Fortune Tellers

The term 'fortune teller' implies gypsies in kiosks with a scarf and a crystal ball.

Real psychics do not like to be called fortune tellers, in fact some only give details of the past , to prove they are genuine and can tell what your life has been like,with details and names and places which correspond, and only you would know
I was told many years ago that i had a blood disorder,i just laughed and said no i don't but a few years later i was diagnosed with a rare blood disorder,and suddenly remembered what i had been told

Fortune tellers are a load of bull.
The term fortune comes from them making it from folk who want to believe in something keep your money in your pocket.

Chestnut. I think it was a giggly game between the Pack after lights out, The Guide Group was based on her local catholic church where fortune telling and the like are completely banned, so there is no way anyone in authority would have condoned it.

For most of the girls I think it was the usual nonsense about handsome husbands and £1,000 a year, but my mother's cup obviously showed this other pattern.

There are some very good ones out there and some charlatans
If people don’t believe that’s fine .. I do .. I have had some incredible accuracy .. but that’s my take on it ... I’ve been a doubter but not anymore

If you could see into the future it would mean it was predestined and no matter what you do it could not be changed so why do "psychics" give warnings or advice on what to change.

God botherers are so scathing about "psychics" but take offence if others call them out on their beliefs, both being unproven to exist.

That's really sad Monica. As you say, irresponsible people doing so-called 'readings' are a menace and can affect a person's whole life with just one throw away comment. Presumably this happened without the knowledge of the Girl Guide leaders.

It is not the professional fortune tellers that worry me, it is the amateur.

As a child my mother was a Girl Guide. Every year they went to camp and one of them used to 'read' tea leaves in a cup. When it was my mother's turn she looked at her and said. 'You will have three children and one will die'. That 'fortune' haunted my mother until she died.

She had two children and that was fine, the war intervened and she had a third when she was 38 and after that desperately wanted a fourth, that never came. I was an adult when she told me why she always said she would have liked to have had four children.

When my mother was in her late 70s one of my sisters was killed in a road accident. The amateur joky tea leaf reader's 'fortune' had come true. My mother did her best to recover her life after my DS died, but I think she was haunted by that childhood fortune and its fulfillment.

My feeling? Sheer co-incidence. The amateur had read a book with all the interpretaions that this pattern of tea leaves means this and that pattern means that and it included tragedies as well as good things. The amateur reader just lacked the age and maturity to know that you never give bad news, when playing, essentially, a game of chance.

'Greeneyedgirl: I can understand why some people put their faith in supernatural beliefs and similar......
I don't think anyone should do that! Nothing is guaranteed not least the abilities of the psychic. What they pick up may be garbled and inaccurate. I don't think it can be anything more than a curiosity which can be fascinating if it turns out to be true. To put any kind of faith in it would be foolish.

I can understand some people being cynical, but unless you have been told something that only you know,and things that happen in the future which come true,you will always not believe
When someone can tell you your past,including details no one else know ,you might change your mind, lots do
I have been told too many things that have come true to put on here, but i could tell the genuine ones from charlatans, by what i was told
I would never go to a seaside gypsy, but i was told at the door how many children i would have [true] even to what sexes, and the house i lived in although not belonging to me but my mother would be destroyed by accident,due to a man
That house was destroyed by fire,when my then husband poured petrol into a bucket next to a lit cooker,
It was burnt down to the brick, and we weren't insured, so lost everything, but lucky to escape with our lives,
I had just brought my daughter downstairs from her afternoon nap,or she would have died, as the stairs were off the kitchen
Same husband was watching a strongman show at an even, a collection bucket was passed around, but he refused to put money in, the man who was a gypsy cursed him and said you wont get very far , and maybe coincidence but a tyre burst on the way home
Too many more to mention

old as me

I went with a work colleague to see the daughter of Gypsy Petulengro who unless you are as as me you won't remember wrote a fortune telling column in one of the women's mags.

She immediately laughed at me and said "I can read you already". She asked me to recommend a good restaurant in the city, which I was able to do. I wish I had gone with her to the restaurant as she would have been an amusing companion.But I did not, Story of my life I am afraid but Eva Petulengro did not know that.

I can understand why some people put their faith in supernatural beliefs and similar, but call me a cynic, I prefer to put my trust in logic, reasoning and science in the absence of any hard evidence to the contrary.

Over 30y ago I went with a friend to see a popular (in our area) psychic. My friend was white when she came out as after passing him her wedding ring to hold he mentioned her 2 children being adopted and it really spooked her that he would know.

I can’t recall what he told me!

When names and details come across it's not just observation Greeneyedgirl. There are so-called psychics who use observation skills and people who succumb to them, but a genuine psychic 'message' will have information that cannot be 'read' from the client. As I said, there are psychics with all sorts of limited abilities including fakes. But there are some who do see, hear or sense things.
As for experiments, well maybe this is something that just defies science if the spirits won't co-operate during experiments. No-one has control over this, even a psychic cannot choose what happens.

I'm not sure about fortune tellers, and would usually be very cynical, but some years ago I found myself alone in a seaside resort where I had never been before. I discovered a palm-reader along the seafront and went in just for fun. I came out feeling totally bewildered by how he could possibly know so much about me. It was uncanny. I can't put the details on here, but believe me, it was amazing, almost frightening really. He was 99 percent accurate.
He didn't actually tell my fortune but knew all about my life at that time, and my past . I asked him afterwards how he did it and he said he was born with it. His mother had the gift and he's inherited it. So I am no longer cynical. There are things which we don't understand.

I am also not sure "how it works" either Chestnut. If it were possible that some humans have such psychic powers, it would be able to be proved scientifically, ie we would be obtain evidence, apart from hearsay.
In controlled experiments with so called psychics, they have not been shown to have any special powers.
My guess is that psychics have good people skills, honed observation, intuition and are practiced in reading body language and gauging emotional responses. A skill in itself?

Lemongrove, I've said how I understand it 'works' in my post Sat 18-Jan-20 16:12:48. Like tuning a radio (this is how someone described it). Of course there are charlatans and people with very limited skills who overstep their ability, but at the other end of the spectrum are people with really good psychic abilities. They may be few and far between of course and there is no way of knowing just how capable any particular person is. So it's easy to dismiss them all as fakes. I always believe it's best to keep an open mind.

Someone I met when we were both working for a charity told my fortune with tarot cards. It all came true

I’ve perfected that bit, lemongrove. I’ve just got to work on getting the right numbers now.

I keep wishing I would win the lottery Maggiemaybe ?.....someday I really must buy a ticket.?

It doesn’t work at all Chestnut.... lucky guesses and calculated guesses with a bit of flattery thrown in.

Greeneyedgirl: Why arn't they all lottery winners for starters?
What, you think they have a direct line to 'someone' who knows all the lottery numbers before they are drawn? Er, I don't think it works like that.

If I’m ever asked if I would like lucky heather, I always say, no thank you I have Jesus, unless you think there is something it can do for me which Jesus can’t! They normally mutter under their breath, and walk away.

I agree lemongrove. Why arn't they all lottery winners for starters? By the law of averages they have a good chance of being right some of the time and as Oldwoman70 said, you tend to remember the times they were right.
Bit like horoscopes really.