Sylvia Celeste Browne was an American author who claimed to be a medium and to
have psychic abilities. She appeared regularly on television and radio,
including on The Montel Williams Show and Larry King Live TV shows and hosted
an hour-long Internet radio show on Hay House Radio. She was the subject of
frequent criticism for making what she claimed were psychic predictions that
were later proven false, including predictions related to missing persons
such as Shawn Hornbeck and Amanda Berry. Early life
Browne grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, the daughter of Celeste and William Lee
Shoemaker. Her father held several different jobs, working at times in mail
delivery, in jewelry sales, and as a vice president of a major freight line.
Browne was raised mostly as a Catholic, and was said to have Jewish,
Episcopalian, and Lutheran relatives. Browne claimed she started seeing
visions at the age of five, and that her grandmother, a psychic medium, helped
her understand what they meant. Browne also claimed her great-uncle was a
psychic medium and was "rabid about UFOs".
Career Prior to her career as a psychic, Browne
taught English and religious education at Presentation High School in San Jose,
California. = Companies =
Browne was the head of the Sylvia Browne Corporation and Sylvia Browne
Enterprises. In a 2010 interview, Browne's business manager said that
Browne's businesses earn $3 million a year.
= Psychic readings = Browne started to give psychic readings
in 1974, and performed thousands of one-on-one readings for a wide variety
of groups and individuals. In 2008, she charged $750 for a 20- to 30-minute
telephone session. = Books =
Browne was the author of dozens of books on paranormal and spiritual topics. She
discussed a wish for people to feel that they are all loved by God. Browne
claimed that God comprises both a male and a female part, named Om and Azna
respectively. She stated that the entity of God loves all people and living
beings equally, regardless of one's specific religious or spiritual beliefs.
According to Browne, this includes atheists. Browne wrote that people's
actions and intentions define a person and soul, and that people of all
religions, spiritual beliefs, and non-beliefs may go to "the Other Side",
Browne's term for Heaven. Browne wrote that she presented her beliefs in a way
that allows readers or listeners to take what they want from her teachings and
leave behind what the rest. = Television and radio =
Browne was a frequent guest on US television and radio programs, including
Larry King Live, The Montel Williams Show, That's Incredible!, and Coast to
Coast AM. During these appearances, she usually discussed her abilities with the
host and then performed readings for audience members or callers. On certain
occasions she was paired with other guests, including skeptics, often
leading to debate about the authenticity of Browne's psychic abilities. These
shows often featured verbal sparring between the two, with each trying to
convince the audience that the other was wrong.
Browne hosted her own hour-long Internet radio show on Hay House Radio, where she
performed readings and discussed paranormal issues.
Browne appeared in a 1991 episode of Haunted Lives: True Ghost Stories. In
the segment "Ghosts R Us", she portrayed herself in a recreation of events that
purportedly took place in a haunted Toys R Us store. Browne also appeared as
herself on the television soap opera The Young and the Restless in December 2006.
= Novus Spiritus = In 1986, Browne founded a church in
Campbell, California known as the Society of Novus Spiritus. It describes
itself as "Gnostic Christian" and states that it incorporates the Gnostic Gospels
and the traditions and teachings associated with Jesus without excluding
Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, or Hinduism. The church's website includes the
statement that while the Bible is a "marvelous book of learning and hope",
it is not the "unaltered word of God". Paranormal claims
Browne claimed that she knew what it is like in Heaven. In her book The Other
Side and Back, she states that its temperature is a constant 78 °F; that
there are no insects unless one wants there to be; that pets may go there; and
that a house can be built there wherever one wants. She also asserted that the
"other side" exists at a "higher vibrational level" approximately three
feet above ground level, making it difficult for humans to perceive. She
claimed to have been born able to perceive a wider range of "vibrational
frequencies". Browne declared that she could see
angels. According to her, they looked similar to depictions in paintings but,
depending on their "phylum", had different traits. She also claimed that
they do not speak. Browne professed the ability to speak with her spirit guide
"Francine" and gave details of 54 of her own former lives as divined by her.
False predictions Browne made many public predictions
which were subsequently proven false. Among the more notable incidents were
the following: In 2002, Browne informed the parents of
11-year-old Shawn Hornbeck, who had disappeared earlier that year, that he
had been kidnapped by a dark-skinned Hispanic man with dreadlocks and was now
dead. Hornbeck was found alive in 2007; his kidnapper was Caucasian and
short-haired. In June 2008, UK television network ITV2 was sanctioned
by Ofcom for reairing the Montel Williams episode featuring Browne's
original prediction. In November 2004, Browne told the mother
of kidnapping victim Amanda Berry, who had disappeared 19 months earlier:
"She's not alive, honey." Browne also claimed to have had a vision of Berry's
jacket in the garbage with "DNA on it". Berry's mother died two years later
believing her daughter had been killed. Berry was found alive in May 2013.
On Larry King Live in 2003, Browne predicted she would die at age 88. She
died in 2013, at age 77. = Psychic detective cases =
In 2000, Brill's Content examined ten recent Montel Williams episodes that
highlighted Browne's work as a psychic detective, spanning 35 cases. In 21
cases, the information predicted by Browne was too vague to be verified. Of
the remaining 14, law enforcement officials or family members stated
Browne had played no useful role. In 2010, the Skeptical Inquirer
published a detailed three-year study by Ryan Shaffer and Agatha Jadwiszczok that
examined Browne's predictions about missing persons and murder cases.
Despite Browne's repeated claims to be more than 85% correct, the study
reported that "Browne has not even been mostly correct in a single case." The
study compared Browne's televised statements about 115 cases with
newspaper reports and found that in the 25 cases where the actual outcome was
known, she was completely wrong in every one. In the rest, where the final
outcome was unknown, her predictions could not be substantiated. The study
concluded that the media outlets that repeatedly promoted Browne's work had no
visible concern about whether she was untrustworthy or harmed people. Among
the predictions examined in the study were the following:
In 1999, Browne said that six-year-old Opal Jo Jennings, who had disappeared a
month earlier, had been forced into slavery in Japan. Later that year, a
local man was convicted of kidnapping and murdering Jennings. In 2003, an
autopsy of Jennings' remains found that she had died within hours of her
abduction. In 2002, Browne claimed Holly Krewson,
who had disappeared in 1995, was working as an exotic dancer in a Hollywood
nightclub. In 2006, dental records were used to positively identify a body found
in 1996 in San Diego as Krewson's. In 2002, Browne claimed Lynda
McClelland, who had disappeared in 2000, had been taken by a man with the
initials "MJ"; was alive in Orlando, Florida; and would be found soon. In
2003, McClelland's son-in-law David Repasky, who had been present at
Browne's reading, was convicted of murdering McClelland; her remains were
found near her home in Pennsylvania. In 2004, Browne said that Ryan Katcher,
a 19-year-old who had disappeared in 2000, had been murdered, and his body
could be found in a metal shaft. In 2006, Katcher's body was found in his
truck at the bottom of a pond, where he had drowned.
In a 2013 follow-up article, Shaffer reviewed more recent predictions by
Browne, as well as predictions whose outcomes had been earlier classified as
undetermined but were now largely resolved. According to Shaffer, Browne
was mostly or completely wrong in 33 cases and mostly accurate in none.
= Sago Mine disaster = On January 2, 2006, an explosion at Sago
mine in West Virginia trapped several miners underground. The following day,
Browne was a guest on the radio program Coast to Coast AM with George Noory. At
the start of the broadcast, it was believed that 12 of 13 miners trapped by
the disaster had been found alive and, when Noory asked Browne if the reported
lack of noise from inside the mine might have led her to think the men had died,
she replied, "No; I knew they were going to be found." Later in the program, it
was discovered that the earlier news reports had been in error; Browne said,
"I don't think there's anybody alive, maybe one ... I just don't think they
are alive", adding, subsequently, that she "didn't believe that they were alive
... I did believe that they were gone." James Randi challenge
Scientific skeptic James Randi, a retired stage magician and investigator
of paranormal claims, was a vocal critic of Browne and claimed her accuracy rate
was no better than educated guessing. On September 3, 2001, Browne stated on
Larry King Live that she would prove her legitimacy by accepting the James Randi
Educational Foundation's One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge to
demonstrate supernatural abilities in a controlled scientific test. By April
2003, however, Browne had not contacted Randi to make testing arrangements.
On May 16, 2003, in another appearance on King's show, Browne said she had not
taken the test because Randi refused to place the prize money in escrow. Randi
responded by mailing a notarized copy of the prize account status showing a
balance in excess of one million dollars; Browne refused to accept the
letter. In late 2003, despite challenge rules that money could not be placed in
escrow, Randi announced that he was willing to do so for Browne; Browne did
not accept or acknowledge this offer. In 2005, Browne posted a message online
that she had never received confirmation of the prize money's existence, despite
Randi's claim that he had a certified mail receipt showing Browne's refusal of
the package. In 2007, on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360°,
Browne's business manager Linda Rossi stated that Browne would not be taking
Randi's challenge "because she has nothing to prove to James Randi".
Fraud conviction During the late 1980s, local authorities
and the Federal Bureau of Investigation began investigating Browne and her
businesses over several bank loans that caused "sustained losses" to banks. In
1992, Browne and her then-husband Kenzil Dalzell Brown were indicted on several
charges of investment fraud and grand theft. The Superior Court of Santa Clara
County, California, found Browne and her husband had sold securities in a
gold-mining venture under false pretenses. In at least one instance,
they told a couple that their $20,000 investment was to be used for immediate
operating costs. Instead, the money was transferred to an account for their
Nirvana Foundation for Psychic Research. Browne pleaded no contest to securities
fraud and was indicted on grand larceny in Santa Clara County, California on May
26, 1992. The couple each received one year probation. In addition, Browne was
sentenced to 200 hours of community service.
Personal life Browne married four times. Her first
marriage, from 1959 to 1972, was to Gary Dufresne. The couple had two sons, Paul
and Christopher. She took the surname Brown upon her third marriage, and later
changed it to Browne. Her fourth marriage took place on February 14,
2009, to Michael Ulery, the owner of a jewelry store.
Browne claimed that her son, Christopher Dufresne, is also a psychic. Her website
says, "If Sylvia is the best psychic around—then Chris is the second best."
In March 2011, the Society of Novus Spiritus, the church founded by Browne,
announced that Browne had suffered a heart attack on March 21 in Hawaii. The
church requested donations on Browne's behalf.
Death Browne died on November 20, 2013, aged
77, at Good Samaritan Hospital in San Jose, California. Her interment was at
Oak Hill Memorial Park. References
External links Official website
Sylvia Browne at the Internet Movie Database
The Society of Novus Spiritus, the church founded by Browne.
Ask Sylvia!, Browne's HayHouse radio talk show.