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Psychics and Missing People

If you are worried that someone may send you spam after you send them e-mails, create a new e-mail account and use that. There are several organisations that will create e-mail accounts for you. If you then receive spam you can abandon it.
 
rjh01 said:
If you are worried that someone may send you spam after you send them e-mails, create a new e-mail account and use that. There are several organisations that will create e-mail accounts for you. If you then receive spam you can abandon it.
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Yeah, I ended up going with an anonymous email address. We'll see how it goes.
 
Thought you all might be interested in hearing what happened to a co-worker's niece a couple weeks ago.

We were just talking about myspace.com and what an evil little web site it is on SkepticalCommunity and it prompted me to tell the story. I've been thinking about posting it here ever since it happened, but just never got around to it.

Anyway.

Here's pretty much what I posted on SC:

A niece of a co-worker was recently (couple weeks ago) nearly kidnapped by a guy she met on myspace. It was only through quick action on my coworker's part that she was rescued at the last possible moment.

Typical clueless problem child teenager. This guy tells her he's the member of a grunge band and a recruiter for Hollywood movies. Promises her he can get her into a movie in California and she will make $600,000.

She was disowned by her parents and living in an apartment with a 34 year old woman. Fortunately, this woman was on her game and started checking a lot of this guy's claims on the internet and showed the kid he was lying. One particular claim was about being a member of a band, which he named. He said they were a California band, and the roommate found it was a real band, only out of Pennsylvania. Other stuff like that wasn't adding up.

But the kid didn't want to hear it. So she tells the guy to come to her town and she will meet him and leave town with him. She quits her grocery store job and tells her roommate she is leaving.

The guy arrives by bus. Yeah. Big picture Hollywood man comes in on a bus. He then tells her he lost his driver's license and money and she has to pay for their hotel room. Yeah. Big picture Hollywood man has no money or identification proving he is who he says he is.

So she wants to stay in town until she can pick up her last grocery store paycheck before they run off to California together. And this is what probably saved her life, because while this was going on, the now ex-roommate has alerted the family, who seem apathetic after all the crap they have had to put up with from her, except for her uncle, my co-worker.

Somewhere along the line, the roommate had challenged this creep on the phone. And during the conversation, he said, "Why aren't you dead?" This was enough for my co-worker to go to the police, and for the police to go after him for threatening bodily harm when he came to town.

Her uncle (my co-worker) was able to track her location because his niece had told the grocery store where she would be.

So the cop goes with my coworker to the hotel and they knock on the door. At first the policeman says nothing as the uncle talks to his niece through the door. But they won't open it. So uncle asks the cop, "Can't you do something?" So the policeman says, "This is the police!", and the big picture Hollywood recruiter grunge band member bolts from the room and jumps out the back window, much to the shock and amazement of the idiot kid.
 
Unfortunately, the bad guy got away and the only person who has seen his face is the niece.
 
KellyJ said:
Let the Sylvia Browne stories begin.

I can sleep at night. I don't know how she can.
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Cold readers don't necessarily know that they're doing it.

I've only seen two kinds of ex-psychics. One sort says "Yes, I was [swiki]Hot Reading[/swiki], I'm a fraud." The other sort says "I was [swiki]Cold Reading[/swiki], and I had no idea."

One of the latter category is our very own poster Nex.

But I've never seen anyone say "I was cold reading and I knew it." Now I think about it, the reason for this is obvious --- a deliberate fraud wouldn't confine himself / herself to cold reading --- they'd always do it hot if they could.

If cold readers can fool an audience, and they can, then they can fool themselves.
 
Hagrok said:
Bet his fingerprints are in a database somewhere...
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That's what I was thinking. I said as much to my co-worker, but I can't recall what his reply was. I don't know if they lifted fingerprints or not.
 
Dr Adequate said:
But I've never seen anyone say "I was cold reading and I knew it." Now I think about it, the reason for this is obvious --- a deliberate fraud wouldn't confine himself / herself to cold reading --- they'd always do it hot if they could.
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The Psychic Mafia bears this out. A good read on the tricks the author and his cohorts pulled as deliberately fraudulent psychics to make their readings as hot as possible.
 
Dr Adequate said:
Cold readers don't necessarily know that they're doing it. ........

But I've never seen anyone say "I was cold reading and I knew it." Now I think about it, the reason for this is obvious --- a deliberate fraud wouldn't confine himself / herself to cold reading --- they'd always do it hot if they could.
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Does Sylvia Brown and others of her class not use cold reading? Are they not frauds?
The impression I get from stage performers claiming to talk to the dead, is that they are very well aware what they are doing, and they talk to people all the time without prior knowledge.
If they used hot reading they would do much better than they do. :rolleyes:
 
Mr. Stick said:
Does Sylvia Brown and others of her class not use cold reading? Are they not frauds?
The impression I get from stage performers claiming to talk to the dead, is that they are very well aware what they are doing, and they talk to people all the time without prior knowledge.
If they used hot reading they would do much better than they do. :rolleyes:
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All we see are her live appearances. Spontaneous readings on people she couldn't know anything about.

We do not see her private readings with regular clients or with clients who have to give their full name and credit card number.

Read "The Psychic Mafia" to get an idea. Psychics keep records on their clients and trade that information with each other.
 
Thank you, Luke, for presenting the story about the near disaster with the misled teenager. This happens more often than we realize.

If you are a parent of a teen, or even a pre-teen, know what they are doing, especially on the internet.

Just 2 nights ago, I had a phone interview with the mom of a missing teen from NV. She was lured away in a similar fashion. NOw she's living the life of a prostitute and is a meth user. She's only 15. Cops don't care because they say she's a "runaway". Apparently, the laws in NV are so lax that no one can effectively react to this. They even had the man in question in their hands for drug possesion, but said they couldn't charge him in relation to the girl. Of course, he did not appear at his trial.

It's a system gone mad.

Don't think it can't happen to you.
 
I would like your opinions, please.

Would having a post on humor in my series on psychics detract from its professionalism? In this post, I would briefly discuss the need for humor in dealing with the issue, and then include some psychic jokes.
 
Humour in the right hands can be a powerful weapon.
How about this one I just invented.

'I would like to report my son is missing.'
'Hey are you not that famous psychics who finds missing people?'
'Yes. Glad you recognise me.'
 
Thank you for the comment and the joke.

If I decide to do this, I'll start a psychic joke thread on the Humor forum rather than have them posted here. The humor forum is an appropriate place for them.
 
KellyJ said:
I would like your opinions, please.

Would having a post on humor in my series on psychics detract from its professionalism? In this post, I would briefly discuss the need for humor in dealing with the issue, and then include some psychic jokes.
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It's hard to do. I make fun of everything I can, but psychics in themselves aren't funny. Their particular arguments are often funny, but the thing itself is just disgusting.
 
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