THE PSYCHIC HISTORY
OF PSYCHICS.CO.UK AND THE COMMUNITY

The Psychic History of The Psychics & Mediums Network Community By your host Craig Hamilton-Parker

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PSYCHIC HISTORY

What's the Internet?

I first heard about the Internet in 1984 from a friend who worked for the secret service and in particular was working with the Star Wars Project initiated by Ronald Reagan. At that time the Internet was still rooted as a military communications system but was now beginning to be used by academics and soon a company called Quantum Computer Services was to open the system to the general public in America. (The Internet was created in 1969 as a military network called ARPAnet -Advanced Research Projects Agency network. Quantum Computer Services changed its name to AOL in 1989)

My friend was very enthusiastic about the civilian applications of the Internet and the cross-cultural implication. I was intrigued by this and hoped one day to own a computer so that I could participate in this project.

At the time I had no idea how important the Internet would become to my spiritual work but it is interesting how even then - not long after having met the medium Doris Stokes - the spirit world may have been giving me a few hints about the future through synchronous coincidences?

PSYCHIC HISTORY OF PSYCHICS.CO.UK
- The site gets started

I started the website in 1996 using a very crude text editing design tool from a PC magazine cover disk. The first image I created was the familiar watermark of the dragon logo that has since been animated. There are a few early versions of the website on the Internet site at www.archive.org which cases websites from the early Internet. To see it (a cache exists to about 1998 but most of it is the 'has moved' pages) you will need to search for the original URL.

The original URL for this site was:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/ TVPsychics/
(There is still a small site on CompuServe that redirects now to the new site)

PSYCHIC HISTORY OF PSYCHICS.CO.UK
- Original Objectives.

I built the site in order to promote my first book 'The Psychic Workbook' and also as a means to publish information that the publishers rejected from the original. The book was originally designed to help people develop mediumship but this was deemed too scary for the publishers intended audience. It also became a useful reference point for people watching mine and Jane's first television series on The Big Breakfast and subsequent TV shows.

Soon the site began to grow from its original ten pages as I introduced new themes that inspired me. Although I had formally worked in the graphics industry (pre-computer graphics www.corporateweb.co.uk ) designing websites was unknown territory.

Eventually I discovered chatrooms and had unique idea. What would happen if we were to use a chatroom setting to give psychic demonstrations? Some American psychics were already using chatrooms to give readings but so far nobody had ever used chatrooms to build a psychic community. My site was getting 200 visitors a day, which in those days was a lot of hits. (Today we register many thousands of hits per day) There were enough visitors to build a community.

To establish the community I asked people to subscribe to a newsletter so meeting times could be set up. In addition I set up a message board to support the community and of course set up a chatroom. Gradually the community started to grow until a point came when people were chatting on the site 24/7.

Along side the growth of the community the site grew too. At the time my main income was coming from my psychic newspaper articles and column. Much of this material together with extracts from my books became the basis of the many thousands of pages of the Network today.

PSYCHIC HISTORY OF PSYCHICS.CO.UK
- The first Community

The first chatroom was a free java chat application from www.xoom.com It was a very crude one room system but we managed with it for a number of years. To supervise the discussions I introduced a staff system and an approved reader system. One person who helped us to get all this in order was a helper called MEL who from time to time would sack or appoint staff to ensure that we only had sincere and emotionally stable workers.

To make it clearer we introduced a prefix system to make distinctions. Today we have settled on M+ for members, S+ for staff and T+ for teachers. This system went through a lot of changes before we got it right and has since been directly copied by other sites that try to mimic our community. During these years everything on the site was free and I funded the sites from my own pocket. It was becoming very hard to give the time and the money to the site as during these early years my income from writing and clairvoyance was extremely low indeed. I was struggling to stay afloat!

INTERNET HISTORY - We nearly lose the Psychic Community

In all groups of people -including spiritual communities- there are occasional fallings out and our community was no exception. The first fall out happened when staff and visitors started arguing between themselves. Most of this was just silly squabbling but it grew into a real problem. All my time was getting sucked into managing the free online chatroom and it became clear to me that this could not continue or my work as a writer and TV psychic would suffer so I closed the chatrooms.

Suddenly my email box was flooded with pleading emails for me to re-open the site. It became clear that a great many people lived and breathed the Psychics Chatroom so I re-opened it. Eventually we managed to stabilize things and we identified and removed most of the troublemakers. We had a second and more serious problem later when our security staff (called gatekeepers G+) and our psychics (called helpers H+) fell out. Unfortunately this turned quite nasty for a while and it was clear that we would not survive unless sweeping changes were made.

Our most loyal helpers saved the day. In particular Vi Kipling (T+Sibyl) Caz Cartwright (T+Hemen), Kathryn Spence (T+Amymone), Doris Smith (T+Harmonia), Andrea Maher (T+Althaea) NeColle (T+Tyche) and Martin Colclough (T+Hesiod) as well as Leslie Hall (T+Psyche) with hubby Terry (T+Lancelot) rushed to my aid and helped me to get the site on its feet. We had to close the message boards and employ expensive specialist designers to build us the security system we have now which allows us to permanently remove troublemakers. Without their unremitting support we would have certainly lost the site.

While all this was happening some of the people we removed set up their own Psychic Chatrooms and then directly targeted our site to get people to visit them. You can imagine that after all the years of work to get this project working, the financial sacrifices made and the huge dedication of our loyal staff, that this made us feel somewhat upset. Plagiarising our idea was bad enough but these people also used underhand ways to infiltrate our community and members email list.

It has taken years to get the system right and years to establish a regular flow of people and years to build this huge website and members area. The hard lessons from this time are one of the reasons that we are now tough on anyone who comes to our site to use it as a means to their own ends. People still come to specifically find out about and copy our system but we are much sharper than we were and have a wonderful dedication from many members who have been visiting us regularly for years.

PSYCHIC HISTORY OF PSYCHICS.CO.UK
- We go commercial

The problems prompted me to make the site into much more of a commercial venture. If I hadn't have done this it would have drained me of time and money. I t was essential to keep the original dream of the altruistic intent to help others via the community but now I had to also generate an income for the site (and me) to survive. I expanded the Psychic Shop section of the site, introduced the telephone psychics system and set up a subscription basis for the members teaching area. These now fund the site, pay for my hours of work maintaining the site and contribute to my livelihood. In addition, the option is available to our teachers to do email reading via the psychic shop so that they too can benefit from the site if they want to.

PSYCHIC HISTORY OF PSYCHICS.CO.UK
- The way forward

The site has now not only survived but thrived to become the best psychic and mediumistic teaching site on the Net. Many new volunteers continue to join us both as staff and teachers. Some of these mediums I have known for many years. For example Keith Baldwin (T+Hawkwind) was one of the mediums who sat opposite to me in our first development circle with the medium Peter Close and Bill Landis. Other friends have joined from my own home circle, from Vi's friends or been inspired to become part of the current team. You only need to read the profiles on our staff pages to see what wonderful people are helping us with this work.

There is a huge amount of inspiration expressing itself through this site. I am sure that the free area, the exciting online Elysium classes and the many real time seminars we are organising will be of great benefit to the many thousands of people who pass through this site.

I am very proud to be associated with such people and am endlessly inspired by the love and warmth which shines from this website that started what seems so long ago now on those few humble pages on CompuServe.

Craig Hamilton-Parker
Q.K.E. Limited, 23 Mitre Copse, Bishopstoke, Eastleigh, United Kingdom. SO50 8QE
Telephone: 02380 696262

See screen shots of the old site at more at Archive.org
(Prior to 1997 the site was hosted on Compuserve)