Oh, I’ve written about Sylvia Browne before, the woman who preys on the gullible people, vulnerable people who need some comforting after losing a loved one. What Browne does — pretend to speak to the dead — doesn’t help these poor folks at all, and in fact delays the grieving process.
Robert Lancaster, on the other hand, is a hero. He has taken on the mantle of exposing Browne, literally simply showing what it is she does without being mean, nasty, or saying she is a fraud. His site, StopSylviaBrowne, is a remarkable compendium of her antics.
While at The Amaz!ng Meeting 6 last week, Robert and a few others went to see Browne live at a casino. His exploits are now online, and they are a fantastic read. Robert handled himself beautifully (note to Robert: yes, you did do very well, and let her ironically expose her own nastiness).
I wish everyone on the planet would read what Robert’s written, especially the believer in Ms. Browne. Robert is a gentle, quiet, intelligent, and warm man, not at all how Browne would paint him. I suspect she needs to look up the psychological term projection.
June 27th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
“Sylvia Browne, still exposing herself”
One word … EEeeeeeewwww!
June 27th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Thanks Phil. Now I am not going to sleep for a week as images of exposed Sylvia dance through my head.
June 27th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Is it just me, or is the “Stop Sylvia Browne” logo just hilarious?
June 27th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
She’s at least right about one thing. She is indeed on her last life.
GodlessHeathen, it’s not just you.
June 27th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
All hideous imagery aside, could any BaBlogees illuminate my utter lack of IT skills and tell me why when I open this site it takes so long to load ( up to a minute, and at least half of that is from Digg related stuff alone ).
I’ve tried from several computers including high end servers and get the same result.
I only ask here because I am starting to think that my IT help department at work adds the subject of the daily Dilbert to their to-do list in the morning.
June 27th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
And people wonder why I say sometimes it’s best to be polite to the adversary. Let ‘em dig their own PR grave.
June 27th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Nice job, Robert! Thanks for bringing it to my attention BA!
June 27th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
That was a crackin’ read! Kudos to Robert Lancaster (and Claus Larsen) for this. I only thought that thanking the bouncers was a bit OTT (but then again, I don’t know how big they were…).
Electro, I experience the same phenomenon. I suspect it is all the diggit, reddit, and stumbleit stuff. Sometimes, the only way to get into the site is to stop loading and try to re-enter. I can see the benefit of these sites, but they really impair the use of the BA blog.
June 27th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
She is a piece of work, isn’t she. Robert did a superb job of letting her expose herself for who and what she really is. I also hope that some of the other folks in the audience check out his website. It would be really great if her causing the scene herself caused some of her believers to be educated.
June 27th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
I’ll say it…
“Silvia Brown is a shrew.”
She obviously knew Robert was there, and set it up, just like he wrote.
But you know what? The first thing that entered my mind when reading his experience was “this woman (if she is one) is an entertainer.
She’s doing shows at a Vegas casino? Sounds like a stereotypical 50’s or 60’s lounge act. You know, the crappy personage who comes on before Joey Bishop or someone else big?
Snake-oil salesman… con artist… shyster… = Silvia Browne.
June 27th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
I think in case of the women whose mother just died and Ms Browne getting the details of the service wrong( there was no service) and Claus’ question is a good example of give them enough rope to hang themselves with. Plus wasn’t there a couple who lost their son and Ms browne claimed he was dead and a year later he showed up alive. I still don’t how people believe in such stuff.
June 27th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
I live in Missouri and have lived in the St. Louis area. What she did to the Hornbeck family is enough to make my skin crawl. It is amazing that anyone is that heartless. It’s great that someone is finally bring her to light.
June 27th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
Back in the 80s my wife and I saw a documentary about Harry Houdini. It mentioned the secret code he left his wife that could be used to test any psychics who might claim to have contacted him after his death.
Impressed with this, my wife and I made a similar pact and selected our own code. We were still young, the idea that one of us might die didn’t seem quite real, and it was almost a joke to us. We remembered the code though.
As it turned out, my wife did die suddenly in 1999. She was just 38 years old. In the years since, more than one psychic has tentatively claimed to be able to contact her. They lose interest when I ask them for the code. At the very least, this has kept various quacks from exploiting my wife’s now elderly mother.
The pitiless nature of these charlatans is almost beyond belief. Maybe some of them really do believe they help people. In that case, they are more delusional than their victims.
June 27th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
The title alone nearly caused me to expell my lunch. Thanks BA, next time, try a pun that isn’t so revolting and traumatizing.
June 27th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
That was great! Thanks for sharing that! I’m all for stopping people like her.
June 27th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Confirmation bias? For a lot of things, people ignore the misses and remember the “hits”. I guess for SB believers they just ignore the misses and ignore the other misses.
June 27th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
SSB should have a sister site: DontStopSylviaBrown
The logo could be that sign that’s been around for eons. The one with the wheelchair flying down a really steep hill into the waiting jaws of a crocodile.
Nah, too harsh.
On topic, it reads as though Robert et al did a bang-up job at being civil and simply letting the truth come out on its own.
Good stuff.
June 27th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Well there’s a mental image I didn’t need…
June 27th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Flodin? Now, that’s an unusual Danish name!
*doing a quick lookup*
Yup, Danmarks Statistisk claims that a maximum of 2 living Danish people is named Flodin.
Might be more common in Sweden or Norway though.
June 27th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
It’s a different kind of psychism, but this reminds me that I haven’t done New Years predictions since ‘02.
I guess it hurt my confidence when Martha Stewart did not in fact mistake a certain noted psychic for the Pillsbury Doughboy and try to stuff him into an oven.
Another one that failed to pan out was my prediction that space aliens would land on the White House lawn, hire lawyers, and file multiple lawsuits over defamatory allegations of kidnapping, cattle rustling, and air traffic violations.
June 27th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
These charlatans are nothing more than buzzards preying on the emotionally weak. On a recent trip to Las Vegas my wife and her sister went to a card reader(despite my loathing for such). They had lost their mother the week prior, after a long battle with cancer. The card reader failed to pickup in seperate readings this fact. Both came away disenchanted and I hope more skeptical of these predators.
On a side and rather sad note, Houdini had it right. My mother-in-law had told my wife she would send butterflies to ease her mind about her crossing over. This having occured in May and to date not a single butterfly in our yard. I would have expected the odds of having butterflys in the yard as having been fairly high as I had seen them only a few days prior to her passing and none since. Sometimes reality is less beautiful than the imagination.
June 27th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Oh, yeah, Phil, I have to agree with others here. That is one disgusting image you’ve conjured up in the headline.
June 27th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
I usually skip to the Astronomy posts. But the account of the Browne show was awesome!
June 27th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
Sylvia Browne exposing herself….
NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! I need to be decontaminated and disinfected…. Pass the Hydrogen Peroxide, please
June 27th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Am I the only one who finds it funny that a so-called psychic has to ask Robert what his name is?
June 27th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
absolutely hilarious. Great job Bob!!!
I’m a fan of that site. I Think the thing that deceives me the most in my mother is that she loves montel.
June 27th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
cactaur, that is PRECISELY what I was thinking. I immediately thought my response would have been “Don’t you know?” - it would have been very good for her though - because she DID know. Hell - if she were “real” - she SHOULD have said “Excuse me - is your name Robert?” THAT would have really amazed the credulous.
She is not only a fraud, but a clueless one as well.
JC
June 27th, 2008 at 11:41 pm
That read was, for lack of a better term, spectacular. The absolute calm Robert exhibited in the face of three seperate unwarrented confrontations and the way he interacted with the other people who had seen the show… just… WOW.
I’d be willing to bet that Browne is more nervous than ever before about the veracity of his website, and no psychic reading is required to understand that.
June 28th, 2008 at 5:17 am
Anyone who likes Robert´s work on SB should go check out www.stopkaz.com, too - that´s how he got started.
The near-miraculous part of all this is how Robert does all this while staying so calm and polite all along.
June 28th, 2008 at 8:14 am
Interesting and something that we desperately need more of…but I found his association with Claus Larsen to be troubling and damaging (for me) to his credibility.
June 28th, 2008 at 9:19 am
Electro: Firefox with the NoScript plugin should speed things up considerably. Some site designs need Java to work properly, but you can turn those scripts on selectively. Most of the stuff here appears to be extraneous. (Sorry BA)
That said, what Robert did was very impressive. It was too bad he was unable to record the entire show for posterity, since all she will be doing is claiming that his account of the entire encounter is slander and he’s somehow influenced all of the other witnesses that back him up. I am glad, though, that his presence helped crystallize some nascent skepticism on the part of some of the other audience members.
June 28th, 2008 at 10:57 am
@Daffy:
Why exactly do you think so? I can guess (not the least because I am entertaining similar thoughts), but I´d like to hear it from you nonetheless.
June 28th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Chaos,
In my experience—personal opinion—Claus is not one bit interested in promoting skeptical thinking; he is interested in promoting Claus Larsen.
IMO, he does far more harm than good, by giving the rest of us a bad name.
June 28th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
One thing that baffles me about Sylvia Browne is why does she have any believers, and why more believers than say the psychic down the street? The only thing I can think of is she is sometimes on television, and television gives anything it broadcasts a certain amount of gravitas. I did enjoy the article, I suppose Sylvia would have been better off ignoring the visit of Robert Lancaster, but at least she got one right by knowing his name! Obviously the website has no money, but another stooge with recording equipment would have been ideal, anytime you rely on your memory you’re opening yourself up to criticism. At any rate I love to hate her, good job Robert!
June 28th, 2008 at 11:27 pm
Kudos to Robert for such an enlightening story, and taking some of the wind out of the sails of his critics. At the very least, they can no longer say “why don’t you go to one of her shows yourself?”
One thing that struck me is Sylvia saying she is on her last life. I know a little something about reincarnation beliefs, and she doesn’t fit the paragon of someone on their last life. For that to be the case, one would have learned all they could in their life on this plane, they would have reached the state of enlightenment known as “Buddhahood” by following the seven fold path and have been “living right.” One aspect of this is to not take advantage of those less enlightened than you — and that is where she fails! Obviously she is in the business (and yes, at what she charges it is definitely Big Business) of preying on those who believe her — and by any definition (religious or not) this is NOT “living right.”
As to how security handled the situation, let’s be honest — they know which side of their bread is buttered on — and it is her side. However, they did handle it professionally and non-confrontationally, for which they did deserve Robert’s thanks — and I think the resolution of “how about I’m banned whenever Sylvia is here” is an excellent and reasonable compromise — let’s face it, what “right living” person would want to be in the same building as her anyway?
June 29th, 2008 at 4:23 am
I’ll never understand how can people believe this rubbish. But then how is astrology or religion any different. People will always look for “miracles” because they feel the need to assure themselves in their (insane) beliefs. Once you realize that, there’s no wonder they find things angels, ghosts, Virgin Mary in clouds or Jesus (with “machine-gun”) in granite…
June 29th, 2008 at 4:30 am
@Daffy:
I was thinking more about his behavior when people have differing opinions about certain “untouchable” subjects. But then, as one of those skeptics against whom Claus Larsen has a jihad going, maybe my experience on the receiving end of his petty, spiteful nastiness makes me biased in that regard.
@Bill:
Good point about reincarnation - and more importantly, a point believers should be able to accept, even if they keep believing in reincarnation.
June 30th, 2008 at 12:12 am
Here is some footage:
http://cectic.com/164.html
July 3rd, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Wonder who else is seeing this banner ad for an astrologer:
http://www.aboutastro.com/cgi-bin/reg2008.cgi?r=plpy4-uc&a=2007-12-04
I’m not sure this is the best place for this blog and I’m a two-decade long Discover mag subscriber.
August 20th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
[…] went on CNN to show that "psychic" Sylvia Browne is very, very icky, and then to link to his personal run-in with this awful person. He is the creator of the website Stop Sylvia Browne (for which he has taken […]
November 2nd, 2008 at 3:29 pm
[…] Last week, I wrote about hero Robert Lancaster’s run-in with the evil Sylvia Browne at one of her live sh…. He has received some emails from other members of the audience, and one woman who was a supporter […]
November 19th, 2008 at 12:10 am
wow. there’s a lot of hate going on here…have any one of you actually read any of her books? do you know what concepts she talks about? that is her true essence. . .
November 19th, 2008 at 2:08 am
@Roz: Isn’t there the old adage, “Talk is cheap, but action speaks louder than words”? Well, what are her actions? She’s fleecing vulnerable people. She’s making up stories. She claims she’s right with her predictions when actually she’s not. And the list goes on and on. Any of these actions are not exactly laudable in my book…