There’s a fair amount of richly justified gloating taking place online at the moment. Sylvia Browne, much-televised and published psychic, has stumbled again – and this time, the social media are taking note. This is not the first time Browne has been wrong, heaven knows, but it is one of the rare cases with a happy ending. Amanda Berry, the missing girl whom Browne declared dead nearly a decade ago, has turned up alive and well, though with a torturous story to tell. Most of Browne’s bloopers do not end so joyously.
How does Browne explain her error? Her first release went like this:
For more than 50 years as a spiritual psychic and guide, when called upon to either help authorities with missing person cases or to help families with questions about their loved ones, I have been more right than wrong. If ever there was a time to be grateful and relieved for being mistaken, this is that time. Only God is right all the time. My heart goes out to Amanda Berry, her family, the other victims and their families. I wish you a peaceful recovery.
More right than wrong? A couple of years ago, Ryan Shaffer and Agatha Jadwiszczok published a lovely article in Skeptical Inquirer, skeptically inquiring about exactly that. They painstakingly pored over the transcripts of the 115 missing persons cases Browne had discussed on Montel Williams’ show, tabulating which resolved cases were hits, and which were misses. Browne’s success rate was – wait for it – 0%.
Missing loved ones whom she described to anxious relatives as alive and, say, a druggie in LA or a child slave in Japan, were in fact dead. People she described as dead were usually dead, all right, but the details she provided of their deaths and burial circumstances were 100% wrong. One child whom she described as dead later turned up alive.
This covered twenty-five of those 115 cases – the remaining ninety were unresolved, and therefore could not be pronounced upon nor counted as hits. One of those ninety was Amanda Berry, whose story can now, happily for all concerned, be moved to the epic fail side of Browne’s ledger.
Browne’s next release on Facebook, however, sought to explain exactly how the psychic superstar got it wrong:
I had a vision of her being held underwater, but I had interpreted it to have a different meaning. She was not being held under water but was being held down.
Which is not only hilariously incompetent, but also fails to explain Browne’s claim that the girl’s last words – which must by rights have been spoken underwater – were “goodbye, mom, I love you”. Maybe Browne’s spirit guide, Francine, needs to get both her eyes and ears checked.
