I’m sure everyone has seen the signs for “$5 Psychic Readings” in their town or while traveling elsewhere. What I wanted to discuss here were your thoughts on using psychics for more than just personal entertainment, more specifically in police and detective work.

There’s been documented cases in the past where police haven’t been able to solve a crime, at which point they turn to a psychic for help. What I find the most interesting is when the psychics they hire actually solve the case.

What are your thoughts on this? What about using psychics to help solve some of the current investigations (such as the Peterson or Hacking trials?)

I’m not an expert myself on the topic, but I’ve been learning a bit more from a new show on Court TV called Psychic Detectives. It’s on Wednesday’s at 9:30pm in case you want to watch it too.

~ Marysol

Hello Marysol, and welcome.

Sorry, but I disagree.

See these links for the other side of the story:

http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/police-psychics.html

http://www.valleyskeptic.com/psybunk.htm

For the most part, police psychics do more harm than good, wasting police resources, causing innocent people to be arrested, and giving false hopes to people who have already been traumatized by a crime.

On the other hand, I do agree with Maljonic that some people who call themselves psychics can help others just by using their intuitive skills. As long as they don't take money from others or cause others to stop seeing things rationally.

I agree with Marcia. It's a very lucrative opportunity for a scam. The $5 Psychics target the the poor, uneducated and superstitious, giving them false hopes of a positive future provided they keep coming back with more money to pay for more advice on how to make decisions on every aspect of their life. I worked with a woman from Haiti years ago who was so dependant on one of these charlatans that s she was afraid to stop going.

I don't mind the $5 or $10 psychics. I think they are fun and often have strong intuitive skills. It's cheap entertainment. And I have the common sense not to do anything foolish just because a psychic told me.

What I object to is people who call themselves psychic and take advantage of people in weak emotional states. For example, the psychics who supposedly help the police. Someone's child goes missing. The police honestly tells the parent that it will take a very long time for the child to be found or the child will never be found. The parent, distraught and in a state of denial, which would be natural in that situation, refuses to believe the police, so a psychic is brought in promising miracles. This just makes it harder for the parent to face reality and achieve closure.

Then there are those TV psychics who claim to contact the dead. They are so obviously phony it's sad, but the people who've lost their loved ones are in such a state of grief and have such a strong longing to see their loved ones again that they just can't think rationally and see the bullshit for what it is.

Then again, there are probably psychics who sincerely want to use their gifts to help others, and don't take advantage of people or just try to take their money.

I think it depends on the "psychic". As in any profession, there are people who behave ethically, and people who don't.

P.S. Those people on the psychic phone lines are definitely not psychic. They will hire anyone with a good speaking voice and the ability to keep people on the phone for a long time so they wind up paying more money. New York City has a welfare-to-work program, and for a while they were going to employ some welfare recipients as telephone psychics, but that idea didn't work out.

I've been having documentable psychic experiences, remote viewing, remote listening, for about 50 years (am nearly 65 now).

The phenomenon always occurs spontaneously; I have never been able to make it happen. Over the years my friends have often asked me to help them find things and so forth. From time to time I have actually found their lost items, but NEVER by trying to do so. sometimes a while later the "vision" comes to me and I report it to my friend. They ask: "How did you do that>? I reply, "I don't have a clue."

It is strange. It is also strange that when the knowledge comes, usually in the form of greyscale images in the left rear back of the inside of my head, they have always been verified as accurate. When the phenomena occurs I now remember to pay close attention to the brief "show" lest I miss anything.

Prior to the advent of caller ID I had a phenomenal batting average of knowing exactly who was ringing the phone before I answered. Again, I never had the skill of controlling the phenomena.

Regarding Psychic detectives: My guesss is that some of these individuals have trained themselves or been trained by others to gain some control over this phenomenon and others are just hustling an extra buck or seeking to "Be Psychic" as a business. I suppose that I could learn to control this stuff, but I'm really not motivated to do so.

If these fortune tellers were really very psychic you should not need to make an appoitment, they would know you were coming

Welcome Hugh

Most people who say they have psychic abilities say that they can't control them or predict in advance when their "psychic powers" will work. Which makes it hard to tell if the correct answers they get are due to true psychic ability or random chance. If you flip a coin, there's a 50% chance that you will correctly guess whether it will be heads or tails. That doesn't make you psychic.

There is also often an element of intuitive ability involved, which might be more strongly developed in some people than others, but I wouldn't call it a supernatural ability. For example, when you predict that someone will call, there may be something going on in that person's life that would make it likely for them to call you. You may not put everything together on a conscious level, but your subconscious makes the connections, and because it's not done on a conscious, verbal level, it seems magical.

There's also the problem of "selective" memory. People will remember all the predictions they make that come true, but they won't remember all the times they predicted things that never came true. (There are always going to be some predictions that come true, just because of random chance.) Have you kept a written log of every phone call you ever received, who you thought was calling, and who it actually was?
If you haven't done this, and you try it, you might be very suprised by the results. I would also suggest figuring out what the mathematical probability of making a correct prediction is (or having someone who likes math do it for you.) Sometimes it's hard to have an intuitive sense of probability, and what seems to be highly improbable really isn't.

Some skeptical organizations keep records of all the predictions for the upcoming year made by psychics that are published in the tabloids each January -- usually involving celebrity gossip-- and the following January, when everyone else has forgotten about it, they study how many of those predictions actually came true that year. The "psychic's" accuracy rate is never better than that which could be achieved by random chance.

I'm not saying that psychic ability does not exist, and I don't know if you have these abilities, because I don't know you and I can never go inside your mind to see how it works. I'm just saying that one should look at all the other explanations for apparent pyschic phenomena before declaring that someone is psychic.

Hi Marcia,

Thank you for the welcome.

Many of your comments are sensible and scientifically based. I studied scientific method in grad school while earning a Masters in Psychology. I am aquainted and practiced in the application of statistical testing, probability theory, "t-tests", Variance Analysis and the like.

My note did not say that I see the future, just the present and sometimes the recent past of others. Here are a few recent examples:
On a particular day I was working at my computer and received a phone call from my friend Allen. Allen & his wife, Gaja, were visiting at my home the previous day.

Allen asked I would help him find his checkbook. I asked if he was sure that he left it at my house. He said, no, he misplaced it in his own house and wanted me to look for it psychically. I replied that I cannot do that deliberately, but if something just comes to me I will let you know. I thougt that was the end of it.

Within just a few minutes, 5 or 10, there was a faint, dark and unsharp little "movie" playing in the left quadrant in the back of my head. I saw Allen enter his bathroom and put his checkbook down on the sink vanity. He then wend to get his pants out of the way to sit on the toilet. As he was preparing to sit his right elbow knocked the checkbook off of the vanity and onto the floor between the commode and the sink vanity.

I called Allen on the phone. I told him to look on the floor in the bathroom between the toilet and the sink. He said I already did, but Gaja overheard Allen and asked if he looked in the UPSTAIRS bathroom. He said that he did not and went upstairs to take a look. I'm sure you know what he saw when he checked the floor of the bathroom upstairs. It was exactly where I said it was.

Regarding my pre-caller ID experiences. Here are a few examples that just don't fit the statistical probabilities:

-- I hadn't heard from my friend Marilyn for over a year and a half. I hadn't heard anything about her, good or bad, for that time period. The phone rang and I picked it up and answered "Hi Marilyn"....She couldn't stop laughing.

... My brother and I were never on good terms. I knew of no reason that he might want to call me. The phone rang, I answered "Hi Gary." That angered him and he said he didn't want to know how I knew it was him.

... I had some friends at my house. The phone rang. I knew it was a call for my house guest, Shanti. I didn't pick up the phone myself. I called to Shanti and asked him to pick up the phone because the call was for him. It was.

... The same evening I was on the phone with my friend Steve. While we were talking I suddenly KNEW that Marge was trying to call me. I told Steve that I had to cut the call short because Marge was trying to call. No sooner did we hang up the phone rang and, of course, it was Marge.

No benefit will accrue to me by sharing these experiences with you or anyone else. I share them, from time to time, so that others may have a brief glimpse into an alternatie reality. I make no claims at special powers, and I do not claim to understand how the KNOWINGS that I get, from time to time, actually work. I earn a good livelihood in my Celtic Jewelry business and have no intention of becoming a professional or hustler in the psychic arena.

I have been to many places on our planet and have seen very unusual things that are generally considered impossible. There are other realities and I am not referring to psychotic episodes. Based on my experiences and obversations I believe that there are some truly extraordinary humans who are aware of multiple realities whenever they wish to be. I do not ask you or anyone else to believe what I say. My knowledge comes from direct experience, not a belief system. My direct experience has, actually, caused many of my earlier belifs to fall away to be replaed by broader, more encompassing, knowledge and beliefs.

My fingers are getting tired of the keyboard and I have much work to do before I can take off the rest of the night. Perhaps more at another time.

Best Wishes, Hugh

Hugh, I never meant to give the impression that I thought you, personally, claimed to be pyschic in order to dupe people or to get any benefit out of it. I believe that in every category of people, psychics, dentists, whatever, there are some who are honest and some who are dishonest. I would never make the generalization that just because you are psychic, or claim to be psychic, you are trying to take advantage of people. You haven't given me any reason to believe you are anything but a nice, honest person.

Dear Marcia,

I was not personally offended by your posting. It was, as I mentioned, scientifically accurate. I described my background and a tiny fraction of my experiences so that others may mentally allow for the possibilities of other co-existing realities that they may or may not get to experience directly.

Prior to visiting India nearly almost yearly between 1980 and 1990, my belief systems did not allow for the reality of some things that I came to know are really real. I came to know and interact with an incredibly wise and, apparently, all-knowing man. He answered every question BEFORE I could state them out loud. He told me, with total accuracy, about friends and family that had never been to India and just didn't believe in "such things", such "absurd nonsense." In October of 1986 he told me, off the cuff, that the US stock market would set record highs in January of '87. (I believe that my dates are accurate here, but am not totally certain; just my best recall.) I thought, at the time that he was joking. He wasn't. I did not "play the market" based on his forecast, but did notice his uncanny accuracy.

Many others have reported experiences nearly identical to my own.

My operational understanding, my interim model, of psychic phenomena goes something like this.

All minds are, somehow, connected like radio or TV transmitters and receivers or TV sets. Under some conditions some people can spontaneously "transmit" and or "receive" the thoughts and mental images of others. I have even experienced this between a cat and myself.

In the cat instances it was simple visual images that were transmitted from me to the cat and from the cat to myself...different times and circumstances and exclusively visual. No language, no symbolism, no abstract concepts; just images. Sometimes extremely clear. The only ones I am ever willing to describe are those that could not have been explained by any other phenomena with which I am familiar. It always makes me smile, laugh out loud and experience a state of "wonderment". When I use the phrase "wonderful" with my friends and family it does not mean that everything is great or terrific or that I am feeling fine. Wonderful means that I am in a state of wonder, of awe, am marveling at what I am experiencing first hand. Of course, all of this is without any CERTAINTY as to exactly how it works. I suppose that if I had the total understanding of how it worked that I would no longer be in a state of wonder. It's a bit like your first rainbow. Wonderful, no? The Aurora Borealis; marvelous, no?

Hey, don't take me TOO seriously because I also think that Garfield the Cat is awesome and marvelous and really makes me laugh!

G'nite Marcia,

Hugh