Do you believe in psychics?

[The Boston Crab]

She was Vanessa Redgrave! Mind blown, bro.

[Backstage With Slowdive]

I am not being shrill I'm being CONCISE!!!!!

I find your inability to understand my gift hilarious. I'm laughing at you, right now. Ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha. Tee hee.

Only other explanation is that you have a very good memory for faces, even ones that have aged slightly.

Ah, but I didn't remember her face, because at no point in the previous 4 years I'd been at college with this lady had it struck me she was familiar. Though it is possible that she said "I was in Wetherby, in the Parent's Evening scene" in between the other 2 bits, I don't remember. But that makes no difference.

[Danger Man]

I find your inability to understand my gift hilarious. I'm laughing at you, right now. Ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha. Tee hee.

You're just jealous because my mum can put images in my head.

[Backstage With Slowdive]

You're just jealous because my mum can put images in my head.

Still laughing.

[Danger Man]

Still laughing.

STILL LAUGHING NOW? EH? EHHH???

[mini goatbix]

...chickened out...

[The Boston Crab]

Wait, totally worth a new thread.

[mini goatbix]

Boston changed his post...

[chand]

Think for instance, of someone proclaiming to be able to guess the roll of a dice before they throw it - how many times do they have to shake the dice and get the right answer before it ceases to be 'coincidental'? There's really no answer you can give which isnt in some way arbitrary. Of course alot of researchers will set a level above 'random chance', but even here its tricky - how may percentage do i have to get above random chance in order for there be more in it than just pure coincidence?

I would say setting any percentage that's less than 100 is rather generous, but then psychic ability does tend to conveniently be a bit unreliable when tested. Anyway, every test will set a level above random chance, you can work out the likelihood of any deviation from chance, and if someone were consistently getting results way above chance it would be interesting.

[Backstage With Slowdive]

SWP mentions the problem of induction, there.

[mini goatbix]

Ah, but I didn't remember her face, because at no point in the previous 4 years I'd been at college with this lady had it struck me she was familiar. Though it is possible that she said "I was in Wetherby, in the Parent's Evening scene" in between the other 2 bits, I don't remember. But that makes no difference.

Your subconscious brain had made the connection but hadn't bothered to inform your conscious self of it, then when given some stimulus your subconscious released the information. Brains are amazing, doing incredible stuff all the time we aren't consciously aware of, they just aren't psychic.

[Dev Shooley]

On the whole, I believe in psychic phenomena, but I don't think anyone has those moments often enough to set up shop as a professional psychic. It doesn't seem like a directable thing, something a person could utilise.

[thugler]

I can see where youre attempting to go with this just by your tone. To be clear - im not saying that where lies a lack of explanation 'there be magic'. Merely where there is a lack of explanation, there is an absence of explanation, nothing more. As i said, i'm sure there is a prosaic explanation at work, and im partially convinced it has at least something to do with body ques, but i dont think anyone really understands how it works.

Unfortunately he operates outside of peer-review, and more or less functions (along with his mates) as judge and jury. Im also highly skeptical of any process that sets up the researcher as personally liable to lose funds if the tests dont turn out in his favour - it's just bad science, and only really serves PR for a certain section of the debunking community.
Well alot of 'psychics' dont use cold reading, this is my point. Ive only encountered a small proportion who 'fish' for their results, and theyve usually pretty easy to spot for anyone who has even a basic grasp of psychology. It's the ones who walk up to you say hello, then proceed to tell you what you had breakfast this morning and what you were thinking about in detail 5 minutes ago who interest me. Is there a prosaic explanation? Of course. But there's little point i think in shoe-horning an explanation that doesnt fit onto the phenomena, just for the sake of having one right now. Id rather exercise alittle more patience.

Once again, where is there a lack of explanation? Please give examples rather than just 'I've experienced it myself, and it is magic because I think so'. Why not let us in on what you're going on about and perhaps we can work out some possible explanations, which you seem to suspect anyway.

Without the likes of Randi this stuff wouldn't be tested properly at all, you really can't complain about him offering the money either as without that why would any psychics bother to subject themselves to testing they know probably won't go their way.

How do you know when a psychic isn't 'fishing' for their results, particularly when you haven't studied what goes into getting the effects they achieve. I can't begin to explain how many magic tricks are done, I don't come to the conclusion that they may be genuinely magic. I don't think theres any big difference in the level of effect between magicians and psychics, in fact I'd probably argue that magicians tend to have more astounding effects, however since they are only claiming to be a magician, the idea of it being real doesn't enter the equation.

As for these ones that walk up to you and tell you what you had for breakfast, that's obviously not a very difficult thing to guess if you think about it. Most people probably have 1 of about 4 things for breakfast. And considering the number of things you think about in a day, guessing one of those thoughts isn't all that impressive, horoscopes continue to fool people by using generic phrases that apply to most people, and I'm sure the same can be done by guessing thoughts, perhaps using a few external indicators.

[thugler]

My psychic experience:

In 1986 I saw the film Wetherby, written by David Hare, which has a scene in which Vanessa Redgrave, playing an English teacher, is at a Parent's Evening. A couple with their daughter say to her: "she wants to do English but we want her to do Physics. We bought her a home computer". In the credits they were listed as "Pretentious Parents".

In 1995 I was university and a lady student was visiting my room. She saw I had a copy of David Hare's History Plays and said "oh, I was in a film he did".

Straight away I said "were you at the parents evening? 'She wants to do English but we want her to do Physics, we bought her a computer'"?"

"Yes... how did you know?"

How did I know?

You remembered what she looked like.

[HappyTree]

"Without the likes of Randi this stuff wouldn't be tested properly at all"

Randi does not use proper scientific method. He decides himself and has a personal stake in proving it wrong. True science is dispassionate and non partisan. There are loads of serious scientific studies into parapsychology that can be found if you're genuinely interested. You just have to look beyond professional, untrained debunkers.

Try reading Lynne McTaggart's "The Field". Not only is it well-written and engaging, it provides copious references to scientific studies that you can follow up for yourself.

Limiting one's research to the self-interested outpourings of a stage mentalist is not the best way to gain a rounded perspective on anything, I would suggest.

[thugler]

"Psychics" are not one homogenous group who all think and act the same. There are genuine ones who do perform better than cold reading. Like myself a few years ago, to name one. There are also a lot of charlatans and these are the ones you'll heard of since they're making themselves known to earn money at it. There are also people who believe they're psychic and don't realise they're cold reading.

Basically, if they're on TV they are an act and not genuine. You cannot turn this gift on and off like a tap but to do a TV programme you have to please the director and producer every week, so by definition they're not genuine.

The real ones work for nothing and only work one-on-one. There are plenty of books citing genuine experiments in parapsychology. I found studies into NDE phenomena in hospitals to be most interesting.

The basic problem science has with psychics is that they are not repeatable experiments. Science is a methodology set up to work with known quantities that can be controlled. 200ml of this, 3 grams of that, regulate the flow of photons, measure on a sensor, etc. The second science begins to study human consciousness effects it is out of its depth since there is no way to measure or regulate what the human consciousness does. Yet psychic phenomena rely on consciousness, so a scientific analysis is confronted with unknown and uncontrollable quantities. How can it expect to repeat and analyse things it doesn't understand?

So if we look to mysticism and philosophy to see what they say about it, they advise meditation and visualisation to access these abilities. Why? Because they are doing what science tries to do: control the experiment. In exercising willful control over the mind (which takes shitloads of practice) it seeks to exercise willful control over consciousness effects.

My own experiments in this field showed me that to get a significant "hit" you need to have your mind in a certain state. Extreme calm and emotional control are one way, but this can also happen spontaneously if events put you into a heightened emotional state. I call this the emotional takeoff speed, i.e., the state of mind required to achieve liftoff just like how a plane needs to be at a certain speed to counteract gravity and generate lift.

If science were able to regulate the mind as it regulates other experimental elements then it could begin to perform repeatable experiments. But for now it can't. There is nothing, no process that will not be explained by science one day. Psychic phenomena are simply natural effects of the universe, we just access them rarely because we rarely have control over our own minds.

This is why "God" is not an opponent of science. The universe is a conscious entity and operates by rules and principles. We just don't know what they are yet. Science and spirituality are just two different approaches of looking at the same thing.

Sorry but you're coming to a lot of conclusions here that don't seem to be based on very much.

How can YOU tell if someone is psychic?

Why do the 'real ones' only work for nothing and only work one on one?

I don't understand why you can't subject psychics to repeated experimentation, do the spirits not like science or something? There are clear observable things that science can take from experimenting on psychics, namely is what they say true, are they saying a lot of things many of which are wrong and waiting for positive feedback from the subject? (almost certainly yes), and how could they have known these things without being psychic. Theres no need to measure any of the spooky bollocks you have mentioned about human consciousness, whats being claimed is fairly simple, and so would be the test. How it's done would be quite obvious.

If there are all these genuine psychics out there, why haven't any of them used their powers for good (finding missing people/dead bodies/kidnapped people) or used them to make money (If supposedly the effect they achieve is so much greater than fake psychics)?

There really is no substitute for personal experience. I went to the Unconvention, a parapsychological convention in London a few years back, with some friends, including one who is the most psychic person I've ever met. He'd written a book on the interaction of the spiritual/quantum world of potentiality and how it creates particles and then matter. And as we all know, there is no such thing as actual particles since they behave as waves in certain circumstances too.

Anyway, he was looking for a publisher and we went to this bookstall so he could ask where to send his book. The man started a discussion with him about it and sounded very interested when suddenly my friend got that look and said, "Oh excuse me but I've just received a message about you. You have a daughter and she was bitten by a dog in her early childhood. You're thinking about getting another dog now and are worried it might be dangerous again. Don't worry, this dog will be fine for her and will help heal the trauma she received when very young.3

The guy behind the stall just stood there with his eyes out on stalks. It was all perfectly true. This is why I smile to myself when people call all psychics cold readers. They just have never experienced anything better, which is a shame.

The best substitute for personal experience is proper testing, which gets rid of all the numerous problems of evidence of personal experience.

Okay so you went to a convention with someone who had written a book of absolute nonsense, and obviously thought a bunch of paranormal types would be most likely to publish it.

There are many explanations for your story, many many of which are more likely than 'he was magic and did a magic thing'. Not to mention the fact that people tend to exaggerate stories over time.

[HappyTree]

Name one.

[HappyTree]

"people exaggerate stories over time"

What does that refer to? I was there beside the guy. There is no story to be retold or exaggerated. Are you saying I am telling the story inaccurately? Is that the only way you can fit what I said into your own world view, telling me I'm exaggerating?

Pshaw, very poor. If you don't believe me that's up to you. What I said happened precisely as I said it. Take that or leave it at the side of your plate. I am no liar. Is that the best you got?

[Backstage With Slowdive]

Randi does not use proper scientific method. He decides himself and has a personal stake in proving it wrong. True science is dispassionate and non partisan.

What are the actual methodological biases in his work? Give specific details from specific studies.

The mere fact an investigator happens to have an interest in the result, and happens to prefer a particular result to support his own theory, does not in itself entail fraud or false accounting, because his results will have to be checkable anyway. If it did then a lot of research would be "proved" to be spurious, plus of course all "creation science" (not that they do much research).

[thugler]

"Without the likes of Randi this stuff wouldn't be tested properly at all"

Randi does not use proper scientific method. He decides himself and has a personal stake in proving it wrong. True science is dispassionate and non partisan. There are loads of serious scientific studies into parapsychology that can be found if you're genuinely interested. You just have to look beyond professional, untrained debunkers.

Try reading Lynne McTaggart's "The Field". Not only is it well-written and engaging, it provides copious references to scientific studies that you can follow up for yourself.

Limiting one's research to the self-interested outpourings of a stage mentalist is not the best way to gain a rounded perspective on anything, I would suggest.

okay, I'll take this piece by piece.

Randi doesn't have a personal stake, because the money is stored so that it doesn't come out unless someone wins. He may not be the most rigorous tester, but he does everything to a fair scientific standard with double blind testing etc. and allows the testee to define their own experiment to show exactly what they are claiming to be able to do.

As for these supposed serious scientific studies, please cite some if there are so many. Or give me a clear example of a real psychic, what they do, and why you think it is real as opposed to a clever trick.

Oh and the well written scientific author you mention?

Just looking at what she's written it's obvious she's a quack

What Doctors Don't Tell You: The Truth About The Dangers Of Modern Medicine (1999) ISBN 0-380-80761-0
The Cancer Handbook: What's Really Working (2000) ISBN 1-890612-18-9
The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe (2003) ISBN 0-06-093117-5
The Intention Experiment: Using Your Thoughts to Change Your Life and the World (2007) ISBN 0007194587

By the sounds of it her work could also be quite harmful. Making money off of unfounded claims about cancer, which based on the amazon summary includes discouraging people from having chemotherapy is fucking horrendous.

The book you mention "the field" seems to be a book about physics written by a journalist, featuring talk of levitation, ESP, unlimited fuel and spiritual healing.

Magic in other words.

A quick google has informed me that the scientific research she cites is bunk also.

[thugler]

Name one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence

There's a whole article for you to read about it.

I wasn't trying to claim you were lying. I was just stating that it's a fact that over time stories we tell tend to be exaggerated and added to bit by bit. But even without that, the claim isn't all that wildly amazing.

[mini goatbix]

If there are all these genuine psychics out there, why haven't any of them used their powers for good (finding missing people/dead bodies/kidnapped people) or used them to make money (If supposedly the effect they achieve is so much greater than fake psychics)?

I find this aspect extremely interesting, there seems to be a fundamental belief by psychics that anyone with psychic ability must be a better person than those without, I think this is where a presumably mental ability like telepathy gets all tangled up with spirituality. Surely if psychic ability exists it is as arbitrary as any other mental ability, clever people are not automatically nicer than stupid people, so why should psychic people be nicer?

Why should being psychic have anything to do with being spiritual? Is psychic ability something bestowed by a higher power? Or is it simply a function of the brain?

[HappyTree]

Yeah, the old anecdotal evidence thing. That explains why YOU don't believe a word of what I said. It explains nothing to me, however, since it happened in front of my eyes.

I am exaggerating nothing. I have been through all the rational explanations myself, being a mostly rational person. Given the extreme state of my own atheism in previous years it really needed something special to shake out of of that.

You say it's not that amazing anyway. Ok, that's fair enough. To me I find it quite compelling. Walking up to someone and saying "I know you had a dog that bit your daughter" involves so many assumptions, I'd say it's hard to guess that cold. You don't think it's that hard. Maybe you're psychic too, then, lol.

No but really, I find it interesteing, the lengths people will go to to deny something. To you it's not that out of the ordinary for people to suddenly guess about dogs, daughters and childhood trauma. To me, the guy could easily have said "I have no daughter, I have never had dogs, no dog bit anyone in my family..." etc etc

Psychologically, it's fascinating that you make it sound so simple and banal. But then you will believe what you believe and I'll do the same.

This has happened to me too. I have received such messages. So I kinda know for a fact that I wasn't reaching, guessing, cold reading or anything. For you it's anecdotal, of course, and this is why I can't be bothered to go into detail about myself. I'd just get another load of "you must be wrong or misremembering" replies. Not worth the hassle.

I'm happy, you're happy, we're all happy with what we believe. I think that's how it should be.

[mini goatbix]

This has happened to me too. I have received such messages. So I kinda know for a fact that I wasn't reaching, guessing, cold reading or anything. For you it's anecdotal, of course, and this is why I can't be bothered to go into detail about myself. I'd just get another load of "you must be wrong or misremembering" replies. Not worth the hassle.

I'm happy, you're happy, we're all happy with what we believe. I think that's how it should be.

It's great that we're all happy, but I'd still like to know a few things if that's ok...
Where do you think the messages that you got came from? Can you say what they were, how they worked? Why do you think they came to you? Did they come out of the blue, just turning up a completely cynical mind or were there others factors that altered your hard core athiest view?
And to reiterate one that I asked up there, do you think that psychic ability is a simply mental ability or do you think it is something to do with spirituality?

[thugler]

Yeah, the old anecdotal evidence thing. That explains why YOU don't believe a word of what I said. It explains nothing to me, however, since it happened in front of my eyes.

I am exaggerating nothing. I have been through all the rational explanations myself, being a mostly rational person. Given the extreme state of my own atheism in previous years it really needed something special to shake out of of that.

You say it's not that amazing anyway. Ok, that's fair enough. To me I find it quite compelling. Walking up to someone and saying "I know you had a dog that bit your daughter" involves so many assumptions, I'd say it's hard to guess that cold. You don't think it's that hard. Maybe you're psychic too, then, lol.

No but really, I find it interesteing, the lengths people will go to to deny something. To you it's not that out of the ordinary for people to suddenly guess about dogs, daughters and childhood trauma. To me, the guy could easily have said "I have no daughter, I have never had dogs, no dog bit anyone in my family..." etc etc

Psychologically, it's fascinating that you make it sound so simple and banal. But then you will believe what you believe and I'll do the same.

This has happened to me too. I have received such messages. So I kinda know for a fact that I wasn't reaching, guessing, cold reading or anything. For you it's anecdotal, of course, and this is why I can't be bothered to go into detail about myself. I'd just get another load of "you must be wrong or misremembering" replies. Not worth the hassle.

I'm happy, you're happy, we're all happy with what we believe. I think that's how it should be.

I wasn't claiming that you were lying, exaggerating or making it up. I was simply outlining why anecdotal evidence like that doesn't and shouldn't convince people.

I'm sure it's true, but it's still really not that impressive or out of the ordinary, it's one in a million similar stories you would see in something like that womens' psychic/spirituality magazine. There are a whole bunch of explanations which make more sense than 'he was magic and had a sudden magic thought'. For one, perhaps he knew the man vaguely, or at least some information about him, for another, how unlikely is it that a man of his age had a daughter? how likely a pet, how likely it to be a dog? how likely for the dog to have bitten his daughter as a child? It's not a ridiculously unlikely guess I suspect. There's a lot you would have to rule out for sure before you start thinking about paranormal explanations.

Then theres the actual thing he used his psychic ability for. It's a bit shit isn't it. He used it to give some advice to a man about getting a new dog.

Why don't psychics use their apparently amazing abilities for anything particularly good or money making? Why is it always little things like telling people their dead relative says something nice. Is their psychic ability only good for little feats to amaze people?

I know for a fact that there are magicians who could certainly achieve the exact same effect or even better than what you saw. So why have you come to the conclusion that it's magic?

Perhaps you could comment on my previous post about your book recommendation also? Or am I just being 'close minded'?

[HappyTree]

Good questions. I've spent the last 8 years exploring this kind of thing. I desperately want to understand what happened to me as well, you know! If only to get it back. I loved being psychic, it made life a lot easier and things ran more smoothly. But it faded away as my state of mind became more "normal". I see it as something I was given to open my mind to what is out there, but to get that state to stick around will take work.

My own current belief is that the universe is a conscious entity based on binary computation. It evolved from simple imbalances of positive and negative energy which created a neural network of connections that can be on or off. As its complexity grew it developed consciousness and has been operating on trial and error. The physical world we assume is real is actually a hologram generated by the universal consciousness to give us a meaningful environment of physical metaphors in which to grow and expand. The purpose of repeated incarnations is to learn how to be responsible with universal energy and eventually become gods of our own universes. There is an infinite number of them, I saw them once in an OBE. The image presented to me was one of vast orchards of trees stretching out in all directions. On each tree were groups of universes hanging like globes on a Christmas tree. I met the goddess who created this universe and we spoke for a while.

The difficulty is relating these things is that there is a massive, if not far more important emotional aspect to it. It's not really enough to relate the facts, I'd have to try to convey the emotional impact, the experience of feeling my consciousness expanded to a point where I was at one with the whole universe. There is really nothing I can type here that would convey what that was like, you hae to have experienced it yourself to understand. And that's no criticism or claim of superiority, it's just that language necessarily depends on making reference to things the listner has already experienced. This is why speakign about such things is so problematic.

I fully admit that according to mainstream psychology I was experiencing psychosis. My psychiatrist has said as much to my face. It was not long after my dad had died suddenly and with no warning whilst I was in France. So to my perception he didn't die, just disappeared off the face of the planet overnight.

But I was very glad of my extremely rational POV, it refused to accept these things at face value and I subjected them to all the internal testing I could muster. I was really VERY reluctant to let go of my rationalist perspective since that at least gave me the illusion of understanding life.

So when psychic things happened to me I was there analysing and trying to refute it all. I'd have been happier believing that I was indeed going insane, but it's when these apparently insane thoughts actually interface with concrete reality and produce verifiable results that it gets less cut and dried.

During my discussion with that goddess (who I do realise was probably not an actual goddess but was a representation my mind found to explain the information I was receiving) I questioned everything. I was just as rational and analytical as I am now, it wasn't like a dream at all. It was, to use a well-worn phrase, more real than the reality I am experiencing right now. Hyper-real. I believe that that is the true nature of existence and what we are experiencing now is a compelling illusion, a hologram.

I think that psychic ability is a natural function of the universe. I would point you towards the concept of quantum coupling to explain how we can be connected to places and people who seem unconnected to us at the moment. We are all connected all the time.

So in that respect, I think there are many people with a natural psychic ability who don't necessarily need to be spiritual at all. But in general it does rely on a spiritual component because this generates the state of acceptance and gratitude necessary to promote these effects.

One can perform "negative" things with psychic energy as well, but it's all governed by the law of cause and effect. "Bad karma" is simply a reciprocal effect from an underlying cause.

I will relate one episode as an example, prefaced with the statement that I am not exaggerating, misremembering or lying. I can predict that most people will just think "it couldn't have happened like that" and that's fine. I'd have reacted in that way myself, before.

I had no money to buy food. I was in an extremely distressed state of mind, combined with a deep depression after my dad's death. I had been receiving messages, some of which I couldn't verify and so I tried to ignore. But I was reading a book about psychic phenomena and got annoyed at how fleeting and unverifiable it all seemed to be. I decided I had to test it for myself.

So I spoke to the universe, sitting in my room. I said, ok universe, if this stuff is true and these messages are real, I am going to test you. I have no money to buy food and am in a desperate situation. I will now psychically resolve this. What can I do?

My state of mind was one of openness to whatever came through. I was going to follow whatever I was told, as an experiment. The feelign came to me that what I had to do to get money was go to the bank. I responded rationally, saying "No, that won't work. I have no money in the bank, the machine will eat my card." Then I checked myself and said, aha but I promised I'd just follow whatever I was told. So if that's what I'm told I will do it. So I took my bank card and went out to my bank, keen to see what happened. I was expecting things to go as normal and for me to lose my bank card in the machine. But if that's what it took to try to prove something, so be it.

I approached the bank machine with my card in hand. Just before I could insert the card the machine beeped and 20€ popped out. I took the money in disbelief. I hadn't put the card in, hadn't pressed any buttons or entered my PIN. It was just there, free money from the bank.

I was able to eat for a week on that. I asked the universe for help, it told me something that seemed illogical and yet the result was I had just received 20€ I didn't have before.

How does one explain that rationally? Without simply denying that it happened and that I'm exaggerating or making it up? I'm a guy sitting here typing what happened to me, not some scam merchant.

Or course, thinking about it logically I must assume that someone has been at that bank machine before me and for some reason they walked away without taking the money. Maybe it got stuck? Maybe the machine had a fault and so it delayed handing out the money to the previous person. I don't claim that anything magical or physics-defying took place.

But the important thing is, how could I know, sitting in my room, that if I went to that bank at that time I'd come across a faulty machine that someone must have used before me? The timing, the knowledge to go there, the fact that it came as a direct response to me testing the universe quite rationally. I have no explanation other than my mind was receptive enough to take information from the quantum soup and use it to my advantage.

This kind of thing kept on happening to me over a period of a few months. There is no such thing as magic, it's just natural functions of the universe we don't normally have access to unless we are in a particular state of mind. In my case, trauma and emotional distress coupled with a genuine desire to explore what was happening just happened to create the right conditions for that to happen to me.

Nowadays I'm more or less fine and this doens't happen any more no matter how hard I try. But my rational mind cannot deny that it did happen. And so I must believe that things are not as they seem most of the time. If nothing else it's interesting to think about.

[batwings]

The only time I thought I had psychic powers was last year. I was over a friend's house and we were watching Deal Or No Deal. For some reason, and this was the first time I've tried, I began announcing what amounts would be in the boxes, several seconds before they were opened. It started as a joke, but then I got the first, then the second one, right, then the third... until I had correctly guessed 6 in a row. This was right at the start so it was from a pool of 22 unopened boxes. By guess number 4 I was starting to feel very strange and my friend was looking at me wide eyed. The odds of picking 6 amounts in a row must be pretty high but I did it. I discounted notions such as that showing of DOND was a repeat and I subconsciously remembered it (it wasn't), or there was some sort of delay on the tv and I was picking up the info form next door (no one was in), so I guess it was just pure luck. Tried it again since and have never even got one right.

Would be nice to have similar luck with something that did me any good like the lottery, for instance.

So, was I in temporary possession of an impressive but useless psychic power or just lucky? I lean heavily to the latter but I can certainly see how similar luck in other circumstances might convince one that they had the Touch.

[HappyTree]

The 'good questions' comment was for mini, not thugler. Thugler, you seem to know a lot of things for a fact. I'm glad you're so sure about the nature of existence. Maybe you could inform the rest of the world why these things are oh-so-easily explained away.

If you think it's so easy to walk up to someone and instantly guess that they have a daughter, dog and a childhood trauma, also that they're about to get a new dog then I long to live in your world.

[batwings]

TIf you think it's so easy to walk up to someone and instantly guess that they have a daughter, dog and a childhood trauma, also that they're about to get a new dog then I long to live in your world.

Is it possible that, since you were all at a convention, that sometime previous to the message coming through, your friend could have subliminally heard the person talking about his daughter, dog etc? Then this memory is triggered by a face-to-face meeting and expresses itself as a message from the beyond?

[The Boston Crab]

It's coming through a little hazy, HT, but I can see you getting a shitload of crap for what you've just posted in this thread...

I'm personally just very surprised that a dude I thought was a girl who liked computer games has bared himself to an incredible level this past week. Does the Tree of your username reference the universal consciousness tree?