Psychics are tricky little bastards, and it’s easy to fall for their ploy, if you don’t
know what to look out for.
This is a continuation of a series exposing their tactics.
So make sure to check out my previous videos on hot reading, cold reading tactics, and
my psychic fail compilation videos and subscribe for the next episode in this series.
When you hear a statement like:
“You sometimes feel an extroverted urge to burst out of your shell, but reservations
frequently inhibit these feelings, and you’re often comfortable allowing others to get the
attention.”
How accurate is this description of you?
This is an example of a Rainbow Ruse.
A statement that attributes someone with opposing personality traits, and lets confirmation
bias do the rest.
You see, nobody is entirely introverted or entirely extroverted.
If you’re more extroverted, you’ll think, “Wow, I am extroverted and sometimes introverted.
This statement applies to me!”
And if you’re more introverted, you’ll think, “Wow, I’m introverted and sometimes
extroverted.
This statement applies to me!”
That’s why this type of statement works so well.
Because the exact inverse of it works just as well.
"I would say that you often feel quiet and reserved, but when the mood strikes you, you
can easily become the center of attention."
If you’re able to read someone’s body language, it’s not hard to slip a Rainbow
Ruse into a live reading, making the Rainbow Ruse a valuable tool in a psychic con artist’s
toolkit.
Rosemary Altea: “And I get the sense that she’s for some reason or another a little
nervous.”
Penn Jillette: “The bereaved son doesn’t respond to ‘nervous,’ so Rosemary completely
turns it around.”
Rosemary Altea: “Which is so not like her.
Because she’s really talkative and pushy and out there.”
Penn Jillette: “Nice save.
Was she tall and short, too?”
Next we have Barnum Statements (named after P.T.
Barnum whose circus claimed to have something for everyone).
These are statements that literally apply to almost everyone.
Statements like:
James Randi: “Recently, you have had to recover from a disappointment.
Your sexual adjustment has presented some problems for you.
You have a great deal of unused capacity.”
Other examples of Barnum Statements include: “You had an accident when you were a child
involving water.”
“You have a box of old unsorted photographs in your house.”
Or asking if an elderly person had pain in their legs, hips, or back, had trouble walking,
or took a rough fall in their old age.
James Van Praagh: “And what about trouble with the legs?”
Theresa Caputo: “Do you understand the leg issue?”
Char Margolis: “Who’s having the issue with walking?”
James Van Praagh: “Was there a man with a cane – like a father or grandfather with
a cane?”
“Yes”
This is Paul Zenon – A former psychic-turned-mentalist – exposing the tricks of psychics by reading
a collection of Barnum Statements to a TV audience.
Without even directing it at the show host, he scored hit after hit with her, showing
just how universally-applicable these kinds of statements are.
Paul Zenon: “There’s an older man.
That you associate with the initial ‘B’ – an older man – who’s probably in your
family or close to your family.
And he’s always suffered long-term with a pain in the back of his chest region.
OK?
But when you think of him, you always think of that daft thing that he does that makes
you laugh.”
“The letter ‘B’ – my dad’s Brian.”
Paul Zenon: “You’re generally outgoing.
You make friends easily.
That would apply to numer 1 as well.
You are sociable, but just occasionally you feel really detached and insecure about yourself.
It’s almost as though you’re zooming out and watching yourself from a camera, from
above, something like that.”
“I’m on TV.
So everybody thinks you’re really quite chatty – this that and the other, but when
I get home, I’m really quite quiet.”
Paul Zenon: “You’ve got a scar, it’s only a small scar, and it’s not from an
operation.
It was from an accident you had years ago.
And it’s on your left leg, in the middle.”
“I have got a scar on my left leg, in the middle.”
Paul Zenon: “You make friends very, very easily.
But you’ve actually got very few close friends and part of the reason for that is because
you tend to bottle things up and you should let things go, and fairly recently you feel
like you were betrayed by a friend.
It’s actually partly your own fault, but you still feel like you were betrayed by a
close friend.”
“All of those things.”
Paul Zenon: “You have a recurring dream where you’re falling – not falling but
almost flying down an escalator or some stairs.
This alternates, you only have it very sporadically, with a dream where you’re being held under
water.
You’re struggling to catch your breath.”
“Well it’s kind of me, basically.”
“All the way though she’s going, ‘That’s me.
That’s me.’”
These are the same types of nearly universally applicable phrases psychics use.
John Edward, “Did somebody work in the food business?”
Here’s James Van Praagh shotgunning one of these Barnum statements out into a crowd.
James Van Praagh: “Does someone have a scar on the foot?”
“I do.”
Or here’s Theresa Caputo asking a woman if her husband disliked a dish she cooked.
Theresa Caputo: “Did you always cook him certain foods, but he didn’t like it?”
If you’re married to someone for years, you’re pretty much guaranteed to find one
dish that they’re not fond of.
Other Barnum statements apply to everyone in a particular demographic and can be used
by psychics once they hone in on one, specific person.
For example, if I ask a 4-year-old Texan boy if one of his parents is usually cold, that
won’t necessarily result in a hit.
But when Caputo asked this elderly New Yorker Woman,
Theresa Caputo: “Did your mom always complain about being cold.”
That’s a guaranteed hit.
Old people just get cold.
It’s what they do.
Most grandparents’ thermostats have two settings: Lava – and The Surface of the
Sun.
Or here’s Rosemary Altea asking this black dude if he had a family member who was:
Rosemary Altea: “Very Black.”
Now so much of the psychic guessing game relies on the audience to do most of the work.
John Edward: “Do you understand that?”
This is no more apparent than when they throw out a number and ask their sitter to make
it fit somehow.
Theresa Caputo: “How do you connect with the numbers 13 and 15?
I don’t know if they’re ages or the 13th or 15th of a month.
Or it could stand for January, March, or May.”
Like an all-seeing spirit would use the number 13 or 15 to represent January?
Come on!
But let’s look at one a little more specific.
Maureen Flinn: “There’s a ‘5’ connection.
5 kids?
Or 5 of one sex?
So I don’t know if she had 5 kids?”
“Yes, she did.”
Maureen Flinn: “She did.
Ok.”
That seems either pretty lucky or like a rather impressive hit, but what if she’d missed.
What happens when a psychic gets a miss on a question like this?
John Edward: “And were there 5 kids in the family?”
“Yeah.
There’s more than 5.”
John Edward: “Tell me”
“6.”
John Edward: “So out of the psychic math, now we know, we do 5 minus one, right?”
“Whatchu talkin’ bout, Willis?!”
John Edward: “5 are similar.
1 is different.
So how can we have 5 being similar one being different?”
“Um, not sure, um.”
John Edward: “Is it that 5 are living and one’s passed?”
“6 are living.
3 are passed.
There’s 6 girls.”
John Edward: “How many total?”
I thought you were the psychic.
“Sorry, there’s 8 all-together in the siblings – 9 sorry.”
John Edward: “Thank you.”
“We’re all sisters.
6 girls and three boys have passed – males.”
John Edward: “So I need to do it my way where it’s 5 and 4.
5 have something in common and 4 are different.
So are 5 close in age, 4 further apart?
Or…
How many total passed?”
“3”
John Edward: “No.
I don’t know how to split it, but I know it’s got to be 5 and 4.”
It’s Ok, John Edward, I’m sure you’ll find some way out of this situation.
John Edward: “And I know that somebody passed from something impacted to the head or something
that effects their head.
Correct?”
Oh, just dismiss it and move on.
No one will notice right?
Thomas Westbrook notices!
When a psychic throws out a number:
Joe Power: “Was there a family of 5 of yous?”
There is almost no limit to the number of ways you can make this fit:
5 siblings counting yourself 5 siblings not counting yourself
4 kids and a miscarriage (counting & not counting you)
Family of 5 counting parents 2 kids 2 parents & a miscarriage (counting
& not counting you) 5 boys & any number of girls
5 girls & any number boys A mom and 4 girls
A dad and 4 boys And you can apply this to your parents and
siblings or to your wife and kids or to your wife’s family.
Or you can search for this number in the family of the deceased loved one.
The list of possible combinations goes on and on and on.
But if you’re going to a reading hoping to connect with a lost loved one, you will
eventually find a way to make the number stick.
Just be aware that the psychic is simply throwing out a number, and the sitter is doing all
of the work for them.
Joe Power: “Was there a family of 5 of yous then?
As if there’s 5 then?
Is there like 5 of yous?”
“5 girls and a boy.”
Richard Wiseman: “Or as some might refer to it: 6.”
Derren Brown: “6”
John Edward: “Psychic Math.
Psychic Math.
Psychic Math.”
Maureen Flinn: “There’s a 2 or a twin connection, as well.
Does she have 2 children now.”
“She had two more after him.”
John Edward: “Is somebody one of three?”
“My cousin was one of three with the third being from a second marriage.”
Theresa Caputo: “How do you connect with the number ‘3’?
You have three children?”
“I have… well, I have 2 children”
Theresa Caputo: “And you had a miscarriage?”
“No.
I didn’t have a miscarriage, but I consider my husband my 3rd child.”
So do psychics really talk with the dead?
It’s possible.
But we know exactly how to replicate the results they get using purely natural methods.
You don’t have to use every one of these tricks to come off as psychic.
The pre-show work covered in my hot reading video, the high-probability guesses I exposed
in my first cold reading video, the Rainbow Ruse, Barnum statements, these numbers games
– any one of these tricks on its own is enough to fool an emotionally vulnerable victim
unfamiliar with these tactics.
And time and time again, hucksters claiming to be psychics have been caught using these
exact same methods.
Or perhaps I’m a raving lunatic, and aligning your chakras with hippie-crystals, transcendental
meditation, and incense burning when the planets are aligned will open your third eye allowing
you to talk with dead people, read the Akashic records, connect with gods, and prepare yourself
for reincarnation - overturning everything we know about how the world works and every
law of physics known to man.
But before you hand over your life savings to a psychic guru to guide you on your spiritual
quest, let’s explore how we can test psychic claims scientifically, or if we can test them
at all.
Are science and spiritualism two non-overlapping magisteria?
Or is that just a concession made by some scientist exhausted at this science vs. the
paranormal battle that’s been hijacked and used as a hippie-dippie cop-out by cash-hungry
con-artists terrified of being exposed?
We’ll cover that in my next video.
So make sure you’re subscribed and click that bell button to get notified.
Orson Welles: “I got interested in mind reading and fortune telling (fake fortune
telling), you know?
And I got to know a lot of old fakes who had retired as millionaires.
And they told me their secrets – how you do it.
They have things that are called cold readings.
And a cold reading is: you warm up the sucker.
By telling him things, that he says, “How could he ever know that?”
you see?
You say, “between the age of 13 and 15 you had a great change came in your life.”
Well that happens in everybody’s lives.”
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