Rosemary Altea

Last updated

Rosemary Altea
Born
Rosemary Edwards

Leicester, England
Occupation(s)Self-described medium and healer
Children1
Website www.rosemaryaltea.com

Rosemary Altea (born Rosemary Edwards) is a British author who describes herself as a medium and healer. She has appeared on various programs, including Larry King Live , The Oprah Winfrey Show , and featured in the series premiere of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! alongside mentalist Mark Edward. She has written six books and claims to have a "healing foundation".

Contents

Early life

Altea was born Rosemary Edwards [1] in Leicester, England to Lilian and William Edwards, and has two brothers and three sisters. [2] Rosemary claims to have had psychic visions from a young age, causing parents to threaten to commit her to a mental asylum. [1] Her formal education ended at the age of 16 when she left school and then got married when she was 19. She has one daughter born in 1970. [2] She divorced and fell upon financial hardship at age 35. [1] [2]

Career

In November 1981, Rosemary claims to have had a vision at night, after which she felt open to the possibility of a spirit world. [3] The same year, struggling to make ends meet and take care of her daughter, she began charging £3.50 per session for psychic reading and adopted the name Rosemary Altea. [1]

In 2001 Altea inherited a farm in Dorset, Vermont from Llewella Day, an elderly cancer victim. Ms. Day changed her will shortly before she died, thereby cutting her family out and leaving the $740,000 farm to Altea, with the desire it remain a working farm. Altea successfully fought Day's family's attempts to invalidate the will, and—against Ms. Day's wishes—demolished the farm house to make the farm into "a healing foundation". [4] [5]

On 26 January 2007 Altea appeared on Larry King Live with skeptic James Randi. When asked on the show to take the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge, she argued that she "[doesn't] believe there's $1 million". [6]

In 2009, Altea learned that her bookkeeper, Denise M. Hall, had stolen $200,000 from her over a period of seven years, using four credit cards to obtain cash advances, forging cheques and giving herself unauthorised electronic paychecks all under Altea's name. [7] [8]

Reception

Altea was featured on Penn & Teller: Bullshit! in the show's premiere episode, "Talking to the Dead." Kevin Christopher of the Skeptical Inquirer wrote that the segment on Altea "was a nice expose of Rosemary Altea during a taped reading arranged by Showtime. Viewers got a clear picture of how she worked the small group of people present for readings prior to the taping in order to glean information for later use. Skeptic and mentalist Mark Edward replicated the cold reading tactics she used and showed how her publicist, Joni Evans, seeded the group with people whose biographies were already known to Altea in order to boost her on-camera success." Critics describe Altea as a clear example of hot reading. [9]

Investigator Joe Nickell believes modern day self-proclaimed mediums like Altea are avoiding the Victorian tradition of dark rooms, spirit handwriting and flying tambourines as these methods risk exposure. They instead use "mental mediumship" tactics like cold reading or gleaning information from sitters beforehand. Group readings also improve hits by making general statements with conviction, which will fit at least one person in the audience. [10]

Skeptic and author Michael Shermer concludes in Why People Believe Weird Things Altea learned cold reading by trial and error, and honestly misattributes her success to psychic ability rather than deliberate deception. [3] However, Shermer also alleges that during his appearance alongside Altea on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1995, Altea used information obtained about a guest through an earlier discussion in a limo ride to the studio, an example of hot reading. [3]

Bibliography

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Randi</span> Canadian-American magician and skeptic (1928–2020)

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, and from his foundation at 87.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Psychic</span> Person claiming extrasensory perception abilities

A psychic is a person who claims to use 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. The word "psychic" is also used as an adjective to describe such abilities.

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, then emphasizing and reinforcing chance connections and 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, author and a self-proclaimed psychic medium.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scientific skepticism</span> Position of questioning the veracity of claims that lack empirical evidence

Scientific skepticism or rational skepticism, sometimes referred to as skeptical inquiry, is a position in which one questions the veracity of claims lacking empirical evidence. In practice, the term most commonly references the examination of claims and theories that appear to be beyond mainstream science, rather than the routine discussions and challenges among scientists. Scientific skepticism differs from philosophical skepticism, which questions humans' ability to claim any knowledge about the nature of the world and how they perceive it, and the similar but distinct methodological skepticism, which is a systematic process of being skeptical about the truth of one's beliefs.

Sylvia Celeste Browne was an American writer, 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.

<i>Skeptic</i> (American magazine) American science education magazine

Skeptic, colloquially known as Skeptic magazine, is a quarterly science education and science advocacy magazine published internationally by The Skeptics Society, a nonprofit organization devoted to promoting scientific skepticism and resisting the spread of pseudoscience, superstition, and irrational beliefs. First published in 1992, the magazine had a circulation of over 40,000 subscribers in 2000.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nina Kulagina</span> Russian woman allegedly with psychic powers (1926–1990)

Nina Kulagina, Ninel Sergeyevna Kulagina was a Russian woman who claimed to have psychic powers, particularly in psychokinesis. Academic research of her phenomenon was conducted in the USSR for the last 20 years of her life.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Allison DuBois</span> American psychic

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. Those officials deny it.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mediumship</span> Practice of purportedly mediating communication between spirits and human beings

Mediumship is the 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Amazing Meeting</span> Annual conference for skeptics, 2003–2015

The Amazing Meeting (TAM), stylized as The Amaz!ng Meeting, was an annual conference that focused on science, skepticism, and critical thinking; it was held for twelve years. The conference started in 2003 and was sponsored by the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). Perennial speakers included Penn & Teller, Phil Plait, Michael Shermer and James "The Amazing" Randi. Speakers at the four-day conference were selected from a variety of disciplines including scientific educators, magicians, and community activists. Outside the plenary sessions the conference included workshops, additional panel discussions, music and magic performances and live taping of podcasts including The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. The final Amazing Meeting was held in July 2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ectoplasm (paranormal)</span> Substance in spiritualism

Ectoplasm is a term used in spiritualism to denote a substance or spiritual energy "exteriorized" by physical mediums. It was coined in 1894 by psychical researcher Charles Richet. Although the term is widespread in popular culture, there is no scientific evidence that ectoplasm exists and many purported examples were exposed as hoaxes fashioned from cheesecloth, gauze or other natural substances.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Banachek</span> English mentalist, magician, and thought reader (born 1960)

Banachek is an English mentalist, magician, and "thought reader".

The One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge was an offer by the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) to pay out one million U.S. dollars to anyone who could demonstrate a supernatural or paranormal ability under agreed-upon scientific testing criteria. A version of the challenge was first issued in 1964. Over a thousand people applied to take it, but none were successful. The challenge was terminated in 2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Telekinesis</span> Influencing of objects without physical interaction

Telekinesis is a hypothetical psychic ability allowing an individual to influence a physical system without physical interaction. Experiments to prove the existence of telekinesis have historically been criticized for lack of proper controls and repeatability. There is no reliable evidence that telekinesis is a real phenomenon, and the topic is generally regarded as pseudoscience.

James Van Praagh (; is an American author and television personality who describes himself as a clairvoyant and spiritual medium. He has written numerous books, including The New York Times bestseller Talking to Heaven. Van Praagh was a producer and screenwriter on the 2002 CBS primetime semi-autobiographical miniseries Living with the Dead starring Ted Danson. He also hosted a short-lived paranormal talk show called Beyond with James Van Praagh.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Edward</span> American mentalist, magician, author and skeptic (born 1951)

Mark Edward is an American mentalist and author. He has written books on mentalism, séance theory and production, including Psychic Blues published in 2009, where he discusses working for the Psychic Friends Network. Wilson has appeared on television as both primary consultant and on-air performer in such diverse programming as ABC's "The Con", A & E's Biography: "Houdini, the Great Escape", NBC's "The Other Side" and "Psychic Secrets Revealed", The Sci-Fi Channel's "Mysteries, Magic and Miracles", The Discovery Channel's "Forces Beyond", and on two episodes of The Learning Channel's "Exploring the Unknown". His featured segment as a spirit medium on the pilot episode of Showtime's "Penn & Teller's Bullshit!" series entitled "Speaking with the Dead" helped secure an Emmy Award nomination for that episode in 2002. He is a fellow with the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.

Theresa Caputo is an American purported psychic medium, best known for her TLC reality television series Long Island Medium.

<i>An Honest Liar</i> 2014 American film

An Honest Liar is a 2014 biographical feature film documentary, directed and produced by Justin Weinstein and Tyler Measom, written by Weinstein, Greg O'Toole and Measom, produced through Left Turn Films, Pure Mutt Productions and Part2 Filmworks, and distributed by Abramorama. The film documents the life of former magician, escape artist, and skeptical educator James Randi, in particular the investigations through which he publicly exposed psychics, faith healers, and con-artists. The film also focuses on Randi's relationship with his partner of 25 years, José Alvarez, who at the time of filming, had been discovered to be living under a false identity, calling into question "whether Randi was the deceiver or the deceived."

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Wong, Jan (14 December 2011). Lunch With. Random House LLC. ISBN   9780385673488 . Retrieved 28 June 2014.
  2. 1 2 3 "Rosemary Altea: Biography" (PDF). William Morris Talent Agency. 2007. Retrieved 7 July 2007.
  3. 1 2 3 Shermer, Michael (1997). Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time. New York: Freeman. ISBN   0-8050-7089-3 . Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  4. ↑ "Psychic appeals court ruling". Rutland Herald. 10 September 2001.
  5. ↑ "Altea's website". Archived from the original on 18 June 2007. Retrieved 8 July 2007.
  6. ↑ "Altea and James Randi". Larry King Live. 26 January 2007. Retrieved 28 December 2006.
  7. ↑ "Woman accepts guilt in defrauding psychic". Rutland Herald. 14 July 2009. Archived from the original on 17 July 2009. Retrieved 28 September 2009.
  8. ↑ "Feds: Bookkeeper steals fortune from psychic". Rutland Herald. 11 June 2009. Archived from the original on 14 June 2009. Retrieved 28 September 2009.
  9. ↑ Christopher, Kevin (May–June 2003). "Penn & Teller series exposes paranormal B.S. and gains audience". Skeptical Inquirer . Retrieved 28 December 2006.
  10. ↑ "Investigative Files: John Edward: Hustling the Bereaved". CSI. November–December 2001. Retrieved 12 May 2011.

Transcripts

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.