John Edward - psychic or what?

[sophia8]

He pointed toward the table behind me, where Liam was sitting, and said that he was getting the name 'Joshua'. I am again using a fake name of the same level of popularity. And I don't mean that he said he was getting a 'j' or the name 'Josh' or the feeling of a male presence. I mean that John Edward pointed at the table where Liam was sitting and said he was getting the name Joshua.

So Liam stood up.

Sounds to me like Edwards just had a very lucky hit. Notice that he didn't actually point at the man and say something like "Your name is Joshua but you call yourself Liam". No, he threw out the name "Joshua" whilst pointing at Liam's table.

One of the ushers brought him a microphone so that he could communicate with Edward. Edward again said that he had gotten the name 'Joshua', and then said that there was something weird about it, because he had the sensation that the name was LIAM's.

Again, Edwards is careful not to be totally specific - he says he has a "sensation". That gives him an out if he's wrong. And did he actually say "Liam" (or whatever the guy's name was?)

Then Edward paused for a moment. Liam had not said anything at this time.

But I'll bet his face and body language was saying plenty.

Edward said that, though Liam's name was Joshua, he had not introduced himself that way to the rest of his table.

I'll bet my hat that he was saying this very slowly, reading the guy's face and giving himself time to change tack if he was getting it wrong.

Edward then asked Joshua to hand the microphone over to someone else at the table, and then asked that person what Joshua had introduced himself as. The person said, "Liam."

My analysis - an initially lucky guess (or two), the rest was skillful cold reading. If Edwards was this accurate more often, we wouldn't be rubbishing him all the time here.

 

[kedo1981]

Simple
When purchasing the ticket “Joshua Liam gave his full legal name, and they often ask for that.
His name was put on the seating arrangement.
JE and his peps looked at the arrangement.
My tell is this, “Liam” self indentifies as “Liam, the name he gave you in a causal conversation , but fake psychic used the official name,
Why would the “spirit” calling out from the grave use a name that the guy didn’t go by?
Because the name on the seating chart was “J” not “L”.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Besides the point is Edward didn’t watch everyone sit down and the question is how did he know the people at Liam's table didn't know each other, not you.

How do you know Edward didn't watch the people being seated? He could easily have been watching from backstage.

Yeah, but one person blabs about a scheme like that and Edwards' career takes a huge hit.

Not really. Any number of psychics have been exposed and it's done them no harm whatsoever.

Besides, the media generally aren't interested in exposing psychics. Look at the number of TV programmes and national newspapers and magazines and their viewing figures/circulation figures when compared to things like Montel Williams and Oprah Winfrey who unquestioningly promote easily demonstrably terrible psychics like Sylvia Brown. No, the truth is that the media doesn't care whether it's true or not. The media knows it isn't true. But they also know that it pays far, far more to perpetuate the myth that it's true than it does to prove that it's not.

True believers, of course, will make any excuse for cheating, and the psychic in question being exposed will not be diminished in their eyes for it. It's not logical, but it's true.

Risking paying one or two extra members of staff to pass along information isn't a huge risk for someone in Edwards' position.

You have everything you need.

The reason I find this unlikely still stands.

Next time you go, then, make yourself a fake Facebook page and make sure you tell the box office person your "name".

 

[ExMinister]

Even if a psychic comps seats to an event to people he/she knows, aren't those people usually either friends, associates or people the psychic is trying to impress, else while bother to comp them seats?

In the case of Sylvia Browne, I don't know about her closest family members but she seemed very careful to maintain her act around her closest staff and ministers. If she comped seats and then used her prior knowledge to impress the audience with her psychic abilities, that would be a huge deal to the people who'd been comped. This seems likely to be the case with JE, too, who seems vastly more competent at this game than SB is.

It's obviously a trick; it just seems a bit of a stretch for dumb luck.

It also seems to me that if Liam had been a plant, he would have spent much more time chatting up people in line in order to make it impressive to quite a few more people, instead of just talking with RemieV.

My suggestion would be to attempt to contact a talented magician and ask. They might not be willing to give away such information on a forum, but they might be willing to give such information to you personally.

If you do, and they give you an answer, could you let us know - I wouldn't ask you to give the trick away, but could you let us know if they actually came up with a workable explanation?

 

[Garrette]

Even if a psychic comps seats to an event to people he/she knows, aren't those people usually either friends, associates or people the psychic is trying to impress, else while bother to comp them seats?

In the case of Sylvia Browne, I don't know about her closest family members but she seemed very careful to maintain her act around her closest staff and ministers. If she comped seats and then used her prior knowledge to impress the audience with her psychic abilities, that would be a huge deal to the people who'd been comped. This seems likely to be the case with JE, too, who seems vastly more competent at this game than SB is.

It's obviously a trick; it just seems a bit of a stretch for dumb luck.

It also seems to me that if Liam had been a plant, he would have spent much more time chatting up people in line in order to make it impressive to quite a few more people, instead of just talking with RemieV.

My suggestion would be to attempt to contact a talented magician and ask. They might not be willing to give away such information on a forum, but they might be willing to give such information to you personally.

If you do, and they give you an answer, could you let us know - I wouldn't ask you to give the trick away, but could you let us know if they actually came up with a workable explanation?

To toot my own horn a bit, this has already been done. I don't pretend to have provided all the possible explanations, but the best mentalists will tell you that the ideas provided here and via pm to RemieV contain plausible explanations.

 

[Senex]

Remie, this thread caught my eye and although I am familiar with some warm/hot techniques I am no where near your sophistication to offer help you wouldn't have thought of. But blind luck happens. Clearly if Edwards had a small army of informants he would have been exposed a long time ago but a chance run in by Liam with a personal assistant or business manager who keeps their ears open has to happen occasionally. I know you have ferreted out who has signed non-disclosures and I'd be curious about that.

It would have been easier if you were able to camp out at his TV studio back in his TV days and watched there. The daily repetition would have made your job easier. I hope you get another crack at his show and share your observations.

 

[Resume]

So "The Biggest Douche in the World" is adept at cold-reading and likely out and out cheating. Big deal. If he had the paranormals skills he claims, he wouldn't doing shows for credules in Vegas, he be at the casino tables, cleaning them out.

 

[Peacock]

Could there have been microphones / cameras being used to watch the ticketholders? Have you asked Randi for his opinion?

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

It is possible that Liam spoke to someone on Edward's staff - but he wasn't staying at the hotel in which the show took place, and claims that the only person he spoke to at any length whatsoever at the show was me. (And I am not working for John Edward.)

Perhaps the only person he remembers speaking to at length. Therein may lie a clue.

 

[AdmiralBuckles]

I go by my middle name and introduce myself to people as such so I am having a hard time seeing what is so overly impressive about this trick. Also the trick seems easy to figure out. I am in no way an expert on tricks or mentalism and have only started taking my skepticism seriously recently so forgive me if I seem to forward. First problem, I think JE's point was not as accurate as you remember. You stated in post #31 that Liam was seated farthest away from the stage, you also stated in another post that there were 6 people at his table. I'll assume that 6 people were at each table in the general vicinity where Liam was sitting. If JE points up to Liams table from the stage it would seem as if he was pointing to the table above,below,to the right, and to the left. That is pontentially 24 people that could have stood up and responded to the name Joshua. It seems that after Liam stood up that cold and hot reading techniques could have taken over. If you want to exploit the mechanism that JE used I would suggest that you just stand up if it looks like he is pointing in your general vicinity.

 

[Jono]

Yup, I totally manipulated you into entering this thread with that title. BWAHAHA.

doh.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

And, hah, you know, I'd never considered that of all the people there the person he might've been trying to impress was ME.

Well, you are rather fetching.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

OK. But Liam did confirm it by standing up. I wasn't aware that the lowest tier was in the back; usually the lowest part of an audience is in the front, must have been a weird set-up with Edwards at the top of some cake-like stage.

She's using "tier" as in price, not physical location. The lower price/tier tickets are in the back.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

I don't think Remie is trying to prove psi; she's investigating and has hit what appears to be a brick wall.

I will do a version of what others have done and list options:

1. JE has the paranormal powers he claims. I will discount this for the moment.

2. You (Remie) did not observe as accurately as you think. I am speaking not of what was said, but of the physical indications, especially where JE pointed. Was it indisputably to Liam's table? But I will discount this option for the moment, too.

3. Liam was somehow made into a stooge. I'll discount this for the moment, too.

4. Liam was not a stooge, but an in-place mechanism used by JE and staff uncovered the information. This is not unheard of, though difficult in these circumstances if Liam's memory is as trustworthy as yours. It is this part that I seriously doubt. Plus, you have overlooked something obvious: Liam perhaps did not speak to anyone in line besides you, but he did speak to people at his table, enough so that they knew he called himself Liam and not Joshua. Did they share stories? Show pictures of children out of their wallets? Leave their wallets in coat pockets draped carelessly over the backs of chairs? What is the likelihood that JE had a plant at some or all of the tables and that the plants could communicate even during the show if they discovered something actionable?

5. Liam was not a stooge and JE had no plant at his table. Then we are left with something unplanned somehow dropping the info into JE's lap. The fact that such a hit is rare or unheard of lends credence to this. This hit is far less remarkable than Harry Kellar's reading of a traveling actor in the orient which I have described more than once on this forum. If this is the case, we will likely never know how it happened.

It should be obvious that I lean to number 5 or number 6. As improbably as they may seem, they are still more probable than number 1.

There is no #6. What are you hiding?

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

I find this INCREDIBLY unlikely, simply because Vegas operates on discretion. People would quickly stop staying at the Flamingo if they knew that the staff was, in essence, spying upon them. This would be the equivalent of the staff of a strip club taking down license plate numbers from their parking lot and handing them over to a third party. Very very very bad for business.

You think some busboy that Edwards slips a $20 to cares anything about discretion?

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Regarding the rest, it's unclear, but I think you're missing the point. By my #5, I don't mean that anything was planned. There need not have been any mechanism in place to gather the information. It could simply have been that once-in-a-month-of-Sundays synchronicities that dropped the info into JE's lap and he capitalized.

Absent "Liam" working for Edwards, another likely scenario is this:

Liam goes into the hotel bar the night before. Talks to the guy on the next stool.

Guy: "Hey bud, my name's Joshua, what's yours?"
Liam: "Liam....well, actually my given name is also Joshua, but I go by my middle name - Liam".
The conversation continues....
Guy: "There's a cool pub over at the Flamingo. I'm going there tomorrow night, there's a Springsteen tribute band. You and your wife should come along".
Liam: "I can't, I'm going to see the John Edward show tomorrow night. Maybe another time"

Guess who "Guy" just happens to work for? It was a stroke of luck that he sat next to Liam. That's why it didn't happen again, or at least doesn't happen regulary.

 

[Psi Baba]

Liam doesn't have to be a plant, but let's say Edward has staffers who mingle among the people waiting in line to get in, overhearing conversations and making note of useful information like names, hometowns, occupations, etc. Such staffers (those "photographers", perhaps?) could also move among the seated crowd before the show gleaning that same kinds of information from people introducing themselves to others at the tables (not a bad idea to seat 6 strangers at a table who are certain talk about themselves--people who already know each other have no need to state their own names, jobs, hometowns, or other fundamental personal details). Now Edward is fed all this information in case it comes in handy during the performance. Most importantly, he is given a few names and their seating locations. Eventually, he points in a general direction and states a name. A man stands up and right away Edward knows that this is not that man's name, and yet this man stood and no one else did. The rest is easy.

 

[aggle-rithm]

Another thing - Liam was in town with his wife. His wife did not attend the show. I suppose it is possible that Liam's wife could have contacted Edward's staff directly in an attempt to give Liam a gift of closure with his father (who was dead, and was the person that Liam hoped Edward would contact).

I would think, though, that if his wife went to those great lengths (and great lengths were required since neither of them even knew about the show until the day before it took place), she would have wanted to be in attendance as well.

I was once at a party hosted by my wife's aunt and attended mainly by family members. As part of the entertainment, she hired a "psychic" to come in and give everyone readings.

Most of the people were astonished as how close she was to guessing their interests, activities, education, etc. However, my wife and her sister were not impressed. She hemmed and hawed and blurted a few generalities, but was unable to come up with anything interesting about either of them.

From this, I was quickly able to determine how she did it. Before the readings, she mingled with the party guests for quite a while. Most people discounted this because she had information that they did not provide directly. However, the fact that she knew a lot more about my wife's cousins than she did about her or her sister nailed it for me. Her aunts and uncles loved to gush about all their childrens' accomplishments, while my wife's mother was always tight-lipped about her immediate family.

Pretty obvious the information was volunteered by people close to them, with just a little prompting from the "psychic".

 

[Garrette]

There is no #6. What are you hiding?

Cahoots. The cahoots I'm in with Remie.

Absent "Liam" working for Edwards, another likely scenario is this:

Liam goes into the hotel bar the night before. Talks to the guy on the next stool.

Guy: "Hey bud, my name's Joshua, what's yours?"
Liam: "Liam....well, actually my given name is also Joshua, but I go by my middle name - Liam".
The conversation continues....
Guy: "There's a cool pub over at the Flamingo. I'm going there tomorrow night, there's a Springsteen tribute band. You and your wife should come along".
Liam: "I can't, I'm going to see the John Edward show tomorrow night. Maybe another time"

Guess who "Guy" just happens to work for? It was a stroke of luck that he sat next to Liam. That's why it didn't happen again, or at least doesn't happen regulary.

That's simply one example of my #5.

 

[RemieV]

Okay, everyone, I'm keeping up with the thread a little more via PM than I am here because the shouts of "Cold reading, cold reading!" are driving me a little bit batty.

But, here is my best suggestion for how to catch him, and if any of you are ever in Las Vegas when John Edward is performing, let me know and we can get together and take a run at it.

We're going to need to have ten people in the audience who are paying attention to who gets a reading during the show. Then we're just gonna have to walk up to those people as they exit, corral them, and ask them what's up.

Of course, now we can have an ethical debate about it. These are people who will more than likely be crying who believe they have just received verification that their loved one is still around. So. What say you? At the very least, we should attempt to get names, and then go online and see if we can divine identical information through non-paranormal means.