by Haddon Libby
While wall-to-wall coverage of the George Zimmerman trial was going on, an autistic eleven year-old Menifee boy named Terry Smith went missing. People searched for four days before he was found. The person who found him, Pam Ragland, had a feeling that she knew where to find the missing boy and went to his home. Ragland searched the backyard with a fireman and her two young children (4 and 3 years old) where they found Terry’s head sticking out of a shallow grave seventy-five feet from the home.
Ragland calls herself “intuitive.” Living in Orange County, she works as a Life Coach helping people to transform their lives by “thought shifting.” Her focus is on health, wealth, happiness and maximizing one’s potential. She sells “effortlessly attracting money,” eliminating autism and ADHD while using a “brand new technology to effortlessly erase three million negative thoughts” floating around in your head…which can all be done remotely. Sounds too good to be true…and what do we know about too good to be true?
This brings up the question, is Ragland truly gifted or is she a sophisticated version of traditional psychics by combining therapy with the dark and fraudulent art?
People spend two billion dollars a year on psychics. People typically use psychics when they are experiencing uncertainty or stress and looking to grasp onto some level of hope. Psychics are often used to find missing loved ones, communicate with deceased family members or gain some help in the areas of health, wealth or love.
Sylvia Brown is generally considered one of America’s top psychics…and fraudsters. When Amanda Berry (held captive by Ariel Castro) went missing in 2004, Brown appeared on “The Montel Williams Show” and told Amanda’s mother, “she’s not alive, honey.” Miller’s mother believed Brown, dying a year later from heart failure. Brown was unapologetic for the bad reading and claimed that she has been more right than wrong over the last fifty years – a flatly untrue statement. Worth noting, Brown has also been found guilty of securities fraud, investment fraud and grand theft.
Mark Edward was also a top psychic who wrote the book, “Psychic Blues: Confessions of a Conflicted Medium” last year. He says that at best he was delusional and self-deceptive in his abilities. He credits his success as a medium to his gift of gab and imagination. As much as he wanted to believe in the supernatural, he concluded that it was not there.
Since 1964, The James Randi Educational Foundation has been offering cash awards to any psychic who can demonstrate a supernatural or paranormal ability under agreed-upon scientific testing criteria. Over the last fifty years, one thousand people have been tested with none successful. The cash award now stands at $1,000,000 for any psychic who can prove their abilities.
A variation on the psychic is the spiritual or faith healer. Some of the most notable include Oral Roberts, Pat Robertson and Benny Hinn. Over the last sixty years, The British Medical Journal, John Hopkins Institute, American Medical Association and Cochrane Collaboration have collectively investigated thousands of miracle healings. To date, none have found even one case where faith alone healed someone. While a positive attitude and hope are critically important factors in curing any illness, there are no cases where faith alone cured a malady.
Delusional and self-deceptive are the best things that you can say about these people who make a living from the supernatural. In most cases though, these psychics and healers are illusionary and immoral fraudsters who prey (not pray) on people’s weaknesses.
