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The psychic medium is a fairground cliché.
She sits in her small gilded tent, overly tanned and gilded
in jewellery, a cross between a pirate and an Indian goddess.
But today the cliché is dead. Psychics have gone mainstream:
they work from offices, they pay rent, they pay tax (well,
some of them do) and they appear on primetime television,
albeit largely cable or satellite.
Figures for how many Britons are now engaged
in the occult economy are impossible to pin down, but anecdotal
evidence suggests it has become a boom area for employment.
Some estimates suggest that the numbers now gaining some sort
of living from the paranormal could equal the numbers working
in the once-proud manufacturing industries currently in steep
decline.
Is Britain moving from the Workshop of the
World to the Psychic Parlour of the globe?
Evidence abounds in the spate of TV series
focusing on the paranormal. Next week, LivingTV kicks off
the second series of its top-rated ghost hunting show Most
Haunted. It involves a psychic and a group of "top experts
from the paranormal field" taking over castles, manor houses
and prisons, making contact with spirits in the afterlife
and getting them to clear up arguments over mysterious events
in the past.
In a similar vein, Anglia TV screens a series
called Real Ghost Stories in the autumn.
The two TV companies are tapping in to what
they say is the public's voracious appetite for psychic phenomena,
without breaking strict rules governing the transmission of
paranormal events. They are pushing back the boundaries with
their ghostly themes after pilot shows recorded a growing
fascination with psychics, the afterlife and techniques like
past life regression.
Clinical psychologist Oliver James says he
is not surprised at the growing interest in the paranormal.
"It is not about poverty and people queuing up at the proverbial
council flat to have their palms read. It is to do with feeling
things are out of control.
"Look at Cherie Blair and her relationship
with Carole Caplin. Cherie Blair obviously feels things are
out of control. And who is to say she is not seeing a psychic
as well?"
Psychics, mediums and past life regressionists
sometimes see people who want to find how their careers might
develop or why their friendship group is all wrong, but tend
to see people who have suffered the loss of a relative. They
are undeterred by critics like Dr Richard Wisemen, a psychology
professor at the University of Hertfordshire, who has conducted
research into all kinds of paranormal activity and found no
supporting evidence.
"Most people who go to a medium or a spiritualist
church have lost someone and want to find out that this
person is OK. But everything I have seen and the research
shows there is no evidence to back up their claims.
"There are lots of ways a medium can convince
people they are in touch with a relative. They make general
statements and then move to the particular, judging body
language as they go, gauging the responses they receive.
|
 Has
our psychic found the body of Lord Lucan?
Can Craig Hamilton-Parker track down the body of the
missing Lord Lucan. Read about the psychic investigation
as Craig visits the murder sites with a journalist from
Crime Confidential.
PSYCHIC
DETECTIVES - the Lord Lucan Mystery |
He stops short of saying his evidence reveals
them all to be charlatans and crooks. "While there are undoubtedly
crooks about I think they are, in the main, sincere people."
Which means that many mediums have convinced themselves they
are summoning up figures from the afterlife, but have got
it wrong.
Craig Hamilton Parker, who gained notoriety
last month when he allegedly contacted the spirit of Princess
Diana, says he is concerned about the growing number of people
advertising themselves as psychics without the "proper" training
or ex perience. "If someone is unemployed they can buy a set
of tarot cards and start telling people all kinds of things.
There is no regulation and no form of redress for the pain
and hurt that might be caused.
"It is disconcerting seeing how many people
are setting up as mediums. They might have a gift, but they
need to be trained so they know how to use it responsibly."
Ironically, Mr Parker Hamilton, who with his
wife Jane runs the Psychics and Mediums Network, came
in for a volley of abuse following the Diana programme. It
was based on a seance with "friends" of the princess who wanted
to know how she was coping in the afterlife.
The Hamilton Parkers say they contacted her
and found she was "having fun" and spending time with Mother
Teresa. Diana was working with children while watching over
her own sons from the "other side", they said. The seance
was screened on a pay-per-view channel in the US but was not
shown in the UK under broadcasting regulations. (Update: Has
since been shown twice on Sci-Fi Channel)
Criticism centred on the decision to press
ahead with the show without the consent of the princess's
sons.
Mr Hamilton-Parker says he believes the programme
will have given comfort to the family and "you could go on
forever asking other people involved and relatives their permission
to go ahead. Where do you stop?"
The notoriety that comes with regular television
appearances is likely to prove an increasing draw for young
psychics. Mr Hamilton Parker admits he likes the attention,
though as a former advertising man he had no intention of
becoming a full-time psychic until it was "inevitable".
The money supports his "middle class" lifestyle, he says.
"But it is just that, middle class. No one goes into this
to get rich."
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