Psychics. Charlatans. But I repeat myself . . .

I'm sure my readers aren't taken in by the shenanigans of so-called 'psychics' or 'fortune-tellers' or 'palm-readers' or 'astrologers' - but many people are deceived by them. If you have family members or friends who are taken in by such things, the Daily Mail has published a very useful article illustrating how such charlatans go about deceiving the gullible. Here's an excerpt.

Picture the scene. ‘I’m getting a Derek, a Donald… no, it’s a David,’ the middle-aged woman on the stage announces to ripples of excitement from the packed audience. ‘Does that mean anything to anyone? Does someone know a David who’s passed recently?’

Nervously, an elderly woman in the stalls raises her hand. ‘My late husband was called David.’

Bingo! The psychic has found her target.

. . .

Now, something very like that happens in most performances given by stage psychics — it has done for centuries — and newspaper reports say that something along those lines happened at a recent performance given in Dublin by Sally Morgan, self-styled as ‘Britain’s best-loved psychic’ and reportedly the daily confidante of Princess Diana.

But was Ms Morgan really addressing the spirit of dear, departed David?

A member of the audience claims otherwise, saying that she could hear a man’s voice relaying information, presumably via a microphone and hidden earpiece — such as ‘David, pain in back, passed quickly’ — to the psychic superstar on stage who, 10 seconds later, claimed to be talking to the spirit of David.

The voice only stopped when it was heard by a theatre usher, who closed an internal window.

. . .

People tend to forget that psychic shows are very big business. In some theatres you can get audiences of 2,000 or more which, at £20 to £50 [about US $31 to $79] a ticket, generates a huge amount of cash to be shared.

This money, the innocent audience believes, will be shared between the theatre and the single person they have come to see — the stage psychic who, of course, is there ‘to help’ the bereaved and the grieving.

But what if the psychic is sharing some of his or her cash with others? What if he or she is employing unseen assistants?

. . .

Gullibly, we believe the performance starts when the curtain goes up; in fact, it probably got under way the moment you walked through the theatre door and started to have a conversation with your friend, despite that chap who was standing so close.

Pre-show work, it’s called, and television audiences for these increasingly popular shows are particularly vulnerable to it. Was that really an audience research questionnaire you filled in before the show started, or have you just made the performer’s job a whole lot easier?

The same goes for anyone who’s paid by credit card at the theatre or whose name appears on its mailing list. Armed with that sort of information, a researcher could be examining your Facebook wall in seconds.

A few months ago I was offered a piece of software that if you fed it a name and a town — which psychics could have access to through ticket sales — would give you an address, and the names of family members (including the recently deceased) and neighbours.

Courtesy of Google Earth and Street View, it could even give you full details of their house, right down to the colour of the front door and the make and model of their car.

It took about 30 seconds and cost around £5,000 [about US $7,900] a year, small change given the amount of money these performers rake in.

There's much more at the link. Interesting (albeit infuriating) reading.

I don't suppose those who are taken in by such charlatans will be 'cured' of their misplaced faith by reading an article like that . . . but if it sows a seed or two of doubt, that'll at least help. I always ask so-called 'psychics' why they aren't multi-millionaires by now. I mean, if they can foretell the future, why haven't they long since foretold - to their own financial benefit - the winning lottery numbers, or the winning horse in a race, or the result of a football game? For some reason, they've never been able to give me a straight answer to that question . . . which surprises me. After all, aren't such inquiries predictable?





Peter