Joe Power | |
---|---|
Born | |
Nationality | British |
Occupation | Medium |
Part of a series on the |
Paranormal |
---|
Joe Power is a British author and television and stage performer who claims to mediate communication between spirits of the dead and living human beings. He appeared as the subject of "The Man Who Contacts the Dead", an episode of Derren Brown Investigates first broadcast in the UK by Channel 4 in 2010. [1]
Power has been active as a stage performer of mediumship since 2004, touring around the UK and Ireland. [2] He also offers one-to-one sessions, readings and courses claimed to aid development and training in psychic powers.
In May 2009, Penguin published The Man Who Sees Dead People, [3] Power's autobiographical account detailing his early life with his claimed psychic abilities and his brother's murder.
Power appeared as the main subject in the first episode of the first series of the Channel 4 show Derren Brown Investigates, in which Brown investigated his claimed psychic abilities through rewatching his live stage events, sitting in on celebrity readings and organising independent private readings. [4]
One such reading was with Hollyoaks actress Claire Cooper, [5] during which Power asked if Cooper drove a Mini, which she confirmed. However, in Power and Brown's final talk, Brown stated that one of his crew saw Cooper pull up in her car next to Power. [6]
Another feature of the show involved Brown setting up a reading with a non-skeptic, named Ros, but giving her the fake name of 'Pam' and asking Power to meet her in a house that was not her own, supposedly to test Power's psychic abilities by reducing the amount of research he could do beforehand. This reading was shown as being poor in comparison to other readings Power had done earlier in the show. Again, Power alleged that Brown and Objective Productions had acted unfairly towards him, as Brown had met Ros before Power himself had met her, despite what he said he understood to be a statement that she hadn't met Brown, despite Brown having earlier told him, on camera, that he had visited earlier that morning. In addition, it was revealed that the subject of the earlier reading, where Power had appeared to divine many facts about the subject, was in fact the next door neighbour of Power's sister.
Power later filed a complaint with Ofcom. He told the Liverpool Echo : "Originally I was told the programme was going to be called Derren Brown Unexplained and I thought it would be fair... But I was made to feel uncomfortable from the start. I felt like it was an interrogation. The edited version showed me being abusive, but I wasn't, I was just very annoyed at what they were doing." [7] Ofcom dismissed the complaint. [8]
James Randi was a Canadian-American stage magician, author, and scientific skeptic who extensively challenged paranormal and pseudoscientific claims. He was the co-founder of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), and founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). Randi began his career as a magician under the stage name The Amazing Randi and later chose to devote most of his time to investigating paranormal, occult, and supernatural claims. Randi retired from practicing magic at age 60, from his foundation at 87, and from life at 92.
A psychic is a person who claims to use powers rooted in parapsychology, such as extrasensory perception (ESP), to identify information hidden from the normal senses, particularly involving telepathy or clairvoyance; or who performs acts that are apparently inexplicable by natural laws, such as psychokinesis or teleportation. Although many people believe in psychic abilities, the scientific consensus is that there is no proof of the existence of such powers, and describes the practice as pseudoscience.
Edgar Cayce was an American attributed clairvoyant who claimed to speak from his higher self while in a trance-like state. His words were recorded by his friend, Al Layne; his wife, Gertrude Evans, and later by his secretary, Gladys Davis Turner. During the sessions, Cayce would answer questions on a variety of subjects such as healing, reincarnation, dreams, the afterlife, past lives, nutrition, Atlantis, and future events. Cayce, a devout Christian and Sunday-school teacher, said that his readings came from his subconscious mind exploring the dream realm, where he said all minds were timelessly connected. Cayce founded a non-profit organization, the Association for Research and Enlightenment, to record and facilitate the study of his channeling and to run a hospital. Cayce is known as "The Sleeping Prophet", the title of journalist Jess Stearn's 1967 Cayce biography. Religious scholars and thinkers, such as author Michael York, consider Cayce the founder and a principal source of many characteristic beliefs of the New Age movement.
Cold reading is a set of techniques used by mentalists, psychics, fortune-tellers, and mediums. Without prior knowledge, a practiced cold-reader can quickly obtain a great deal of information by analyzing the person's body language, age, clothing or fashion, hairstyle, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, level of education, manner of speech, place of origin, etc. during a line of questioning. Cold readings commonly employ high-probability guesses, quickly picking up on signals as to whether their guesses are in the right direction or not. The reader then emphasizes and reinforces any accurate connections while quickly moving on from missed guesses. Psychologists believe that this appears to work because of the Barnum effect and due to confirmation biases within people.
John Edward McGee Jr. is an American television personality, writer and self-proclaimed psychic medium.
Derren Brown is an English mentalist, illusionist, and writer. He is a self-described "psychological illusionist" whose acts are often designed to expose the methods of those who claim to possess supernatural powers, such as faith healers and mediums. His live performances, which heavily incorporate audience participation and comedy, usually begin with him reminding the audience that his results are achieved through a combination of psychology, showmanship, magic, misdirection, and suggestion.
A psychic detective is a person who investigates crimes by using purported paranormal psychic abilities. Examples have included postcognition, psychometry, telepathy, dowsing, clairvoyance, and remote viewing. In murder cases, psychic detectives may purport to be in communication with the spirits of the murder victims.
Sylvia Celeste Browne was an American writer and self-proclaimed medium and psychic. She appeared regularly on television and radio, including on The Montel Williams Show and Larry King Live, and hosted an hour-long online radio show on Hay House Radio.
Mentalism is a performing art in which its practitioners, known as mentalists, appear to demonstrate highly developed mental or intuitive abilities. Mentalists perform a theatrical act that includes special effects that may appear to employ psychic or supernatural forces but that are actually achieved by "ordinary conjuring means", natural human abilities, and an in-depth understanding of key principles from human psychology or other behavioral sciences. Performances may appear to include hypnosis, telepathy, clairvoyance, divination, precognition, psychokinesis, mediumship, mind control, memory feats, deduction, and rapid mathematics.
Pieter van der Hurk known as Peter Hurkos, was a Dutchman who claimed he manifested extrasensory perception (ESP) after recovering from a head injury and coma caused by a fall from a ladder when aged 30. He came to the United States in 1956 for psychic experiments, later becoming a professional psychic who sought clues in the Manson Family murders and the Boston Strangler case. With the help of businessman Henry Belk and parapsychologist Andrija Puharich, Hurkos became a popular entertainer known for performing psychic feats before live and television audiences.
Allison DuBois is an American author and purported medium. DuBois claims she used her psychic abilities to assist U.S. law enforcement officials in solving crimes, forming the basis of the TV series Medium.
Mediumship is the pseudoscientific practice of purportedly mediating communication between familiar spirits or spirits of the dead and living human beings. Practitioners are known as "mediums" or "spirit mediums". There are different types of mediumship or spirit channelling, including séance tables, trance, and ouija. The practice is associated with spiritualism and spiritism. A similar New Age practice is known as channeling.
The Montel Williams Show is an American syndicated tabloid talk show, hosted by Montel Williams, which ran from 1991 to 2008.
Arthur Ford was an American psychic, spiritualist medium, clairaudient, and founder of the Spiritual Frontiers Fellowship (1955). He gained national attention when he claimed to have contacted the dead son of Bishop James Pike in 1967 on network TV. In 1928 Ford claimed to have contacted the deceased spirits of Houdini's mother and later in 1929 Harry Houdini himself.
Sally Morgan is a British television and stage artist, author and controversially, a self-proclaimed psychic medium.
A pet psychic is a person who claims to communicate by psychic means with animals, either living or dead. The term psychic refers to the claimed ability to perceive information unavailable to the normal senses by what is claimed to be extrasensory perception. It is the opinion of scientific skeptics that people believe in such abilities due to cognitive biases and the use of various techniques by the practitioners, including intentional deception.
Messiah is a Derren Brown special originally shown on Channel 4 on 7 January 2005 at 21:00. In the episode, Brown travels to the United States to try to convince five influential figures that he has special abilities in their particular field of expertise: psychic powers, Christian evangelism, New Age theories, alien abduction and contacting the dead, with the objective of getting them to endorse him as a practitioner in their field.
The Merseyside Skeptics Society (MSS) is a nonprofit organisation that promotes scientific scepticism in Merseyside and the United Kingdom. Founded in 2009, the society has campaigned against the use of homeopathy, challenged the claims of psychics, and hosts regular events in Liverpool, podcasts, and an annual conference in Manchester, QED: Question. Explore. Discover.
Janet Lee, also known as the Greenwich psychic and the Bedford psychic, is an American psychic based in Bedford Hills, New York. She has been working as a psychic since the late 1990s and says she was born with the gift. Her specialities include psychic readings, tarot card readings and past life readings.