Question about Mediums

[$_DEADSEXE_$]

This chick and I had smoked some weed and were basically just kicking back on my bed watchn late night tv...well we ended up doing the flip up through every channel deal...and ended up on some cross country show with this guy John Edwards who I guess is some famous medium..I talk to dead people guy.

Well this girl is a magicians assistant and she was explaining how most of these mediums who are really just doing cold readings, picking up on people's facial expressions/reactions etc. But we were watching and this Edwards dude keeps pulling [censored] out of his ass that even this girl couldn't figure out.

Things like knowing what a guy said to his mother the last time he saw her before she died, or some old girlfriend/wife/sister...who he had done something that none of them had either told anyone etc.

And its not like he was pulling it out of them...he just blurts this [censored] out.
Like "why is your grandfather...hes telling me/giving me the image...something like he knew you never actually shot the turkey, you just bought a dead one" blah blah blah...just wierd random facts about a persons life.

So anyone know how they pull this [censored] off? cuz he seemed to be hitting at a high percentage on the wierd random [censored]...the other cold reading [censored] was kinda obvious.

any of you guys believe in this stuff or have been to one?

This was wierd show to watch stoned.

[spanshcastlemagc]

yea, i never know what to think about these kind of things, its like watching David Blaine, part of me thinks that its real ( and yes, quite [censored] up) but another part me says "it's not real idiot, it's all a hoax"
damn i really want to see david blaine and have him tell me honestly how he does all that [censored] up [censored]

[Hopey]

A few of John Edwards' tricks:

1) To be part of the audience, you need to order tickets. To order tickets, you need to send a self-addressed envelope to the show. They now have your name and your address. With this information, the show's researchers get to work investigating you, and figuring out who you knew who died recently.

2) They have people planted outside the studio eavesdropping on the audience members while they line up before the show. The people waiting in line are usually talking about the dead family member that they hope gets contacted during the show.

3) John Edwards has a receiver in his ear and information about the audience member that he is talking to (gleaned through the above methods) is fed to him during the show.

4) The show is heavily edited. You only see the "amazing" reads, you don't see the multiple mis-reads that he makes throughout a typical filming.

James Randi has written quite a few articles about these fraudsters. They're no better than con artists.

[spanshcastlemagc]

clever

[Hopey]

[ QUOTE ]
clever

[/ QUOTE ]

You don't reach the top of charlatan heap without being extra clever.

Back before he was on TV, he used to perform private readings for people. In order to get him to do a reading for you, you had to call and book an appointment. He claimed to be "so busy", that there was a long waiting period to get an appointment. However, in reality, the waiting period was used to do research on the people making the appointments.

It was quite an easy task for him to do research, as people who were contacting him for readings would invariably have recently suffered a tragedy of some sort. He wouldn't have to look too hard to find the information that his clients were hoping to hear.

[diebitter]

The only way I check they're mediums is by the tag in their knickers.


KA-CHING!

[$_DEADSEXE_$]

Hmm cool. But still some of the stuff he says would most likely not be found thru investigation. I guess every person might have let it slip while in the audience etc...but how he comes up with some totally random minutia..like something someone once said the last time he saw his father..or some wierd [censored] doesnt seem like it could be easily found out.

I always figured it was 90 percent con.

On a side note..I once went to this place down near san diego where my dads girlfriend would go see a psychics etc...well this crazy lady was sitting outside and started talking to me and asked if i wanted a reading...so i figured what the [censored]-she asked me for $10 bucks and my dads girlfriend was paying like $100 inside with the "pro's". She said a bunch of mumbo jumbo that sounded legit but was just thru cold reading etc...and she talked about the spirit she was contacting etc etc. But then i was done and was leaving and was about to go inside ...and she was like "i have no idea what this means..but the spirit wants me to tell you that you should just throw those leather sandals away...your never going to bother fixing it...and one sandal for your right foot isn't going to do any good." And then she looked at me shoes and said again...im not sure what that means but maybe u do. I was wearing a pair of sneakers

That totally freaked me out.

On the way to SD to see my dad i had to run back and forth between the terminals trying to non rev a flight. When I finally ended up getting on the flight I broke one of my sandals(i had these weird tiva like sandals but with leather) walking off the plane. The broken sandal was on my left foot. And I liked these things so I kept thinkin to myself...don't throw em away..you can get em fixed or sumthin(which anyone who knew me, would say no "yeah right").
So I was about to junk them but then at the last minute decided to keep them thinking ide have em repaired back in AZ. So I threw them in my luggage and put on the nike sneakers.

Well how the [censored] did that crazy lady come up with that [censored] when i was wearing sneakers???...and she knew the right foot.

To this day that [censored] still freaks me out when I think about it lol.

Anybody here ever see the South Park episode with John Edwards?
I'm not a douche! lol

[chrisnice]

Call. In todays loose games you will allways have the implied odds when you hit your set.

[madnak]

Weird [censored] happens. But it doesn't happen consistently or on TV.

[Copernicus]

google cold reading and record a few shows. A lot of things JE says that appear to be remarkable hits are just good guesses from other clues, and after you go over the conversation with an audience memeber a few times you'll see where they came from.

As far as the sandals go, if you were with a NY psychic in winter id be a lot more impressed. Youre in SoCal where 80% of the population has sandals (100% if you count one pair of huaraches as sandals). A large percentage of those have probably got a pair of flip flops that pulled through, or a broken strap or whatever. And if she were wrong about which foot it was you would have been thinking "Wow, she got the foot wrong, but its amazing she knew about the sandal at all", so throwing that in gives her very little downside but some extra credibility when shes right 1/2 the time. (There may even be some statistic that footwear is more prone to breakage on the same or opposite side of your dominant hand to give her a little more edge).

[bunny]

The point Copernicus makes is an excellent one. I used to perform as a magician and included a bit on cold reading - a kind of debunking theme. What was amazing was just how easy it is. When you make a wild stab and you're right, people are absolutely stunned, when you're wrong they forget. Even though I was performing as a magician and openly stating I was relying on misdirection and deception, I still had people come up to me convinced I had "the gift".

[AceofSpades]

[ QUOTE ]
well this crazy lady was sitting outside and started talking to me and asked if i wanted a reading...so i figured what the [censored]-she asked me for $10 bucks and my dads girlfriend was paying like $100 inside with the "pro's".

[/ QUOTE ]

Of course it is entirely possible that she was on the airplane/in the airport and saw you break your sandal. Maybe she had read about the art of cold reading/mediums, and was curious to get one done to see if she could spot the technige. Then when she saw you, she thought "I wonder if I could do that." She offers to "read" you, and charges a palty sum to make it seem more real, but little enough that you wouldn't turn her down. Then after trying the mumbo jumbo, tosses that sandal thing in just to see the expression on your face. Makes for a good story to tell her grandchildren.

[Alex-db]

There is an excellent TV program by a British guy, Derren Brown, called 'Messiah'. I highly recommend it if you can find it on torrent or something.

Basically, he is a magician and pyschological illusionist in the UK, he comes to America where he is unknown and sets himself the task of being accepted as a genuine practioner in a number of fields including as a medium and as an evangelist doing miracle conversions and healing.

Its all from the point of view of showing it can be done as a trick, or 'unconcious fraud' (e.g. if a person learns palm reading from a book, they can learn to cold read fairly well even while believing it themselves, as they have learnt the correct things to say, and they deliver it with conviction)

All his other tv shows are good as well. 'The Heist' was amazing, but its off topic so I'll leave you to google it yourselves.

[Bigdaddydvo]

This is absolutely the best way to order your steak.