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geo

Mediums and specifically the Long Island Medium

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With Halloween coming up, time to talk about spooky things like mediums and talking with the dead.

Anyone believe in mediums? I saw an episode of Tanked (fish tank builders) that had the Long Island Medium on so now I'm watching her 'Gone Fishing' episode of her show where it has her side of the story. She asks a lot of questions and at the end makes statements. She has even gone into details that in post interviews the clients say 'I never told anyone I had that dream and she knew.' Well how would a ghost know? Maybe she's just a mind reader.

My cousin's boyfriend likes to fuck with mediums for his own entertainment value. $10 - $20 to communicate with someone that doesn't exist let alone someone that died. Its different every time, his dead sister, dead friend, dead father that's still living. He agrees with the mediums all the way through and being totally agreeable, he then tells them that someone that was dead doesn't exist and laughs in their face. Sometimes he'll ask do you speak German? Because my dead uncle doesn't speak English. Not sure why that's his fun when it costs him money, but whatever.

Has anyone had an experience with mediums? Would mediums just get harassed walking through a graveyard? Do they communicate with dead animals too? Like a dead dog just hanging out? If someone can communicate with the dead, there are probably billions of undead in areas like Asia and Europe that have had longer eras of population.

Is finding out about dead people made so much easier with the Internet? Why would dead people just hang out with their families 24/7 rather than visiting beautiful countries? Maybe they're bound to families I guess.

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I've never encountered anything like this, but I sure know as hell my cousins have. For some reason they always end up buying a old house with alot of history.

My younger cousin, when she was around 4 remembers seeing a young boy in their hallway, at first thinking it was her brother but coming close to him realized it was not, she asked him what he was doing and he replied that his mother was dead and he didn't like that my cousins where living there. Then a few nights later my aunt saw a little boy running across their deck, thinking it was her son but was confused when she checked up on her son to find out that he was fast asleep.

Now my other cousins had some really screwed up things happening. Their house used to belong to my great aunt which belonged to her great uncle and no one knew who owned it before him. When my cousin was 5 years old he remembers having to go sleep with his parents after having some strange nightmares. He went to the bathroom and when he came out he saw the top of some ones head going down the stairs even though his parents where already in bed and there was no one else in the house that night. A couple of years later he was taking a nap during the afternoon when he saw a women with a red gown and a red hood looking towards the ground with her hands together as if she was praying, he at first thought it was his mother who was cleaning his room while he was taking a nap, but as he got closer the woman disappeared. That night another frighting event happened, my cousin woke up in the middle of the night to realize another woman, this time in a white gown at the end of his bed, he started swearing and telling it to go away, and when it disappeared the coat hanger that was over his bed came undone and hit him on the head!

Both of my cousins eventually had to call some psychics to make them go away, and the creepy thing is that hey never seen anything bizarre again.

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geo said:

Would mediums just get harassed walking through a graveyard?

Ha, this reminds me of when Richard Dawkins asked Craig Hamilton Parker a very similar question:-

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She has even gone into details that in post interviews the clients say 'I never told anyone I had that dream and she knew.' Well how would a ghost know? Maybe she's just a mind reader.


Most people have roughly the same dreams. Being a good medium is not too different from being a good statistician. More candles and weird pets, maybe.

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It's all bullshit. And it's extra bullshit when these conmen are swindling people out of their money.

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Doominator2 said:

I've never encountered anything like this, but I sure know as hell my cousins have. For some reason they always end up buying a old house with alot of history.

My younger cousin, [...]

Now my other cousins [...]

Both of my cousins eventually had to call some psychics to make them go away, and the creepy thing is that hey never seen anything bizarre again.


Does schizophrenia and/or compulsive lying run in your family?

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geo said:

Anyone believe in mediums? I saw an episode of Tanked (fish tank builders) that had the Long Island Medium on so now I'm watching her 'Gone Fishing' episode of her show where it has her side of the story. She asks a lot of questions and at the end makes statements. She has even gone into details that in post interviews the clients say 'I never told anyone I had that dream and she knew.' Well how would a ghost know? Maybe she's just a mind reader.

They are snake oil salesmen. They use cold reading on a captive, sympathetic audience that desperately wants these things to be true. It's the worst kind of swindling as it more or less robs people that are in very vulnerable emotional states given the subject matter: dead loved ones.

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If you can find the episode of Penn and Teller's Bullshit where they debunk talking to the dead (I believe it was the very first episode?) They do a really good job at tearing this shit apart.

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I don't know about all that kind of stuff - but I'm a little bit clairvoyant, and I foresee that a bunch of disaffected technical and engineering experts are reading this thread right now, and are reliving the moments of fellowship of kindred spirits of fortunate times in recent months in their daily thoughts. Later on they will consider future prospects and sow their seeds carefully for earnest companionship can be carefully managed and rewarding experience.

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geo said:

Would mediums just get harassed walking through a graveyard? Do they communicate with dead animals too? Like a dead dog just hanging out? If someone can communicate with the dead, there are probably billions of undead in areas like Asia and Europe that have had longer eras of population.

Best estimate seems to that for every living person there's 30 corpses, so there should be no shortage of spirits for mediums to chat with.

It's bullshit!

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Some shit about my own house:

The former, dead, owner used to own most of the surrounding area as an Apple Orchard. It was eventually sectioned into a subdivision. The sign still exists on one guy's house, while there's an overgrown baseball field in the common area named in the orchard owner's honor. Anyways, the guy's dead, and we have his house, now.

My dad runs his own company, and was having his guys work on the house, and almost everyone has their story to tell about the house. One guy says he saw someone standing in the hallway, and he thought it was the other guy he was with. He was walking into a laundry room, caught the person out the corner of his eye, and turned back to ask him for help. Of course. the man was gone, and when he went looking for his partner, he was found in the basement, which is some distance away.

The partner, on the other hand, occasionally found tipped over beer bottles in different areas of the house (Yah, they drank on the job, but at our house it's nothing unusual). Now, outside or near windows, we can guess it's the wind. Inside, who knows. Maybe bad balance? The bottles weren't always full, but they weren't always empty either. Sometime earlier, either taking to the Old Owner's wife or to him before he died, he was rather against drinking or alcohol (I don't know much about it, but if I was to theorize, maybe he was a reformed alcoholic?).

The neighbor also claimed to occasionally see the old owner outside the house, just looking up at it. She claimed it was usually just for a few seconds, and I think she said that she thought it was her husband once inspecting our house, until he showed up behind her, and when she looked back, OO was gone. (I guess OO was friends with the neighbors). Nehibors on the other side of the house never saw anything as far as I knew, but they knew about that story.

Finally, my dad was leaving the house to buy something, and he claims that he kept hearing some voice telling him to turn around. He didn't know what for, but figuring he left something behind, he returned to find that a pipe had burst, flooding the lower level of the house. He figured it was OO. He also claimed that he in general felt a presence once in a while, or just a feeling, but after the flooding such feelings, much less "appearances" haven't surfaced since. We suspect that if he was here, he's long gone now.

*shrug*

As for talking to the dead, mediums who sell shit fake it, clearly. But I bet if someone really can, they either keep to themselves, or think they're schitz and commit themselves.

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Quast said:

They are snake oil salesmen. They use cold reading on a captive, sympathetic audience that desperately wants these things to be true. It's the worst kind of swindling as it more or less robs people that are in very vulnerable emotional states given the subject matter: dead loved ones.


After seeing a video of James Randi cold reading and teaching how to cold read, I've been able to cold read people into thinking I'm psychic then I said no, I just know a lot of astrology.

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It's complete bullshit. Mediums are either con-artists preying on vulnerable people, or just straight-up delusional if they genuinely believe in their own nonsense.

Read up on cold reading. The most well-known "mediums" are actually incredibly canny in the techniques they use to work crowds and "guess" people's personal details, etc.

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Nomad said:

Does schizophrenia and/or compulsive lying run in your family?


Certainly not, My stories might sound a little like the typical hollywood ghost films, but since I haven't seen this encounters my self I may have been adding alot more description than what my cousins have told me, (Because it has been 2 years since I've seen them, and its not fresh in my memory) I might be sounding crazy but as a child when I used to visit them more often, I sometimes would feel uneasy like there was someone was trying to make me leave whenever I was there, be it in the afternoon or before I went to bed.

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It's interesting that "ghosts" only seem to appear to people who believe in ghosts. Much in the same way aliens only seem to abduct basket cases out of trailer parks.

A lot of things like the part of Clonehunter's story with the tipped over bottles can easily be chalked up to confirmation bias. "Hey this weird thing happened, and there's this possible explanation that seems to fit the bill, so that must be it. Case closed." When usually, there's much more mundane reasons. Like people getting drunk and knocking over bottles and lying about it because they don't want to get in trouble.

Also, the human brain is really good at seeing faces or figures where there isn't anything; surely a mechanism bred from evolutionary need to survive in habitats with predators. The primitive humans that saw predators even when there wasn't one was probably more likely to survive than the ones that didn't. Those kinds of false positives are almost always the case when people claim seeing "ghosts."

Really, the output of the human brain is horribly unreliable when it comes to interpreting the unknown. Add to that, that science knows exactly what part of the brain to stimulate to make it feel like there's someone right behind you, I have to be more and more skeptical when I hear stories about people feeling "presences."

Frankly, even if I had my own firsthand encounter with something seemingly incorporeal I don't think I'd trust my own perception.

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Zed said:

Now we just need a thread about J. Z. Knight and RSE for this forum to be complete.


@Zed : It doesn't help that J.Z lives in my hometown and the only thing I constantly throw about her is her fear of lizard people coming out of Mt Rainier.

@Topic: I am slightly skeptical of mediums, but I do believe in ghosts and the supernatural. I generally feel the energies around areas and take on that energy, and will also feed off the energy of the living and their emotions, which in turn can make me emotional towards the most prevalent one.

I'm not sure talking with the dead seems possible but seeing the shadows of them though I do believe.

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Nomad said:

Frankly, even if I had my own firsthand encounter with something seemingly incorporeal I don't think I'd trust my own perception.

When I was a kid, I was convinced the house I was living in was haunted. It started with a story from my mom about someone laying on the couch when no one was home. Nowadays when I see something out the corner of my eye that isn't there I just dismiss it, but as a kid every one of those things was a ghost -- it didn't help that my parents were both believers and reinforced this, going back to the original story. I moved out for a few years, then moved back a little older, and never saw a ghost again. I guess they got bored and moved on? I even still believed at that point, I was reluctant to move back in because of what I had seen. I guess I got old enough that my imagination didn't get carried away as much anymore.

One thing that was definitely real about those sightings was the raw sense of dread and panic I'd get seeing something for a split second. Probably exactly what you said about seeing predators where there are none. Better for your brain to scare the hell out of you and get you to run than let you get eaten by a lion. I still get chills thinking back to some of the things I (thought I) saw.

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Nomad said:

It's interesting that "ghosts" only seem to appear to people who believe in ghosts.

It's also interesting that the belief in the supernatural doesn't seem to be like believing in tables and chairs, where if you believe in one kind of table or chair you believe in them all.

For example, a colleague of mine sincerely believes in ghosts, but he doesn't believe in God because "there's no evidence for it" (his words). I've never interrogated him over it, but this kind of selectivity doesn't make a lot of sense to me, especially when he says he's never had an [alleged] encounter with a ghost.

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I like to believe in aliens, ghosts and talking to them, but its one of those things that I have yet to experience it for myself. I wouldn't experience it with a medium so much as they would experience it.

I kind of wonder if they're delusional or have a mental issue that makes them believe it and they're not just a clear cut con artist.

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Even when I believed in ghosts, I believed they were merely psychic "imprints" of the dead, not conscious beings, so the idea of communicating with the dead always seemed ridiculous to me. After all, if you die, shouldn't you pass on to the afterlife, in heaven or hell? If anything remains, then why would it be able to act like a sentient being? I could buy the idea that ghosts are, say, recordings of previous activity, but the idea that they're self-aware beings just seemed ridiculous even then.

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I've had a few weird occurrences throughout my life, but none of them has made me believe in spirits. However about six months ago my wife and I were sitting on the couch watching TV - the couch is in a position in the living room to where you can see down the hallway to our bedroom - and she was sitting to my right, so if I turned and looked to her I have a clear shot down the hallway. I turn to her to say something, and a person is just standing right in our bedroom. I could make out the color of his/her shirt, it was like a weird red and short sleeved. The weird part though is I wasn't thinking anything even remotely close to 'ghosts,' and it was like my brain shut down and couldn't figure out what I was looking at. I instantly looked down and almost passed out. I don't know if it was from fear or what, but it was fucking crazy. Still on the fence about spirits/ghosts though.

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fraggle said:

It's complete bullshit. Mediums are either con-artists preying on vulnerable people, or just straight-up delusional if they genuinely believe in their own nonsense.

Read up on cold reading. The most well-known "mediums" are actually incredibly canny in the techniques they use to work crowds and "guess" people's personal details, etc.


Some of those con-artists make a lot of money off people, like the couple of con-artists that got a movie based on them. The movie The Conjuring is based on this two exposed con-artists, yet they get movie deals. A sequel to that movie is out even. I say rippoff those movies, no point in giving these bastards more money.

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doomgargoyle said:

Some of those con-artists make a lot of money off people, like the couple of con-artists that got a movie based on them. The movie The Conjuring is based on this two exposed con-artists, yet they get movie deals. A sequel to that movie is out even. I say rippoff those movies, no point in giving these bastards more money.


Poltergeist had them too.

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Obviously it's as bunk as it gets.

I was really hoping this kind of thing would have faded out of the mainstream with the death of Sylvia Browne, but it looks like we're stuck with Theresa Caputo for another thirty freaking years.

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Flesh420 said:

However about six months ago my wife and I were sitting on the couch watching TV - the couch is in a position in the living room to where you can see down the hallway to our bedroom - and she was sitting to my right, so if I turned and looked to her I have a clear shot down the hallway. I turn to her to say something, and a person is just standing right in our bedroom. I could make out the color of his/her shirt, it was like a weird red and short sleeved. The weird part though is I wasn't thinking anything even remotely close to 'ghosts,' and it was like my brain shut down and couldn't figure out what I was looking at. I instantly looked down and almost passed out.

It was most likely an intruder, who made his/her escape while your wife was asking if you're feeling OK.

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