I’ve never been a big fan of world renowned “psychic” Sylvia Browne. The practice bugs me. As far as I am aware there has never been anyone who demonstrated, in a controlled environment, any sort of psychic power. James Randi has run a $1,000,000 paranormal challenge for a decade whereby anyone, with an paranormal ability, has only to prove it in a proper experiment and walk away with a million bucks. Despite many applicants, no one has claimed that prize. I think this is telling. The big guys, Sylvia Browne being one of them, go no where near this challenge which seems to hint that they don’t actually believe in their “powers”. Sylvia has, on numerous occasions, agreed on national television to take the challenge but has consistently weaseled out of it (couldn’t find Randi’s phone number, wanted to proof that prize exists, to finally Randi doesn’t believe in god so…). Again I think this speaks volumes.

Anyways. This stuff is a bit of a tricky issue because most of the time it’s done by adults and most of the time there isn’t an obvious harm to anyone. If someone wants to have an $850 30min reading (that’s what Sylvia charges) I guess that’s their decision. If they want to believe in this despite the total lack of evidence I guess that’s fine. I have much more of a problem when psychics get involved in medical issues and missing person cases (both of which Sylvia has done). In the former, people have forgone, or delayed, valuable medical treatment based on her advice. In the later, Sylvia is messing with, and derailing, police investigations.

So, when the time came to see Sylvia’s “last” tour, for free, how could I say no? Anji won me some tickets for the event from a local radio station and myself and my skeptical friend Steve went to the show.

I went in there with a pretty bad attitude having seen videos of and read a lot of the dangerous readings and advice she has given. I went so far as to make a special t-shirt for the event with the “Stop Sylvia Brown” logo on it (I wore this under another shirt and only exposed it briefly to get a photo of me in the show with it on :) ). So the show somewhat surprised me…

To start off… Some general observations. The crowd was substantially women. And by substantially I would say ~90%. The men that were there were almost always part of a couple. I think Steve and I were probably part of an extreme minority. I’ve often thought that women tended to be more spiritual that men and this certainly re-enforced that.

The show started off with Sylvia just talking about her books, her religion (oh yes. She’s started a church) and that sort of stuff. I hadn’t heard much about her religion (which is labeled as Gnostic Christian) before so this was… interesting. I think the basic idea is somewhat similar to Hinduism. The deal is that “hell” is here on earth. We have a number of lives here on earth before we get to advance to Heaven. Before each life we have to choose what it is that you are going to do this life (ie. you are responsible for your own life). Her rules are pretty much (1) respect god and (2) don’t be a jerk here on earth. Karma was brought up a few times too. I’m not entirely sure where the relation to Christianity came in?

While she spoke of the religion there were murmurs of approval, applause, etc. People were exicited. I guess that makes sense. A religion where you are not, by default, a sinner, and where you will get to go to heaven, sooner or later, is probably fairly appealing to many people. It also set the tone for the rest of the afternoon; the whole afternoon was a positive “telling you what you want to hear”, sort of thing.

Despite myself, I found myself laughing out loud a lot. While I don’t agree with her views on life, the afterlife, or stealing money from suffering people, she is an interesting speaker and, at times, she was hilarious. She spoke about getting older and how it’s a crime to put mirrors on the inside of bathroom doors in hotels, facing the shower (you can probably see where this went). She really had the crowd (>1000 people I would guess) loosened up by the end of it.

After a short break she led us in a group meditation with some snazzy new-age music playing in the background. It was rather odd. She spoke about thinking about and healing your muscles, your reproductive organs, various other organs, medulla oblongata, your pituitary, etc. It all seemed rather specific. I wonder if it’s an attempt to make it sound scientific? I was day dreaming through most of that. It was kinda boring but the whole crowd was quite in to it. All around us where people with arms in their laps, palms up, and eyes closed.

Finally we got into the good stuff. The predictions / readings. This was what I really wanted to see. I got out my notebook for this piece (which got me some semi-hostile looks from those around me).

When we went in to the show we were each given a ticket with a number on it. Sylvia would call out numbers and, if you had the matching ticket, you got to ask one question. She really plowed through and did probably 40 or so readings. It was really hard to keep up with my notes but I got the gist of a lot of them. Here are some of the typical questions and answers and my thoughts on them.

On class of question that was particularly unsatisfying was this. Sylvia says that we all have a “spirit guide” that’s with us some/all of the time. Probably four or five people simply asked the name of their spirit guide. Sylvia must love these types of questions. She pauses for a few seconds and then blurts out a name like Luela or Alena. Seriously.

A number of people asked if they were on the right track with respect to a new business venture or their finances. Sylvia invariable said yes. I guess this makes you feel good but I’m not sure I would trust her word for my business or personal finances. I think I might, instead, ask someone like a banker, retirement planner, investment planner, business expert, etc… It’s funny because I bet nobody would forgo going to the mechanic and instead ask Sylvia if their car was in good shape. I think some of these people are going to be disappointed when, as statistics would have it, a large percentage of those businesses fail.

A couple people asked some health related questions and I was very relieved that Sylvia immediately recommended going to see a doctor. She then tried to add some “value” be recommending the doctor investigate the intestinal tract. I’ve seen her give that same advice on a YouTube video before. I assume that abdominal pain is typically related to something with the intestines?

Some of the questions were given very specific predictions and I have no doubt that many of them will fail but long after everyone has dispearsed and left the room so I doubt there will be any consequence. In one case a woman was nervous about her house selling. Sylvia confidently assured her it would sell, for her asking price, in a month and a half.

Sylvia, as psychics often do, was fairly smooth for taking credit for a hit where the information was volunteered. This case was interesting.

Woman: I want to know if my grandmother is spending time around my daughter.
Sylvia: Yes she is. Your daughter can see her. I’m surprised she hasn’t told you.
Woman: She has told me.
Sylvia: Yes I know.

Um. Well I suppose you do know since she just told you!

One woman asked how many past lives she’s had. Sylvia immediately responded with 47. And then reassuringly added this was her last life. Murmurs fell over the crowd at this. I think this was exciting to most of the people in the room.

One woman asked about meeting a husband and was told she would meet a dark haired, blue eyed, 6′1″ man in December. The woman looked pleased.

One of the weirder ones was a 30ish woman who had a “visitor” come to her place of work. She thought that maybe this visitor was her husband from the future. Sylvia assured her that this was the case and that he was an angel. The woman was pleased and said, “I thought so.” And I thought… Um… Sure…

A number of people asked about their parents and if they had a message for them. Every single time the parents were hand-in-hand and very happy. Again. Telling people what they want to hear.

My favorites were when people would ask about the angels near them. Sylvia would say that she sees someone of average height, average weight, and dark hair. When asked if the victimaudience member knew this person they would smile and say yes. Who the heck does not know someone of average height, weight and the most common hair color around?!! Sometimes it was a roundish man, balding while other times a slender woman. Sometimes when it wasn’t an immediate hit she’d just keep stretching it out to uncles, aunts, etc until the nod of recognition. A few times Sylvia would try and provide a name of the angel but these didn’t go so well for her. In one case she tried “Margarette”. The woman didn’t know a Margarette so Sylvia hummed a bit more and said… “err. Maybe Mary?” and lucked out. Apparently the guest did know a Mary. Gah! My favorite case was when she volunteered the name Anne. The woman made it clear that she did not know an Anne and Sylvia countered by switching subjects to tell the woman that her parents were “holding hands and very happy.” (Margarette and Anne being fairly common names for the age of the deceased parents)

A very interesting one was when a young woman came up and asked if there was a message from her deceased fiance. Sylvia then asked if the man died suddenly. Yes he did. So then Sylvia asked why she saw him holding his head. The woman seemed surprised and answered he had his neck broken. Sylvia, claiming the win, said of course that’s why he was holding his head. However, if you think about this one… The woman is young so presumably her fiance was too. Sylvia had then probed and found he had died suddenly. Now I’m no doctor but it seems to me that there are not that many common causes for a young someone to die suddenly. Off hand I can think of heart problems, brain aneurysms, broken neck, and major trauma. I don’t think that people my age generally die of a heart attack or other hearth failure. So saying that he’s holding his head is going to look like a hit for the for mentioned aneurysms, broken neck, and even major trauma from an accident. This was one of Sylvia’s more clever readings. However I’ve seen her do EXACTLY the same thing on Montel only for an aneurysm case.

On other one that was interesting was a woman asked about her love life. She was told there would be two men. One with blond hair, one with brown. Avoid the blond haired one at all costs she was told. She seemed confused and tried to tell Sylvia that she was currently living with a man and Sylvia cut her off and told her to keep away from the blond man. I hope the man she’s with now isn’t blond! What a stupid reason to break up with him.

I could keep going on this but I’m sure you are getting bored :)

So my final attitude coming out of the show is mixed. Sylvia never once gave, as far as I could tell, any dangerous medical advice. The people who were asking her questions were often very distraught about something (lost parents, brother, siblings, finances, etc) and Sylvia invariably answered with whatever people would want to hear. It was always positive. I suppose it gave some comfort to a good number of the people who went up that afternoon. That said, I don’t for a minute believe that any of this was accomplished with any sort of psychic abilities. Every one of her answers was vague. When she was asked to describe which spirits were around someone, the answer was always someone with very average features, dark hair, medium weight, height, etc. When she gave names they were common names. When she guessed medical problems I think they were educated guesses. I think Sylvia is good at reading people and doing cold readings. Nothing more.

I imagine if one were to do a study of the hits between her live shows and a sight-unseen telephone reading you would find, assuming similar duration reading, that the later would have a lower success rate. When doing the reading in person she can read facial expressions (to determine who traumatic something was), age, hair color, weight and height. All of these were integral components of the readings I witnessed. I think without access to all those visible cues her hit rate would fall.

While there was, arguably, some comfort given by Sylvia I think this is still pseudo science and fraud. Legitimizing this type of activity can not be good for a society. I bet these sorts of things would just go away if people were given some skills in critical thinking, instead of memorization, in school.

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn.t go away." - PK Dick