Can psychics really see the past/future?

marysol2103

I’m sure everyone has seen the signs for “$5 Psychic Readings” in their town or while traveling elsewhere. What I wanted to discuss here were your thoughts on using psychics for more than just personal entertainment, more specifically in police and detective work.

There’s been documented cases in the past where police haven’t been able to solve a crime, at which point they turn to a psychic for help. What I find the most interesting is when the psychics they hire actually solve the case.

What are your thoughts on this? What about using psychics to help solve some of the current investigations (such as the Peterson or Hacking trials?)

I’m not an expert myself on the topic, but I’ve been learning a bit more from a new show on Court TV called Psychic Detectives. It’s on Wednesday’s at 9:30pm in case you want to watch it too.

~ Marysol

Chronos

Mary, all the real tests say this is phony. Please stay around and listen to all the people who can explain it better than I. Any real phenomenon requires energy and mass to make things happen. Watch here and learn. There are many nice people who can help. You came to the right place.

JV

Right, the psychics are frauds. They are however often smart. They are usually good listeners, and can help the police look at the evidents from a different perspective.

But this does not seem to be a topic for this category

daveed

did miss cleo forsee her being arrested?
=P

turbo

Why didn't the psychic network warn us of the 9/11 attack? Certainly, that horrific traumatizing event would have had all "real" psychics screaming. Case closed.

geometer

Try this idea out. People have all kinds of talents. Some are good at mathematics, some are good at music. I think there are some people who are good at looking current events and extrapolating from them the most probable future. There is nothing magical, or strange here - just a subconcious assessment of the probabilities of various outcomes.

Ivan Seeking

Hi Marysol,

I don't believe in "psychics", esp TV psychics, but I think psychic things may happen. One day these "psychic events" may be explained and given a scientific name. Then we will all agree that there is not and never was such a thing as a psychic event.

In other words, "psychic" implies "magic". Consider that pheromones may in fact explain some of this stuff. And who knows, maybe quantum mechanics will produce other mechanisms for information transfer between two minds; or even a mind and some distant or future event. Also, consider one recent experiment that reportedly shows that people can tell when they are being watched. We do seem to find hints at something real. Your example of police investigations I think is a very good one.

I have seen and read some very compelling "official" police files and reports, and interviews with investigators that definitely imply something real is happening. Still, debunkers will always insists that a psychic event is magic; and there is no such thing as magic. But this is a self fulfilling prophecy. We may find good scientific reasons for peoples experiences that for now only seem like magic; that we call psychic. I think it is painfully obvious that if real, most of these alleged events cannot be produced on demand for science. So I say keep and open mind but not so much that your brains fall out.

Tom McCurdy

Psychics don't exist

Moonbear

I think psychics are just very talented at observing human behavior. They use subtle cues in the tones of your voice, your posture, your speech pattern, your mannerisms, etc., to guess at what you're thinking. The psychics you find out for entertainment and such start off with some leading questions, not really telling you anything, just getting a feel for how you react until you start to lead them in the right direction of what you want to hear. This same skill at observing human behavior can also help them predict things about how criminals operate. They probably have a knack for criminal profiling and understanding how other people think to help guess at what they've done.

Kerrie

i think the term "psychic" is just a fancy word for intuition. take for example, yesterday my husband and i were driving down a busy street to get the grocery store...i remembered a friend telling me he had an accident in the exact spot we were passing through, and then i became a little panicked...i kept saying to my husband who was driving to slow down through all this chaos (he's got a bit of a lead foot)...suddenly, a van pulls in front of us and my husband has to literally slam on the breaks to not hit the van, which left some tire tracks on the road. do you call that being psychic, or just a good intuition?

selfAdjoint

People can be trained to do it. Look up "cold reading".

Overdose

Yes you can see the into the future and its well documented, someone mentioned no one foreseeing the 9/11 attacks, well infact many people did, and one man in england even went so far as to paint a picture of the planes hitting the twin towers, and to get the picture dated and verifed at his local bank, and put in storage (to proove that there was no cheating involved).
The guy actually did this on a regular basis and had many premonitions which came to pass; so i learnt from an interesting documentry a year or so ago...

radagast

Can you provide a source of documentation for this?

Locrian

It would seem safe to say that he cannot.

Overdose

His name is David Mandell, theres unfortunately not much information about him on the web, although i did find the following links...
http://www.trioptimum.co.uk/archives/000262.html
http://www.geocities.com/hairybobby2...ammandell.html

Overdose

Not so atall, this is either disinformation or someone whos just misinformed, theres plenty of compelling evidence for psychic Phenomena being done by reputable people who conform to the most stringent guidelines.

Locrian

And on the web link,

Your definition of well documented is aparently more lenient than mine. Much, much more lenient. There is no evidence this person saw this specific event prior to its occurence; descriptions of his painting make it abundantly clear that he captured none of the particular details.