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There are many mysteries that people haven’t figured out yet. One such mystery is the existence of psychics, and why despite how many times they are exposed, you have a constant stream of new claimants.
There have been many supposed psychics throughout the history of mankind and one of the most famous is Nostradamus. He was a seer that seemingly managed to predict several things in the future, and although believers in him may need to decipher what he said as a way to make his prediction fit current events, there are many who think he was the real deal, but there are many others who just see a desperation of believers to make things fit.
Psychics claim to have what is known as ESP and they say that this helps them predict the future and even read minds. This sounds too good to be true and you know the old saying about things that seem to good to be true. There have been lots of fake psychics that have been exposed throughout the years, something that we on this site have done more than most. We have yet to find that elusive "real" psychic.
If a true psychic existed then he or she will have the power to predict what happens next. That would be especially helpful if the psychic is a casino enthusiast. The person would know when to increase or decrease a bet, when to switch from one game to another and would find himself/herself banned from a lot of casinos.
The thing about casinos is that most of them are online now. There are plenty of such sites that offer lots of games to players. The one game that would be a challenge for a psychic would be any slot game. Sites like Casimba Slots offer more than one slot games so players have a variety to choose from. They also throw in some bonuses to make things interesting. And to make things fair they use a Random Number Generator. Now if you were really psychic, surely this is the easiest way to prove it?
The Random Number Generator
This is something that every casino site has on offer. The generator makes sure that every sequence it pulls out is a random one. That’s why slot games would be a challenge for a psychic. They would probably know what game to pick and when to pick it so they could get a payout.
The True Psychic vs an Expert Slot Player
If you’ve been paying attention to history then you’ll see that psychics aren’t that much concerned with payouts from online slot games, or from Casinos at all. In fact there isn't a single psychic in history who has come forward and said, "watch this, I will take $1, and make it $1 million". Ask yourself why that is.
Master slot players might be lucky a few times since they’ve played a game for a long time which is why they might be able to “sense” what’s coming next. But usually that sense comes from watching a machine over hours, working out how much money is in the machine as it has been used by other players. On an online Slot machine, this isn't possible, so it really does come down to chance, or if you were a real psychic then it would be your abilities, yet instead psychics "waste" their time giving readings to vulnerable people for $20. Still think they are real?
Unfortunately, the world is short on psychics that would test their skills in online slot games. And if any have tried it, then they have failed every single time. And that is why you never ever see a psychic make a claim that is easily debunked. Gotta keep things vague!
UPDATE: Please Read This First
I hate that I have to write this, but due to the abuse I am getting from the so called Skeptic community I think it is best I say a couple of things.
1. READ THE WHOLE DAMNED ARTICLE!
2. The whole point of this article is about the difference between a good skeptic and a great skeptic. Taking a deliberate "click bait" type headline and breaking it all down. A good skeptic just debunks a claim. A great skeptic gives the claim the benefit of the doubt, gives the claim every possible chance to be real, puts the claim on a pedestal and STILL debunks it. And by doing so removes all doubt.
3. If you read the whole article I actually expose Sylvia's claim, yet I have skeptics who only read half the article and then call me a "Sylvia Browne Apologist". You people are not true skeptics, you are imbeciles. And you are the very people I reference in the headline about "going crazy".
By Jon Donnis
I have always wanted to write a ridiculous click bait type headline like that, and now I have my chance.
So before I start let me make a few things clear. Sylvia Browne is dead, she died on 20th November 2013, and up until the day she died she maintained that she was a real psychic medium, who could communicate with the dead and see the future. That was a lie. She was a fraud. Like literally, a convicted fraudster. In 1992, Browne and her then-husband Kenzil Dalzell Brown were indicted on several charges of investment fraud and grand theft, she was found guilty.
So to make absolutely clear where I stand on Sylvia Brown, she was a fake, a fraud, a con-women, a charlatan, in fact I was exposing her as such decades ago, and in fact I helped the late great Robert Lancaster start his "Stop Sylvia" website, and when he started that, I stepped back from writing about her, as he was going to only concentrate on her.
Now with that out of the way, let's get back to the lovely click bait headline, that any hack at the Tabloid media would be proud of.
Sylvia Browne predicted the Covid19 Coronavirus.
This was bizarrely first brought up by everyone's favourite tooth shaped celebrity Kim Kardashian.
Sylvia wrote a book in 2008 called "End of Days" whereby she recorded many future predictions.
And yes in that book is the very passage that Kim shared on her twitter account.
She wrote "In around 2020 a severe pneumonia-like illness will spread throughout the globe, attacking the lungs and the bronchial tunes and resisting all known treatments. Almost more baffling than the illness itself will be the fact that it will suddenly vanish as quickly as it arrived, attack again ten years later, and then disappear completely."
Now let us ignore the ten years later bit, as we will have to wait until 2030 to see if that happens.
So did she get this prediction correct? Yes.
Unlike the vast vast majority of psychic predictions she was very specific. She gave a year, she described the symptoms of the disease, and how no treatments would work.
These claims are objectively true. Let us look closer at what she said. "around 2020"
Well the virus officially started in 2019, but it became a global pandemic in 2020, so for her to use the word "around" is actually more accurate than it is vague. A lot of skeptics have tried to use that as an excuse to dismiss it.
"a severe pneumonia-like illness will spread throughout the globe, attacking the lungs and the bronchial tunes"
From a laypersons point of view, she perfectly describes the symptoms of the Covid19 Coronavirus. This is not some vague "he felt a pain in his chest before he died" type of claim you often get from mediums. This is an accurate and very specific description of the main symptoms of the virus that people suffer with who get very ill and then die.
She also stated it "will spread throughout the globe", again this is objectively true. She could have easily just said the United States, in fact if I was to make a vague future prediction, it would be easier to just say one country, that way if there was a bad flu outbreak that year (which there was at the end of 2019) you could claim that you were correct. But instead she clearly states it will spread around the globe. Unlike any other major outbreak of this kind in history, this virus has spread around the globe, to more countries than SARS, MERS, or any of the big name coronaviruses you will have heard of.
Next up she stated "resisting all known treatments" again so far this is objectively true. China knew of the virus at least 6 months ago, if not longer, but at the very least 6 months, so after 6 months can you name a single confirmed treatment that works? There has been some promising results with a few treatments, but at the best they may help you recover a couple of days sooner if at all. So 6 months after the virus is out there, and we have no truly workable, accepted treatments. Now that doesn't mean there wont be one, but as of writing this, her prediction is objectively true on the treatments aspect, and even if there is a treatment found tomorrow, that's 6 months worth of her being right.
The rest of her prediction we can't answer since we don't know if it will just vanish itself, or if it will come back, so that has to be left open.
Up to this point of the article I can see you all scratching your heads and asking "I thought Jon was supposed to expose fake psychics and mediums, yet all he has done so far is point out Sylvia Browne was right".
And now we get to the problem I have with this whole story. As skeptics we are supposed to look at the evidence and build our opinion based on that evidence, and so far pretty much every skeptic has blindly dismissed Sylvia Browne's prediction, just rubbished it without any real explanation. I have seen some skeptics just say she was vague, others just refuse to even talk about it, yet I have shown here she was not at all vague, she was incredible specific. Others have pointed out that she was a proven fraud so what's the point of giving any credence to this prediction, and yes there is some weight to that argument, but there is also the counter "black swan theory". In other words it only takes one black swan to prove that black swans exist. (They do exist by the way, the theory was talked about when there was a presumption that none existed).
So where does that leave us?
It leaves me annoyed with the skeptic community, for they do the very thing they accuse others of doing, ignoring the evidence, being closed minded, dismissing out of hand something just because it seems impossible or unlikely.
As skeptics the thing we demand more than anything from psychics is for them to be specific, we don't want vague comments that could apply to anyone, we want specific dates, times, names, descriptions, we harp on about this all the time, and this one time we get the kind of super specific example of a psychic prediction, and the skeptic community buries its head in the sand.
I refuse to do that.
So I am stating here that in 2008, in her book "End of Days", Sylvia Browne made the single greatest, most accurate, self proclaimed "psychic" prediction in history. Her prediction on any level of understanding was correct and it could yet further come true as time passes.
But now the big problem. I am a skeptic, I have accepted that her prediction came true, it was not at all vague, how do I deal with this. Quite simply really. Of the thousands and thousands of predictions she made in her life, she got one right. It's that simple. She had a failure rate of 99.99999%. She was a fraud, a fake, and just once, she got something right.
If I make a pinhole in a wall, pick up a handful of sand and throw it at the wall, and one single grain of sand lands in that pinhole, I can claim correctly that I threw a single grain of sand and it landed in a pinhole, something so impossible to do, that the fact I did it means I have magic sand throwing powers.
Now we can talk about how and where she came up with the idea of the prediction, well the SARS outbreak happened a few years before she wrote her prediction, that virus infected over 8000 people around the world, killing 774. It infected people in 29 different countries, so very much a "global" disease.
But here is where it gets interesting, the SARS virus came, it then went, it then came back and then it disappeared, and there has not been a single case of it in over 15 years. Sound familiar?
There was no treatment for SARS and no vaccine was every created, and in fact Covid19 is a strain of that virus, so if we had have developed a treatment for SARS it would likely help in the fight against Covid19.
When you look at the SARS outbreak, the lack of treatment etc, it kinda sounds like what Sylvia predicted does it not?
Since she released her book there has actually been 4 different outbreaks that had she used a different year in her prediction, they would also fit.
Remember no where in her prediction did she actually state number of people who would die.
So if a virus had killed less than 1000 people like MERS has then her prediction is just as accurate as Swine Flu which killed 200,000 people.
Before the SARS outbreak, with the exception of HIV, there had not really been any major worldwide virus since the late 60s and the Hong Kong flu.
The question you have to ask yourself, would she still have made the same prediction had the SARS virus never have happened? or if it had not gotten media attention? Probably not.
So when you look at these things as a whole, when you put things into context, then you can figure out the more likely reasons behind the prediction, but to just dismiss it, is a mistake, for when you just dismiss such things, you make yourself a target of the deluded.
Never back away from such a claim, I didn't, and I'd like to think I explained away her prediction pretty well. But let us not pretend that her prediction was not in itself, and on its own, and without further context, the single greatest "psychic" prediction in history, it was. But that still does not make her psychic.
By Jon Donnis.
(Some of my numbers might be off, or might change as time passes, so please if anything is wrong feel free to correct me in the comments, also please feel free to leave your opinions, and if you think I am wrong, then say so.)
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As I write this it is the 27th March 2020, the world is on lock down, due to a world wide pandemic. Thousands of people are dead due to the Covid-19 Coronavirus outbreak, the streets are empty, it literally feels like we are living in a post apocalyptic world, people in massive queues to get bread and toilet tissue, people scared to even get close to each other in fear of catching this deadly disease. But with all that happening I have decided to do something even worse! I have decided to review another classic episode of Most Haunted.
I have also stuck to my promise that I would not review any of the new Most Haunted stuff unless it got over 100,000 views, their new stuff at most is getting between 10,000 to 15,000 views, which is hardly surprising.
We travel back in time to Series 1 Episode 5 (25th June 2002) Leap Castle, Coolderry, County Offaly, Ireland. A time when bog rolls were aplenty, brand name bread cost just 50p a loaf, and Karl Beattie still had his original hair, long before the transplant. So with that, let's take a look at the blurb.
This is the first episode of Most Haunted I will have reviewed since the death of Derek Acorah, it will be interesting to watch him, back in his prime.
This episode is one of the Most Haunted Unseen episodes, I don't recall exactly what that meant, I assume it just meant it had a few extra scenes thrown in? I grabbed it off youtube, so what can you do.
We start off with Yvette and for some reason she seems really aggressive in her intro, I am guessing she was trying to get across how scary and dangerous this place was.
Many a cow had to die for that long leather coat.
She tells us that the castle is home to a "half-man, half-animal elemental" ghost. I hope Derek Acorah gets possessed by this. I wonder if in the afterlife Derek has met up with all these ghosts who possessed him? Even the famous monkey from episode 1 I think it was? That would be interesting to see.
Now although Yvette Fielding does look fetching in her red leather trousers, as a vegan I cannot approve.
She sits down with actor Jason Karl who is playing the part of a parapsychologist to talk about the castle. Worth noting that despite being an employed actor playing the part of a parapsychologist, I give him credit as being one of the more skeptical people who played this part, and as such was many times more credible than those who followed him. And in case you didn't know, he was only fired from the show, because he became too popular with the viewers. Remember this whole show was supposed to be a vehicle to relaunch Yvette's career. As history now tells us that failed and Derek Acorah quickly became the true star of the show.
Jason explains how the elemental ghost is created by negative energy. He also talks about these "coil" types of energy that only appear in photographs, as always a real skeptic knows the cause of such "manifestations" are usually a hair near the lens, or the camera strap hanging down, funny how these images pretty much disappeared from the genre as cameras on Smartphones became more prevalent and of higher quality.
Yvette tells us how she is scared for the arrival of Derek Acorah who apparently has "no idea about Leap Castle at all", well that's 4 minutes in and we get our first direct lie. Derek worked as a spiritualist medium, the idea that he would have "no idea" about Leap Castle is ridiculous. It was his job, it was his life. He knew.
We then get an interview with Sean Ryan the owner of the castle, and boy is this a treat, he is like the character Ted from The Fast Show.
Sean does a decent job "selling" his tourist attraction. We also get a quick piece to camera from a small child.
Now to make you feel old, she is nearly 30 years old now! And has had a career as a professional dancer and teacher. A seven times provincial champion and a top 10 World championship medal holder for eight consecutive years!
You could argue that she has had a more successful career after appearing on Most Haunted than Yvette Fielding has, after all Ciera only appears once on the show, and Yvette is still trying to make a living from pretending to see ghosts.
Ok I have lost my train of thought now, yes we were watching a program about fake ghosts.
We see some footage from Karl's camera, he is filming in the day, worth noting Yvette calls him "our producer Karl". He films a burning fire from afar. This is something that any good ghost hunter should do more often, just film a fire burning, with a bit of luck you will get at least a single frame of something in the fire that looks like a face, purely a pareidolia effect, but it would look great for your gullible fans.
Completely pointless segment and totally understandable why this got cut from the original airing.
Yvette is still wondering around doing pieces to camera, great to see them do some effort with production too, some nice shots with candles burning and so on.
Jason Karl announces that the battery in his camera has gone dead. He also clearly states that he has been using it all day. That's how batteries work mate, you charge them, you use them, they go dead. To try an make this some kind of paranormal event is ridiculous and just shows a total lack of intelligence, but then again it could also be that you are doing it deliberately as part of your "gas lighting" of the audience.
Rick Fielding of the Fielding family claims he has heard a whisper noise in his ear. Jason Karl then pulls out an EMF meter and says there is a high reading right where they are, the fact he is surrounded by people holding electrical equipment all giving off electromagnetic fields seems beyond him.
15 minutes in and the investigation proper finally starts, Derek has now appeared.
Derek looking smart gets straight into his act as they go up some stairs, and he claims he can see a figure, and is very descriptive of her.
I really had forgotten how good Derek was at describing made up ghosts. But there is also the problem that everything he says just sounds like innuendo.
Derek is now describing the ghost as not just spirit but as inter dimensional, whatever that is supposed to mean. The ghost is changing shape, so it's an inter-dimensional, shape shifting being. We then hear the owner of the Castle off camera getting a bit nervous and warning Derek about the elemental spirit.
Derek then comes up with the name "Sir Henry Darby", an on screen graphic confirms the name and that he was born at Leap Castle in 1749 and served as an Admiral in the British Navy.
The funny thing is that back in the day, when this show would air, you would have the believers quickly declaring that this was proof that Derek was legit, and you had skeptics quickly checking the internet to see how easy such information could be found out, and then the battle between the two opposing groups. I took part in such battles, and I am a bit embarrassed that I did now. It so obviously faked, and although I knew it was faked, I spent way too much time proving it was all fake. I was one of those skeptics.
If this was to air today, many many less people would believe in Derek as they did in the past, and only the hardcore would really get into arguments trying to prove it all one way or another. I think it is partly a shame that both believers and skeptics got so annoyed with each other, when realistically Derek was just playing the part of a character on a TV show, no different to Jason Karl playing the part of parapsychologist.
But we did take it all too seriously back in the day, non more so than me.
Now when I see him come up with a name, I really have no interest to check if it's a real name or not, or how easy it is to research, it really doesn't matter.
This guy starts talking about how some batteries are running down and how there was some audio issues, of course the presumption is that this is caused by the ghosties.
Derek has found a small room, which has a ghost monk in it. Derek is in full "Degsie Mode" here. Of course what he is saying matches up to some Monk who was at the castle hundreds of years ago.
Worth noting here how they regularly seem to switch from a black and white filter to REAL night vision mode.
Great way to spot night vision is the eyes.
Of course it is completely pointless as the area is well lit, there are candles lit everywhere, a big roaring fire. It is not dark in any way, so this is purely a production choice to make things seem more spooky.
Karl is with Rick and is desperately trying to get him to have a seance. Rick is not interested though.
We then get an "orb". I had forgotten about them, boy did they go on about them a lot back in the day.
Yvette does her best Blair Witch Project shot, but the problem is that in the Blair Witch Project, it was done with full colour.
We then get another orb shot, Yvette proudly declares on voice over that Orbs are the first signs of a ghost manifestation.
Karl and Rick are doing their seance stuff, but it comes across more as just two nervous blokes having a laugh on camera, which ironically is exactly what they were.
Yvette is now pretending to cry as a ghost is nearby, putting her trained actress skills to full use there.
Remember when Yvette pretended that Harry Styles tried to seduce her when he was 16? About as likely as Karl claiming to be the worlds last samurai.
I've started to get bored now, not enough Derek. Need a good possession to get me interested again.
Come on Degsie, you can do it.
Yvette is with Stuart, and Stuart closes a door and Yvette has a break down and starts crying because she is so scared. All very pathetic and over acted.
Karl is with Marcel, whoever that is.
Derek has seemingly disappeared as Karl heads off to the cellar.
And is filming orbs. I will not even waste my time explaining them, if you don't know by now what they are you never will.
The investigation ends, and we get the post investigation comments. I wonder if Derek went home early on the night after he did his little spot? Also in the post investigation comments, Jason Karl reveals that he told ALL of the crew where they were going before the investigation and wonders if the expectations of phenomena and that auto suggestion might have had an effect on people.
Jason Karl then summarises all of the nights events, and gives a skeptical opinion.
This shot of Derek really needs to be made into a meme.
Well the episode ends, and it was an ok episode, the lack of a possession by Derek really hurt the episode, and he hardly appeared in the episode. As such I can only score this a 3/10. Unlike the first few episodes of the season, this was definitely a filler episode.
Review by Jon Donnis
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Early this morning Gwen Acorah (Derek's wife) posted the following on Facebook.
"Farewell my love! I will miss you forever! I’m devastated to announce that my beloved husband Derek has passed away after a very brief illness. Thank you so much to everybody who has supported me - I can never thank you enough. To the vile couple who hounded him for responses to their ridiculous campaign whilst he was in Intensive Care in a coma, I hope you have the decency to hang your heads in shame. I have things to deal with now but I won’t forget nor will I forgive what you have done!"
I had spoken to Gwen a few days ago with regards to the article about the Sunday Mirror that I published. She informed me that Derek was very ill, and asked I keep it quiet as she didn't want the media finding out. I wont reveal any more of what she told me, as it has not been made public outside of what she said in her statement. I offered to remove the article about the Sunday Mirror straight away and she said I should keep it up, and she even retweeted it from Derek's twitter account. I just wanted to make that clear, since I am getting a lot of abuse right now.
I would like to start off by saying that without Derek Acorah there would be no Jon Donnis, there would be no BadPsychics.com, to say this site would not exist without Derek Acorah is no understatement.
Year after year we went after Derek, we attacked him, we would expose things he said and did, spend countless hours investigating him. We did not make his life easy. You would think Derek and Gwen would hate me for this. In fact they were only ever nice to me.
I would like to share one example of that. Many many years ago someone contacted Derek as they had found out my home address, my full details, they gave those details to Derek, perhaps in the hope he would send his lawyers after me, or worse. Instead what happened was Gwen contacted me on behalf of Derek and told me exactly what had happened, and that someone was trying to get them to go after me. Instead they did the opposite, and gave me the heads up. Derek never sent his lawyers after me, instead he was being a nice guy.
I never forgot that. Here is me thinking the guy is the literal Devil, he gets a chance to come after me, and instead he does the good guy thing.
Now I am sure there were times when Derek cursed my name, probably shouted about me, complained about me to Gwen, and he would have every right to, after all I was attacking his career, his living. But personally Derek and his wife were always good to me, undeservedly so I admit.
As the years passed I always kept in contact with them. And I was invited to a show Derek was doing in West Bromwich one year to come meet him and say hi. To say I was a tad suspicious and worried was an understatement, I half expected to either get beaten up, or handed legal papers, instead Derek was super polite, shook my hand, took a photo with me, and we chatted for a few minutes.
So here we are 2020, and Derek Acorah has "passed over".
Some people may think I would be happy about that, but the truth is I am sad, I am sad for Gwen and the whole family. Regardless of what I thought about Derek's professional life, personally he always treated me well and very fairly, anyone who knows me, knows how harsh and blunt I can be, yet Derek and Gwen were always just very nice to me.
Regardless of what anyone reading this thinks, understand that Derek was a huge part of my online life on BadPsychics. And on a personal level I will miss him.
I fear that much like when Colin Fry died, that we will now get an influx of fake psychics and mediums trying to use Derek's name to make money for themselves, claim that he is speaking through them, and so on, and when that happens (and it will happen) I will put a stop to that much like I did after Colin Fry passed.
As an entertainer Derek was Number 1 in his profession. No one ever really came close.
Without him, there would not have been a Most Haunted. There would be no Paranormal Investigation teams around the country.
And as the UK's Number 1 skeptic, I can only hope that Derek finds a way to haunt me.
