Reply #9: Woo-woo Revoo [View All]

[onager]

Novelist Michael Prescott reviewed this show when it originally aired in 2003.

He was irked that the show lacked balance. It didn't cover any REAL psychics!

Advice from Prescott: Just because some money is counterfeit, we can’t assume that all of it is.

No, but if I visit the Psykiks 'R Us Bank nine times and they give me counterfeit money, I don't need to try a tenth time.

Prescott has a simple explanation for why "real" psychics sometimes get caught cheating. The Weird Powers, after all, can't be summoned up on demand for us cranky skeptics. So under public pressure to perform, the poor fragile psychics sometimes resort to trickery.

In other words, it's all the fault of the non-believers. As usual.

This is the end of his article: After all, there’s one thing worse than being taken in by a fake psychic. It’s being in the presence of a genuine paranormal phenomenon – and thinking it’s a trick.

http://michaelprescott.freeservers.com/psychic.htm

If the name sounds familiar, Prescott got into a running Web-battle with James Randi a few years ago:

http://michaelprescott.freeservers.com/FlimFlam.htm

A similar documentary aired on FOX--of all places--back in 1998: The World's Greatest Hoaxes

Concentrated on Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, UFOs and alien autopsies etc. (Somehow they missed Judaism, Xianity, Islam, Hinduism, Mormonism, $cientology et. al. ...)

It has also been challenged by kooks all over the web, especially its treatment of the Patterson-Gimlin "female Bigfoot" video from 1967.

In reviewing the show, one woo wrote that the video quality was poor because Patterson "only had his old 8-mm home movie camera."

Actually, Patterson had a state-of-the-art (for 1967) 16-mm movie camera. How do we know that? Because he rented the camera, failed to return it, and the rental company issued an arrest warrant for him.

:rofl: