Science Friction_ Where the Known Meets the Unknown - Michael Shermer [20]
Figure 1.4. The astrological chart used by the author
Psychic Reading
My fourth subject was a fifty-eight-year-old woman, for which I was to do a straight cold read with no props. I began with the Barnum reading, but did not get far into it before it became apparent that she was more than a little willing to talk about her problems. She did not want to hear all that generic crap. She wanted to get straight to the specific issues on her mind that day. She was overweight and did not look particularly healthy, but since I didn’t want to say anything about her weight I said I was picking up something about her being concerned about her health and diet, guessing, since this was still early January, that she probably made a New Year’s resolution about losing weight and starting a new exercise program. Bingo!
This subject then opened up about her recent back surgery and other bodily ailments. I tried a number of high-probability guesses that worked quite well, especially the box of photographs, broken gadgets around the house, and the short hair/long hair line, all hits, especially the hair, which she explained she changes constantly. I said I was getting something about a scar or scrape on her knees, and that left her slack jawed. She said that she had not scraped her knees since childhood but had just the week before fallen down and torn them up pretty badly. Swish!
Although I was able to glean from the conversation that she had recently lost her mother, and a few minutes of generic comments from me about her mother staying close to her in her memory left her in tears, she really came to find out about her son. What was he going to do? A minute of Q 8c A revealed that he is a senior in high school, so I assumed that as his mother she was worried about him going off to college. Nothing but net! what in particular was she worried about? He was thinking of going to USC, so I jumped in before she could explain and surmised that it was because the University of Southern California is located in downtown Los Angeles, not exactly the safest neighborhood in the area.
In the post-reading interview this subject praised my psychic intuition to the hilt and Bill and his producers were beside themselves with glee at what great dramatic television this was going to make. Imagine how John Edward’s producers must feel after a taping of Crossing Over. (On a positive note we did learn that day that psychic James Van Praagh’s television series had just been canceled due to poor ratings.)
Talking to the Dead
My last subject was a woman age fifty, who turned out to be my best reading. She had told Bill’s producer that she had something very specific she wanted to talk about, but did not offer a clue as to what it was. It didn’t take me long to find out. When I introduced myself and shook her hand, I noticed that her hands were exceptionally muscular and her palms sweaty. This was a high-strung, nervous person who was obviously emotional and agitated. I assumed that someone near to her had died (the proper phrase is “passed into spirit”) and that she wanted to make contact. “I’m sensing several people that have passed over, either parents or a parentlike figure to you.” It was her father who died, and she clearly had unfinished business with him.
From the ensuing conversation I discovered that her father had died when she was twenty-seven, so I deduced that it must have been a sudden death and that she did not have the opportunity to make her peace with him (both correct).