Sally Morgan – Star Psychic
Sally is a psychic. She communicates with your dead relatives, who are standing right next to you.
I watched a bit of two of her shows (ITV2 Wed 11pm) a few weeks back. She had a rather cynical TV presenter celeb on, and proceeded to tell him all sorts of details about his life, including that he was about to sign up for a big new tv deal, that he had a flat in Brighton and was thinking of buying another, etc.
How did she do it? Most of this information was not, I guess, Google-able.
The TV celeb was certainly amazed. So was comedienne Rhonna Cameron, who got a reading on a different episode. Rhonna was very sceptical, but ended up getting tearful as Sally scored hit after hit, even being able to say she had two dogs that had died, being able to name dead relatives, the dogs, all of whom were supposedly right there in the room, etc. etc.
I’d be very interested to get more information on Sally Morgan’s techniques. I believe that psychics do pool info about clients, but these people were new to it, so that wouldn’t explain it. Nor, it seems, was it all down to standard cold-reading. Nor, I’m guessing, was much of it down to the TV technique of editing out all the misses (the clients were far too impressed).
Possibly Sally is relying partly on hot reading, i.e. research: e.g. a microphone in the waiting room to overhear what clients are saying, or earlier Private-Investigation-type research. e.g. perhaps Sally’s researchers phoned the celeb’s agent to do a little fishing (we wanted to book your celeb and were wondering whether he is busy next week? Oh really, what’s he doing?). Though, even then, there are obstacles, including that Sally only gets to know who she’s reading a short while before (but is this really true?)
The wonderful Tony Youens has something on Sally here.
The one thing I’m disinclined to believe, of course, is that Sally is a genuine psychic (some of you may consider that a bit premature).
The really depressing thing is the programme is nothing more than a highly effective advert for Sally and psychics generally. I think this sort of TV brings shame on its makers, frankly.
Anyone with more info on Sally – do let me know.
Sally’s website, with some videos, is here. I recommend Kim Marsh video (bit of standard cold reading in there, though: “Who’s Joe?” No reply. “And it’s a man”. Blank looks. “So he may have been know as Jack.” Kim and Mum get hysterical “Oh my God! …That’s unbelievable!” [also notice the so-quick-you-miss-it switch with names : “Joe” is short for “Joseph” and “Jack” for “John” – completely different names!])
with regard to tv psychics generally, you may want to watch penn and teller’s thorough debunking on their brilliant show ‘bullshit’- sadly not available in the uk i think.part one:http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=zChQnsXOzAQpart two:http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=umiHxduh24spart three:http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=6QkHcmZwR4A
Just watching Penn and Teller – excellent. Thanks for links.The shows they’re looking at are remarkably similar to Sally’s.
I would be really impressed when I read in the news psychic banned from playing lottery because she kept getting the numbers right. Everything else surely must be a set up. If she is truly psychic why doesn’t she submit to some rigorous scientific tests? She could then become the raison d’etre of the parapsychologists.It’s just an elaborate hoax which pretends to ‘prove’ its extraordinary claims. I am sorry but I am still not convinced.
Yes, I am personally convinced there’s a non-psychic explanation for Sally’s amazing “abilities”. I am just very curious to know exactly what’s going on in this case. Impossible to say, I guess, unless we get some inside information from people involved in the show (who may have all been made to sign gagging contracts, as P and T reveal is the case with U.S. shows).I think that Penn and Teller show should be shown in every school in the country.One of the reasons I favour getting kids’ critical faculties sharpened up is so that they don’t easily become victims of the sort of thing Penn and Teller expose.
Stephen, my guess is you’re right about the hot-reading, but we’ll never know how she does it; such people are too starry. There must be lots of technology to help businesses (journalists, politicians, criminals) to spy on each other these days, but they wouldn’t want us little people to know the details; and star psychics often have influential friends.
You might be interested in the work of Richard Saunders and the blog entry I’ve done on it here in Australia: http://podblack.wordpress.com/2008/01/30/another-fake-exposed/
Oh – nearly forgot. You can’t show Penn and Teller’s Bullshit in school classes. I’m a teacher who has tried and the only part out of all the episodes that has halfway *near* acceptable language is the one on ouija boards. It’s one of the things that the TANK vodcast and the Australian ‘Sleek Geeks’ show tries to consider.I’ve seen Jamy Ian Swiss, who works with P&T, be challenged about it at a dinner at TAM3 and his (understandable) response is ‘we’re not editing for language; you make your own show if it isn’t what you want’.