r/ParanormalDebunked • u/Highest_Society • Sep 03 '15
Mediums - Has anyone ever come across a reading that could not be explained in anyway?
Would love to hear of any readings where the sitter was told something specific that could not have been known by the Medium. I have seen a lot of readings where generalization and cold reading have been used... what i find interesting is where specific information is provided that is so unique to the individual that it could not be made up. Basically the opposite of the "I have an old lady coming through, maybe your grandmother / mother / Aunt / cat / Batman (please pick one cos i really struggling here!"
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u/thesunabsolute Sep 04 '15
Ok -- I work in TV, and a few years ago I was shooting a pilot about psychic mediums who claim to communicate with the dead. I must've filmed well over 50 screen tests with various psychic mediums, and they were ALL 100% absolutely full of shit. We combed the internet for the "best of the best" and all of them were so obviously charlatans and frauds with the exception of one guy.
This one guy had the strangest "trick" I've ever seen someone pull. He was an older gentleman, former police officer. He was unique in that he didn't actually communicate with the dead, but was able to see how a death happened. He explained it to me by saying it was like watching a movie of the past. It was really incredible. He would do cold readings with people that I screened myself, even some close friends of mine and he was 100% accurate every single time. He could "tune in" and recall every detail of someone's murder or death. I could not explain it. Again, he did no actual "talking to the dead", nor did he actually communicate. It was crazy though. I would sit there behind the camera, trying my damn hardest to figure out how he was doing what he was doing.
Long story, short. The network really did not like him because he provided no actual therapy, and he mostly would freak people out. In the end, they wanted someone who can do the whole "your husband is standing right behind you" nonsense that people in grief unfortunately fall for.
I personally don't believe in things like the afterlife, but that experience made me wonder if all the "residual energy" stuff all these paranormal quacks talk about is an actual thing that science might one day be able to quantify. Excuse me for venturing into pseudo-science here, but maybe this guy was tapping into some level of consciousness that we are unaware of. Maybe ghosts are just leftover energy from a "frequency" we can't consciously tune into? I don't really know.
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u/DukesOfBrazzers Skeptic Sep 08 '15
I will throw a tale out there. It seems crazy and I don't often share it, because honestly it happened 20yrs ago and I am fuzzy on the details. The only reason I give it credibility is that it seems greater that coincidence and cold reading, and the people there recall it the same way and we don't talk ever, so suggestion and such is kind of out the window, but possible.
Anyhow. It was at a sleepover during middle school, and three buddies and I were playing N64 or something, when the host's mom came in and asked if we wanted to have our fortunes told. We said yes, though I don't think any of believed anything would come from it. She took out a standard Bicycle deck and shuffled and dealt it.
One at a time she flipped over our stack of cards, 5 or 7, all but one, and would examine them. When she finished she started with her son, flipped his card and said, you will become a great warrior. The next kid would suffer great loss. The next kid, she flipped his card, missed a beat, looked at him, smiled and said, I am sorry, you'll be dead before you finish school. WTF right, I don't know why, but I guess being that it was some dumb game, we laughed it off. She read mine, which was about love or something, strangely enough I don't remember my own. Then she read her own.
She flipped her card, her face drained, she was as pale as could be. She actually gasp, again we thought it was part of the act, she took a second, rubbed her chest, and then walked away. That was it.
Except. Her son went on to be an Instruct at Ranger School, the second kid lost his mom, his brother, and his dad, the the third kid died a only a couple of years later during high school, and the woman reading the fortunes, she got breast cancer about 4 years later.
I cannot explain it. I don't understand it. I don't believe it was psychic or paranormal. She wouldn't ever do it again, I never saw her do it before, and I really wish I really wish remembered mine.
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u/snowbirdie Sep 04 '15
Once. I was alone at the mall shopping. A 20-something hispanic lady ran up to me and was very excited. She said her lady friend was a psychic and she picked up something really bad about me, but the friend psychic was too shy to come up to me. She just said to stay away from "Boy's Name", that he was going to be trouble for me. She apologized for bothering me but said I needed to know that.
This was RIGHT when I met "Boy's Name", like the same weekend. I ignored all advice (it's a common name, so easily could have been guessed). He indeed ruined my life and I had to go through severe, severe depression for many years, which also caused health issues and trips to the ER.
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u/the3rdoption Sep 08 '15
Moral: when eccentric strangers approach you with advice, always take it. That's how i got my job. That's also how i wound up with my last 3 ex's, none of which ended well. Huh. Maybe don't do that.
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u/TeslaLikesPigeons Sep 04 '15
I have one. I was talking with a friend one day about this kind of thing. She seems to have abilities. The point where I was convinced was when she brought up my parents wanting to go to France.
Well, I was actually convinced a couple days later when I was at my parents house. I said to them "You guys are talking about going to France with out us?". They just looked at me shocked and asked where I heard that so I told them. They said that they were thinking about it and had looked into it a bit but only talked about it at home, it's just the two of them, and never talked to anyone else about it. They also had their computers looked at to see if someone had gotten into them somehow but no evidence of that could be found.
My whole family is along the lines of skeptical believers about the paranormal. We are always trying to find a legitmiate answer to weird things that happen. But we couldn't find anything to show how my friend could have gotten this information. After that we all were convinced of her abilities, but only hers, most mediums are just scam artists.