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Merged Sylvia Browne: "You'll meet her (Amanda Berry) in heaven" / Sylvia Browne wrong again

Sherman Bay said:
Robert, any chance your hosting service would boost your traffic allowance if a few $ were thrown their way? If so, I think you may have many donors here who would help if that's a financial difficulty for you. I hate to have prospective fans be turned away -- they may not return.
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I'm in! Both on his page and willing to pony up to increase his traffic allowance.
 
Robin1 said:
But, I'm curious if you know of any missing person's cases where she knew something SPECIFIC and UNIQUE that she could not have possibly known?

Again, I am not asking because I think she is real...I don't... I am just curious how she ended up being involved in so many of these types of cases when she is clearly a fake.

For example, was there one case where she stumbled on a big hit and others thought she could repeat it and that's why they kept asking her help?
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I know of no "big hits" she has had, stumbled upon or not.

As far as I have been able to figure, her star began rising when she got a gig on a local (San Jose, CA) TV show called (IIRC) People Are Talking, and her "folksy, down-to-earth" shtick caught on with the locals.

She then started making one-off appearances on shows about ghosts and other paranormal subjects, and parlayed all of the above into getting an appearance on The Montel Williams Show, on which she became a weekly guest on what Williams called "Sylvia Browne Wednesdays". Williams was thought of as a stand-up guy, and viewers evidently figured that if HE thought than Browne was "the real deal" (something he repeated almost every Wednesday), then she MUST be truly psychic. Her weekly appearances were little more than show-length commercials for her books and public appearances, with her doing "readings" for the studio audience as well as for some relatively well-publicized guests (such as Shawn Hornbeck's parents and Amanda Berry's mother).

And that's how a cheap carny act (apologies to carny acts everywhere) became a New York Times Best-selling author and a multimillionaire.
 
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RSLancastr said:
I know of no "big hits" she has had, stumbled upon or not.
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According to this tally (which I'm sure you've read), she's actually been wrong far more often than would have happened by pure chance.

During the Sago Mining Disaster, she claimed the miners were alive when they were actually dead. She also said Richard Kneebone was alive in Canada, but his decomposed body was discovered a few days later in California. More recently, she predicted that a 9/11 firefighter was alive, but his body was found in the World Trade Center rubble two weeks later.

Sometimes Browne is not only wrong but also tells suffering families horrible things. In 1999, Browne did a reading for Opal Jo Jennings’ grandmother, who wanted to know what happened to Jennings, a six-year-old abducted from her front yard in Texas. Browne told the grandmother, “She’s . . . not . . . dead. But what bothers me—now I’ve never heard of this before, but for some reason, she was taken and put into some kind of a slavery thing and taken into Japan. The place is Kukouro. Or Kukoura.” Browne was wrong. Child molester Richard Lee Franks was charged with the kidnapping that same year and convicted the following year. Jennings’ remains were discovered in 2003. Medical examiners concluded that “Opal was killed by trauma to the head with[in] several hours of her abduction.”
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Indeed, from the stories there, it looks like she might be a perfect reverse barometer; if she says they're dead, they're alive, and if she says they're alive, you might want to buy black.
 
RSLancastr said:
I know of no "big hits" she has had, stumbled upon or not.

As far as I have been able to figure, her star began rising when she got a gig on a local (San Jose, CA) TV show called (IIRC) People Are Talking, and her "folksy, down-to-earth" shtick caught on with the locals.

She then started making one-off appearances on shows about ghosts and other paranormal subjects, and parlayed all of the above into getting an appearance on The Montel Williams Show, on which she became a weekly guest on what Williams called "Sylvia Browne Wednesdays". Williams was thought of as a stand-up guy, and viewers evidently figured that if HE thought than Browne was "the real deal" (something he repeated almost every Wednesday), then she MUST be truly psychic. Her weekly appearances were little more than show-length commercials for her books and public appearances, with her doing "readings" for the studio audience as well as for some relatively well-publicized guests (such as Shawn Hornbeck's parents and Amanda Berry's mother).

And that's how a cheap carny act (apologies to carny acts everywhere) became a New York Times Best-selling author and a multimillionaire.
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That is just ridiculous. I was desperately hoping for some big hit to begin to explain the insane popularity of Sylvia Browne with regard to missing person's cases.

Anderson Cooper on CNN tonight referenced Sylvia's connection (or lack thereof) to the Shawn Hornbeck case as well as Amanda Berry (showed clips from Montel's show). Anderson Cooper also read Sylvia's statement about all of this. And he pretty much ended the segment by saying she should be ashamed of herself. Not his exact words but that was the gist of it.

Thanks for your reply!
 
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I'm about to explode !!!

Sylvia Browne:
“I am so relieved that Amanda Berry and the other women have been found and are safe with their families. Of course I do feel very bad telling Amanda's mother on the show that I believed her daughter was not alive, and I'm so so glad that I was wrong. I had a vision of her being held underwater, but I had interpreted it to have a different meaning. She was not being held under water but was being held down.”
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http://www.examiner.com/article/psy...ng-amanda-berry-s-mother-she-was-dead?cid=rss
 
It's sad that not even this evidence of the harm she's capable of doing makes SB reflect on the ethics of pretending to be a medium.
 
Robin1 said:
That is just ridiculous. I was desperately hoping for some big hit to begin to explain the insane popularity of Sylvia Browne with regard to missing person's cases.

Anderson Cooper on CNN tonight referenced Sylvia's connection (or lack thereof) to the Shawn Hornbeck case as well as Amanda Berry (showed clips from Montel's show). Anderson Cooper also read Sylvia's statement about all of this. And he pretty much ended the segment by saying she should be ashamed of herself. Not his exact words but that was the gist of it.

Thanks for your reply!
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This case just shows how dangerous this nonsense is Robin. All "clairvoyants" should receive nothing but our utmost condemnation. Sorry if this seems like a cheap shot to you. I believe you are a decent person but you are deluded if you think that God, if there is one, would allow anyone to make money out of communicating with the dead.
 
pakeha said:
The BBC has this to say
"... There is an online backlash against self-proclaimed psychic Sylvia Browne, who in 2004 told Ms Berry's mother, Louwana Miller, on TV her daughter was dead and her last words were "goodbye, mom, I love you". Ms Miller died in 2006 of heart failure, aged 43"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22459433

The more mentions, the better.
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Where did they get this from? It's not in the transcript.
I've always considered the BBC a reputable newsprovider. If they make up stuff like that, they're undermining their credibility.
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
So far I haven't seen any mention of Sylvia's pronouncement about Amanda in the mainstream media stories about the discovery of these missing girls/women.

I think there's a bit of an ethical problem there. They'll report psychic predictions, but not follow up on their failures.
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The psychotic psychic shows are money makers.
 
Mr. Stick said:
Where did they get this from? It's not in the transcript.
I've always considered the BBC a reputable newsprovider. If they make up stuff like that, they're undermining their credibility.
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Whether that's right or wrong, the BBC is still trading on a reputation it no longer deserves.

Rolfe.
 
We discussed this last night on http://virtualskeptics.com

Tim Farley was kind of surprised that her social media presence disappeared. Both the facebook and the twitter account. The facebook, as noted, has returned. I suspect she is too old and in frail health to make a comeback. This was her 50th anniversary as a psychic and she has appearances scheduled through the summer. I have a feeling that will be too soon. However, she bounced back after the Shawn Hornbeck thing. I don't think the public is so forgiving this time. As Bob Blaskiewicz noted, the public is getting particularly outraged by grief vampires and heartless truthers. I hope that is so. However, she is grooming her son and possibly her granddaughter(?) for the business. It's such a gold mine, I would not be surprised.
 
Thank you, idoubtit. I also hope that these "psychics", especially the high-profile ones like Sylvia, Edward, and Van Praagh will at least be slowed down. I also hope that we'll hear less and less of how they "help the police" and "provide solace to so many people."

Ugh.
 
In my opinion these so called psychics and speakers to the dead are human lice feeding on the spiritual corpses of the deceased. They are totally aware of what they are doing.
Probably thinking "what a fool this person is" while they spin their hokum.
Fight woo wherever you find it.
 
sowhat said:
In my opinion these so called psychics and speakers to the dead are human lice feeding on the spiritual corpses of the deceased. They are totally aware of what they are doing.
Probably thinking "what a fool this person is" while they spin their hokum.
Fight woo wherever you find it.
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Speaking to the dead is easy. Everyone can do it.

Getting them to speak back, now that's the rub.

:D
 
Hellbound said:
Speaking to the dead is easy. Everyone can do it.

Getting them to speak back, now that's the rub.

:D
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Heh ... same thing with gods. :rolleyes: They always refer to their unprovable god for validation so that no-one can refute them - or so they want us to think.

Their god never comes forth to defend them, especially Sylvia, does it?
 
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