Lisa Williams New show same Stichk

Ok. I am about done with this forum. Here is what I wrote concerning the "Bad Psychics" article (and the reason I wrote it is because I watched that show and got a VERY different perspective. Regardless of whether Lisa Wiliams is true or flase, this episode was unfairly evaulated and transcripted):

Give me a freaking break! That's ALL you have to say about that show? You are nothing short of a coward and you ought to be ashamed of your tacticts. There was a lot more to that show than you wrote about. I don't know who is worse, the fakes you write about or you cowardly skeptics who MUST make anything fake for your insecurity or fear of losing control. Grow up! If you have the guts and want to email me, use reasonmusic@yahoo.com

END QUOTE
 
Did somebody give her a wedgie or somethin'? Coz her knickers are seriously twisted.
 
reasonmusic said:
Ok. I am about done with this forum. Here is what I wrote concerning the "Bad Psychics" article (and the reason I wrote it is because I watched that show and got a VERY different perspective. Regardless of whether Lisa Wiliams is true or flase, this episode was unfairly evaulated and transcripted):

Give me a freaking break! That's ALL you have to say about that show? You are nothing short of a coward and you ought to be ashamed of your tacticts. There was a lot more to that show than you wrote about. I don't know who is worse, the fakes you write about or you cowardly skeptics who MUST make anything fake for your insecurity or fear of losing control. Grow up! If you have the guts and want to email me, use reasonmusic@yahoo.com

END QUOTE
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Well, as you said before, people here have some sort of negativeness towards self proclaimed psychics because of all the pain they've cost. Especially in cases where psychics describe the horrorific way a missing relative has died, which later on turns out to be not like the psychic described at all, or even the relative turns up alive again.

However, many people here including me respect your opinion and would gladly exchange information considering the truthfullness of the ability of psychics in general or this psychic in particular. At least long as you respect the opinion of sceptics too.

Personally I don't disclude the possibility some psychics indeed have powers, but I am somewhat unmystified by the many psychics who don't.

With Regards,
Mist
 
I've been watching Lisa Williams's show, and I have to say I've noticed something: the people she gives the most specific information to are people that meet with her in private, where the meeing was prearranged, presumably waivers signed, etc., long before it was ever filmed. But the people she just walks up to on the street... the readings aren't as specific.

So in other words, for those private, prearranged readings, she and/or the show's producers know the client's name, address, phone number (and, if the guest is getting paid for their appearance on the show, their Social Security number), and have probably several weeks to find out ANYTHING they can about this person -- search online for obituaries, for example. ("So-and-so is survived by three daughters, Sarah, Jessica, and Linda.") Once you know a person's name and address, hello -- $40 for a background check, listing every address they've ever lived at, any bill collections (such as for a hospital), etc., etc.

Add all that to good cold reading technique, and, well... I'm not impressed.
 
reasonmusic said:
Lifetime makes a disclaimer about no one having prior knowledge before the taping of the show.
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Another factor to consider is that even if the disclaimer is to be trusted (and other posts would suggest not) it is still a taped and presumably edited show. There may have been umpteen cold questions prior to the shown segment to elicit information that is then pre-packaged and then fed back.

There's a good P&T Bullpwp episode about this with an extremely impressive reading that falls completely apart when you see the earlier segments but that still impressed those there at the time as they are not watching for the technique. James Randi did a similar exercise on the British show Psychic Investigator where someone recorded a session with a medium and then, without listening back to it, gave their assessment. They had been very impressed at the reading and asserted several facts that the medium could not possibly know. Every one was shown by the transcript to have been given or inferred to the medium earlier on in the conversation.
 
Here's a transcript of one part of a Lisa Williams reading I took down from her Lifetime show. It's typed as verbatim as I could get it, faulty grammar and all. Lisa is doing the reading in a woman's home. I've highlighted the sitter's answers in blue. The portions listed as "side interview" are segments of the woman telling parts of her story as an aside (not with Lisa, but to the camera). I would like the debunkers here to read through and point out any cold reading techniques Lisa is using. I can spot a few, such as she seems to ask questions more than make statements, but I'd love to get some "professional" insight.


Do you want to know everything?

Yes.

Has your mom passed?

Yes.

(talking to spirit) Hello mum!... She’s saying that sometimes she could, you know, be quite blunt, all right, but it’s as though she also had a very fun side to her. A real fun side. Oh, she just said “I laugh and joke with the rest of them.” What your mother’s just showed me is that there are a lot of angels protecting you. She keeps showing me a lot of angels. Why does she keep telling me that the baby’s in spirit? (Note: the sitter had given Lisa a baby blanket as the “personal object” to hold onto during the reading.)


My baby?

Your baby’s in spirit, does that make any sense?

Would that be because he’s passed over?

OK, because your baby’s in spirit, that’s what she keeps telling me, and she’s also telling me that there’s been a lot of questions about him. OK? So whether that’s the reason I’m here, I’m not sure, but this is what she keeps showing me. He’s saying “I’ve grown up in spirit,” does that make any sense? “I’ve grown up in spirit.”

(Side interview with sitter: "My son, who was killed, was my baby and I always called him my baby." )

He keeps talking about walking…was he walking along side the road?

Yes he was.

Because he keeps acknowledging the walking by the side of the road…I don’t know whether it was on the way home from school…

Yes.

Because I just feel like I’ve got study or books or I feel like there’s an element of study that’s been part of me that day. (Talks to spirit: "You don’t have to give me the pain.") <gestures to forehead> This is where he’s giving me the pain. Was this a car accident?

Mm-hmm.

Because I keep feeling like a car accident and I think this is where I got my head pain coming from…

(Side interview: "He was killed after getting hit by a car, after a friend crossed the street.")

He’s saying there were good-byes. I don’t know whether that means anything to you, but there were good-byes.

Yes.

You talk to him all the time.

Yes.

He keeps showing me like this vigil, I don’t know if you often have a ceremony for him, or you light candles or you do something in your own way for him….this is what he keeps showing me.
 
Well the main thing is that she's either asking outright questions or ambiguously worded statement-questions, and then modifying her response afterward. She's taking risks that the punter won't identify with what she's saying, but they are small and calculated risks.

Had the punter given different answers, Williams would have responded differently. E.g. "Was this a car accident?". She got a hit (a good chance guess) but if it had been something else, she could still have scored a partial hit by, say, focussing on another traumatic form of accident and blaming the spirit or herself for misunderstanding. Or giving the "car" part some other significance. There are any number of ways around it, and the lamest sounding bits will always be recut or edited out entirely in a TV production.
 
One part that struck me:

She keeps showing me a lot of angels. Why does she keep telling me that the baby’s in spirit? (Note: the sitter had given Lisa a baby blanket as the “personal object” to hold onto during the reading.)

My baby?

Your baby’s in spirit, does that make any sense?

Would that be because he’s passed over?

OK, because your baby’s in spirit, that’s what she keeps telling me
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Emphasis mine. Notice how Williams starts by saying "The baby's in spirit", while holding a baby blanket. The sitter indicates that she thinks it's HER baby, at which point the medium starts saying, "YOUR baby". Of course, the sitter will only remember that Williams seemed to know about "her baby" (who wasn't a baby at the time of his death).

In the next line, Williams says, "Does that make any sense?" at which point the sitter indicates that her child has passed on. The sitter told Williams everything she needed to know at the beginning of the reading: The blanket belonged to the sitter's kid, who had passed on.
 
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shanek said:
reasonmusic: you do make a good point. As skeptics, we run into this stuff so often and have to explain it so much we end up feeling like, "What, I have to go through all this AGAIN? Why don't you idiots get it?" and we tend to forget the fact that the person we're talking to may never have been exposed to those arguments before.

Also, I think we need to make it clear that the exasperation we feel is mostly targeted at the scam artists like Lisa Williams, not at people like you. When I saw an ad for Lisa Williams's show, I was livid. I was doubly so when I saw that John Edward is now on We, long after being cancelled from the Sci-Fi channel. But those audiences are hardly as sophisticated (as is evident from the normal programming fare), and so are much less likely to have encountered skeptics or learned about the concepts of skeptical thought.

The first time I saw John Edward, I could immediately tell what he was up to, and I hadn't even heard of cold reading at that point. But that's because I have been educated on critical thinking and knew a bit about how scam artists work. Someone coming into this fresh has trouble because he doesn't know what to look for.

That is where we come in. We should be educators, not agitators. Unfortunately, we're human, so it doesn't always work that way. (And it doesn't help that their dogmatic supporters, "woos" as we call them, keep coming back with the same old arguments over and over again and ignore us whenever we present rebuttals and counterarguments and explanations, and even resort to lying and namecalling...a lot of our frustration is at them as well.)

I guess what I'm saying is, we should understand your position and be patient with you; maybe you could also understand our position and what we've been through, and be patient with us, too.

After all, we're all just humans trying to find out the truth.
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This is a good point. It would be good to have a stickie for "Psychics." The stickie would consist of an article briefly explaining major concepts this form of woo (cold, warm, and hot reading; current famous psychics), with links to expand on those concepts (like StopSylviaBrown).

Unlike the Evolution & Homeopathy stickies, the Psychic stickie would either consist entirely of one post containing the article (it would be locked), or the first post would be regularly updated to include relevant information from the discussion in the thread following.

Then, instead of getting snippy, we could just post a link and say "Please read this article, and then we'll discuss the psychic you saw."
 
SRW said:
Yes I am jaded, I cannot explain the specifies method she uses to get her answers, however I have seen people with no psychic ability do the same thing. If she is the real deal set her take the jref challenge, for her to convince me I would need to see some real ability that is demonstrable not fake.
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Wow! SRW encapsulated the new skepticism (ie. psuedoskepticism, ie. heckling) mantras in one concise paragraph. To recap, hecklers are saying

1) im angree!!!
2) I have seen no evidence of X by people who claim X
3) I have seen people do something like X by people who don't claim X
4) by 2) & 3), therefore X doesn't exist
5) these people MUST CONVINCE ME! (see 1)
6) oh yeah, and a challenge by a magician and skeptic club is important for some reason

All the while SRW watched the program, therefore giving the very thing he doubts credibility and ratings. Go figure. :)
 
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That walking by the road thing was very weird. How DO THEY do that? Mere chance? Maybe she heard them talking before the reading or something.
 
"She got a hit (a good chance guess)"

How many good chance guess must she have before she is taken seriously.
 
panchov said:
That walking by the road thing was very weird. How DO THEY do that? Mere chance? Maybe she heard them talking before the reading or something.
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I'm guessing that they edited out a large line of questioning before she came up with the walking part, because at first she didn't even know the child was dead or who "the baby" was.

I was doing some browsing and found a post on a blog by a man who had appeared on Lisa's show with his wife. It's interesting to see how much difference there is between his memory of the sitting and what actually happened. He said that the reading lasted about an hour and a half, so since they only showed 10 minutes or so on TV, there was indeed a lot edited out. But certain parts that he recalled were included in the broadcast, but not at all like he described.

For example, on the show Lisa asked the wife if her father spoke English. Wife replied "no." Lisa then said "Because I'm getting Chinese, he's speaking in Chinese..." The man recounting the story, however, was impressed that Lisa "nailed" that her father was speaking Cantonese. (She never specified Cantonese.) He also said that Lisa never "fished" or asked questions, yet if you watch the show that's almost all she did - "Was your father at your wedding? No? Because he's telling me he's sorry he missed it." Things like that. (Oh, and of course the man was amazed that Lisa "nailed" that his father-in-law hadn't come to their wedding. For heaven's sake, she outright asked about that!) :rolleyes:
 
juniper_ann said:
This is a good point. It would be good to have a stickie for "Psychics." The stickie would consist of an article briefly explaining major concepts this form of woo (cold, warm, and hot reading; current famous psychics)...
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Or a Bingo Card?

Scroll down for explanations of the cold reading techniques.
 
RichardR said:
Or a Bingo Card?

Scroll down for explanations of the cold reading techniques.
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I scrolled down and read this:

VAN PRAAGH: Did she have a toy that she loved so much, she nearly wore it out?
CALLER: Yes! She had a stuffed Pink Panther that she carried with her everywhere!
VAN PRAAGH: Because she's showing me a Pink Panther.


That is so sick! I mentioned before that I once took a three day class with him, but I still can't figure out if he knows how false and manipulative he is. Sometimes during the class I would think he did and sometimes I would think he didn't.
 
That's actually a really good short standalone introduction for anyone that hasn't come across the technique before. Needless to say, everyone has a favourite toy as a child; the punter comes up with the significance to them, and the reader reads it back to them. It looks terrible on paper, but in the delivery and the moment, with imperfect recall, it's an incredible insight into and validation of, his "skills".

And yes, it's tough to tell, isn't it, whether he or any of the others recognise that they are deceivers. Some must, others will compartmentalise and rationalise away what they, deep down, will know is deception. I think only a very few (mostly less high profile than this guy) will be unaware that they are "digging" for answers, and will put down their skill at gleaning info to some sort of intuition/psychic power.
 
T'ai Chi said:
Wow! SRW encapsulated the new skepticism (ie. psuedoskepticism, ie. heckling) mantras in one concise paragraph. To recap, hecklers are saying

1) im angree!!!
2) I have seen no evidence of X by people who claim X
3) I have seen people do something like X by people who don't claim X
4) by 2) & 3), therefore X doesn't exist
5) these people MUST CONVINCE ME! (see 1)
6) oh yeah, and a challenge by a magician and skeptic club is important for some reason

All the while SRW watched the program, therefore giving the very thing he doubts credibility and ratings. Go figure. :)
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So which of Lisa's performances are you defending? Or could it be, you have a problem with anyone but a true believer watching her show?
 
lisa williams is not a fake

hello everyone. i never write in forums but felt i had to when i read the comments in this one. i am from a small town in england called redditch (lisa,s home town) i have been very fortunate to have had a personal reading off lisa before she moved to america. all i can say is there is no way in this world she is a fake! i went in to see her feeling skeptical but the things she knew soon changed my mind. she knew every tiny detail about things which id been thro (i.e. my dad passing away) right down to knowing how i put a photo of him and my son in the coffin. she even described the picture! this was something i hadent shared with anyone before. i could give you so many examples but id be here all day. everything she predicted for my future up until this point has also happened. infact i listened to my cd recording of the reading just the other day (4 years on) and was amazed! i came across this forum as i was trying to find out when lisa is returning home. and i was upset to read the comments. i understand everyone is entitled to an opinion etc however i dont think you can brand someone a fake till you have experienced there gift first hand. one more point is that i got my appointment with lisa last minute. i rang expecting to be told there was a 3 month wait however her husband informed me that her next appointment had cancelled so there i was a few minutes later driving to see her. my point been there is no way in a couple of mins (20 max) could they have researched anything about me when they only knew my first name. thanks for reading, kind regards lucy (redditch worcs england)
 
lucyhicks1980 said:
hello everyone. i never write in forums but felt i had to when i read the comments in this one. i am from a small town in england called redditch (lisa,s home town) i have been very fortunate to have had a personal reading off lisa before she moved to america. all i can say is there is no way in this world she is a fake! i went in to see her feeling skeptical but the things she knew soon changed my mind. she knew every tiny detail about things which id been thro (i.e. my dad passing away) right down to knowing how i put a photo of him and my son in the coffin. she even described the picture! this was something i hadent shared with anyone before. i could give you so many examples but id be here all day. everything she predicted for my future up until this point has also happened. infact i listened to my cd recording of the reading just the other day (4 years on) and was amazed! i came across this forum as i was trying to find out when lisa is returning home. and i was upset to read the comments. i understand everyone is entitled to an opinion etc however i dont think you can brand someone a fake till you have experienced there gift first hand. one more point is that i got my appointment with lisa last minute. i rang expecting to be told there was a 3 month wait however her husband informed me that her next appointment had cancelled so there i was a few minutes later driving to see her. my point been there is no way in a couple of mins (20 max) could they have researched anything about me when they only knew my first name. thanks for reading, kind regards lucy (redditch worcs england)
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Hi and welcome!
Some questions for you to consider:

1) Did you book the reading in advance over the phone and give her your name?

2) Did you pay for the reading in advance with a credit card?

3) Care to share your reading with us here for analysis?

cheers
Z
 
It's a common theme for psychics to claim they have a 3 or 4 month waiting list. It is somehow supposed to display how genuine they are.

As you discovered, this is not really the case, and they will often take any appointment they can get.
 
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