by Elizabeth Carreker

Created on: October 15, 2009

It may not be a simple task to find a genuine psychic. Let's discuss fake psychics first, in order to better ascertain the real thing.

Sadly, there are a lot of fakes out there. I learned this fact from many years of personal experience in this field, both as a reader and as a client. Also I have watched firsthand the performances of many fake psychics as they conned the public. Some put on quite a performance and were quite convincing.

Sometimes the fakes aren't that easy to spot. Some financially successful psychics I have met are nothing more than 'cold readers'. These are 'psychic' readers that use a variety of techniques to glean information from the client using mostly visual clues. They usually have little, if any, real psychic talent. They are able to make their methods work chiefly because cold readers are usually very charismatic people and they are very talented in charming the public. Thus many are very successful.

A cold reader will usually make very general statements in the beginning of the reading, such as I see problems around you concerning another person or You often fantasize about a better way of life. They use the client's responses to these statements to further deduce more about the client's past and areas of concern. As the reading progresses, the cold reader will also take into consideration such factors as age, gender, and manner of speaking. If the reading takes place face to face, the cold reader has access to information from such things as style of clothing, jewelry (expensive or not), body language, absence of wedding rings, or even sexual orientation. Cold readers are also experts at using flattery to wheedle information out of the client and picking up subtle signals form the client.

Some cold readers have achieved fame for themselves by demonstrating how easy it is to 'fool' a client and fake a psychic reading. It is often uncanny how well these techniques work in the hands of the experts.

Other types of fakes are the psychics that ask for a large amount of money to perform a service like breaking an ancient spell that has been jinxing your family for generations. Or they will promise to make the person of your dreams fall madly in love with you. These psychics may also use strange wordage or outlandish claims to disconcert the client and add weight to their predictions. For example, You have iguana energy or I can see in the cards that you are descended from royalty in Atlantis.

Behavior such as this is the

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