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Rights and wrongs of psychic detection
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Location: Blogs Roy Stemman's blog |
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| Posted by: Roy Stemman |
1/15/2007 11:07 PM |
 Let me be the first to confess that there’s nothing I enjoy more than a good television documentary about psychic detection.
By “good” I mean one in which an unsolved case, or one that is proving almost impossible to crack, unravels before our eyes as one psychic clue after another is proved correct, the culprit is apprehended, and the detective in charge shakes his head in disbelief as he confesses that individuals with paranormal gifts can make a difference in the fight against crime.
It makes for good television viewing and there appear to be enough cases – not always with such dramatic results, I admit – to produce TV series in the UK, US and Australia, and probably elsewhere.
But there’s another side to psychic detection that also deserves our attention and it raised its ugly head early in January 2007 when a missing boy, who had been declared dead four years ago by two leading US psychics, turned up alive and well, along with another boy who had been abducted more recently (see Missing boy: psychics get it spectacularly wrong).
In 2002, four months after the 11-year-old went missing, two of America’s best-known psychics, Sylvia Browne and James Van Praagh, gave separate televised sittings to Shawn Hornbeck’s parents in which they provided conflicting information about the circumstances of his disappearance and his whereabouts. On one thing they were in agreement with was that Shawn was dead.
Sceptics will have a field day, and rightly so. No matter how evidential Browne and Van Praagh have been with other readings, such a total failure to determine whether the subject they were reading for was dead or alive must call into question the accuracy of their psychic abilities.
They are, after all, both mediums whose fame and fortune are based on their ability to communicate with the dead. That’s what they do for a living. So it is not unreasonable to ask, “Who were they communicating with if not the ‘dead’ Shawn Hornbeck? And how did their spirit helpers allow false information to be conveyed to his anxious parents?”
The answer, if Browne and Van Praagh ever provide one, will probably be along the lines that “communication” was not clear, or that they were picking up the parents’ fears, or that their comments were based only on vague psychic impressions not clear spirit communications. None of which I would find acceptable, in the circumstances.
Quite apart from causing Shawn’s parents unnecessary heartache, rather than reinforcing their hope that he was still alive, the mediums concerned also wasted valuable police time searching for a body in the areas they identified but where he had not been.
The reality is that spirit communication and psychic readings are seldom 100 per cent accurate. Inevitably, the medium’s mind can be influenced in many ways, particularly by his or her own thoughts, or be leading questions from an interviewer or the sitters.
In saying that, I am not offering an excuse for their lamentable performance on this occasion. Instead, I am making the point that because mediumship or psychic readings are never totally reliable, I believe it is wrong to turn on-going criminal cases, however intractable, into public entertainment for the sake of television ratings or to boost the reputations of the psychics involved.
I see nothing wrong with Browne and Van Praagh being consulted in this case, but it should have been done in private and treated as an experiment. I am recommending this not to protect the psychics involved but to protect the person involved.
Let us suppose that, during their TV readings for Shawn Hornbeck’s parents, either Browne or Van Praagh, or both, had been amazingly accurate, telling the television audience that the boy was alive, pinpointing the place where he was being held, and linking his abductor to a pizza restaurant.
One has to ask oneself whether such information would have been helpful to the boy’s predicament or have put his life in danger.
We’ll never know.
The only good thing one can say about this sorry episode is that at least they got it wrong in the best way. How much worse it would have been for Shawn’s parents if the psychics had told them he was alive when in fact he was dead.
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Comments (2)
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Re: Rights and wrongs of psychic detection |
By C.C. Corry on
1/18/2007 9:36 AM |
Sylvia Brown and Van Praagh are two of the biggest frauds out there. I still remember when Brown got it very wrong on Coast to Coast last year when she said all of the miners were dead in Virginia and while still on the air, she was told some where found alive, she stumbled and bumbled until George Noory saved her.
I do happen to know a psychic that got it right in regards to these lucky children. Her name is Mary Occhino and she has a show on Sirius Stars 102. Just the other day, a listener called in a asked Mary what she thought and to make a long story short, Mary nailed it.
She is a amazing and proud to say, my mother. |
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Re: Rights and wrongs of psychic detection |
By psmc on
1/19/2007 12:38 AM |
I agree that Sylvia Brown is one of the biggest frauds in this field. I am not sure about van Praagh. I say this because by fraud I mean one knowingly deceives people. I ahvent heard enough about van Praagh to determine if he is delusional or is in fact knowilgly deceiveing people. Ms Brown though, bu her actions, has shown she is nothign more than a huckster and a charlatan. I wish more people would devote sites to exposing their activites. and that the people that do would get more exposure.
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