HANNAH DAVIES went in search of professional psychics to find out what the future held. She finished the assignment poorer ? but none the wiser
THEY claim they have special powers to contact the dead and predict the future.
But a Sunday Mail investigation has revealed Queensland's self-proclaimed "psychics" are taking people's money and filling their heads with nonsense.
I visited several "psychics" in the Brisbane area for clairvoyant readings with tarot cards.
The sessions, costing as much as $55, lasted between 30 and 40 minutes, and boasted of picking up on my past, present and future.
If I believed what was said, in the next 12 months I would be ditching my job to pursue a career in medicine, selling my house to move back to Britain, and dumping my long-term partner to make way for a new man.
The mumbo jumbo was broken up by plenty of dramatic deep breaths, and random questions were fired at me as the clairvoyants clutched at straws.
"Are you wanting to move house?", "Do you have a sister?", "Do you heal animals?", "Do you do something with children?", "Has someone died in the last two years?" and "Are you studying?"
The answer to all of the above was a resounding "No".
Sarah, from Clairvoyants Corner, in Capalaba in Brisbane's south, put her 25 years' experience to good use with the question: "Who gets headaches?"
"No one," I replied.
Sarah was clearly stumped.
"I'm not getting any more on that one so I don't know what that one's about ? it could just be something that's coming in," she said.
Names were also thrown about haphazardly during every reading ? Penelope, Angela, Carol, Michelle, and a "capital K" to name but a few.
The general rule was if I didn't know these people now, then I would do in the future.
One woman, who called herself "Katrina" and read from the My Spirit shop in Chermside shopping centre, in Brisbane's north, had an explanation for her catalogue of errors.
"Other people's energies will also come in around you, so if I am out it's because it will relate to someone close to you," she said.
Katrina claimed to have my dead grandmother coming through, patting a cat or a dog, or "any other sort of furry animal".
She then asked: "Did you have any animals as a child?"
My reply was "cats", which prompted yet more claptrap.
"Your grandmother is looking after your cats," Katrina said.
"She wants you to know they are loved, and when you die, your cats will be there waiting for you and they'll be running along to see you."
But perhaps the most unusual of all was clairvoyant-turned-businesswoman Janice Richards, of Golden Light Psychic Services in Carina in Brisbane's southeast.
She spent the reading telling me how my "energy was needing some sort of healing" and I would "benefit from meditation".
She said: "Go to somebody and they will help you with that."
As luck would have it, Ms Richards runs energy healing and meditation courses costing $200. She took my email address after the reading to send me the details.
Simon Turnbull, president of the Australian Psychics Association, said the organisation had had to blacklist only three members since 1983.
"We do get complaints from people about psychics," he said.
"Psychics get most of their business from recommendations and repeat business so no lousy psychic is going to survive very long in this industry.
"If someone has a belief system that this doesn't work, it's not going to for you and you shouldn't be going to see a psychic in the first place."
Barry Williams, executive officer of Australian Skeptics and editor of The Skeptic magazine, said people deliberately turned off their brains in order to believe in psychics.
"So-called psychics work on generalisations and telling people what they want to hear ? you'll never get a clairvoyant telling you you're a mongrel," he said.
"They assume someone is visiting them for advice on a personal relationship or where they are at in their life, so they will always tell you you're not too comfortable with people around you.
"The downside is if you really believe the sort of stuff they tell you, then you are giving control of your life to someone who knows nothing about you.
"The psychics themselves are self-deluded because a lot of the time they actually believe they can do it.
"But I bet they didn't foresee this investigation, did they?" he laughed.
http://www.thesundaymail.news.com.au/co ... 22,00.html
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