Psychic mediums who claim they speak with the dead are ‘grief vampires’: sceptic

Fitz: You’ve been a pioneer in exposing these fraudulent practices. How do they manage to convince people they’re actually talking to the dead?

SG: By “cold reads”, “hot reads” and clever editing. A cold read is assessing someone on how they look, how they sound, what they say, making observations and assumptions about them. Then you throw out bait: “I can see someone whose name starts with ‘M’, and maybe a car accident” and see in a big audience who reacts, and take it from there. You feel your way forward.

Fitz: And a hot read?

SG: A hot read is a lot less common, but it is when you and your staff go through the names of the people who are coming, and then find out about them and their dead loved ones from the net – and sometimes from mixing with them in the foyer before the show. With this information about the person in advance, you just relate it as if you heard it from the spirit world. And when any of this doesn’t work, you edit it out from the show that goes to air. You can convince vulnerable and grieving people you’re really doing it. When I have done “stings”, I will plant the information about me or operatives, feed it to the psychic, and then when they repeat it, we have them caught.

Fitz: You most famously did this in Operation Pizza Roll in 2017 and Operation Onion Ring in 2021 – the latter by sending emails to “psychic” Thomas John who was doing a “gallery reading” for children at a price of $400 each, whereby he was to deliver messages from the dead to particular individuals. By planting a couple of kids with made-up stories in the gallery, you were able to expose the whole fraud when Thomas John read those stories back as if he was talking to the dead. Have you ever tried a similar sting on John Edward?

SG: No, he’s old news now. I mean, South Park called him “the biggest douche in the universe” 20 years ago, in a show by that name, because it was already totally established what he was, what he did. I go after others.

Fitz: But this is what stuns me, and having read your stuff, I can see that it stuns you too. It’s never been more obvious to anybody who delves into it with a clear head that the man is a fraud, and yet whole swathes of the soft media continue to enable him by interviewing him, giving him a platform to sell his nonsense on.

SG: Yes, I’m just shocked by it. The problem with psychic mediums, and actually the whole pseudoscience world, is the enablers. They could slap these people down in a heartbeat by stopping the interviews, stopping them appearing on the breakfast shows because it’s obvious what they’re doing. But instead, they continue to push them on vulnerable people, in the name of “entertainment”.

Fitz: Do you get angry at the enablers who even take them half-seriously?

SG: Absolutely, absolutely. Particularly when they defend themselves by saying “Oh, it’s just a bit of fun.” No, you have a responsibility as a person of influence to not keep perpetuating pseudoscience.

Fitz: And yet there are nuances. Once, as a Fellow on the Sydney University Senate, I made a strong case that we at Australia’s leading university should not allow a similar kind of English charlatan to hire one of our lecture theatres and charge money for talking to the dead. But then it was pointed out to me that plenty of the students on campus and the university’s leadership believe that a dead man rose again after three days – and they could talk to him and he might talk back – so who were we to deny this bloke?

SG: That comes up a lot. And when it does, I point out that the people who are most often the victims of psychic mediums are Christian because they’re already conditioned to believe in life after death, so they’re most likely to be preyed upon. The mediums are more than willing to take money off these poor people.

Fitz: Others, though, will defend people like John Edward by saying, “look, he’s just giving comfort to those who are grieving, so what’s the damage done? Leave him alone.”

SG: I just throw the question back at them. “Right, so it’s OK to lie to people for money? Is that something you endorse? I say it’s a consumer issue. I mean, do we hire a plumber who says that he’s going to fix your plumbing, and then doesn’t fix it? It’s not right to take money from people for a job that they’re really not doing. And with some of these psychics, they weave in health advice and financial advice. They exert influence over decisions people take, based on no actual knowledge at all! Look, the whole thing is just so, so absurd. I mean, if he could really talk to dead people, would he be charging money to talk to people’s mums and dads? If I could do that, I’d be reaching out to many great thinkers of the world, which would be pretty cool.

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Fitz: You’ve also made the point that if there really were people who could talk to dead people, they could solve every murder case there ever was by simply asking, “Who killed you?”

SG: Precisely, but no so-called psychic has ever done that. Despite claims, none of them have ever solved a murder, or found a missing person or named a found body. Ever. These grief vampires are still in business because the enablers are giving them a free pass, and the people seeking a reading are so motivated that they can’t see the tricks we who are looking in, can see clearly.

Fitz: And yet, John Edward also has a book out right now with the former FBI agent Robert Hilland Chasing Evil: Shocking Crimes, Supernatural Forces, and an FBI Agent’s Search for Hope and Justice, which claims that Edward helped the former solve crimes.

SG: There is no hard evidence that anything John Edward said solved anything. They are just selling a book and trying to stay relevant. I’ve looked up the Australian missing person database. Instead of John Edward doing shows across the country, he should get busy clearing up all these cold-cases for free. I’m sure we will just hear crickets from him.

Fitz: In sum, you are not a fan?

SG: Not a fan. Most psychics also say they can foresee the future, and some like John Edward pass on messages from deceased loved ones about what lies ahead for the grieving one. But when COVID suddenly came along, all the big psychics had full programs booked across America. And John Edward himself had a full tour of Australia planned. Now, if he could see his own future, and the futures of so many others, why couldn’t he see that COVID was coming, and his own tour would have to be cancelled?

Fitz: I’m sorry, I got nothin’. But as ever, when it comes to these so-called psychics, I can see a word starting with “F”. Thank you for your time.

Peter FitzSimons is a columnist and author.