Nobody really knows whether people can have psychic powers or spiritual or religious knowledge.

However, some people who claim to have such powers or knowledge use this claim to take advantage of depressed, anxious, vulnerable people.

They do this by using the techniques of hot reading and cold reading.

Hot reading occurs when a supposed psychic finds out information about you before demonstrating their “psychic abilities”.

For example, if you are in the audience before a show, the psychic (note that in this post when I say psychic, I am referring to someone who claims to be a psychic , not someone who has been proven to have psychic powers. It’s just easier than typing “so-called psychic” every time) can have a helper sit next to you and have a conversation with you. The helper will then tell the psychic what they have learned. When you appear before the psychic and the psychic reveals that your mother recently died of cancer and that are planning to go on a long journey, you are amazed by the psychic’s ability to read your mind.

There have been cases where famous faith healers were caught using radio transmitters to communicate with their assistants in the audience.

Cold reading is more subtle than hot reading. Cold reading is a way of using normal human psychological traits to manipulate people into believing that they know more about you than would seem possible without some sort of psychic powers.

Cold readers will often use vague statements, such as “I sense that you are very concerned about a relationship”, which many people will agree applies to them.

They will also sometimes combine opposite traits in a single statement, so that they can apply to anyone. For example, “You often enjoy the company of other people, but there are times when you need to be alone with your thoughts.” This technique is called the “rainbow ruse”.

Cold readers often fish for details. For example, the psychic will something vague, like I’m thinking of somebody named “Barry”. If the subject says, “my brother’s name is Barry”, the psychic will move on. However, if the subject doesn’t know a Barry, the psychic will say, “I’m sure I sense the letter B” - it must be someone whose name begins with the letter B. The subject will then think of a friend or relative whose name beings with B, say a cousin, “Beatrice”.

After a while, the subject will forget all about the name and remember that the psychic guessed that he had a cousin called Beatrice. This is due to a psychological trait called “selective thinking”, in which people tend to remember the things that support their beliefs and forget the things that don’t support it.

If it happened that the subject didn’t know anyone at all whose name started with B, the psychic would accuse the subject of repressing a painful memory, and then move to a new topic.

However, to prevent this from happening too often, good cold readers memorize things like the most common first names and the most common medical conditions, so that for example, they can say something like “I’m thinking of an older male relative of yours. He seems to have something wrong with this heart.”

Experts at cold reading pay attention to the subject’s body language to obtain feedback. They pay attention to the subject’s voice and breathing patterns, their body movements, whether their pupils are dilated or contracted, and so forth, to determine if the subject is accepting what they say. If the subject seems to be taking it all in, the psychic will continue along, fishing for further details. If the subject’s body language seems to show that the psychic is going down the wrong path, the psychic will move to a different topic.

Cold readers take advantage of the fact that human beings have a naturally tendency to try to make sense of things. Rather than reject a statement as being wrong, we will try to figure out it can be right. – “My father didn’t have what I would have considered to be heart disease, but he did have high blood pressure. That must have been what the psychic meant.”

Cold readings are also sometimes done by sales people, advertisers, counsellors and others who want you to come to them for advice, in order to make you believe that they understand you and know what is best for you.

Psychic who claim to be able to contact the dead are often cold readers. People who have recently lost loved ones are in a very vulnerable emotional state, and have a very strong need to believe that their loved ones aren’t lost to them forever. Therefore, they are even more likely to fall for the techniques of cold readers than the general population. In their highly suggestible state, they will only remember those statements that “proved” that the psychic was in touch with the deceased.

The psychic will use positive statements when communicating the “thoughts” of the deceased. “Your Aunt Mary wants you to know she is having a wonderful time in heaven. She isn’t in any pain and she feels young again.” “Your Aunt Mary wants you to know she loves you very much.” This will make the subject even more inclined to believe that the psychic is telling the truth, because in their fragile emotional state, the subject needs to believe this.

thank you

i'm so glad u posted this dream fairy. not enough people are aware of this risk. many people who claim to have spiritual or pyschic powers, who may actually have them, realize how vunerable these people who come to them are. they will try to talk you into anything, because they know they can. i went to chicago with my sister to visit my cousin and she told us that she went to this physic who gave her a reading which my cousin felt was very helpful. then this woman told her she would like to do this special thing with her over 6 weeks or so where they would meet once a week and go through each year of her life and find every obstacles or issues and resolve them. she told her that she would just have to pay for materials....guess what the cost was?------$1500!!! for what u may ask, CANDLES! this woman realized how vunerable my cousin was and she's a very intelligent person who is also a good judge of character and she still got sucked in. my sis and i told her NOT to do it! i can't believe the nerve of this woman! if u are blessed enough to tap into these gifts, please please dont use them with bad intentions!! and be aware of others intentions always!

~renee

I was a victim

Last year from about march till July, I was severly depressed and had an eating disorder and I kept turning to pyschics hoping they could tell me of the good thigns the future would bring, i must of spent around 2000 dollars seeking out answers and all of them were wrong.

I've rewritten the original post so that it's easier to understand (I hope.)

Common scams and genuine psychics

Great post, thankyou!

Years ago I worked as a Tarot card reader, and in the course of my interests, met psychics, readers, and certified mediums who were gifted, sincere intuitive counsellors, people who spent many years developing their skills. In my experience, people often come to psychics looking for psychological "quick fixes", and even the best cannot give them what they really need, which is the in depth work of ongoing therapy. Also, people generally hear what they want to hear, and even the most sensitive intuitive often cannot penetrate the wall of preconceived ideas or needs a client brings to the table. All of this is why I stopped doing psychic work.

I've also seen some scams; its a world ripe for exploitation, as your article so well points out. The Gypsies have a scam that is so common it must have been passed on among their "fortune tellers" for many generations. They will begin to "see", after creating an atmosphere of sympathetic intimacy, that the person has a "curse" of some kind on them. This can take many forms, from "black magic" to "a negative entity", etc. For a small fee (which gets bigger and bigger) they will help the person remove the curse that is blighting his or her life. Once they have the person hooked, they'll continue until they've milked the sitution dry. It's hard to believe that this still works, but it does. Recently I heard of a reader at a Renaissance Faire in New York pulling this, and notified the management that a "classic" Gypsy reader was probably working there.

I've also seen a lot of people who are well meaning but misguided by their unconscious personal issues, which completely overtake their "advice". A good reader should never, ever, impart fearful or negative information, although it would be alright to suggest being "frugal", "cautious", or "temperate". Anyone who talks about "death", "misfortune", etc. (unless the query concerns something that has happened in the past that the querant is consciously seekng to heal or resolve) is either setting the person up for manipulation, or is projecting their unconscious negativity onto a "client" who may be vulnerable, and thus absorb it.

Thanks laurenraine. That's very helpful information