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Psychics and Missing People

That's great, Kelly! I'm confident that the series will continue to make a difference in peoples' lives long after it is complete.
 
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Kelly, I just read the conclusion to your three-part story about Julie the con.

I really need to make sure I've taken my blood pressure meds before I read this stuff. :mad:

One formatting comment: While helpful for most people, using differently-colored text to make your analysis of the reading "stand out" can be problematic for people with color-blindness. One out of ten adult males suffers from some degree of it, IIRC.

Using some other method of making your analysis stand out (italics, bolding, brackets, indentation, etc.) instead of (or in addition to) color-coding helps color-blind people to differentiate, and actually helps non-color-blind people to do so as well.

Here's a sample from your blog:

It was a fairly busy highway. Julie insisted it was Highway 27. That was the first deception. There is no Highway 27 anywhere near our home, period.
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Here it is again, with the addition of italics and brackets:

It was a fairly busy highway. Julie insisted it was Highway 27. [That was the first deception. There is no Highway 27 anywhere near our home, period.]
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The red is still there, helping most people to spot the difference easily, but the brackets and italics allows the color-blind to spot it as well.
 
As always, good advice, Robert. Thank you.

I see Meg's still hard at work on the flfiesta forum with the psychics. There's yet another new one on the scene now. Not a surprise!
 
I'm hoping this isn't a silly suggestion like some I pose when I'm overtired.

I was thinking of posting a checklist of sorts for people who, no matter what, are going to use psychics to "help" in their missing loved one's cases. A checklist could possibly help them get a bit closer to seeing the light in respect to usefulness of psychics. It may serve to uncover their deceit.

Some examples of items on such a checklist:

1) If the psychic claims to have assisted police on any type of case, ask them to provide the contact info for that LE and specifics on their involvement and what they did to help.
a) how much information did police or the family provide to the psychic
b) what information was already publicly available through news articles or family websites
c) is the case resolved and what was the outcome

2) If they claim to have worked with other families, ask for references and for specifics on what they did to help.
a) what information was already publicly available through news articles or family websites

etc, etc.
 
Sounds like a good idea, Kelly.

Also, some normal business-type questions might be a good idea (you'd have to use your experience to determine if you think they'd be effective), such as:

Are you willing to sign a contract for your services?
Are you willing to agree to a quality clause? If your information is wrong or unverifiable, you forfiet or reduce your fee? (in other words, payment is contigent upon accuracy)
When is payment due? (if they insist on payment up front, that's a warning sign).

A few of these types of questions can go a long way towards verifying the psychics confidence in thier own ability (i.e.-deluded or scammer), as well as placing some protections on the family. I'd suspect most of these psychics would disagree with these strictures.
 
Great suggestion, Huntsman.

I'd like to see the tables turned on the psychics on this point.

Maybe they should be billed for wasted resources and time spent chasing down their guesses. :mad:

I know a woman who will not stop using them. She frequently drives hundreds of miles checking on things told to her by psychics, and comes up empty handed. :(

Even though this borders on the ridiculous in a legal sense, (at least here in the US) it might make people think, especially given the negative reaction of the psychic to this demand. They will lose their confidence rather quickly if they are not allowed any leeway and excuses.
 
Kelly, there's not much I can do from where I live to help you, and I want to thank you for your work and helping me find much better argument to fight the "psychic vampires" in my part of the World, so I thought I'd share this nice story on a French-speaking skeptic board:
http://forum.sceptiques.qc.ca/viewtopic.php?t=2621

"Douce-Lionne" came asking for advice on the feasibility of suing a medium who had advised her to sell her goods and leave town to rebuild her life, following her husband's suicide, and had predicted one of her friend's child was going to die (the friend lives in terror ever since). Looks like she's found a new passion:


Ok, so you lied to me, tried to make a living on a widow's money, so I'll use my newly awakened woman's money and I'll make you understand what it costs to lie and make believe you can talk to the dead, and be careful next time you'll tell a mother her kid's going to die, she's going to lose her job and should sell her house and leave town, losing her friends in the process.

I'll go to court because I don't find it funny that people pretend being "gifted" when their only talent is with doing the dishes and laughing at us as soon as we're past the door.

That's what motivates me, and it was high time I woke up !
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Huntsman said:
Sounds like a good idea, Kelly.

Also, some normal business-type questions might be a good idea (you'd have to use your experience to determine if you think they'd be effective), such as:

Are you willing to sign a contract for your services?
Are you willing to agree to a quality clause? If your information is wrong or unverifiable, you forfiet or reduce your fee? (in other words, payment is contigent upon accuracy)
When is payment due? (if they insist on payment up front, that's a warning sign).

A few of these types of questions can go a long way towards verifying the psychics confidence in thier own ability (i.e.-deluded or scammer), as well as placing some protections on the family. I'd suspect most of these psychics would disagree with these strictures.
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And - would they be willing to sign some kind of confidentiality or non-disclosure agreement - i.e. whatever the outcome of the case, the family won't be taken unawares by a tv show all about them and their psychic saviour at a later date.
 
chillzero said:
And - would they be willing to sign some kind of confidentiality or non-disclosure agreement - i.e. whatever the outcome of the case, the family won't be taken unawares by a tv show all about them and their psychic saviour at a later date.
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That's a two way street. I mean, would the victim be able to publicly disclose what a joke the psychic turned out to be?

Anyway, no psychic is going to provide the information asked for, or sign any piece of paper. They have a ready dodge for every one of the items proposed.

Also, a psychic is going to tell the desperate family of the missing person that there is no time to waste on such things.

It's a good idea to provide a checklist for the family along the lines of "How to tell your psychic is a fraud". But to expect the psychic to participate in an investigation of herself is just not going to happen. ETA: And let's face it, not everyone has good investigative skills to determine if they are being defrauded, particularly when they are emotionally wrecked.

Asking a psychic for the names of families or law enforcement with whom they have worked in the past is going to be answered with, "I would like to give you that information, but I have to respect their privacy."

If they do give the name of a law enforcement officer with whom they have worked, you run the risk of having a law enforcement officer who believes in psychics actually confirming their utility.

I think it would be best to just have a pamphlet with the kinds of quotes that are in the blog series from Klaas and such, as well as official statements from well known police agencies about the utter uselessness of psychics.

In fact, a simple booklet form of the series would be even better.
 
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Somewhere in the series, a young girl told a psychic that there was a huge reward for information leading to the solving of a missing person case, so why didn't the psychic just solve it and collect it instead of asking for an upfront fee of hundreds of dollars? The psychic said, "We don't work that way."

Stuff like that in a series booklet should be in boldface. You know how magazine articles will have a box in the text that quotes something from the text? Like that.
 
Picture it. A booklet with the title Psychics and Missing People that can be sent to the families and friends of missing persons.

Maybe they will read it, maybe they won't. But when a psychic attempts to contact them, I bet they will read it. The fact it has articles by people in their exact same position packs one hell of a punch.
 
Flo said:
Kelly, there's not much I can do from where I live to help you, and I want to thank you for your work and helping me find much better argument to fight the "psychic vampires" in my part of the World, so I thought I'd share this nice story on a French-speaking skeptic board:
http://forum.sceptiques.qc.ca/viewtopic.php?t=2621

"Douce-Lionne" came asking for advice on the feasibility of suing a medium who had advised her to sell her goods and leave town to rebuild her life, following her husband's suicide, and had predicted one of her friend's child was going to die (the friend lives in terror ever since). Looks like she's found a new passion:
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Hi Flo,

What a story. That infuriates me that the woman told her that the friend's son would die soon! (among other things) If you can, keep us informed on what happens in this story.

It would be groundbreaking, would it not, if we could sue psychics and other predators for emotional distress/wasted efforts, etc?

Thank you.

Kelly
 
Hi Luke,

I think the brochure is a great idea. We could have it on our site as a download, like a PDF file. We could also have hard copies available.

In regards to the other discusssions, is there no legal ramification in the US to keep these predators at bay? I know of none. Are they protected by Freedom of Speech?

I'm not a sue-happy person, but in so many of these cases, enough is enough. I really won't have definitive proof in my case until I know the final answer, but other people, such as Lori's family, do know the answer, and it wasn't what the psychics said. :mad:
 
KellyJ said:
In regards to the other discusssions, is there no legal ramification in the US to keep these predators at bay?
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Randi asks variations of this question in his commentaries all the time. :)

Apparently, these people are free to do as they please.

I think what is needed is for someone to record their phone conversations with a psychic who initiated contact and who won't leave them alone. I think that would be very powerful in court when the jury considers the emotional stress the person was in when they were being harrassed. Getting them on tape asking for money would be great.

Even if it wasn't in a court of law, it would go a long way in the court of public opinion.
 
Of course you would need to tell the phychic you you were recording the conversation, and get an OK, or I don't think it is admissible in court.
 
Luke T. said:
Randi asks variations of this question in his commentaries all the time. :)

Apparently, these people are free to do as they please.

I think what is needed is for someone to record their phone conversations with a psychic who initiated contact and who won't leave them alone. I think that would be very powerful in court when the jury considers the emotional stress the person was in when they were being harrassed. Getting them on tape asking for money would be great.

Even if it wasn't in a court of law, it would go a long way in the court of public opinion.
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It's too bad if it takes phone harrassement to do anything about this. I've been harrassed by email, although I doubt that anyone would take it seriously other than people who understand this situation. Saying that I'm a bad mother and that I don't care about my son because I won't do another reading would not count as harrassement in the eyes of the law. :(
 
Katachresis said:
Of course you would need to tell the phychic you you were recording the conversation, and get an OK, or I don't think it is admissible in court.
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Depends on the state, actually. IN some states, all parties involved must be aware of a recording for it to be admissable. In others, however, consent from a single party involved is all that matters. So I'd suggest checking your state laws.
 
I continue to be in awe of the positive results already achieved, and the continuing good work being done via this thread. The booklet or pamphlet idea is fantastic. Although I agree with Luke T. that no psychic would agree to answer the questions posed by Kelly's proposed checklist, I also think those refusals speak volumes to people, so I would include those. As to the possibility that someone would come across a bleever cop who would back up the psychic, I guess it's possible. However, the preponderance of evidence presented here and on other skeptical forums suggests that would be very rare. I would also include the suggestion that LE references be checked.
 
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