Derek Acorah - Fake Psychic.

"Psychic" Cold Reading - Testing Psychic Reading - Psychic FAILURE!

Psychic FAILURE!
  

Psychic Sally Morgan over exposed?

In my last 5 years of criticism of psychics I have come up against many quacks, and one of my favourites is a woman who cut down on the extra pounds with surgery, but how she funded such costly operations was by just chatting to the dead.  How easy it must be, surely ask were they hid their jewels and you need never work again, or if your psychic who not get the lotto numbers on a big roll-over draw, but obvious psychics do not work in this way.  Sally claims to have the loved ones of the living come through from the afterlife to give loving messages of hope to the audiences of large theatres, and out of a room of 1 to 4 thousand people Sally may give ten people messages, what a skill she has!  And considering her shows are mostly her stretching out her work is it any wonder that she gets some serious critics within the psychic industry and the religion of Spiritualism.  Many Spiritualists find Sally in person is not anywhere near as gifted as they see on TV, if they were to accept the TV series,"Sally Morgan on the road", as evidence for an afterlife, then seeing her in person on stage may well rush them towards agnosticism.  A number of close friends of mine and two family members have given good ol' Sal a go, they thought she was very poor, the people seeing her were believers, and still are, and yet the experience shook their faith in some kind of mediumship ability, maybe the skills of Sal are not as advertised.  

Maybe it is worth pointing out the fact that Sal has lied on a number of occasions, such as a claim of working with Sir. Bob Geldof, which she had to withdraw from a statement due to Bob's people not taking kindly to this mistaken claim.  There are other such statements and errors made, maybe one of the worst things is the abuse of the idea of princess Diana, after all Sally raised he formerly-chunky form up the Z-list Celebrity ranking by whoring out the idea that she did readings for the Late, Great Lady Diana.  The leap in ol' Sally's career was majority due to a controversial book written about Di coming back from the afterlife to communicate with Psi-Sally, naturally No series revelations were expressed, just the obvious marketing scheme to ensure exposure.  She had a following before, yet after this and other things to launch her Psychic Career, she now has a wide following, millions made in TV deals, travels across the world, meets some quite famous people, and makes good sales on books detailing her experiences, and as a result of this business, which includes regular theatre events, she makes large sums of money.  Even after the blood sucking tax men have their share.

Interesting side note, Sally charges many times more than the normal rate for her readings, yet calls it a gift, I'm not sure if it's irony or hypocrisy, or a more complex breed of bullshit. More recent information from her website confirms she no longer does 1-2-1 readings, well unless your a rich TV star who needs a reading for hundreds of pounds, Sal now advises you got to her website psychics, she has a number of psychics on the pay roll who will supply readings for 1.50p/m, and Sally get a nice cut.  So unless your willing to get a reading in a stage event, which is doubtful, or personally contacts sally or a celebrity who can get you a 1-2-1.  Then you stuck with a bunch of moon lighting dinner-ladies who will serve you up a load of cheap nonsense after serving up another lot of cheapness to your children in a school hall.  I'm kidding, I'm sure they all have a Stanford PhD in spoon bending or something to suggest they aren't just cold readers, except they usually don't have any real qualifications and very few skills.  Speaking of which Sal has been said to have the paranormal by the Stanford institute, the same place which said Uri Gellar was real in the 1970s, and yes they are not part of that famous place of learning by the same name.  

The crazy thing with ol' sally is how she claims she never used an ear piece, doing a Peter Popoff, many say being fed information by someone who researches a few audience members to make a few impressive hits to not look to poor at what she does.  Truth is when you buy a trick they have your name and location, typically your address, they can research you, there are specialist programs to grab private data on you, track your activities, and even though costly services these tools can be used and covered by costs.  Sally claimed she did not use an ear piece, clearly in the images capture from the Bio channel she does wear one, a microphone with ear hook on one side, an earpiece with the other ear, but even if there was no earpiece news at all she could do almost as well by just throwing out cold readings.  When you have knowledge prior to the reading it's called Hot Reading, you can avoid the cold reading guesses and just give the researched data in a theatrical way.  Sally seems to do this too well for her own good?  One report from people over in the Republic of Ireland was of a theatre in Dublin, the audience were enjoying the show, but in the second half a window to the rear of the theatre room was left open, a number of people head in another voice the words sally was saying but a moment before her, as if she was being told what to say.  If you dismiss such claims you dismiss the people of Dublin who are real world witnesses to the trickery.  This event and story ballooned into a news media fest, and tabloid trash rags like the daily mail as usual went too far with their edits to make a good selling story, so Sal took the Mail to court, and won a big pay out over £100,000, and other pay outs were settled out of court, total sum may have been much higher.  The problem was not the idea that it could be tricks, it was a technicality on the use of language in a few article headings, including a Mail headline saying "SCAM", this was a bad move maybe pushed by editors who wanted a bigger sell story, and it back fired.  Yet, let us not be told she "never"used an ear piece, nor should we hear that Sally must be real if she beat a tabloid paper in court, and please lets not fall victim to the idea that sceptics are just closed-minded. 

The simple truth is there are believers who buy into mediumship and other relating ideas, they are credulous, not idiots, and the fraudsters take advantage, and get rich, they use obvious tricks and can't work in controlled conditions, they call critics closed-minded and say acceptance is open-minded, they say belief and experience is evidence and call science closed-minded for being critical, and to many people what was the religious impulse has a new age. 

Psychic/Mediumistic Proof ?!?!?!

What is any psychic/mediumistic worth, the faithful seem very poor in their skill, the tricksters can out do them, the rare cases of the objectively amazing seem so rare that it is less than chance, which says a whole lot.
I would guess that the read of this may have seen a psychic, or some other reader, who taps into a higher source or power, so it must be up to you on that personal level, how you have come to feel about your experiences, yet the subjective world can miss the reality as they focus on one region of it.

Many years past since I was a trainee medium, having gone to many workshops, having spent hundreds of hours meditating over the course of years, my faith was mighty, let if i was to not focus on the parts that i could take from others, or that others could take from me, in readings/communication, I found it was as holy as I had believed.  I had seen over the years many mediums work from stages and many more in spiritualist churches, as well as visiting psychics and new age teachers, and the best ones were showmen(or show-women), they had not power to impress but spoke well and with a skill, they offered no clear information, yet out of the general ideas expressed they made it fit with a charismatic abilities.

I have often lacked such skills, and my depressive feeling were made worse during my various periods of religious faith throughout my life, I found I could give good bits from time to time, but it was usually very general, this kept me in my belief, even though over time this seen through.  I could imagine much, and when influenced these imagined ideas seems so real, crystals, chakras, healing, spiritual guides and ETs, and hauntings, how odd it all seems to me now looking back, faith in god and all maybes, gifts from above which were just illusions of truth.

The "evidence" I could offer was stuff like saying 'Thomas' 'Cook' to an old lady who know a Thomas who was a chef/cook, or in another case saying I get 'b', and 'it feels like aunt, to which the sitter said (during in a meditation class) that her aunt was called Be, short for Beatrice, but everyone called her Auntie B.  Now, I dare not say this is proof, not that I often gave this out, nor that most mediums do, but it sounds clever, if very limited.  In actual fact, now that I ponder such things, I notice it is how I told to give things, a name and connection technique that I was once told how to do in a spiritualist church just outside of Birmingham, to get a name of the "spirit", and then how they link to the sitter(the person being read/having message from spirits).  It is in fact a good trick, you learn from other faith spiritualists that a spirit will come close, your to try to sense who it is, ask for a name, and how they link in to that persons life, so most people give common names and common links, statistically it's easy to get hits.

The tricks of the trade are told to the believers as tools for truth, not as contricks, and yet they are just that, I was told how to imagine a person in mind in very, very general terms, believe it was real, and accept it was real, and pass on this imagined information to another person as from the otherside.  I over simplify, in essence what I am saying is that the tricks to see or sense ghosts are, well, tricks, and not objective experiences of truth, after getting over some bad times in my life I began to wake up to how it was false, it was a slow realisation in the final few years of my time in spiritualism, until I realised that it was not right for me. 

When a medium tells you something you may finds it fits somewhat, in some way, or ways, but is it proof that a spirit is in the room, or in some way in touch of with the medium, or even that it's mind reading, all you have is a hand full of mildly true things, information often without full context, if any, and your expected to find the connections.  A medium or psychic will often throw out generality that fits most of us, if it was more general they would just say you were born and drink water, but to look at an old woman and say I sense mother is almost sure to hit.

The psychics and Mediums really seem to love giving out Barnum statements, the general statements that fit most of us, and you can always make it fit if you fail, a good example was a fat mediums call Sandra, she operated locally to me, he trick at the start of a show was to say a person lost to every audience member. It worked like this, she would just do a service in a spiritualist church, start with a hymn, prayer, ect.  To start he work she would just say what she thought people lost by doing each row, an old lady would get mother, a young lady grandmother, and if you disagree then she would just go back a generation, so if grandmother was not yet dead then she would say it must be great grandmother, after twenty or so people in a small church had this she would move on to doing readings for a few individuals.  Her technique was clearly not magical, just judging each person by age and doing an educated guess, so she was ether a cheap fraud making her living off cheap tricks, or alternatively deluded that this act was in anyway convincing.

I have had many such experiences with mediums, where they use contricks like they work, and as i say i was once fooled by this fraudulent level of reasoning, I, like many, got into Spiritualism, Psychics, and New Age after rejecting religion in general, yet not moving beyond the ignorance that my wishful/magical thinking flourished in.  I was a fool, and this I accept, and to be stupid at one point of your life hold no shame, just as long as you realise the error in your ways as you learn from the mistake, I learnt over the last five years that there is much more in philosophy that religion, that there is more in the cosmos than a psychic could dream up if sat at a typewriter for all eternity.

Final thought, an open mind in all things is good and well, yet to find out if a thing is factually true reasoning must be applied to work out if a thing is as believed or if reality is more than wishful delusions.