I should point out that the tricks employed in this occasional series refer to those who pass themselves off as mediums in order to capitalize on the grief of others. They annoy me because they are parasites, and because they make it extremely difficult to find a genuine medium to study.
The 'memory-man' trick is one of the most convincing. Just before a show, people are excited. Will Uncle Bob come through? Will Grandmother make an appearance? They are all too willing to chat with those who seem to be similarly excited. They will immediately forget what they said to total strangers before the show.
Some of those strangers work for the medium. They collect information and pass it to the memory-man before the show, along with the seat numbers (oh yes, they are that good) of the 'marks'.
All the supposed medium has to do is recall some detail of the information and claim that the spirits are directing him to the person in question. Then our exalted fraud relates what his assistants have told him. It rarely fails.
If you're ever attending one of those shows, and a stranger seems overly interested in what you hope to hear, I have one piece of advice.
Lie.
Invent the most arrant nonsense you can think of. Let the medium relay it back to you, then drop your bombshell.
'None of that is true, but it's exactly what I told your assistant before we came in here.'
It's worth getting thrown out for.
4 comments:
May I suggest wearing a leather jacket and pants so you don't lose too much skin when the medium's bouncers sending you skidding across the pavement.
you know, I actually saw a show with John Edwards where he almost, almost, made a mistake!
He totally got the names wrong (actually, he had gotten the wrong person in the audience)
But you got to hand it to Edwards, his recovery was as smooth as a Tom Cruise smile - he said: "I'm sorry, we will have to take a break, there is a great deal of psychic interference here right now."
Then he scuttled off stage, probably to consult with his henchmen, since he got it right the next time
One of the things that makes TV psychics so unlikely to be real is that they always--always--get it right. They always find an appropriate ghost for each of several audience members. They always find just the right number of spirits for a 30-minute show.
Why would the dead be hanging around a TV studio? Why are there always the right number to fill a show? Do they have to get tickets too? Is there a ghostly doorman who lets them in, one at a time? Does he have a list, so he only lets in those who can prove they have a relative in the audience?
You'd never see a real medium on a TV show, because a real medium can't guarantee a) that a certain number of spirits, or indeed any at all, will visit on the night and b) that any who do show up will have a relative in the audience.
It won't make much of a show if the medium says 'Sorry, but there are no spirits here tonight', or relays a message to someone who's wathing the TV at home. That would be impressive for one household, but not for the rest of the audience.
The one-on-one sections of those programmes show cold reading at its best. The medium is clearly fishing for information. Watch carefully, and pay attention to the parts he gets wrong. They'll be overlooked by the sitter. Watch for 'revelations' such as 'Your aunt tells me you're a student?' Remember, you're seeing the recorded part. You're not seeing the informal chat beforehand, which the sitter won't remember because it was apparently inconsequential chit-chat. Part of any idle chatter is 'So, what do you do?'
Don't look for a real medium on TV. It's a good place to learn the tricks of the fakes, but that's all.
Southern Writer - I don't think the 'door shut, or the 'stars misaligned', I think it's a case of you can't hear them any more because they're not speaking now. The dead don't hang around and interfere with the living. They have places to go, things to see - and they have eternity so they don't feel they have to rush back. If you heard them once, you'll hear them again, but only if they have something to say.
Speaking for myself, I'll have plenty to say, and it'll probably take me eternity to say it all. I plan to try to communicate with every fake medium I can find after my death, just to scare the Bejesus out of them.
What with all the hauntings I have planned, I'm going to have a busy afterlife, I think.
lol!
hey, it's actually not so unlikely that ghosts would hang around the TV studios all day!
Think about it, we live in the telly age! What do people do for fun and enlightenment today?
Watch TV, obviously. So, why is that going to change after life?
Imagine the kind of hell that has no Game shows, CNN, Paris Hilton doccie-dramas, reality TV...
what am I saying!?!?!
that's the kind of Hell I would kill to go to!
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