just before we get to the video that you actually came here to watch let me tell you about a new
channel that i'm running called decoding the unknown it's a show where i take a long deep dive
into some of the world's biggest mysteries from what happened to the roanoke colonists
to the regular guy who found a listening device in his power strip it's absolutely terrifying
and it's always a bit of a wild ride you can find a link below i hope to see you over there
human history is full of examples of people claiming to have a link to the divine the
world of the dead to spirits and more alexander the great visited the oracle at amun in 332 bc
astrology was developed in the third millennium bc in mesopotamia fortune telling goes back
as far as 4000 bc as well much of this is done in a way that's arguably harmless but not all of it
especially not in the modern world people who claim to be sidekick and have a link
directly to god or the dead have had a devastating impact on the lives of
many people and sometimes they trip up and fall flat on their faces doing it
number 10. sylvia brown bungles are kidnapping sylvia brown made a name for herself as a psychic
on the daytime talk show circuit and published a number of books before she died in 2013
in what sent out to be one of her most infamously wrong psychic predictions brown told luana muller
that her daughter amanda was dead this happened in 2004 on the wantel williams show luanna died
in 2006 believing her daughter was dead in 2013 amanda berry was rescued from the home of ariel
castro along with two other women where she'd been held captive for a decade after she escaped
she revealed that castro had left a tv on for the women to watch during the day in 2004 she'd seen
the episode of montel williams that her mother was on and she had to watch as a woman claiming to
be a psychic a woman she thought would finally be able to tell her mother the truth and set her free
said the exact opposite montel williams later apologized to berry but brown maintained that
she was always right more than she was wrong and it was good to be wrong
about something like that 9. noreen ranier fails kimberly mcandrew noreen rania has been in the
psychic game for years and claims to have helped police solve over 600 crimes one of
these crimes was the disappearance of kimberly andrews a 19 year old canadian who vanished in
1989 on her way home from work in 1995 with no progress noreen rania came in to help find her
maureen sat down with both police and family to help locate kimberly transcripts of her
interviews include her saying things like your sister just finally gave up on you you're the
procrastinator in the family to kimberly's sister when she admitted to not writing down her dreams
she offered details of kimberly's last day and supposed demise many of which didn't align with
facts already in evidence even simple things like what door she left to go home from work
after sending police to two locations which they searched with divers that came up empty police
told her of a suspect named jaime who confessed only then did noreen decide she had conjured up a
name someone called jimmy when she's told that the suspect is named james and she was already told
that she just says oh darn they then performed a third search wasting yet more resources no one has
ever been arrested in the case number 8. yuri geller exposed one of the most famous cases of
a psychic getting owned on national tv came to us thanks to the late greek johnny carson famous for
bending spoons and other tricks yuri geller was going to show off his talents for the audience
carson insisted on setting up the props instead of letting gellar do it the result was geller failing
at everything stalling making excuses and clearly being very uncomfortable magicians came out and
labeled him an outright fraud geller blamed his failure on a hostile environment and not on the
fact that he wasn't able to set up the props ahead of time famed skeptic james randy exposed
geller's tricks and explained how anyone could bend spoons geller later sued a publisher for
defamation a case which he lost the court ordered him to pay twenty thousand dollars in legal fees
as well number seven psychic zoe the thief ann thompson was making a living as a fortune teller
named psychic zoe her specialty seemed to be defrauding the gullible which she did to the tune
of eight hundred thousand dollars as a result of her scheming she ended up being charged with
fraud thompson's massive scam actually only took in two victims one was a businessman who
got scammed out of 72 000 the second victim was a canadian woman who got built for a stunning 740
000 when she finally went on trial for fraud and grand larceny thompson and an accomplice only got
five years probation and were ordered to pay back some of the over one million dollars
that they were ultimately found guilty of stealing number six long island medium miss after miss live
one of the most popular sidekicks today is the long island medium teresa caputo
though she's very famous and her show is edited to make her look remarkable and genuine her live show
not always so smooth right from new jersey went to a live show at which caputo attempted to cold read
the audience and failed again and again she'd nail simple things like who had a father who
passed which could arguably be dozens of people in the room and then fumble the next question trying
to guess the reason why or other personal details people have said that producers from caputo's show
interviewed them before they talk to the psychic getting all the details ahead of time which takes
some of the wonder out of a psychic reading number 5. sylvia brown on the sago mine sylvia brown just
couldn't help being wrong so she's made a second appearance on the list this time she again follows
the already familiar pattern of saying people are dead when they aren't and doing it in front of
the tv cameras the fact was she had a long noted history of being wrong about many things but some
stung more than others in 2016 13 coal miners were trapped when a mine in sago west virginia
collapsed sylvia happened to be live on the radio when it happened and the host alerted her as the
event broke out he told her based on the reports that were available at the time that the miners
were all alive sylvia explained that she knew they would be found in reality all but one of
the minors died the host got the updated info and told sylvia who immediately agreed that none
were alive as though the story were unclear and she was using her powers to define it
4. john edward accused of hot reading psychics work in several ways but the most famous methods
are cold reading and hot reading you may have seen cole reading in action it's where the alleged
psychic asks incredibly vague questions and lets people fill in the blanks they'll say things like
i'm getting an r does anybody have an r in their name in front of a crowd of people the odds are
that someone will have a dead relative with the initial r or s or t or however many letters they
need to go through hot reading is less common and it's harder to do because it requires research
hot reading can involve spying on people with hidden microphones or doing online research about
a subject then they pretend that the information was gleaned from the spirits john edward who had
a daytime tv show for some years in which he did psychic readings was caught doing hot reading the
idea was that assistants on the show were having potential guests fill out comment cards that
included personal details and family trees before the show one guest also noted when the show aired
it had been edited to make it look as though he was nodding in agreement with things edward was
saying even though they weren't true the guest also noted that between the time the audience was
seated and the start of the show there was an hour delay during that time much of the crowd discussed
the reasons they had arrived in particular the dead loved ones they wanted to contact
all while aged from the show were chatting them up number three laurie macquarie and the undead
reporter laurie macquarie claimed that she'd been a psychic detective for 30 years and had solved
hundreds of missing person cases in an effort to test her accuracy and ability to deliver on that
promise a producer from the show inside edition pretended to be the brother of a missing child
he brought a photo of the missing girl and set up an interview the cost was 400 mccoy proceeded to
explain how the girl was sexually assaulted and then had her head beaten him with a rock she said
she could locate the body as well the next day she had another meeting this time with a woman
named lisa guerrero who also worked for inside edition as an on-air correspondent guerrero
had some concerns with mccrory's previous reading owing to the fact that the photo of
the supposedly dead girl was a childhood photo of guerrero macquarie left the interview but
ten other psychics also confirmed that the girl in the photo was dead number two deborah dominique
outed at a denny's deborah dominique claims to be a professional psychic and pet psychic on linkedin
she has not had the international fame that some of the psychics we've covered today enjoyed but
she has outed herself in much the same way many of them have as being well not entirely trustworthy
most psychics are arguably doing harmless things by telling people they may get their dream job
soon or that their love life will get better but dominique waded into the waters of being a
psychic detective claiming that she helped find the body of lacey peterson the cbs affiliate in
sacramento figured someone that was trusted by the fbi should be able to answer a few questions about
a missing person so they took her to a denny's and filmed her in secret to see what would happen
dominique looked at photos of a missing boy and determined that he was dead the victim of child
trafficking she even stated that his body was buried in europe and she was channeling his spirit
for a moment the entire time the actual boy from the photo was sitting in the booth behind her
for what it's worth the station also interviewed an fbi agent who went on record saying that the
fbi has never solved a case with the help of a sidekick number one maria duvall's massive scam
maria duvall didn't have the name recognition of sylvia brown or john edward but she could scam as
well as any fraud psychic and she managed to rake in a ton of cash doing so according to
the justice department she defrauded her victims for about a hundred and eighty million dollars
duvall whose real name was maria carolina gamber and a male fraud racket claiming to be a psychic
she gained notoriety after alleging to have used her psychic powers to find bridget bardo's missing
dog which was not true bardo herself pointed out that her dog wasn't missing it had died and
no psychic had found it the scam involved sending personalized letters usually to the
sick and elderly there were whole companies of people involved in churning out these
omas designing them to look personalized and handwritten it's even been said that some had
coffee stains on them to give them authenticity the personal details were taken from data miners
but they made the letters seem like the person writing truly knew who they were writing them to
they clearly worked given how many victims fell for it and how much money they made
each round of correspondence cost a person 40 plus there were extras like lucky talismans that would
cost more though the justice department shut the scam down that was only in the
united states the company behind the letters is still going strong in other parts of the world