A start in how to expose a fake psychic/medium.

Pick a psychic, any psychic.

For the sake of this article, I will use the word psychic as a catch all word to describe anyone who claims psychic, paranormal or medium powers. So please no comments about me not knowing the difference.

One of the problems I face, is that I receive a lot of messages, either by email, or through social media. They usually go something like this.

"Have you heard of psychic Bob McBobberson, he is such a fraud, I wish you would expose him."

(Disclaimer: Bob McBobberson is a made up name, however if there is a real world, self proclaimed psychic by that name, I guarantee you he is a fake.)

I then face a dilema, if that psychic is a small time internet only psychic, with a few hundred followers, if I expose him, and put his name on this site, I will inadvertently give him publicity, and he can then claim to be in the same league as many of the big name psychics I have exposed.

I have literally seen psychics use being exposed on this site, as a badge of honour to say to their followers to gain sympathy. So as you can imagine, the last thing I want to do is help give a psychic publicity, even if I am exposing them along the way. You see believers will see such an article, and not read it, they will instantly dismiss it because it is written by me and published on this site. And clearly that is not a good thing for me, or for skepticism in general.

For bigger name psychics this is not a problem, as their names are already out there, and often I will get such a name thrown at me as someone who has never been exposed. Usually when I hear that, I will find a clip of them, and expose how they do it. Job done. My site ranks very highly in google, and their fans tend to read such articles.

It is much easier to reveal the truth to a fan of Gordon Smith for example, than a fan of Bob McBobberson, for the fan of Smith will have invested a lot of time and money in that psychic, going to shows, buying books and so on, so they will want to prove me wrong, and will try to find flaws in what I write, so will actually read my article. Of course the hope is, by doing that they realise they were fooled, get angry and never spend a penny of that psychic again.

Whereas fans of Bob McBobberson will be the types of believer that jump from one psychic to the next, again and again, trying to get that "fix" to feed their addiction.

So what I want to do here, is try to help people understand how to expose a psychic themselves, and at the very least, see through some of the tricks they would have previously fallen for.

And with that I am going to try to talk you through my thought process when I am faced with exposing a medium.

If you read through my replies to comments on this site, or on the forum, you will notice that I always offer a challenge to someone who is defending a psychic. That challenge is always the same.

Show me an unedited recording/video or a psychic you are 100% convinced is real, and I guarantee you 100% that I can show you how it is done.

Now the first thing you should notice here is what I am asking for, I am asking for an unedited recording. The reason is I understand how television works. When Colin Fry used to record his TV show, he would record for a few hours, but the final show would only be 25 minutes. His readings would seem incredibly accurate and the responses of the people being read, would completely validate what he had told them, whether that was in post show interviews, or even the affirmative nods on their faces during the show.

When making television, all entertainment shows need certain reactions from the audience. On X-Factor for examples, the warm up guy will often ask the crowd to give a standing ovation that can be filmed and used later. And peoples reactions will be filmed and shown out of order. There is no difference when it comes to psychics and their TV shows.

If a woman is shown nodding affirmatively to something the psychic has said, or crying, or some other emotion, you never truly know if that is a direct reaction to what the psychic has said, or if that has been edited to make the psychic seem more accurate. You are witnessing an edit, and every time the camera switches, there is a chance you are not seeing something in real time. So when I ask for an unedited recording, all that means is that it hasn't been professionally produced.

Often I will take such unedited records direct from a psychic's own youtube page. Because often they themselves are proud of their own work, and know that 99% of people who watch it, wont realise what is going on.

So when judging a psychic that you believe is real, or at least think are doing something you cant easily explain, make sure you are not watching something with multiple cameras, edits and cuts. So forget professionally produced TV shows.

One thing to note here, there is always a chance of hot reading, whether that is researching someone who has booked a reading using their name, email, whatever, there are endless ways to research someone. Just look at the latest Facebook scandal with data being sold. There are so many ways to find out about people in the world of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and so on.

But let's assume the person has not been researched and the psychic really has no idea who they are and has no prior knowledge on them, this reading could be one on one, or it could be someone picked out from an audience. How do we start to spot a fake?

The absolute easiest way to spot a fake psychic is if they tell the client to only answer yes or no. This is the oldest trick in the book, a psychic does this so they can claim that they are not fishing for information, or that the client is telling them things and so on. The truth is the complete opposite, the psychic by forcing the client to only answer in one of two ways is taking complete control of the reading, they are able to frame it in such a way that most times regardless of how the client reacts, it will end up being a hit.

Let me give you a simple example.

Psychic: Did your Grandfather smoke?
Client: No
Psychic: Yes he is telling me it disgusted him.
Client: Correct.

So the person then comes away thinking the psychic knew that your Grandfather didn't like people who smoked. Let's try again.

Psychic: Did your Grandfather smoke?
Client: Yes
Psychic: Yes I can see him sat in his favourite chair smoking and having a whiskey.
Client: Correct

Now regardless of how the client reacts, the psychic can follow it up with a statement supposedly from the dead Grandfather.

Now if the psychic hadn't ordered the client to only answer yes or no, they may have added information in their answer, which then would have taken away what the psychic said in reply.

Psychic: Did your Grandfather smoke?
Client: Yes, he would enjoy a smoke with a glass of whiskey in the evening.
Psychic: Yes he is showing me that now.
Client: ok.

Can you see the difference, now the client has given the psychic more information, which gives the psychic less to repeat back, of course sometimes this does happen, and the psychic will simply repeat back the information the client told him perhaps later in the reading.

So this is a good place to start, if the psychic is controlling the reading completely they will tell you to answer yes or no, so if you hear that, they are a fraud, time to go home. Game over.

Now if they don't tell you that, then you need to keep track of what the psychic says, and what the client says.

This is why I will always have a reading transcribed, it makes it much easier to keep track.

Now if you do this yourself, the easiest thing you can do is count how many questions the psychics asks. Simple as that.

A real psychic would not need to ask any questions at all. Not even "would you understand that?" By asking "Would you understand that?" The psychic is FISHING, they need to know their reading is going the right direction so they can continue, if they do not know, then their reading could go in the complete wrong direction and they end up looking a fool.

If the person reacts in a negative manner to that question, it allows the medium to change directions, they can tell the client that they need to "take that home with you", this basically is their way out, they are getting rid of you. They then change the direction of the reading or end it completely. You go home, you ask your relatives a version of what the psychic has said, if it is vaguely right, then you are amazed because there is no way he could have known about it, and he couldn't have picked it up from you, if he is wrong, it is just forgotten about. Either way the psychic doesn't have to deal with the result.

In the inner circle, this is known by psychics as the "Take Home Escape", and pretty much all psychics use it. Think of it like a fishing net, you have a small net. Psychic asks you if you understand the number 50. You have no idea. So you go home and ask your parents, because there is two of them, their net is twice as big, so a wider chance of success. That number 50 might be the number of the house someone lived in 40 years, the year someone was born/died, joined the army. If your parents don't know, they ask their siblings, their net is double the size for each added person to the question, and so on.

One of the reasons it is called "fishing for information" is the wider you cast the net, the more chance you will catch a fish.

So as you transcribe the reading, every time a sentence ends in a question mark, note it down, and count them up. Then at the end of the reading, just read through them all, and ask yourself, why is the psychic asking question after question.

It might look something like this.
Would you understand that?
Is your mother still alive?
Did he work in the steel industry?
I'm getting the number 4, was he 1 of 4 children, or did he have 4 siblings?
Did he die of something to do with the chest area?

Next, take out everything the psychic says, and only read the responses from the client, note down all the information they give the psychic. This truly is the easiest way to see how much the client says compared to how much the psychic says.

Notice how often the client will ask no questions at all. How strange is that when you really think about it? You pay to see a psychic, they claim that they are speaking to your dead relative, yet you never ask a question or at least never get a direct response to a question, yet the psychic asks you question after question.

If you can separate what the psychic says and what the client says, this really is a great way to see the direction the information flows, and it is never from the psychic to the client.

Of course there is much much more that can be analysed in readings, but this truly is the easiest way to expose a psychic and a great way to start doing it yourself.

So to summarize.
1. Write down and count how many questions the psychic asks.
2. Write down all the information the client gives the psychic.

Compare the two. Does it still look like the psychic told the client everything? Or does it seem more like the client gave the information and the psychic just repeated it back and elaborated a bit.

Now I have given you a starting point, why not use this knowledge. You want to expose a psychic. Do as I suggest. Find that unedited raw recording, transcribe it, and go through it.

You can open on a free blog on Blogger.com or Wordpress or something like that, and publish it.

You can even drop me a line and ask me to look it over first, to make sure it all looks good, I will happily do that, and even give you advice and help you.

The more we expose psychics the better, but this is just one site, I would much prefer an army of 100s of people all with their own little blogs, all publishing articles, exposing the methods.

So you have a choice, sit on your backside and do nothing, or help me to help you and others.

By Jon Donnis

What to do if you believe you have been scammed by James Higgins TV Psychic Medium or anyone else

In October 2018, Bad Psychics published an article entitled “Why you should avoid James Higgins Psychic Medium, which you can read here.

Much to even our surprise, it provoked a huge response – as you can see from the comments section. He now ranks as our most complained-about psychic ever with posts such as these:

Please note that all images can be clicked on and enlarged to make easier to read.

However, as appalling as his alleged behaviour is here, things have recently taken an even darker turn. In the last week alone, we have been flooded with messages, all telling very similar disturbing stories. We therefore felt it was important to do a follow-up article with information about this and advice on what to do if you ever make the mistake of paying for a reading from a psychic/medium.

James Higgins’s latest scheme

If you visit Mr. Higgins’s Facebook page, you’ll see that he has now amassed several thousand followers. A closer look will reveal how he has done so. He live-streams videos practically every day, asking people to send him messages if they want the chance to get a free reading. The word ‘free’ is guaranteed to grab people’s attention – and it’s also a sure-fire way of getting his page numbers up. Especially since he also tells his followers that they must share his videos and like his page to take part.

Needless to say, many people messaged him in the hope of winning. They then got responses like these:

And these:

And these:

Can you spot the differences?

Nope! Despite shameless claims such as “you are one of the first I feel drawn to”, and “I believe there is something you need to know”, they’re all identical automated replies – with just the recipients’ first names changed.   

But sad to say, many people did fall for this, clicked on the attached link which took them to his ‘Spirit HQ’ page, and paid around £32+ each for a reading.

It should be mentioned here that most of the customers only did so because they had suffered bereavements, were feeling very vulnerable, and were desperate to hear from loved ones again. In fact, to illustrate this, here is a selection of just a few of the distressed messages which we have received over the last few days.   

Think for a moment how despicable it is to take advantage of people who are grieving. But I’m afraid it gets worse. Because not only did his customers never receive their readings, they just got more spam when they tried to make enquiries:

And then to top everything off, they were blocked from his page when they asked for refunds!

As a result of all this, we’ve been inundated with messages from his customers asking us what to do.

Well, in answer to this, we have three pieces of advice.


1. Get Your Money Back

If you paid by PayPal, log in to your account and open a dispute in PayPal’s Resolution Center.

Information on how to do this is here on PayPal’s official site. https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/security/buyer-protection-resolution

And you can also find step-by-step instructions in this article:
https://medium.com/@grailed/how-to-file-a-paypal-claim-ae9372cb371f

If you paid via any other method, contact your bank or credit card company.

For those in the UK, you should be entitled to a refund under the ‘Chargeback Scheme’. But make sure you do this within 120 days of paying for a reading.

Further information can be found here on the Citizens’ Advice Bureau website: 
https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/somethings-gone-wrong-with-a-purchase/getting-your-money-back-if-you-paid-by-card-or-paypal/


2. Report! Report! Report!

If you ever experience a situation like this with any (England/Wales-based) psychic, you MUST report them to Trading Standards!

If Trading Standards get enough complaints, they will investigate and can take the psychic to court or stop them operating.

To contact them, you must file a report via the Citizens’ Advice Bureau. Instructions are here: 
https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/get-more-help/report-to-trading-standards/


3. NEVER EVER Pay For A Psychic Reading Again

I have looked closely into the psychic world for over 15 years (while Jon Donnis has investigated it for even longer). Neither of us has ever come across conclusive proof of anyone having psychic powers. In our experience, psychics/mediums always fall into one of two categories.

a) Deluded people who believe they have psychic powers
b) Con-artists/tricksters who exploit grieving and/or vulnerable people.

It’s a sad fact that happy people rarely consult psychics/mediums. The psychic market usually consists of people who are down on their luck for one reason or another, and are looking for someone to bring them hope. But believe me, a psychic or medium will never provide that! As the late great skeptic Robert S. Lancaster, among others, once observed, psychics/mediums will only:

i) Take money under false pretences from people who are in a very vulnerable state emotionally

ii) Make these vulnerable people so dependent on them that the victims will not be able to move on with their lives. Unfortunately, there have even been cases where victims have been scammed out of their life savings and ended up in debt because they believed what the psychics/mediums told them and kept going back for more.

iii) By inventing messages from people who have passed, the psychics/mediums will be stepping on the true memories of your loved ones.   

And on that note, I’ll end by saying that if you ever have problems or feel depressed for whatever reason, there is no shame in asking for help. There are professionals who can offer confidential support and unlike psychics/mediums, they will not charge you a penny.

If you are in the UK, you can contact the Samaritans for free on 116 123 or via their website: 
https://www.samaritans.org

Or if you are in the USA, you can call the Lifeline Network on 1-800-273-8255, again for free, or contact them via https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/talk-to-someone-now/ (N.B. This service is also available to those who may not be contemplating suicide).

Both phonelines are there for you 24/7 – day and night.


Addendum
As at the time of writing, James Higgins's main Facebook page has been deactivated. He has now moved his business to his Spirit HQ page, and is bizarrely blaming Facebook for “temporarily unpublishing” his Facebook page because of “high levels of engagement”. He also rather audaciously claims that he thinks he “holds a record in relation to levels of engagement and followers”. Make of that what you will.

In addition to that, some people have contacted us about a private Facebook account in his name (and with his photo) that appears to be messaging people and sending out friend requests.

However, we believe that this account is NOT actually James Higgins, but another scammer who is trying to cash in on fans/followers. See the screenshot.

Notice that this scammer wants money to be sent to the PayPal account of someone called Wycliffe Mutsami.

No doubt this is an impersonator from Africa. This is a VERY common trick that scammers (particularly from countries like Nigeria) use. They set up fake accounts in the names of celebrities or people who have a lot of Facebook followers and try to befriend their fans to get money out of them.

DO NOT accept any friend requests from this account or click on any (phishing) links it sends you. In fact, do not engage with it at all. Just block and report it.


--- The following paragraph is written by Jon Donnis---
Article written by someone who wishes to remain Anonymous, I have verified their identity.
Please understand that the amount of abuse someone gets for daring to speak out against people like James Higgins is huge, as such if you do want to be abusive you will be met with overwhelming kindness, facts, and knowledge. You wont scare us, you wont make us go away.

Why you should avoid James Higgins Psychic Medium

Source: Facebook/Google Images

"I recently had a run in with self proclaimed "Psychic Medium" James Higgins, and I thought it would be a good idea to look into him further, however since he had made certain rather nasty comments towards me, I thought it would be better if I asked someone else to write the article, so I asked a colleague here at BadPsychics, and the article below is written by them. As such I will say that any of the comments and opinions in the article below are those of the author." - Jon Donnis

As readers of Bad Psychics may be aware, we have various dealings with a woman called Deborah Davies over the years.

You can read the original article about her here, which reveals - among other things - the disgraceful claims she made about Madeleine McCann.

And don’t forget to check out the sequel, detailing the catfight she had with her former friend, Gail Cuffe who runs the ‘Readings by Gail’ Facebook page, (previously ‘Psychic123UKreadings’).

Alas, despite all of this, Ms Davies has continued to practise as a self-proclaimed psychic and medium. One of her latest schemes involves offering weekly horoscopes, which just happen to bear a curious resemblance to those on Russell Grant’s website.

Source: Facebook/Google Images/RusselGrant.mobi

Can you spot the differences?

Anyway, it now turns out that she is not the only person in her family to be making forays into the psychic world.  In autumn 2016, a series of posts appeared on her Facebook page, promoting her son, James Higgins. This struck me as a little odd as he was already 25 years old, and she had never indicated that he had any psychic ability before then.

In fact, one of the few times that she had mentioned him previously was when she publicised an event that he was due to host with someone from an inane reality show, back in 2014.

Source: Facebook/Google Images

However, it appears that this venture didn’t last long – as his Facebook page as an entertainment host/MC has since been deactivated. A cynic might be tempted to think that the sudden emergence of his alleged psychic ability very conveniently coincided with the failure of this business. Nevertheless, one must not jump to conclusions.  Let’s look at the evidence first before making our minds up as to whether James Higgins is the real deal or not.

To begin with, here are screenshots of Ms. Davies’s posts from last year – interspersed with my comments.

Source: Facebook/Google Images

So what do you think the odds of him creating his own psychic/mediumship Facebook page were?

Source: Facebook/Google Images

Oh, what a surprise! By the very next day, he had created a page.  And apparently, he had “no intention” of charging for his psychic services. Well, as we are about to see, that soon went out the window.

Source: Facebook/Google Images

As stated above, James was already 25 years old. Isn’t a bit strange that she hadn’t taught him to connect with his ‘spirit guide’ before then? Even more bizarre that she only taught him to do so after he had created a psychic mediumship page.

A few weeks later, this post appeared on both their pages:

Source: Facebook/Google Images

I have to say these are some of the most unconvincing examples of validations that I have ever seen. In the first case, I could name you half a dozen people who keep their feelings hidden. In fact, this is often said to be a typically British trait – i.e. keeping a stiff upper lip and not showing your emotions.

The second comment, on the other hand, really makes me sad. Clearly, this is someone who has suffered bereavement and is clutching at anything – no matter how vague – to give her hope of an afterlife.

Let’s be honest, though. Anyone could link the letter ‘B’ to a multitude of things in their lives. For example, just off the top of my head, I baked some bread for breakfast this morning.  I also got a text from my brother. One of best friends had a baby boy this year, and another close friend of mine had a birthday last month. I bought him a photo autographed by Bobby Charlton. I also have an Uncle Bruce and my grandmother’s sister was called Betty. And in my immediate circle of friends, I know people with the surnames Brown, Burton, Bennett, and Bright.

Furthermore, for all the positive responses that Ms Davies has for her son, we have received plenty of negative feedback in return.

For example, here are two typical complaints from former fans:

However, they were among the lucky ones, who decided not to pay for James Higgins’s psychic services. One customer, unfortunately, made the mistake of buying a reading from him and waited for three days – before she was sent this:  

Source: Facebook

(NB: At the time, James Higgins described himself as a ‘spirit medium’. He has now changed the name of his page to ‘James Higgins Psychic Medium’)

Just from looking at this reading, we can see that it’s simply a load of rambling waffle. James can’t seem to make up his mind as to whether the customer has just had a baby or is about to have one. He also talks about the customer getting the opportunity to work online – but then strangely contradicts himself at the end by saying that he “can’t see anything flagging up in her career”.

He was totally wrong, in any case. The customer actually completed her family many years ago. All her children are now adults, so she isn’t about to have another baby. Neither is anyone close to her, and she has no plans to work online.  She couldn’t believe it had taken him so long to produce something so short and inaccurate. She initiated a dispute to get her money back – but has yet to receive a refund.

These are not the only complaints that there have been about him. Another customer recently got in touch with us, alleging that James appears to be buying items online and then selling them at marked-up prices on his Facebook page. For instance, a few months ago, he offered this dress for £29.99 with a ‘free’ spirit reading.

Source: Facebook/Google Images

Note however, that you can buy EXACTLY the same dress here on eBay for £16.99 (plus £9.99 postage).

Now, in the interests of fairness, we should not confine our analysis of James’s psychic ability to his written readings or the items he sells. On occasion, he has conducted mediumship demonstrations for his customers.

Unfortunately, they don’t seem to be particularly impressive either.

A few months ago, he took part in a bizarre ghost hunt at a pub in Macclesfield. Apparently, this pub was supposed to be haunted by 22 ghosts, including a particularly evil spirit who has regularly assaulted women.

The video of the hunt went viral – and was picked up the Daily Mirror, which published an edited version on their website, complete with spooky background music. Yet *spoiler alert* absolutely NOTHING happens! The pub landlord, for some reason, goes into a particularly foul-mouthed rant at the ghost, goading it to attack him.  But James Higgins, for the most part, just stands there like a lemon, sporadically saying vague things like, “I sense a male presence.”

But let’s give James another chance. He sometimes holds live ‘question-and-answer’ sessions on Facebook. Here is a sample, which you can watch here:

You can, of course, judge for yourselves as to whether this video shows any proof of psychic ability. But for the purposes of accuracy, here is a transcript – with:

James Higgins’s reading in normal text,

commentary by me added in red,

and parts that I wish to draw attention to in bold.

---------

James: Sarah Lewis, you’re just commenting there. That is, you know, it’s really nice that I’m seeing messages like this. “What will my children be when they grow up?”

A fairly straightforward question about the future. But can he give her a straightforward answer?

Okay, erm, for now, I feel as though your children are at quite a young age.

She’s just asked what her kids will be “when they grow up”, so it’s pretty obvious that they aren’t very old.

There is so many factors that can influence this. I don’t feel in any way whatsoever that a child’s viewpoint on what they want to be now is what they’re going to be in the future. I wanted to be a barrister and that’s a very different job from what I’m doing right now. Erm, there are certain things that can influence this throughout their whole life. Lots of different roads that they could be taking at certain points and each option has a different outcome. So, it’s very difficult for me to be able to tell you that at the moment.

Eh – what?? This is common sense. Everyone already knows that there are different factors that can influence a person’s career path. But aren’t you supposed to be psychic? So shouldn’t you be able to say exactly which road the woman’s children will take?

But it’s very good that I’m seeing that you’re concerned about this. You’re very driven for your children and in the long run, that’s going to benefit them further down the line.

Well, if she wasn’t driven for her children, she wouldn’t have asked that question.

What I think is so important here to say – and this goes for anyone that’s got children. I’ve not got children at the moment, I’ve not got children. But I feel as though I’m very wise with knowledge of what I might pass on to my children. And a lot of what they teach you in school…it’s not the real world. It’s not the real world at all. The things that I’d be telling my children aren’t necessarily the things that they’d be taught in the educational system.

So your school didn’t prepare you for the real world? Very interesting, I’m sure. But what does that have to do with what the woman’s children will be when they grow up?

So, I think it’s important that you – at every available opportunity – give them the lessons that you have learned to develop over the years and things that you wish you knew when you were their age. And a lot of the time, you know, there’s things that you wish you would have known back then that you’ve only just found out recently. There’s things that you might not even know yet, that you’re yet to find out that would have benefited you when you were a child. And looking back, would you have done anything different? A lot of you might have. A lot of you might have done things differently and you know, that’s the whole point of life’s lessons. It’s us learning and developing on the things that we do and then passing that down to our children. And it’s important that we do that for the sake….for the sake of the children’s life, career, finances. You know, we want the best for our children at the end of the day, don’t we?

Oh, good grief! This sounds like the kind of guff you can hear on American talk shows about the best way to raise your children. I’m sure if the woman wanted parenting advice, she would have consulted Supernanny instead of a psychic.

And Sarah, no doubt in any way whatsoever that you are capable of relaying everything that they need to know. I feel as though you’re a very good mum to your children and I do feel as though you’ll get there and give them the support that they need throughout their life. Hope that makes sense to you.

No, I’m afraid it doesn’t. It’s just generalised blather.

But erm…it’s an exciting…exciting time, very exciting time, and watching a child grow up, you know, it must be amazing to, you know, hear at different stages…their aspirations from such a young age. A lot of children want to be a fireman when they grow up or you’ll hear the most randomest things…..I’ve heard children say they want to be a binman when they grow up and when they get older, you know, everything changes. Nothing stays the same. Nothing does stay the same, but it’s just something to bear in mind for the future.

This just basically repeats what he stated earlier about how children’s ambitions often don’t pan out. Sorry, but I can’t see anything remotely psychic about this fairly obvious fact. No answer whatsoever to the woman’s question – despite waffling on for almost five minutes.

---------------

Nonetheless, Jon Donnis (who runs this site) was prepared to give James Higgins one final try. A few weeks ago, James asked people to see if he was drawn to them by messaging him on Facebook. So Jon took him up on his offer – and received quite a surprising response:

Source: Facebook

However, not long afterwards….perhaps after consulting the spirit of Google Search…. James Higgins changed his mind, and sadly decided that Jon wasn’t so ‘lovely’ after all:

Source: Facebook

Regrettably, Jon then received a Facebook block before he was able to reply. But for my part, I simply say this: 
1. Read both previous articles about James’s mother,

2. Consider the evidence that we have provided here on what ‘help and guidance’ James Higgins actually gives to people in need, and

3. then, decide for yourselves who are the ‘evil ones’.

By Stefanie Schmidt

This article is the opinion of Stefanie Schmidt, any images used are freely available in the public domain either on google images or facebook, or otherwise specified and are used for the express purpose of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research.

A Warning about Deborah Davies Psychic Medium aka Deborah Jane Higgins (McDonald/Davies)

UPDATE: 14/08/2017
Just a small update, since we published this article Deborah Jane Higgins changed her social media name in an effort to throw people off and so that this article would not be linked to her in google searches.

This article was originally published in September 2014, and the information contained will refer to her under the name she was using then.

I republish this article due to the fact she has been getting some media attention and that people need to be aware of the truth about her and her claims, as well as her history.

Admin

---

The following article was sent to me, the author wishes to remain anonymous due to the aggressive nature of the psychic being talked about, as such you can direct all your abuse to me on Twitter @JonDonnis Please enjoy my little disclaimer below, as we all know how much these psychics like to use Disclaimers!


DISCLAIMER:
The following article is the opinion of the author and may not correspond with the opinions of BadPsychics.com

This article is for Entertainment purposes only, and/or for scientific experimentation

--

Introduction

I have pondered long and hard about whether I should write this article, and come to the conclusion that it is in the public interest that I do so. There are two reasons for this.

Firstly because I think there is a chance that vulnerable and grieving people might be ripped off.

And secondly because of something which happened last year that I found extremely disturbing (this is detailed at the end of this article - under the section entitled Madeleine McCann Claims).

I therefore ask all readers to carefully consider the evidence that I provide here, do more research as they see fit, and then make up their own minds about this person.

Background of Ms Higgins

Sometime last year, I happened to come across a Facebook page called “Deborah Higgins Become a Fan!!” It is run by a self-proclaimed psychic/medium by the name of Deborah Jane Higgins, who is also known as Deborah Jane McDonald (her maiden name) or Deborah Jane Davies (as a result of her second marriage). Although I hadn’t heard of her before, I was astounded to see what a huge following she has. It has since swelled to over 140,000 Facebook “likes”. That's almost double that of Sally Morgan and around four times as many as Derek Acorah. 

As far as I can ascertain, Ms Higgins has managed to gather a huge number of fans even though she has not appeared regularly on TV, nor does she perform shows. According to my research, she simply ran a beauty salon in Stockport - which may have since changed hands or been dissolved since the official website given on the Facebook page no longer seems to work. If it has been dissolved, then it wouldn't be the first of Ms Higgins' businesses to bite the dust.

Funnily enough, I also came across this article which publicised her (failed) slimming business. No mention at all of her having psychic powers, even though Ms Higgins claims in one of her YouTube videos to have heard voices since she was young.

One also wonders, if she was really psychic, why she didn't see the failure of her previous business(es) coming.

Analysis of Ms Higgins' Psychic Ability and Claims

But I digress. Returning to the subject of her Facebook page, I personally wasn't too impressed or convinced by some of her readings. Take a look at the following examples below:

Note how she simply asked for someone called Emma Louise whose grandfather was called Albert.

1. Isn't it funny how the spirits are never able to say what their surnames are?

2. Isn't it even more strange that the spirit actually got his relationship to his descendant wrong (great grandfather instead of grandfather)?

3. What's particularly interesting, though, if you look on the right, is just how many people called Emma Louise this statement could have applied to! Theoretically, all she had to do was pick one of them!

Or how about this reading:

Again this is very vague, and the spirit isn’t even able to say for definite who he is – leaving the customer to supply the relationship. The name “Rose” is very common, and the letter “E” could be just about anything. This smacks strongly of cold reading, a technique which stage magicians or mentalists often use to convince the audience that they know more about them than they really do.

And then, we have this very strange reading:

So let’s get this right. With her previous messages, Ms Higgins wasn’t even able to convey the exact full names of the people who had passed, yet here she has a spirit message from a dead dog?! I wonder what Marley had to say; “Woof! Woof! Woof!”?

These were not the only assertions by Ms Higgins that some have found questionable. On her official website Ghost Antics (which has since been redesigned, but the info is still available here via The Wayback Machine), she made the rather grandiose claim that her mother was also a psychic/medium who had been responsible for locating one of the bodies of the Moors Murder victims, as well as working on the Ripper case.

This was later challenged by others - and simply met with personal attacks:

We will return to the subject of Madeleine McCann later in this article. But I personally also find it highly unlikely that Ms Higgins' mother really managed to locate one of the Moors Murder victims’ bodies. I apologise in advance for linking to this video - as it is extremely graphic and distressing - but it also backs up what the challenger to Ms Higgins' claim said.

As for the Ripper, again I don't personally see how a psychic/medium could possibly have helped in cracking that case. According to this link, it actually took over five years to apprehend Peter Sutcliffe. He had been interviewed by the police on at least one occasion – before they finally caught him red-handed with a prostitute in a car which had been fitted with false number plates. The investigation had been hampered in part because of a number of hoax messages sent to the police by Wearside Jack.

Allegations about Ms Higgins ripping customers off

Nevertheless, whether or not you choose to believe that Ms Higgins is psychic, there are other things that she has been accused of. I came in contact with a group of former admin from Ms Higgins’ page (see their Facebook group here) who claimed that there were several clients who paid Ms Higgins for readings that they never got. Or found that the readings they did get from Ms Higgins were duplicates. Apparently, when the clients tried to make enquiries via Facebook, they were blocked. According to the ex-admin, Ms Higgins left them to deal with the unhappy customers - while she went off on holiday. The ex-admin then allegedly decided that enough was enough and "outed" her on the Facebook page.

This version of events was also detailed on a now-defunct website, a copy of which can still be seen here, c/o the Wayback Machine.

Now, in the interests of fairness, I have to say that Ms Higgins and her supporters claim that her Facebook page had been hacked. However, since the people who allegedly "outed" her were actually ex-admin that she herself had appointed, I'm inclined to think that "hacked" is inaccurate. Again, please note that despite claiming to be psychic, Ms Higgins apparently didn't foresee the problems with her admin team. There were also accusations from her side that this was part of a huge hate campaign because ex-admin were jealous and wanted to make money from doing psychic readings themselves. I honestly do not know if the ex-admin had ulterior motives, but let me assure the readers that if this does eventually prove to be the case, then I shall add this info to this article in due course.

Nonetheless, there were one or two points on which Ms Higgins and/or her supporters have (perhaps unwittingly) agreed with the ex-admin's story.

Firstly, on the subject of duplicate readings, I came across a number of people claiming that Ms Higgins had given them readings which mentioned Peter André. I'm not sure in what context, but take a look at this (written by two different people):

And then Ms Higgins gave this interesting response:

So, it seems to me that Ms Higgins has effectively admitted giving duplicate readings and blamed this on the other people picking the same cards. I will leave the readers to decide for themselves how likely it is that two people picked the same cards. I will only say that there are generally 78 tarot cards in total in each average pack. Thus, the odds of two people picking the same cards are less than the chances of a person matching the lottery numbers drawn each week. And the chances of winning the lottery are, incidentally......................................................1 in 14,000 000.

Then I noticed this:

So here Ms Higgins' supporters are admitting that she was behind with her readings - yet she still went on holiday! Not something a professional would do - but again, make what you will of that.

Madeleine McCann Claims

And finally, we come to why I decided to write this blog entry. In August 2013, I was made aware of a series of disturbing posts on Ms Higgins' page. She has since deleted them - but fortunately, I was able to obtain screenshots - along with a statement on psychics from the official spokesman for Kate and Gerry McCann (taken from Jon Ronson's excellent article here):

I think most of us must be aware of the tragic case of Madeleine McCann who has been missing since 2007. One thing I detest about self-proclaimed psychics is when they interject themselves into missing person cases and divert the investigation with misinformation - costing precious time and resources (see Sylvia Browne’s involvement with the Shawn Hornbeck case as one example of this). Note too that according to the McCann’s spokesman, Clarence Mitchell, the investigators look into anything demonstrably checkable - which would mean approx. 100-150 psychic leads in Madeleine's case. All of which, logically, must have been a waste of time because poor Madeleine is still missing. Make of that what you wish. I personally consider it to be evil!

But see here that Ms Higgins claimed she knows everything, that Madeleine is still alive and seems to be blaming the police for not taking her seriously when she tried to contact them two years ago.

It is very odd that Ms Higgins claimed the police were not taking her seriously, given that she had indicated on her own website that she has successfully worked with the police in the past on missing person cases:

But then again, I have found that Ms Higgins isn't always consistent in her claims. PLEASE take a look at this post (on the left) she apparently made about Madeleine McCann on 15 January 2013 and just see if you can spot the differences!!

I really have no words for this. I just leave you to draw your own conclusions

Still, for a brief while at least, Ms Higgins did actually do herself a disservice where her fans were concerned. I'll leave the last word with them - before their comments were removed, that is: