| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
rynner2 What a Cad!
Great Old One Joined: 13 Dec 2008 Total posts: 21365 Location: Under the moon Gender: Male |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
| BlackRiverFalls I wear a fez now.
Joined: 03 Aug 2003 Total posts: 8716 Location: The Attic of Blinky Lights Age: 44 Gender: Female |
 Posted: 05-11-2011 00:09 Post subject: |
 |
|
|
| Quote: | | At the same time she was advertising herself as a chat line clairvoyant on the Psychic TV website. |
Not that Psychic TV one imagines.  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| Mythopoeika Boring petty conservative
Joined: 18 Sep 2001 Total posts: 9109 Location: Not far from Bedford Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 05-11-2011 13:02 Post subject: |
|
|
|
| BlackRiverFalls wrote: | | Quote: | | At the same time she was advertising herself as a chat line clairvoyant on the Psychic TV website. |
Not that Psychic TV one imagines. |
I did wonder how P-Orridge made a living.  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| Ducado Yeti Joined: 27 Apr 2008 Total posts: 49 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 17-11-2011 22:31 Post subject: |
|
|
|
The problem is that people have got fortune telling and Psychic phenomena mixed up; fortune telling has been around for 100’s of years, now the fortune tellers have morphed into Psychics. Cold reading is a fine art indeed, but you don’t have to buy a book or go on a course basically everyone has the same set of problems or has had, just know what real life is about and read it back to them, and watch the money roll in
Genuine Psychics don’t really do that type of thing, there are a few about but they are very rare indeed, I really don’t think there are more than 10 in the UK. It always amuses me the amount of time necromancers and genuine mediums spend preparing themselves for a séance, the rituals etc, and even then results are not guaranteed, yet some women sits in front of 1000’s of people and can turn it on like a tap. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| oldrover Great Old One Joined: 18 Oct 2009 Total posts: 2146 Location: Wales Gender: Male |
| Posted: 30-11-2011 22:20 Post subject: |
|
|
|
| Quote: | Why do you doubt a book you've never read? On what grounds?
I'm just interested in what has led you to dismiss it, whether it's reviews or something you've heard?
Colin Wilson was firmly of the belief that it was Joe Fisher's obsession with one spirit that led to his death. |
Essentially it comes down to the subject. Which I have gathered from reading a few overviews in this case deals with mediums and spirit guides. Mediums and by extension the spirits they deal with are in my opinion, which I have to say I'm more than usually confident in on this context, a fraud. My reasons for saying that is that I have met several people who claimed such abilities and in every case I found them to at best a little deluded and often over indulged or alternately excluded by those around them. Also I found them all to be very careless of those around them. Straight away I can think of two cases, both of which concerned members of the same group of spiritualist congregation, where these mediums have directly harmed or caused distress to very vulnerable people. One was in the final stages of cancer and was left distraught after their intervention and counselling. The other was seriously mentally ill and was left a lot less able to cope. Personally and although this could be seen as being a fairly easy shot, I can’t help feeling that something vaguely like this may have contributed to Joe Fischer’s death.
As to the claims they made in my experience they were often very childish and always extremely easy to rationalise, and at no time did I ever come across them offering anything like evidence, or even anything interesting. There's more to say but I won't be specific because it'd be unkind, but I believe they were compensating by retreating into a fantasy role in which they had more control or effect than they could manage in real life. Sorry if that sounds unpleasant but it's a genuine observation.
Then we have the famous mediums frankly I don't think there's anything that can be added there. If there is one out there that isn't an obvious scam artist I've never heard of them.
So as I’m completely convinced by the enormous amount of negative evidence presented against mediums over the years, I’d look elsewhere for an explanation for the content of Fischer’s book and death. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| Ravenstone I suffer bad press in Genesis. I may sue...
The Original Sin Joined: 01 Aug 2001 Total posts: 6073 Location: Outside the Garden of Eden, with my flamin' sword Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 30-11-2011 23:07 Post subject: |
|
|
|
Hmmm... then you need to read the book. Joe Fisher approached the subject purely to discredit it, to uncover the fraudulent psychics and mediums, and to find out their 'tricks'. Instead, he found something he couldn't always explain, and something that ended up being far more disturbing than the simple notion of speaking to the dead could ever be.
It is not, as you seem to think, an advert for mediums. Also, the mediums and psychics you seem to have had the most experience of appear to be member of the spiritualist church. One does not immediately follow to the other. There are mediums who are not spiritualists.
Joe Fisher began by treating his 'spirit guide' as a figment of the medium's imagination, and perhaps as a carrot to keep him coming back. Until he started to see 'her' for himself, and experience 'her'. From then on, he found himself drawn more and more towards 'her'. Colin Wilson found this becoming more disturbing, as he became suspicious about the spirit's desire to 'be with' Fisher again. To the point where Wilson commented along the lines that he didn't consider Fisher's death to be suicide, unless it was 'assisted'.
Fisher discredited much of the information the spirits' provided, but he nevertheless believed 'something' was lying, and it wasn't the psychic. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| oldrover Great Old One Joined: 18 Oct 2009 Total posts: 2146 Location: Wales Gender: Male |
| Posted: 01-12-2011 00:01 Post subject: |
|
|
|
Again I’m struggling with this you’re saying that Fisher author of ‘Life Between Life, The Case for Reincarnation’ and ‘Predictions’ and the 1987 winner of ;
| Quote: | | The Leask Award by The Spiritual Science Institute of Canada for "making an outstanding contribution to the field of spiritual awareness." |
http://www.anomalist.com/milestones/fisher.html
approached this subject with detached scepticism.
I think it’s irrelevant whether on the face of it the book celebrates or condemns mediums if it takes the subject seriously. It is saying there are spirits good or bad floating about in the ether and these guys, the mediums, can talk to them, that can only be supporting the claims that these easily repeated parlour tricks are genuine.
| Quote: | | Also, the mediums and psychics you seem to have had the most experience of appear to be member of the spiritualist church. One does not immediately follow to the other. There are mediums who are not spiritualists. |
Yes that’s just the way it’s worked out in my experience I’m well aware that not all mediums are spiritualists or any other sort of Christian. To me the important thing is they say they can contact the dead after that any other details are fairly academic.
I’ve read some of Colin Watson’s work and to be frank I don’t find having his foreword on the revised edition, or any other input of his, a point in the book’s favour. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| Ravenstone I suffer bad press in Genesis. I may sue...
The Original Sin Joined: 01 Aug 2001 Total posts: 6073 Location: Outside the Garden of Eden, with my flamin' sword Gender: Unknown |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| oldrover Great Old One Joined: 18 Oct 2009 Total posts: 2146 Location: Wales Gender: Male |
| Posted: 01-12-2011 00:13 Post subject: |
|
|
|
A character in a short ghost story I read years ago and ever since got his surname confused with Colin Wilson.
We've both posted the same link. I don't take that page as indicating a sceptical attitude, that said of course I haven't read the book. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| Ravenstone I suffer bad press in Genesis. I may sue...
The Original Sin Joined: 01 Aug 2001 Total posts: 6073 Location: Outside the Garden of Eden, with my flamin' sword Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 01-12-2011 00:19 Post subject: |
|
|
|
Yes, I posted the same link quite deliberately, given that quotes can be taken either way. In any event, he was described as an 'investigative writer'. Just because he wrote about the paranormal doesn't mean he did so blithely reporting everything as fact and not checking his sources. He did check his sources; it's what got him thrown out of the group that he'd infiltrated in order to check them out.
Just because he wrote about psychics and mediums doesn't make him a medium, anymore than writing a sports column makes someone a sportman. Or writing vampires makes Anne Rice a vampire.
It is a very good book. Makes for very uncomfortable reading. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| oldrover Great Old One Joined: 18 Oct 2009 Total posts: 2146 Location: Wales Gender: Male |
| Posted: 01-12-2011 00:40 Post subject: |
|
|
|
| Quote: | Just because he wrote about psychics and mediums doesn't make him a medium, anymore than writing a sports column makes someone a sportman. Or writing vampires makes Anne Rice a vampire.
|
Agreed but winning the the Leask Award by The Spiritual Science Institute of Canada for "making an outstanding contribution to the field of spiritual awareness." does mean he's made an outstanding contribution to the field of spiritual awareness in the eyes of an organisation I'm guessing I wouldn't have a lot of time for.
I'm not knocking Fisher, and as I say I've not read the book. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| rynner2 What a Cad!
Great Old One Joined: 13 Dec 2008 Total posts: 21365 Location: Under the moon Gender: Male |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| BlackRiverFalls I wear a fez now.
Joined: 03 Aug 2003 Total posts: 8716 Location: The Attic of Blinky Lights Age: 44 Gender: Female |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| Bigfoot73 Great Old One Joined: 19 May 2009 Total posts: 1079 Location: Leeds Gender: Male |
| Posted: 03-12-2012 03:22 Post subject: |
|
|
|
| Quote: | Long article: Alex Clark attends shows by Colin Fry and Derek Acorah.
|
Strange how none of these dead people ever relate what it's like being dead.  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| sherbetbizarre Great Old One Joined: 04 Sep 2004 Total posts: 1418 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 08-05-2013 13:16 Post subject: |
|
|
|
| Quote: | Sylvia Browne: fans lash out at 'psychic' over false Ohio abduction prediction
'Psychic' incorrectly predicted the death of Amanda Berry in 2004 – not the first time she's been wrong about a missing person
One of the world's most recognizable self-proclaimed psychics was wrong yet again about the fate of a missing child, and her followers on social media are taking her to task.
Browne's prediction about Amanda Berry's fate was not the first child whose fate she attempted to explain, but her fans on social media are waiting for acknowledgment from the self-proclaimed spiritual leader.
On Facebook and Twitter, Browne sends inspirational messages to hundreds of thousands of fans, often advertising her latest appearances or one of 45 books she's published over the years (most recently Afterlives of the Rich and Famous). She reached a high level of visibility after years appearing as a regular guest on Montel Williams' television show, a long-running daytime talk program that subsisted on paternity test results, cheating spouses and half-baked psychic predictions before it finally stopped production in 2008.
"I remember you on Montel Williams telling the family of Amanda Berry she was dead," wrote one commenter on Browne's Facebook page. "What do you have to say for yourself? What a horrible horrible thing to say to a family holding on to nothing but hope and faith."
"Can you admit that you're a hack now?" asked another.
"I hope todays events seal it for you and everyone else who take advantage of those in mourning," wrote another.
Not likely.
Browne announced the death of Amanda Berry in 2004, when she appeared on Williams' show to tell Berry's mother, Louwana Miller, that her daughter was "in heaven and on the other side" and that her last words were "goodbye, mom, I love you". Miller would die a year later of heart failure.
In fact, Berry escaped Monday from a Cleveland home where she had been held captive with two other women for more than a decade. A child who is hers was also removed from the home, according to police. |
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/07/sylvia-browne-amanda-berry-cleveland |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
