I wanted to take a look into some of the more convincing claims of the paranormal, and I though a good place to start would be with self-proclaimed psychic mediums. I’m sure we’ve all seen or heard of the likes of Sylvia Brown, James Van Praagh, and John Edward, people who have made a name for themselves by claiming that they can talk to the dead. Of course I view these claims with a healthy dose of skepticism, but I’ll freely admit that watching them perform can be fairly impressive. So what makes these “psychics” so good? They’re right way too often for it to be purely guessing. Well, let’s take a look at their art. First we’ll look at the various types of readings, and then we’ll get into some of the other techniques that add to the performance.
Hot Reading
Hot reading is when the “psychic” goes into the reading already having done research about the client, or is being fed information on the fly. A good example of this is Peter Popoff, a “Faith Healer” who claimed that God was talking to him and telling him who in the audience needed healing. James Randi, a famed magician and debunker of paranormal claims, decided to check out his work. Of course Randi didn’t come unprepared, and wasn’t the least bit surprised when the FM receiver he brought with him started picking up a feed from Popoff’s wife. She was feeding him names, addresses, and afflictions that had been filled out on “prayer cards” by the attendees, right into an earpiece that Popoff was wearing.
Warm Reading
Warm readings are a bit trickier than hot readings, but not by much. In a warm reading the reader will make some very general statements about the person being read, usually utilizing general facts of psychology and culture. For example, it is very common for a widow to wear jewelry given to her by her deceased husband, so the reader will say something like “Your husband is telling me you’re wearing something he gave you.”
Another way to make a high probability guess about someone’s appearance just requires a little bit of knowledge of genetics. When the medium is talking about someone’s parents, children, or siblings, they can often make fairly accurate guesses as to the relative’s hair color, eye color, etc., based on the attributes of the person receiving the reading, if the reader knows how such traits can be inherited.
Cold Reading
Cold readings often start out as warm readings, but the reader takes it to the next level. They will often start with general things, like letters or general names (”I’m hearing a J. Is there anyone involved with a J in their name?”). From there they look for clues from the person’s reaction to see how to proceed. If they nod when the reader mentions the letter J then the reader may suggest names like “John” or “Joe”. If the person does not give a positive reaction then the reader moves on to another general claim.
Many people refer to this technique as “fishing”, since the reader is basically throwing out all kinds of stuff until he or she finds something to latch on to. Here’s a good explanation of it from the Australian Skeptics:
One way of fishing is to phrase each statement as question, then wait for the reply. If the reply or reaction is positive, then you turn the statement into a positive assertion. Often the subject will respond by answering the implied question and then some. Later, the subject will forget that he/she was the source of the information! By making your statements into questions, you also force the subject to search his/her memory to retrieve specific instances to fit your general statement.
Once some of the general facts are found then the reader can start honing in on the specifics by continuing to try for high probability hits. For example, if a person responds positively to the letter L then the reader would never guess “Liam”, they would probably start with “Larry” or “Laura”. Often when the reader says a name that is important to the person they will respond with “Yes, Larry, he was my uncle”, and it’s all too common to hear the reader say “Yes, he is saying he was your uncle”. This isn’t even reading, it’s simply repeating back what the person already said in a way that makes it sound like the medium is actually talking to Larry.
Unfortunately a lot of people who get sucked into this do so because they want to believe. Because of this the reader can make hundreds of false guesses in a reading session, but the person will only remember the ten actual hits that were made. Generally these misses aren’t shown on the TV shows, but when people manage to get some of the raw non-aired footage from show filming it’s astounding how many false claims they have to go through before they get one right.
Derren Brown shows exactly how susceptible we are to to this type of reading (as a side note, look at other videos of Derren Brown, he’s absolutely amazing and never claims to be using “magic” or “spirits”). The video linked there is about 10 minutes long, but it’s well worth the time. He provides readings for a bunch of people, many of whom say the readings are over 90% accurate, and then fills them in on how it was all a trick.
I’ll be the first to admit that some of these people are really good at what they do. They have the whole act down, and know what subtle hints to look for in eyes, voice, and body language, which makes this a great bar trick. The problem I have is when it is used to exploit someone’s grief or to con them out of huge amounts of money (Sylvia Brown makes up to $700 for a 30 minute phone session). Unfortunately there are no regulations on these things in the USA. A “psychic medium” can get thousands of dollars from someone and provide them nothing in return, and there’s nothing the law can do about it. So what can we do about it? Educate!
The aforementioned James Randi has set up the James Randi Educational Foundation which has held a long standing offer to pay out $1,000,000 to anyone who can provide proof of any paranormal ability. The members of the JREF even go out of their way to travel to the person with the claim, create a test that they BOTH agree on, and then do the test.
Randi doesn’t have a science background, but he spent quite a while as “The Amazing Randi”, a magician, which gave him some invaluable insight as to how these seemingly magical feats are accomplished. At first there were people lining up to take the challenge, but as the con artists realized that James Randi was not easily fooled, the line of challengers quickly became just the true believers, with the likes of Sylvia Brown and John Edward nowhere to be found. Since the challenge has been put forth the JREF has tested tons of people, from psychics to dowsers, astrologers to faith healers, and not one of them has even passed the preliminary testing.
Who could ask for more proof than that?
Abbr. Enth.
