Have psychics solved any actual crimes?

It's a common trope in film and TV -- a police department at their wits' end calls in a favor and makes contact with a genuine psychic, someone in tune with the greater mysteries of life, death and the universe. In works of fiction these individuals often do possess some spark of extraordinary ability, but what about in real life? Join the guys as they delve into the world of true crime and allegations of ESP to discover whether any real-life psychics have solved actual crimes.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M Hello,

(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt noel
Is on Adventures today. Yes they call me Ben, But
most importantly, you are you. You are here that makes
this stuff they don't want you to know. We just
got the green light from our super producer, Paul, mission
controlled decand it is bright today. To Paul, geez it

(00:45):
is it must be one of those new LED bulbs.
But you know, I seem to recall that one of
us anticipated this, Matt, maybe even predicted it. Yes, uh,
it might have been. But you and I have made
many predictions on this show, right and earlier you predicted

(01:06):
that today's episode would be a success. And not vague,
not not not vague at all. Now I have a
I have a strange inkling that someone who is listening
to the show today is either near or not near
a body of water. Well, they're either I either their

(01:28):
their name has the letter E in it, or they
know someone who does. Oh my gosh, I know spooky right,
I'm sensing something all right, there's a dog barking. I
can hear the yep yep somewhere somewhere. It's a It
sounds like a small breed. M oh, just be careful

(01:51):
if you can hear that talk. I'm seeing a plane
or some sort of a sky, like a pressurized Yeah.
I can feel the pressure of the air pressure. I
think it either was a Tuesday, or will be in
the future, or may even be right now. So so wow,

(02:12):
we're starting this off on a little bit of a
let's let's say a little bit of a glib note
to just cast a net, you know. And today, folks,
we are tackling something many of you have asked us
about via email, YouTube comments back in the day, and
of course through social media, and that is the nature

(02:36):
of a psychic detective. Ultimately, the question is have psychics
actually solved crimes? And we've come across several of these
types of psychics, right yea that that have looked into crimes,
psychics that have been involved with the law in some
way or another, been in court in fact. But what

(02:56):
we've never delved deeply into the United States history of
psychics well and and outside of the United States as well,
and so to be absolutely clear, this is a true
crime episode. Oh yes, and that's really hot right now,
we just gotta roll with it. Is old friend again,
mastermind of Atlanta Monster. Oh yes, everything I did everything

(03:21):
on that show. Yes, it's not true, that's not You
should see Matt, Matt, you are so humble and modest. Uh.
Matt was shaking his head in a what are you
doing to me, ben sort of fashion. Yes, let's let's
talk about these old United States, the red, white, and blue.
We got a bit of a problem when it comes

(03:42):
to um people doing things that are against the law. Absolutely, absolutely,
the US in arguably has a problem with crime. And
on an even more disturbing level, not only do we
have a problem with crime, we have a tremendous problem
with solving crime. Only about half of the violent crimes

(04:06):
that take place in the US and only about a
third of property crimes that occur in the US each
year are even reported to police. So that's not a
deing on law enforcement. They can't do anything if they
don't know what's what's happening. Yeah, that is an intense statistic.

(04:26):
Just knowing that there's that much crime occurring in this
huge country, that that the police don't even know about,
right yeah. And there there can be any number of
reasons that people would not report a crime. Maybe they
don't want to be implicated, or they have some some
sort of sketchiness in their past, right well yeah, Or

(04:46):
if you take it to recent issues, perhaps they might
have a problem with immigration if they were to report
a crime. Um, and that's that's a very intense issue.
If you know something bad has happened to you, but
if you do report it, you're probably gone from this country,
right and there. There are many reasons that are similar

(05:08):
to this, and often very tragic. For instance, in cases
of domestic violence or something something where someone in your
family or even a loved one or a spouse or
a significant other has done something violent to you or
someone you know, but you don't want them to go
to jail. These are only some of the causes for

(05:32):
a lack of reporting crime. But let's look at the
crimes that are reported. Most of the crimes that are
reported in the US do not result in the arrest, charging,
and prosecution of a suspect. And that's according to government stats,
right according to the Bureau of Justice statistics. In Now,
that's just the most recent year that we had statistics
for twenty of the violent crimes and thirty of the

(05:57):
property crimes tracked by that that group were reported to police.
So that is well less than half, especially violent crimes. Right,
This is simply the reality of the situation. It does
not matter if you are an ardent supporter of law

(06:18):
enforcement in the US or in your home country, whatever
your neck of the global woods maybe, And it does
not matter if you are a committed anarchist who believes
that we should just burn this house of cards down.
As experts work around the clock, at least in theory,
to solve these various crimes and these unexplained disappearances, they

(06:41):
use every possible resource legally available to close the case, or,
in examples that we've seen in fiction such as the wire, uh,
sometimes illegal methods. Yeah, exactly, well, because there are a
lot of problems that they run into when you're dealing
with a disappearance. There may be neighbors that did actually
see something that you could have a viable witness, that

(07:02):
don't want to speak to the police for other various reasons. Right,
I mean, we can go into all those but but
let's just spend a moment on the disappearances themselves. There
there are as many as one hundred thousand active missing
persons cases in the United States at any given time. Yes,
a hundred thousand at any given moment. It does not

(07:24):
matter if you were listening to this podcast in twenty
nineteen three, any given moment since we started counting. Of
the six hundred nine two thousand, nine hundred and forty
four people reported missing in twenty for instance, five hundred
thirty one thousand, nine hundred and twenty eight were under

(07:45):
the age of eighteen. These are kids. To god, that
is an awful statistic. And we have more information regarding
the statistic. Is that correct? Oh? Yeah, According to the
National Crime Information Center, that's the n c I, see,
three hundred and fifty five thousand, two hundred and forty
three women were reported missing in two thousand ten compared

(08:07):
compared to three hundred and thirty seven thousand, six hundred
and sixty men. So not that much of a difference,
but more women going missing here in and either way,
even if we put gender divisions or how people identify aside,
we're still looking at hundreds of thousands of people. And

(08:29):
when we talk about missing persons. We need to immediately
bust some myths, some missing person myths. It was oddly
hard to say that. First things, First, you do not
have to wait twenty four hours to report a missing person.
That is one of the most dangerous misconceptions. And second, you,

(08:54):
if you are an adult, can choose to go missing. Okay,
you you can report somebody who doesn't want to be found,
but it's within their legal right in most cases in general,
to ghost if they wish, unless you know doing that
also violates a law such as jumping bail. Oh sure,

(09:15):
and not to mention maybe the bill collectors, because you're
probably paying somebody something on a monthly basis. Sure, statistically
that's true. And again, this is just the US, so
let us know how laws work in your country. It
may affect your experience with this topic we're exploring today.
In the United States, however, many of the people who

(09:35):
are reported missing are found within a few days. Unfortunately,
many other people will either not be found alive or
in some cases, not be found at all. And there
really is a ticking clock situation here when when someone
goes missing, every passing moment lessons that likelihood of their

(09:56):
safe recovery. You've heard that forty eight hours, that two
days that we just mentioned before is the most crucial
time to find a missing person, and it really is.
And as there are a lot of factors there too
has to do with police being able to put their
resources into a case. I mean, you know what could
happen to you within forty eight hours. There's just all

(10:18):
kinds of factors. They're Racism and prejudice play an enormous
role in this, either systemic on the institutional level, where
for some reason of racism or prejudice a police precinct
is not given the resources it needs to address crime,
or individual matters of prejudice where people say, you know,

(10:38):
people like that fall off the grid all the time.
He's probably just on heroin or wayluds or something and
he'll come to eventually, they'll show up. Yeah, that's a
real factor. And just that the fact that there are
all these people going missing every year moment a moment.
Then all the other violent crimes, all of the nonviolent
crimes I have to be investigated, and you you think

(11:00):
about the resource problem and it just becomes overwhelming. And
then let's also factor in something that will become very
very important to today's episode media coverage. Oh so if
a if a prominent person goes missing, say a uh,
someone who is the child of a very important politician

(11:23):
or a very wealthy family, or if a celebrity goes
missing or something a public figure, then the media will
latch on. And this means that a national spotlight is
suddenly put on the police department, like the Patty Hurst case. Right, yeah,
that's a great example. And it's no surprise then that
in some cases, perhaps more cases than you might assume,

(11:44):
police have employed unorthodox methods in their search for missing
persons or their quest to solve a crime. Here are
the facts, friends, neighbors. You have probably heard apocryphal tales
of a police department at its wits end, finally resorting
to something that sounds like it's straight out of a

(12:05):
fantasy novel or an episode of The Twilight Zone, the
original series, the good one, And that's an official law
enforcement organization actually contacting self proclaimed psychics for assistance with
a case. Yes, this is a very real thing, and
it comes about in roughly two ways. The first one

(12:28):
is the psychic This is the majority of the cases,
by the way, where that you hear about this, the
psychic themselves like contacts the police and says, hey, I
heard about this thing and the news. I need to
tell you, I need to talk to you about what
I think I've found or let me help you at
least right right. And this this is huge. So when

(12:48):
a case receives especially if it receives national attention right
from a syndicated news source, thousands of calls can roll
into the precinct. And of those thousands of calls, you'd
be surprised how many of them are calls from people
claiming that through some extra sensory ability, right through some

(13:12):
some sort of extra sensory perception or something, yeah, exactly,
a dream or revision, they have received something that could
help with the case. And many of the other calls
are going to be people who are say reporting a
suspicious person, like in America's Most Wanted, they say this
person is sus so build here's a sketch or here's

(13:34):
a photo, And then you know they're inundated with calls
because someone you know in like ham Lake, Minnesota or something,
which is the real place, thought that they saw a
a roughly six ft one guy with a beard and
a hoodie and that matched the description, right, But we're

(13:57):
focusing on the psychics and the major porty of cases.
As you said, Matt, are going to be someone who
believes they have psychic abilities contacting the investigating authorities with
the best of intentions. I can help you. Yeah, I
believe that I found this and I want to tell
you about and we want to say this at the front.

(14:19):
Most of these calls are from people who genuinely believe
they're doing the right thing. Are their hoaxes, yes, of course,
sure are there, Charlatan's absolutely, but not all of these
people are in any way right, at least not not
purposely so. And the second method, and this is far

(14:40):
less frequent and far more interesting, would be when members
of law enforcement may reach out unofficially to a psychic.
This happens way less often the works of fiction, which
have you believe, and often when it does happen, there's
a very range, convoluted series of events that occurs. We

(15:04):
will see maybe family members of the missing person themselves
reach out to a psychic, and then they act as
the middle ground, right, the connecting tissue between law enforcement
and the psychic. Or we may see a member of
law enforcement on their own reach out, so not not

(15:25):
like an official letter from the police chief saying, Madam Bell,
please help us find uh the notorious uh Timpanti drum thief. Yeah,
the timpanty drum thief was a notorious of it for
Scith Central High School. I remember him. We were originally
when we started this podcast years and years ago, were

(15:46):
originally just going to make it about that case. Yeah,
I know that was gonna be the whole thing. It
was going to be called Drum Disappeared. Yeah, and uh
could you could you say the title again? And Paul,
could you could you throw in that theme music we
we used for our original demo, which I think is
just a tympani drum This week on Drum Disappeared, Uh,

(16:10):
what a hit, surefire hit. I feel like we really
missed the boat there. We need to we need to
keep working on that show. We missed the beat. But
no true story. These things happen, maybe not as much
as we would like to believe, but it's startling that
they happen at all, and there are multiple examples of

(16:32):
this in the real world. So let's go with the
category that you proposed first, Matt, which is an example
of psychics contacting the police. Absolutely, and we'll do that
right after a word from our sponsor. Let's set the scene.

(16:54):
It's the first of May two thousand and one and
a Washington d C intern named Andre Levy goes missing
psychics from around the world, not just in the United
States hall and they provide tips from realizations they've seen, revelations,
they've experienced, dreams or visions that they have had, and

(17:17):
they many of them say that Levy is dead, that
one we or another she has died. And many of
their tips were suggestions for where to search for her body.
Some of these were vague and some of them were
a little more specific. And that's interesting because typically what

(17:38):
we find in these cases is that psychic detectives are
generally going to be kind of vague because they're working
off what they feel are intuitive, intuitive sensations. So one
prediction was that her body would be found in the

(18:00):
basement of a Smithsonian storage building. Specific, yeah, really specific.
Then another one would be just somewhere in the Potomac River,
somewhere in the Nevada desert. And you know, when you
get to an entire river or an entire desert, it's
not really a prediction. It's you know, like you said,
a feeling that they may have had or a vision.

(18:23):
It's just hard to to narrow any of that down.
And each of each of these tips really didn't lead
anywhere for the investigators, right, they were all dead ends.
And of course the people who are making these predictions
aren't saying, you know, they're not holding the information hostage.
It's very important they're not saying they're buried somewhere in

(18:44):
the Nevada Desert, I know where by my book, or
pay me the ransom fee if there is one, or
something like that. It's not financially related in that way.
A little more than a year after her disappearance, Levy's
body was discovered by a man walking his dog in
a remote section of not the Smithsonian, not the Potomac,

(19:08):
not the Nevada Desert, but in Rock Creek Park, which
is in northwest d C. So, out of all of
the people from around the world who called in, they
were all wrong, so far as we know, according to
the police department, according to the media sources we could find,
and we have other examples. Yes, Elizabeth Smart is another

(19:31):
person who disappeared, this time in June of two thousand two,
and in this case, police received about nine thousand tips
from psychics, and the Salt Lake City Police chief, Lieutenant
Chris Burbank, he said that responding to all of these,
you know, all this advice, it's unsolicited advice, is just
sent to them, um it ate up so many hours

(19:54):
of police work, and the family of Elizabeth Smart maintains
that they received zero significant assistance from psychics, which is
sad that there are that many people trying to help
but no dice. And there's a strange thing that occurs
here too, because we could say, maybe the police department

(20:15):
does not want to officially acknowledge that their lead came
from some inexplicable phenomenon, right, But it's it's tougher to
say that the family would also participate in some kind
of cover up. Because they have no official institution binding them,
they are free to say what they wish. So in

(20:37):
both of those cases, it appears that again officially, none
of these people were able to help in a meaningful way.
And furthermore, it appears they were harming the investigation with
the best of intentions because they were eating up hours
that police could have spent chasing other leads. And one

(20:57):
of the things we have to realize is in these
examples and the other examples were exploring, it's not as
if the police got a phone call from a psychic
and said, Okay, whoop do you do. I'll get right
on that. Let me dial you up by a crystal
from a crystal ball. Even if they did think it
was a load of bunk, they at least compiled it,

(21:20):
you know, gave it um, gave it consideration, probably not
as a credible source, but they want to have a
record because if you if a for instance, if of
those nine thousand calls in a case like this, even
five hundred or thousand of them said hey, there's this

(21:42):
abandoned drug store on on some city street fourth and eighth,
then you can you can be damned well, sure they're
gonna send somebody to fourth and eighth just because of
the same place has been reported so often. We also
found that some psychics attain a degree of fame or
maybe notoriety is a better word, by repeatedly attempting to

(22:05):
assist law enforcement or appearing to assist law enforcement. Yes,
one of the most famous examples of this kind of
thing is the late Sylvia Celeste Brown. She was once
known as America's most controversial psychic, which is you know,
a moniker that makes sense. Yeah, that came from a

(22:28):
writer working with the Guardian, so that was a British
papers perspective. She had all kinds of television appearances. Yeah,
she was on Larry King Live, she was on Montel Williams.
She had been a repeat guest on Coast to Coast AM,
which is one of has always been one of my
favorite AM radio shows. Additionally, yes, we must say fairly

(22:53):
well to Art Bell, who recently passed away and was
a longtime host of Coast to Coast A m you
are missed, but I brought the mood down there. But
she she appeared on a lot of shows. Yes, she did.
Let's go through some of the cases that she, let's say,
worked on. Uh. She said that six year old Opal

(23:16):
Joe Jennings, who had disappeared a month earlier, had been
forced into slavery in Japan, and later that year a
local man was convicted of kidnapping and murdering Jennings in Uh,
that's not at all what she had alluded to. And
then in two thousand three and autopsy of Jennings remains
found that she had died within hours of her abduction.

(23:39):
So no Japan, no human trafficking, a local criminal and
she died within hours. Yeah. In two thousand two, Brown
claimed to have realizations psychic realizations, that is, about the
fate of someone named Holly Krussen who disappear. Krusen, Brown claimed,

(24:03):
was working as an exotic dancer at a Hollywood nightclub. However,
in two thousand six, dental records were used to identify
a body found in n in San Diego as that
of Holly Crusen. So in one case, she claims that
someone is alive and they're enslaved in a foreign country.

(24:25):
They are dead, and they died relatively close to whether
they were kidnapped. In the other case, she claims that
someone is alive when they've been dead for quite a while.
So yeah, and there's more, and there is more. In
the year two thousand, a woman named Linda McClelland disappeared,

(24:47):
and then in two years later, in two thousand two,
Brown claimed that she had been taken by a man
with the initials m J and was alive somewhere in Orlando, Florida,
and Uh, she was going to be found soon. That's
what That's what she said. And then in two thousand three,
McClellan's son, David Rapaski, who had been present at Brown's reading,

(25:09):
was convicted of murdering McClellan. And it remains were found
just really close to her home in Pennsylvania. Again just
so far off the mark here, right, and this is
two thousand two, and so it's the same year as
the cruist example. There was another person who disappeared in

(25:29):
two thousand That was a nineteen year old named Ryan Catcher,
and Brown in two thousand four claimed that Catcher had
been murdered and his body would be found in a
metal shaft. In two thousand six, two years later, his
body was found in his truck at the bottom of
a pond, and the autopsy indicated he had died due

(25:51):
to drowning. Now that one is that is the closest
that I think she came, right, And it may sound
as if we are cherry picking to find unsuccessful cases.
That's something that a lot of supporters of this practice
will will argue, right, we are pulling these from Admittedly

(26:15):
a skeptical source called the Skeptical Enquirer, so they mapped
several studies of her work over a couple of years.
In two thousand ten, they published a three year study
that was written by Ryan Schaefer and Agatha Jadwiskus that
examined Brown's predictions about missing persons and murder cases. This

(26:37):
is over the span of three years, right. Despite Brown's
repeated claims to be more than eighty five correct, this
study reported the quote Brown has not even been mostly
correct in a single case. They compared the psychics televised
statements about a d fifteen cases with newspaper reports and

(26:58):
said that in the pass where the actual outcome was known,
where wherein experts found the body or found the person,
when they found the method of death, et cetera, that
in those cases Brown was completely wrong in every single one.
And in the rest they said where the final outcome
was unknown, they couldn't substantiate their her case. They couldn't

(27:21):
say whether she was right or wrong, because not enough
information right other than her belief that you know, she
was she was legitimately receiving signals from some other source.
And then they did a follow up study in Yes
and this one it looked at some of the more
recent predictions by Brown, as well as the predictions that

(27:42):
had earlier been classified as undetermined because there were you know,
there wasn't enough information. Um because a lot of those
were now largely resolved. And according to Schaeffer, Brown was
mostly or completely wrong in thirty three cases and mostly
accurate in none. And to this day, as supporters of

(28:05):
Brown will we'll typically say that this record looks bad
because people were again only picking out unsuccessful cases. The
folks that the skeptical inquirer will argue that they gave
a comprehensive look at all possible instances where Brown would
have been correct. People also say, well, maybe the police

(28:27):
department is not telling the whole truth, which unfortunately is
a not uncommon occurrence in the US nowadays and in
the past. Let's look at an example of police contact
in the psychic of the much less common dare I say,
much more fascinating category that we mentioned. Yeah, and I

(28:51):
think this category is born from desperation from a police
department or law enforcement agency, at least it is in
this first example. So, in nineteen eighty, the Atlanta Police
Department contacted a self proclaimed psychic named Dorothy Allison and
they were contacting her to assist with finding a serial

(29:11):
killer that they could not locate um. And this is
according to the Washington Post from So at the time,
Dorothy was working on or she had just written this book,
and she was on a book tour. It was called
a Psychic Story, and she had recently gone on what
is it the Phil Donahue Show, which was huge at

(29:32):
the time, one of those talk shows. And after this appearance, apparently,
according to this article and according to City Hall of Atlanta,
the citizens, numerous citizens were just flooding their phone networks
with people saying, you need to talk to Dorothy Allison.
She's going to help you out. So this is in

(29:54):
the midst of the Atlanta child murders, which occurred from
nineteen seventy to eighty one. That's and at this point
within the Atlanta child murders, where there were thirty plus victims,
mostly children, there were already ten young black children who
had disappeared and then been found murdered, and then there
were four others who were actively missing, several other ones

(30:14):
hadn't been reported yet exactly, and there were no major
suspects in the case at this moment. So the department itself,
the police department, along with the task force that they
created in the FBI, are just desperate to get any leads,
anything at all. So they called her. And according to
Dorothy Allison, she had worked with police in more than
a hundred cases, including the Patty Hurst case, uh the kidnapping,

(30:39):
as well as the John Gaycey murders, the John Wayne
Gaycey murders. Um. She also stated within this article after
speaking to people there, that she had helped find more
than fifty missing persons through her visions. So she's claiming
that over fifty people have been found by her. Here's
the here's the tough thing. Even the mothers of some

(31:02):
of these these children who were slain, the victims, they
were really hopeful that Dorothy might actually come in and
find something that just the police investigations, the the more
mundane ways of finding somebody, it wasn't working. They were
hopeful that Dorothy could. There's a quote here from Willie
May Mathis, who was the mother of one of the victims,

(31:23):
Jeffrey Mathis, and she said, I believe in Dorothy Allison.
She is not raising false hopes, but I pray she'll
tell me my child is still alive, and that kind
of the sense that you give a victims a victims
family member when you have a psychic coming in that
there's hope or something at the end of the tunnel.

(31:43):
It's it's so positive and negative at the same time,
which is fascinating to me. Powerful I could tell that
it really got to you as well and in course
of your research and moved you. Well, it did, because
I want to believe that Dorothy was trying to help out,
but I know she's all so trying to sell her book.
She's actively trying to sell her book, and this is
a huge national case, and she's putting herself in front

(32:07):
of the camera when she's doing this investigation. She's being
driven around in a limousine with three days yes, and
taking what they referred to after all the fact a
wild goose chase. She named over thirty names of who
it possibly could bet two. I think, yeah, it was,
it was closer to forty two. Um Williams was not

(32:31):
in there, although I believe she claims that Williams was
in there. Wayne Williams is the name of the person
eventually who's convicted of these crimes. Um in the end
it seems like she didn't lead them anywhere, And we
were looking because I was I was helping with a
little bit of the research for this for the Monster Show.
And one of the things we found was that many

(32:54):
people associated with law enforcement APD at the time did
not buy this lad a story. Yeah, they didn't want
it to even happen, because her story is that she
helped all these people. She had A was an investigator
from New Jersey that would be her interpreter for other
police departments, because she would give these vague descriptions and
then this interpreter would go through and say, well, you know,

(33:17):
this is what she really means, right, And there's something
oracular about that because it calls to mind, you know,
the ways that profits or sears of old would have
a spiritual revelation, say at Delphi or something, and then
someone else would interpret that for the common people, the

(33:40):
non enlightened amongst us. Yeah, you're writing that line between
if something like this was real, perhaps you would need
something like that, but then also if it's not real,
it's a helpful tool to kind of obviously skate what
you're what's going on. So now the question that I
can predict is on everyone's mind? Is is uh Matt

(34:03):
Ben Paul mission controlled decand are you all really telling
us that this is an enormous con job? Is the
stuff they don't want you to know in this episode,
the fact that some psychics don't want you to know
they actually don't have powers. Are you going to spend
this entire time poo pooing the hope that families have

(34:29):
not quite? Not quite? And it's surprised. Frankly, it's surprised
both of us to find this and they all, oddly
enough come from Australia. Yes, yes, down under, down Under?
Am I saying that correctly? Melbourne, Melbourne, Melbourne. Oh boy,

(34:51):
where you're gonna get a letter about that? Uh soup? Yes.
In two thousand and one, the body of Thomas All
and b R a u N was located by a
Perth based clairvoyant named Leona Adams in Western Australia. The
body was in Western Australia. Rather, Braun's family had been

(35:13):
told to contact Adams. They didn't come out, They didn't
come up with this idea of a whole cloth. Adams
went to Alice Springs in the northern Territory of Australia,
and apparently she took the family members directly to Thomas
Braun's remains and it was in a ridge that was

(35:34):
about twenty kilometers west of town. They couldn't immediately identify
the body, but Adams, again, according to the story, said
note that is him, and police later confirmed the remains
to be his through DNA testing. That's astonishing, it's just
the surface of that is true. Right. And again this

(35:56):
this psychic was based in Perth, and that's not the
only case that comes to us from Australia. We'll have
a couple more for you. Stay tuned after the break.
So here's another one. If we jump around in time
a little bit. This this one messes, I think with

(36:16):
geography the most. In Sydney, Australia, in nineteen nine six,
the fiance of a missing person named Paula Brown approached
a psychic named Philippe Durant to ask for help. Yeah.
I think it's Philip Durant's Philip. I just so you

(36:40):
understand how it's spelled, Philip Durant. Yeah, So Durrant told
the police the location of Paula Brown's body. Durrant himself
did not physically go and find the body. It was
spotted within two miles of where he predicted it would
be found by a lorry dry ever who came across

(37:01):
the remains, and this prompted uh a statement that changed
the game for people who are advocates of psychic detective work.
It was this. Even though the body was discovered purely
by chance, the speculation by a clairvoyant appears to have
been uncannily accurate. Which is a quote from a spokesperson

(37:22):
from the police department there, and it's I mean, it's
true if you just pointed on a map somewhares that
I think that's where it is, and then within two
kilometers that's where the person is. That's at least, I
don't the chances are very slim for that. I mean,
some people would argue they're not as slim as we
would think. But I feel, at the very least it's

(37:44):
a stunning coincidence. That's very least. It is going to
happen every once in a while, right, yeah, just just
by odds, but it feels extra special. There was another
what's call it a near miss. This is a weird one,
and it's it's much more recent in August of an

(38:04):
Aboriginal elder named Cheryl Carol log Away claimed that she
had seen the location of a missing child, a child
name Kesha Abraham's, in a dream, that the location of
this body came to her in a dream. Police had
been investigating the disappearance, and Carol Loggerway took them, took

(38:24):
law enforcement to a location where they did in fact
find a dead body. However, it was a body of
an adult female, not of the child. Um fortunately unfortunately, right,
So it was another maybe we could call it a
near miss. But in that situation, what happened there? Could

(38:47):
she sense the dead body somehow? I mean? That is
that again is astonishing to me? Right? And if someone
is being skeptical, they might say, well, did she know
of the dead body? And feel like this was the
safest way to reveal it? Maybe you know, there are
layers to that tail. So the question then becomes, has

(39:10):
any psychic actually solved a case? Here's where it gets crazy. No, Well,
officially no, right, the official answer is almost always going
to be heck no. Even in cases where individual family members, relatives,
or law enforcement professionals believe psychics did provide some sort

(39:32):
of assistance In fact, multiple law enforcement agencies have official
statements claiming they have never uh and are not currently
and well not in the future, treat psychic advice as quote,
credible information. Not even Australia, they say they do not
officially accept assistance from psychics in most cases, don't call us,

(39:54):
We'll call you, for lack of a better phrase. However,
in Western Australia, the West intern Australia Police say that
while they will not seek out info from psychics, they
will accept info if it is offered. Yeah, I mean,
I think that's the way to handle it. On the
off chance that somebody gets lucky or actually does have
some kind of powers and know something, we'll take it.

(40:16):
But for now we're going to focus on policework. Let's
look at some other countries. New Zealand. New Zealand and
the United Kingdom also do not officially interact with psychic
or the phrase they use spiritual based information spiritually derived information.
Although again there's another interesting twist. Yeah, the the United

(40:39):
Kingdom's Metropolitan Police was a bit shady about the way
they handle this thing. They're saying, quote, we do not
identify people we may or may not speak with in
connection with inquiries. We are not prepared to discuss this further.
Just gotta leave that door open. That is so sketchy.
I wouldnt say it's a bit a d We do

(41:01):
not identify people we may or may not speak with
in connection with inquiries. Were not prepared to discuss this further.
It sounds like they're not specifically referring to the question
at all. Two psychic detectives any they that could be
anything as uh this that that's this a blanket statement
that also covers for instance, ce iyes or other inmates

(41:24):
or something. And you know, for some reason that phrase,
that whole phrase feels very British to me, right, it
reminds me of c I A speak. Yeah, it's spook speak.
But the that's the thing. They're not saying yes or no, dude,
they're hiding. What they're doing with that is they're hiding

(41:46):
their interaction with some master AI that they're working with.
That's what they're doing, right. This is this similar to
that episode where we asked if technology would lead us
to a point where we can predict the future. The answer,
by the way, if you haven't heard the episode, is um,
almost Yeah, We're almost there. And show will probably still

(42:10):
be on when that happens, right, And then you think
about the massive network of security cameras that exist in
London alone, some of this other stuff. That's what's happening, dude.
That is it is true. By the way, my co
host is correct to the United Kingdom has the highest
rate of uh CCTV cameras or surveillance cameras in comparison

(42:35):
to the size of population in the world. Are they
all linked? Uh? The official answer is no. The official
answers no. So this is this is fascinating because quotes
like this persuade people who do believe that there's there's
some sand to the idea of psychic investigation. It seems

(42:58):
like a smoking gun if you believe this. You know
what about the United States? Well, the United States is
overall more friendly towards psychics in this regard. A way
back in there was a survey of police departments from
fifty of the largest cities in the US and they
found that the third of these departments had accepted information

(43:21):
and predictions from psychic detectives in the past. Of those
police departments, only seven treated this information from psychics differently
than they would a normal source, So that means only seven.
Most likely that means only seven said, Hey, this person's

(43:42):
real crock pot on high, Let's just leave them the simmer,
you know, and follow up some real leads. I feel
like that was a convoluted way to get there. I say,
I don't want to say a croc I'm trying to
make I'm trying to work crock pot. I don't know,
crack pot, crack pot, You're you're far too kind. It

(44:05):
also turns out that there's something counterintuitive at play here,
or at least we thought it was counterintuitive. Precincts in
larger cities are more likely to work with a psychic
than precincts in smaller cities. I'll tell you why. Why
is that because they have bigger media in those large cities.

(44:25):
There are more reasons for the person to get on
television or be in a you know, a major news
article if you're in a big city doing it. So
you don't think it's a motivation of the police or
law enforcement. You think it's a motivation of the person
attempting to use psychic powers to investigate. I mean, that
is my opinion with capital Oh, but yeah, that's what

(44:46):
I think I never thought about that. That is a
fascinating point. Still, no police department reported in this study
any instances of a psychic investigator providing information that was
more helpful than other information or other leads they received
during the course of investigating a case. Since any information

(45:06):
would have to be proven correct, they could only use
this stuff that matched other evidence as they were building
a case. However, we did find some interesting, tantalizing hints
of instances of unofficial cooperation. Oh yeah, I mean despite
this this whole almost universal dismissal of all this psychic

(45:27):
stuff and psychic based investigation, there there really is evidence
that police have at least responded to and in many
cases analyzed the claims of psychics. So taking in all sources,
you've got to treat it as though there might be
something there, right, um, And organizations such as the FBI
have even taken this information into some sort of account

(45:48):
like thinking about it in some way, even if they're
not treating it as if it's full on evidence. Yeah.
In a book called mind Hunter, inside the FBI's elite
Serial Cry Unit, authors John Douglas and Mark Ole Shaker
note that a former senior investigator for the FBI said
psychics may be used as quote, a last resort, as

(46:12):
an investigative tool, with caution for providing clues not directly
admissible in the court of law, such as comments on
the criminals character or the location of dead bodies. That's incredible, right,
because that is someone in the FBI saying, well, it's
not our favorite thing, but occasionally maybe you know, it's

(46:34):
not an alien occurrence to them. They didn't immediately say
that's some TV mini series brew Haha. Well, and that's
John Douglas, one of the guys that created the whole
behavior analysts thing, like the science is behind that. He's
one of the guys that did that. And just to

(46:55):
have someone that he's quoting in his book stating something
like that, that's an oh right. And then again we
see that many psychics and people who support these practices
believe that police departments are successfully using these folks or
successfully cooperating with these self proclaimed psychics, but that the

(47:19):
departments are keeping the knowledge hidden from the public in
order to preserve their own credibility. So they might secretly
go to some uh, some hermit, you know, and a
fourth floor walk up in an apartment that doesn't want
anyone to know that they are capable of finding names

(47:41):
just by closing their eyes and holding an object that
the killer of the victim had. That would be psychometry
is really cool power if its uh, well, at least
we now know what John Edward is doing now that
he's I guess retired, I mean he might not be retired.
Famous TV psychic Right who claims to help people commune

(48:04):
with their loved ones who have passed beyond the mortal veil,
had a TV show about it. Did he was a
cold reader? Right? That? That would be my personal take,
to be honest with you. But but that's maybe a
story for another day. Today, we have some conclusions we

(48:25):
can make about this practice, which appears on surface to
be very American, more so than perhaps you and I
had assumed going in. What what are our positive conclusions here,
Matt Well, The biggest one I think we found is
that in the this type of investigation, when there's a
missing person's case and there is a loved one, somebody

(48:48):
has a loved one who has gone missing, the most
tangible benefit of psychic involvement is hope. Because if you
can imagine, take yourself to a place where or your
family member or a friend of yours has gone missing,
and the police just can't make any progress because there's
no evidence for them to go on. There are no
witnesses who saw it happen. You just have zero all

(49:12):
of these questions and zero answers. Someone comes along and
gives you hope and says, I think I can help
you find this person. I think I know that they're here.
That that moment of hope I think is the positive thing.
The problem is it sling shots a lot of times
to what the negative thing about psychics can be, and

(49:34):
that is dashing those hopes against rocks or whatever hard
thing is nearby. How's that because the hope that's generated,
it's it's not necessarily false, it's just incorrect. A lot
of the times. When I say false, I mean it's
not someone lying. It's just not the correct information or
you can't prove it. Yeah, exactly. Um. And there is

(49:57):
no evidence to show that any kind of psychic powers work.
There's no current evidence to show that it works. There
are some interesting experiments that have been conducted. Yeah, there
are their experimentations that cannot be replicated though, or they
have yet to be replicated, and of course fans of

(50:19):
James Randy Will will be champion at the bit to
point out that nobody has won that one million dollar
prize for proving any paranormal activity or any psychic abilities. However,
on a softer note, it is again inarguable that you

(50:41):
and I and everyone we know and everyone we've ever
met has experienced something inexplicable. You can call it a strange,
one in a million coincidence. You can call it um
a slight glimpse at some part of the universe or
the human mind that we don't under stand. But whether

(51:02):
skeptical or whether you know true believers, whether you think
it's all a cynical play for money, or whether you
think that not only are psychic powers real, but that
you have experienced an event like this, the truth of
the matter is that everyone has or will experience something
that they feel is inexplicable, and in many cases the

(51:25):
best science we have can make some educated guesses or
attempts to explain things, but not all of it. Still
not all of it. That doesn't mean that these things
are real. I hate to have to pump the brakes
on that one, but it does mean there's a ton
of stuff that we do not understand. Yes, there's still

(51:46):
much for us as humans, you and Ben and Paul
and I to discover about what we are, how we function,
what our connection to one another is. I think that's
one of the biggest things. And well yeah and no, no,
because you know, I could definitely feel them in here
right now. Yeah. Um, he was like scratching on the
mic earlier. I don't know if you could hear that,

(52:07):
but he was scratching on the mic. I predict he
will agree largely. I think we're all on the at
least us in the room. We're in the on the
same page in this regard. So a conclusion from the
skeptic side would say that in most cases these psychics
are either flat out wrong, or they're getting information that
was available through mundane means. They've either soaked it up

(52:29):
subconsciously or it's a coincidence, or in the worst case scenarios,
they're purposely being misleading. Uh. They might be using methods
like the one you mentioned, Matt, cold reading, which is
when you verbally and nonverbally fish for confirmation to things
that you are saying. You know, it tells that people

(52:50):
are displaying that they are not aware of and then
you use those to make them believe that you have
gained you have access to knowledge. Yeah, you shape whatever
you're sing to how they're responding, right, Darren Brown is
a master of something like that. And then they'll also
point out that the claims of psychics appear to be
vague and they're often reinterpreted to retroactively fit the facts

(53:13):
of a matter. So that would be a situation like
similar to what we did in the beginning of the show.
There's someone near water or it's not water, or sometime
before or after it has been Tuesday, I can see
a number seven right. Sometimes the way that that horoscopes
have been written in the past, where it's like you
are a unique person. Sometimes you want to do things

(53:37):
and you do them. Other times you want to do
them and you don't. There will be a hardship, but
you will get past it with the help of something.
You're a person who enjoys some music, you know what
I mean. And I'm not I'm not dinging anybody's spiritual
belief system. When I'm specifically talking about when I'm knocking horoscopes,

(54:00):
I'm knocking those, uh weekly half a paragraph things, And
I'm knocking them because when I used to write them,
I sure as heck was just pulling rabbits out of
a hat. What Yeah, hold on, yep, hold on, yep.
Can you say who you wrote it for or what
you wrote it for? I wrote it for a student newspaper. Oh,

(54:22):
that's awesome, it's great. I wanted to write features for
the paper, but they told me. They asked me, do
you believe in what do you think about horoscopes? And
I said I don't really, I don't buy into it.
And they said, cool, well you're hired. I said, great
for what? And they said the horoscope column. I got
a slow clap on that one. Oh man, you like
you talked up Leo a lot, right? No? No, no, no, no, no,

(54:47):
I didn't. I wouldn't think it was fair. No. Actually,
I tried to make it somewhat inspirational or or or
useful for people. Was there ever a negative like a
specific month or um a sign that had to be
negative for like, did you cycle through that? Because it
can't all be positive right now? And I was pretty open.
I wouldn't have done it if I was deceiving people.

(55:08):
I was pretty open. In the column about how I
didn't believe in horse. They were kind of on the
level of a really poorly written version of what you
would read in the Onion or Mad magazine or something.
So last question, I was not purposely deceiving people into
thinking I had some sort of knowledge of the passage
of the heavens. Last question, did you have a byline?

(55:32):
And are they available somewhere? You know? I don't know.
I don't know. I'm gonna make T shirts with Ben
Boland's horoscomps. Be careful, Matt. Every so often off air,
I threatened. I threatened Matt with the idea of getting
us all T shirts with his face on them. Oh, okay,

(55:55):
that's the birthday. We'll wear them around. So why don't
you just you and I just be in a T
shirt Armistice T shirts. He's accepted, so that aside. People
on the other side will will say that there is
something to this and that it's being repressed, and that's

(56:15):
the reason why it's so difficult to find provable instances
of psychic detectives solving crimes. That's why they would argue
it's also impossible to find a single person who has
been repeatedly, consistently doing these things. And at this point,

(56:36):
we want to hear what you think. Do you know
of a case where a psychic person as inexplicably or
inarguably solved a crime or missing person's case, Because we
found things that sound tantalizing, but we haven't found a
home run. We haven't found anything that conclusively proves these

(57:00):
people are out there. Yeah. The biggest, the the most
successful version of this would be finding a culprit. I
think like actually going and pointing at someone saying that
person did it write? And in serial killer cases, there
are people who are not only attempting to recover a body,
but attempting to find an active killer. And we also

(57:21):
want to know if you think this is all a
con job or you know, do you think these people
are exploiting the hopes of folks who have already undergone
tremendously traumatic events, and do you think this practice will continue? Yeah,
we want to hear what you think about this because

(57:42):
you know, we've got our opinions, we let some of
them out today, but we want to hear yours. You
can find us on Facebook, you can find us on Twitter,
where we're conspiracy stuff. On Instagram or conspiracy Stuff show.
If you want to call us, you can call our number.
It is one eight E three st d W y
t K. That's stuff they don't want you to know.

(58:04):
In acronym form UH seven uh six D and sixty
six days out of the year. You can call us
directly and leave a message. Let us know your take
on this, let us know your suggestions for future topics,
let us know the strange secrets that you believe your
fellow listeners either want to hear or need to hear.

(58:27):
And Uh, you know, I don't know about you, Matt,
but I'd be open to talk into an actual to
a psychic detective. Absolutely, I would want to see I
would want to see their take because I read some stuff,
uh accounts from several other people claiming to be psychic
detectives working currently, and one guy was very candid. He said, uh,

(58:50):
he said that he had a success rate about eighteen
to and he I mean, he said I have eighteen
success rate and I'm being honest, and that that was
That was intriguing. So stay tuned and perhaps we will
have a psychic detective on in the future to tell

(59:13):
us about their experiences in the meantime, as Matt said,
we would love to hear from you. We would also
love to hear your firsthand experiences with things that, even
if you don't believe in psychic powers, things you find
really difficult to explain any story about that. Yes, so

(59:33):
let us know. You can also jump on our community
page Here's where it gets crazy on Facebook to chat
with Matt Noel, myself, and your fellow listeners. Most importantly,
that's where you can see us pop up in some threads.
It's where we also look for a lot of topic
suggestions for future episodes. In the meantime, I'm gonna work
on getting Long Island Medium on the show. Oh come on, Manresado,

(01:00:01):
Oh man, all right, will Matt succeed? And uh, well, man,
do you know Tersa Caputo? Get her on the show?
Have her call one three three S td W I
t K, leave her, leave a message, hopefully a cell
phone number. We'll get back to her. She she already
knows that we're doing this. And then, oh god, just

(01:00:23):
just cut all this. No, no, is this revenge Theresa
Caputos coming on the show. Alright, this guy please just
got keep it. Matt, is is this are you annual
taking revenge on me for the Pizza Gate comments and

(01:00:43):
previous episodes. That's exactly what this is. We're square now,
will we remain so? Will we still remain close as
a co workers, best of friends? Or is this the end?
It's hopefully not a real cliffhanger. Regardless of whether the
Long Island Medium has or has not received a vision

(01:01:06):
of speaking with us in the future, we want to
hear from you and of all that social media hullabaloo
is not your bag of badgers and you're like, I
am not the biggest fan of talking to people on
the phone, and we have good news. You can email
us directly. We are conspiracy at how stuff works dot com.