friends," after all.

[The Grand Nudger]

Or, maybe, Lewis lacks psychic is worth more in advertising dollars and referrals than any reading. He’s a loss leader.

[Thumpalumpacus]

[AFTT47]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXUH7Wk8-WI

[Fake Messiah]

Louie Anderson saw a psychic on a TV show and decided to send his friend to him, after which his friend told Louie to see the same psychic - meaning that the psychic knew in advance who is comming to him.

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Rather than go over my background in detail, the man asked that I reply “yes” or “no” to a few specific questions. Then something seemed to click into place and he began talking:

“There’s a woman here who’s very excited to see you,” he said. “She says she’s your mother and the first thing she wants me to tell you is to stop punishing yourself, to stop thinking you didn’t do enough for her. She says she wants you to watch where you’re walking and be careful of your right knee. She’s trying to tell me her name. She keeps pointing to the light around her head. She says I’ll never guess it. She has great news about your career. In May, you’ll win an award and you’ll be changing your career from comedy to drama. Your sister has liver trouble. You’ll reconcile with your older brother. She says your dad is here, but still struggling with being here. He’s sorry he wasn’t a better father, but is very proud of you. She says it’s important you keep making people feel better.”

The psychic went on to say that I had four or five guardian angels, brothers or sisters, who’d passed over. Up to that point, he’d held my interest, but the last comment about guardian angels sowed some doubt since all my siblings were still alive at the time. I told him this, but he couldn’t be dissuaded. “They’ve always been with you and are excited to talk to you,” he said. Then he asked me if my mom had had any stillborn babies. I said “yes”: two sets of twins and my parent’s first baby. I was stunned because I’d never mentioned this to anyone.

Some of the things the psychic had said I knew to be true the day I met with him. It was correct, for example, that since my mother had died, I’d wondered if I’d done enough for her. As for the reference to my leg, I fell onstage and injured my right leg. The light around one’s head is called an “aura” and my mother’s name was Ora. As for what would happen later, in May of that year, I won my first two Emmys for Life with Louie. My sister came down with liver cancer and eventually died before she could get a transplant. My older brother and I eventually reconciled and are now very close.

Could this psychic have done a little research and discovered things like my mother’s name, even gone into public records and learned about the stillborn children? Hard to believe he’d do that much preparation in advance, but I suppose. Were some of his predictions more a matter of logical guesswork than access to the spirit world? Perhaps. But so much of what he had to say was on target that I became a believer.

As things developed, I became friends with this man and introduced him to other celebrities. They seemed to benefit from meeting with him.

Myself, I choose to believe that some people are able to contact people on the other side for one very good reason: I want to believe it.

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So the psychic claims to be in contact with his dead mother, who told him to watch his knee, and then Louie says that he once fell onstage and injured his leg—which is not necessarily his knee—but then you don't have to be a psychic to make a good guess that a morbidly obese person has problems with his knee or leg (especially if he limps).

He told him that he has four or five dead brothers or sisters, which Louie admits is public information that he could have gathered if he went to public records, but he doubts that the psychic would do that. Well, the psychic would do that because it is his job and, perhaps more alluring, fame & money. The psychic was already on TV, and Louie sent him some of his celebrity friends afterward. Indeed, if you want to see the lengths that psychics are prepared to go to in order to fool people, read a book called "The Psychic Mafia."

The psychic didn't know his mother's name but kept mentioning auras, to which Louie draws a similarity to his mother's name, Ora—but then again, the psychic probably mentioned other words that he could have connected to his mother's name if she was named differently. It is interesting that the psychic didn't know his mother's name, although she was supposedly in the room with them, so maybe he pretended not to know her name in order to lead him to think that he didn't go to the public records.

The psychic also told him that he'll win the award in May, but he won several Emmys in his career, so it's not such a hard guess.

Perhaps the most interesting guess is that his sister has problems with her liver. But Louie doesn't mention if he already knew about that because if he did, his friend could have told the psychic about that. Also, maybe the psychic didn't say "liver," but e.g., "gut area" or "organ troubles" or something similar, to which Louie thought he said "liver."