Psychics. Real or Fake?
 

Psychics. Real or Fake?
What do you believe?



To get this discussion started, I just want to say that I did not make this discussion for the phony psychics that sit at fairs and con you out of money, I'm talking about the 'real deals'

I believe that everybody can be psychic. The only problem is, is that we are so busy with everyday life. Stress, family, kids, school. We just simply don't have time to focus on our unique abilities. We, as busy as we are, don't have time to light scented candles and meditate every day. There are people though, that can tap into their abilities without any of the inscents or meditation techniques. They are just born with this gift.

Whether it is something more extreme as telepathy or as simple as dejavu, psychic is psychic, and we all are (:

As an example of a well known psychic: If any of you have seen the Montel Williams show, Sylvia Browne has always been a regular guest. I have watched her for a few years and I have done some research on her. Each time I have tuned into watch her in action, I have always been amazed by the readings she gives people. She admits that she can be 'off' at some points and may not get everything correct about a person, but I am able to accept and expect that of her though because she is, after all, only human. Human with a very special gift.

I'm sure there are other well known psychics out there. If you know of any, let me know (: Sylvia is the only famous psychic I know of, which is why I posted her as an example. This thread is not to debate about if Sylvia Brown is right or wrong. This is a thread to discuss if you believe in the psychic ability or if you have had any psychic experiences.

Here is Syliva Browne on the Montel Williams show:
Here she predicts Obama, The Swine Flu, she makes predictions about celebs., etc.

YouTube - Sylvia Browne's 2008 predictions



I guess it all comes down to what you believe in.

I think that some people just claim to be psychic. I believe that people can have a "supernatural" gift that allows them to read into the future, tell what someone is like, and all that. For me, I somewhat possess this gift. Sometimes in my dreams, I'll dream of something that is just totally odd, or that seems normal. And then down the road, whatever happened in my dream will happen. It freaks the hell outta me. I'll only remember that dream when that particular thing is happening right then. Though I cannot control my dreams, nor can I say which are just dreams, and which other ones aren't. People can't prove whether I'm lying or not (though I'm not), so I don't usually bring things like this up.

I believe that eveyone is psychic. There are people in this world though who are more open minded and are capeable of posessing such a unique ability.

I was going to state that I think people are psychic in some way as well. Whether they know it or not. But that's how I think that I am XD. But like I said, it's just minor things that happen (down to the last detail from my dream). Like a conversation will happen, or I'll be standing somewhere and everything in that was in my dream, is there, lol

Ahh (: I have been able to tap into my abilities aswell. Not very often, but I have been able to a couple times. Once or twice ^.^ All my experiences have happened in a dream to reality state, just like you.

I'm guessing that dreaming and using your special gift will probably be the most common one. But it doesn't happen that often to me either. Most of the time I forget my dreams when I wake up.

I know what you mean ): It's so very frustrating when I just end up getting that dejavu feeling instead of being able to say "This will happen next!" Although, I was able to do that once.

Lol, dejavu happens to me quite frequently. But I've never stated what will happen next. Seeing as there was no way I could of really been right -3-

*Sings* Put a banana in your ear!

Listening to Charlie the Unicorn (:
The only reason I stated this is because I just had the dejavu feeling now.
Weird o.o

Hmm...well, I'm not sure what I believe in with this. I have to say I have had gut feelings and very strong intuitions that seemed to have had led to something or another. My mom also has these...but she has much stronger ones, such as sometimes just knowing whats going to happen. Its very strange and scary at times...but I didnt really believe it for a very long time.

That could be your psychic abilities coming out (: gut feelings are usually a form of being psychic, I believe. I get pretty strong guy feelings to. Like if I get a bad feeling about going to a certain place. For example: when I was little, my friend Brooke, my sister and myself were all going to hang out under this bridge (it was where all the 'cool' people hung out, lol) and on the way I got this bad feeling telling me to turn around. So, I did. The next day, a couple of boys that we would hang out with every so often found alligator skin up on the rocks. If we had gone that day, we could have encountered an alligator.

Well, what I mean by feelings is the horrid feeling of dread or excitement. You know, like butterflies when you're about to do something scary or fun? Although the difference between good and bad is very very different. only about a year ago I was on the bus on the way to school and this god awful feeling in my stomach appeared out of nowhere. It was like butterfly's swarming madly, making me nauseated and everything. When I got to my first period class my teacher explained to the class what happened. Someone had a heart attack during an Easter egg hunt at the school...and I swear just like that, the feeling was gone. So freaking weird.

Shoot...and long story, lol I have to add this for credit for my mom, I just thought this was so cool..scary but cool. When I was about 7 years old. We were leaving to get some food. I always sat on the right side of the car in the back. And that evening my mom and I had gotten in this huge fight over it. She wanted me to sit on the left side for some reason.. So after a while I gave in. that night going up the drive way to burger king a huge truck went right over our car. It missed me but hit the right side of the car. If she had forced me to sit to the left I wouldnt be alive. Back then she had the same gut feeling that we have been talking about. And to this very day I trust her with every intuition/feeling she says.

Thats pretty neat, I totally believe in this stuff. Gut feelings are definetly real. I have them sometimes. Not a lot, but when they come they either mean really good or really bad.

Thats very much the same for me.

Your mother could be very Psychic (: Congrats. It's a gift. Anyone can be psychic as long as they really focus on it.

I think psychic ability is possible through dreams. My aunt has psychic dreams on a regular basis -- not usually premonitions, but dreams that she shares with someone image-for-image, or dreams where she gets a glimpse into the life of someone she's been out of touch with for a long time. I can think of no reason that this would be impossible -- our brains are extremely strange, complex machines that even the best scientists aren't close to fully understanding, and dreams are the most mysterious of all the brain's functions. There have been a lot of things that skeptics have called impossible but which turned out to be accurate -- Darwin's theory of evolution, the idea that light acts as both a particle and a wave, relativity, and quantum physics, to name a few.

This thread is less of a debate, and more of a discussion, so I'll be moving this on over to General Discussion. Thanks! :D

Okie Dokie smokie (:

Jesus, you can't even check the snopes article first?

Etc. You can read the whole article, linked above, for a thorough debunking of this heavily perpetuated myth.

You mention vague predictions like these, yet don't mention how she has, every year, released an "End of the World" date for the next year, and when it doesn't happen, actually tries to take legal action to keep people from mocking her. Bias much? And yeah, I've seen her on Montel. Saw her claim that a moth caught on camera (you could see the antennae, wings, legs, everything) was really a ghost haunting this woman's home, and that one lady's dog was the reincarnation of her grandfather. One incident which really exemplifies her usual tactics was when she convinced a woman whose husband had died in a car accident that it was really a homicide, there was a police cover-up, and he could never rest peacefully until she found his killer. She's a cold reader and a scam artist who uses people's sadness to make money. She's the very lowest sort of person.

And I would venture to say the vast majority of "psychics" are exactly like her, though hopefully less asshole-ish. Look at Nostradamus and his predictions -- they were, for the most part, extremely vague. When they weren't, they were either so far-out that people assumed it was metaphor and then interpreted it as they wanted to, or were things that were more than likely going to happen eventually and he simply took advantage of it. And cold readers, like Brown and Edwards, are just talented sociologists and psychologists. Heck, I've even cold-read before -- I used to give "tarot card readings" and would even tell the people beforehand that I was full of crap, that tarot cards cannot tell the future, and not to believe anything I said. But the thing is, they wanted to believe. That's the way cold-reading works: you guess things based on what you know of a person, and what you know of people in general, and say what they want to hear, giving them plenty of room to fill in the gaps. When people admit that it's all BS, it's a nice party trick, and can really be quite fun, sort of like Ouija boards. But when they pretend it's something paranormal, they are using people to make a name and a buck for themselves and should be seen as the scum they are.

Sylvia is just one Psychic I know very well to get alot of things she says correct. Just because she might get something wrong (like a moth haunting a women's house) doesn't mean she doesn't hold these kind of special abilities. For her predicting the end of the world, I have never read nor seen a video where she ever made that kind of prediction. I would appreciate it if you could provide some kind of article or a video.

Every human being, every object, EVERYTHING holds some sort of energy. When it comes to tarot card reading, yes... you do have to believe and really put your energy into the reading. For example (I speak from personal experience): I had a tarot card reading by my grandmother, who does it for a living (she is VERY succesful and not in the least a scam artist. She is also a motivational speaker). I was going through a very rough time in my life. I was with a boy that treated me bad and even though I hid it, I was unhappy. So she did a reading on me, and the cards pointed to me going through heart break (later that week my boyfriend cheated on me), but I would get through it with the help of another (my best friend who is now my boyfriend of 2 years). The cards MIGHT be just a party trick, but I believe that if you put your energy into anything, you can make it happen. Therefore, the cards had told my future and they were correct.

Sylvia Browne has ADMITED to her audience that she does not get everything 100% correct all the time. People who expect her to get everything right about anything is mistaken. NO psychic, no matter how gifted, can predict everything perfectly. Not only is Sylvia a psychic, she is a motivational speaker, just like my grandmother. She teaches people how to think positively and use their energy to make their lives better and easier. Have you ever seen the movie "The Secret"? It explains the energy and the power of the human mind.

Hmm, I cannot seem to find it. Shame, it had a nice countdown clock and everything. However, she is now saying that it will end 95 years from...I think 2008? So the world ends in 2103. Convenient, that she picked a date so far into the future that neither she nor any of us will be around to prove her wrong and by then, no one will remember her name, yet close enough that it causes fear.

Also, here three other quite lovely ones that I accidentally found (the first is much more recent):
Sylvia Browne
How Well Did Sylvia Browne Do With Her 2006 Predictions? | The Smug Baldy Speaks
A review of Sylvia Browne's 2009 psychic predictions

Her Wikipedia page is quite a read as well. She's been indicted for fraud a fair few times, and from what I got from my glancing-over of the article, once told a woman (over the phone, for a fee of $700), that she would live a long and happy life, the woman dying of cancer four years later.

Tell me, why do you believe in tarot? Because your grandmother says it should work? Because the nice people at the local bookstore tell you it will, while shoving custom, themed, and overpriced decks in your face (you know, for just the right occasion)? The tarot was created by scholars as a device to get around language barriers when trying to convey certain concepts, nothing more. There is absolutely no reason why it should even be associated with telling the future. The original creators of it should know its potential far better than we should. Also, you were a teenage girl. More than likely, you'd be having some sort of love trouble, and if you have friends, they'd probably offer to help. Your grandmother, sweetheart though I'm sure she is, was doing a cold-reading, plain and simple. I probably would have told you the same thing, and I don't even know you.

And why is that? Why does whatever causes them to see the future screw up so often? Why is it not 100%, or even 50%? You'd almost think they were guessing.

No, I wouldn't waste my time. Pretending that she is a great person (you forget how much money she's made off her various books and appearances), she's stating the obvious when she suggests that if we think positively, we can improve our lives. She doesn't have to be right, since this is one of those things where if it doesn't work for you, they can blame it on you not trying hard enough or not doing it right. And even if she is right, she's only repeating what a thousand people before her have said and adding the energy bit so it sounds supernatural, rather than just motivational.

I have heard that she said it will end in 95 years. She says we are the bravest souls aswell. Why say that it might NOT end in 95 years? Even so, like you said, we will not be alive so we don't have anything to worry about. Who is to say she is wrong though? It could happen.

I have found Wikepedia to be a website that lies very often. I'm not saying it lies all the time, because what your saying could be true, but I have had many lies told to me by Wikepedia, and (off topic) many failed book reports because of the information Wikipedia provided me with x.x


I don't believe that the cards hold any special powers. I believe that the person (or customer) hold said "special powers". What I'm trying to get at his, we are all psychic. Some people more then others. That is where the tarot cards come in. They provide images that are seen by the reader, while it is the readers energy and belief that there future is what is being told to them. Again, not 100% right, but there are people that claim to have had their futures told to them through the tarot readings. Like myself (: Another thing to remember is a tarot card dealer (when doing it correctly) does not touch the cards themselves. They tell the customer to handle the cards, that way the customer may transfer their energy of what they want to be answered into the cards. The teller (dealer) only explains to the person what the cards mean. Sometimes there are even charts invovled, which is what my Grandmother did for me. Just so happens that the reading I recieved was dead on. My grandmother didn't tell me anything. I read the chart and the cards. She just provided me with advice. Oh, and I am STILL a teenager. 16, to be exact. I was 15 at the time.


Simple. They are human. They are no special then anyone else. Everyone can posses this ability. Some people just have to experience being psychic to actually understand, though.


Tell me, have you read any of her books? I have skimmed a few, and each one is a motivational read. You should try thinking positively. Really focus. It has worked for a great deal of people. Infact, one women had cured herself from cancer just by believing she didn't have it, though she did with help from The Secret:

YouTube - How Did She Cure Herself Of Cancer With the Secret?


This proves how powerful the human mind is. If we are able to do this, we must be capeable of so much more.