<HTML>Anthony -
But surely it's a scam. I mean, we don't think magicians actually conjure up extraordinary powers to do card tricks or saw people in half. We accept they are illusions, even if we are bamboozled by them and cannot explain them. Mentalists do the same thing. I've seen mentalist magicians do "psychic" tricks, but they explain they are just doing tricks. If you dress the trick up with a lot of hot air about speaking to the dead, you offer the bamboozled a ready explanation for what is going on -- and people are likely to accept that. But they're just tricks.
If you read the link to Larry King's transcripts I posted below, you'll see the following sliding scale of success applied by the psychics on the show:
(1) Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they fail
(2) Sometimes they get a spirit other than the person sought by the person being read -- a desire to talk to a recently deceased brother might conjure up a long-dead aunt or grandmother, or even a living but injured uncle. I've seen this happen several times on his show. The person being read is puzzled by Edward's statements until they fit them to auntie so-and-so, who died decades ago. The read person makes the connection -- Edward just feeds them vagueness in order to do it.
(3) Psychics have no control over "who comes through"; anyone in the audience can provide them with spirits.
(3) Sometimes they say things that can only be later understood by the person read. This covers those people for whom no connection is established, but who (according to the psychics) will only later make the necessary connections (and there is no follow-up to check that).
So what you have are goal posts set so wide you can't fail to score. You have "spirits" of the past, present and future of everyone in the audience. SOMEONE will make a connection with something you say, and they may (or may not) "retrofit" that connection long after the show is over (though we're never told if they did or not).
As to the Ricky Nelson thing -- this MSG event was on the public record, right? So all Edward had to know was that some relatives of his would be in the audience that night. That's all. There are two choices: (a) Edward spoke to the spirit of Ricky Nelson or (b) Edward knew some relatives would be in the audience and referred to a well-known event in Nelson's life. Given what Litz writes below when Edward lied about knowing details about a certain cameraman, I think (b) is looking pretty goog.
Best,
Garrett</HTML>
