Brattus, I want to mention one more thing since you asked about this. How is it possible to be around someone like Sylvia Browne and not figure out right away that she isn't psychic?
Because Sylvia Browne made it clear back then that she is not psychic for herself or for people she is emotionally close to. She used to joke about how she would say, "How are you?" to someone at a party, and invariably some wiseguy would say, "Well, you should know!" As a result, and conveniently for her of course, none of us expected her to be psychic for herself, or even for us. Does that make more sense?
Now I get all snarky about that because it was just a ruse. I know, d'oh. It's a sneaky way to distract people from the fact that she isn't really psychic. I've even heard other psychics mimic her on this. They know a good thing when they hear it, right?
But that's now. Back then I trusted her.
Now, I have a little more to say with regard to the lying issue and how I came to trust her.
I have been thinking about this, and I realize that partly Sylvia Browne won me over with kindness. Twenty years ago a reading cost $400 and lasted 45 minutes or so, and by the end of my first reading with her she knew that my best friend had died, my relationship had just ended, I was in a rotten job with no money, just this lonely young girl living by herself in a one-bedroom apartment... I think she just felt sorry for me. I don't know but she invited me to attend her trance classes for free. Mr. ExM, who knew her better than I did, said he doesn't recall her having done that for anyone else. But for whatever reason, she did that for me. To repay her kindness, I volunteered in the offices. I know I've mentioned this here before, but she was very close to my husband. She eventually made us ministers for free - another gift to us, though that was years later. She did readings for me for free during those early years, just taking me aside and sitting me down somewhere when she could see I was struggling - something else my husband said she rarely ever did.
The fact is, I thought she wasn't a very good psychic because she got a lot wrong. Then again, she DID say she couldn't read for those of us she was close to, and the only errors I knew about were in the readings of people close to her. I thought her actions to be kind of unspiritual at times, to put it mildly. We left the church the first time around in a big mess of a drama, which we attributed to Sylvia having let her personal feelings get in the way of her objectivity. I won't go into all of that.
Her behavior, it turns out, was inexcusable. But I had to be 100% sure of my position before I could take the stance I took and continue to take here on this forum, because I did consider her a friend, at the very least someone who had always been kind to me, until I found out the truth. Really, there was no other conclusion to reach: A person faking trances is a person who is actively deceiving people. The end. A person lying on TV, within hearing of her own ministers who KNOW she is lying, is a person who can't be trusted. The end. Period.
The fact is, a person who lies and deliberately deceives you is NOT a friend, and that is not kind. BTW, I didn't have the benefit of Robert's web site at this time, as it was just going up around the time I resigned. Having that, of course, would have helped.
Also, just for the record, I say nothing here on this forum that I wouldn't say directly to her face-to-face. That's a rule that I live by.
For a long while, I would actually waver occasionally with all of this. Some memory would come up and I would start thinking, "Well, what if she really was sincere? What if she didn't mean to hurt anyone?" My husband, who had been way closer to her than I was, would then get all disgusted and say, "Sheesh, think of the trances. The lying on TV. Shawn Hornbeck!! Opal Jo Jennings!" And it would be like a slap in the face with reality. My husband, for his part, never wavered. For him, betrayal is betrayal, and he has remained totally and completely furious and disgusted with her, without any doubt whatsoever.
Those years of wavering are long gone, I'm happy to say. And at no point has ANY of this been intended as a defense of Sylvia Browne.
At any rate, that's the deal with Sylvia Browne and my experience with her.
And it didn't stop there. No, I really liked Robert Lancaster and the way he thought. Thanks to him I got hooked on this forum, the rationality, the logical arguments, the critical thinking. I asked RSL if he could recommend a few skeptical books. He suggested Carl Sagan's
Demon-Haunted World and James Randi's books. I ordered them and read them in a week and then I bought more. I haven't stopped reading skepticism and science since.
Believe me, if I could be content to live a lie, I would not be here right now. I would not have turned into this skeptic that my family and friends don't quite know what to do with. I know most everyone wishes I was like I was before.
Believe me when I say it would have been so much easier to maintain the status quo.
I've been saying for years, "I just want to know the truth." It's ultimately turned me into a skeptic! Who would have thought it? So it's kind of funny that you bring this up, Brattus.
All right. I'm done rambling on about myself in a thread that is supposed to be about Linda Rossi and not me. Unless someone asks me something else that requires a lengthy answer, I promise to stop rambling.
