Latest / CelinaSpookyBoo / YOU WON_T BELIEVE WHAT THEY GOT AWAY WITH

Transcript

YOU WON_T BELIEVE WHAT THEY GOT AWAY WITH · CelinaSpookyBoo

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey everyone and welcome to my spooky yet juicy top
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: tens and today we're doing something a little different from
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: our usual content because instead of covering things that go
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: bump in the night we are covering the people that
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: made money off the things that go bump in the
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: night and let me tell you the paranormal world has
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: produced some of the most creative, most audacious, most utterly
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: shameless con artists in human history and I genuinely cannot
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: decide if I am more horrified or impressed. We are
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: talking psychics who charged grieving families hundreds of dollars for
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: an hour to speak to the dead loved ones and
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: got it completely wrong. We are talking ghost hunters who
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: built billion dollar franchises off cases that were literally admitted hoaxes,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: and we were talking to a woman whose entire identity,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: the accent, the name, the Jamaican mysticism, was completely made up.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: And the scary part, people believed them. Millions of people, desperate, grieving,
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: genuinely hoping for answers, people. That's the part that gets me.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Not the scam itself, but what this scam tells us
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: about how badly people want things to be real. So
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: this is top 10 paranormal scammers. Mediums, demonologists, ghost hunters,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: and every memorable hotline. All you have to do is
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: call the number on your screen. So, at number 10,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: we have the Fox sisters. That might sound familiar, but
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: let's jump into it. Now, these are the women who
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: started it all. Picture it, 1848. We have to start there.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Because without the Fox sisters, basically none of the modern
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: paranormal industry would exist. In 1848, in a farmhouse in Hydesville,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: New York, two teenage girls, Maggie Fox, 14, and Katie Fox, 11...
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: told their mother they were hearing mysterious knocking sounds in
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: their bedroom. Strange rappings, and they claimed that the rappings
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: were coming from spirit.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: They developed a code.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: One knock for yes, two for no. And through this code,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: they began communicating with what they said was the ghost
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: of a murdered peddler buried under the house. Word spread fast.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Within months, the Fox sisters were performing public seances. Within years,
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: they were national celebrities. Their older sister, Leah, became their
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: manager and promoter. They performed for packed crowds, charging admission. Spiritualism,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: the belief that the dead could communicate with the living,
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: exploded across America.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: By the 1850s.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: There was a full-blown cultural movement with millions of followers.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Now here's the twist.
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: In 1888, Maggie Fox publicly confessed She went on stage
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: in New York and demonstrated exactly how they did it,
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: popping the joints of their toes to create the knocking sounds.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: Her toes.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: They did it with their toes, dude. She said, and
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: I quote this because it is one of my favorite
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: things anyone has ever said, is that the whole thing
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: had started as a prank to frighten their mother. And
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: then it just, it just got out of hand. Kate
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: eventually denied the confession. Maggie later recanted her own confession.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Both sisters ended up dying in poverty, having been largely
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: abandoned by the spiritualist movement that no longer needed them.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: But the movement that they did start, it lasted decades
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: and it created an entire industry of mediums. seances and
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: spiritual readings that is still very much alive today. Two
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: little girls cracking their toe knuckles in the dark.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: That's insane. That's where it all began. Huh.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: Okay, guys, I need to show you something that I
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: have genuinely been obsessed with. I've been playing this game
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: called Paradise Pause, and I didn't expect to love it
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: as much as I do, but it has become my
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: go-to when I just want to honestly shut.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: My brain off and relax for a bit.
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: Merge.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: It basically is a super cozy game where you rescue
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: and take care of adorable animals while rebuilding your own
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: little sanctuary. And the animals are so cute, but also
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: weirdly full of personality. Like some of them are dramatic,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: some are chaotic, and some act like they fully run
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: and own the whole place.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: Might take after their mommy.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Anyways, I will be playing it suddenly and I'll be like, hey,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: why do I care so much about this tiny pixel flamingo?
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: Why do I dream about him?
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: Doesn't matter. And what I do really like is how
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: easy it is to just pick up and play whenever.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: There's no pressure. It's super chill. I can just check in,
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: merge things, grow my sanctuary, and unwind for a bit. Also,
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: it's actually a really good time to start playing because
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: they're about to drop a brand new sanctuary called the
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: Glacier Glade, which also looks so cute and has new animals.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: and a whole new area to explore. The first 100
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: people to install Paradise Paws using my link in the
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: description or QR code.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: Will get an exclusive and mysterious reward. Who wonders what
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: it could be? I just can say it will.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: Help you speed up your progress in game.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: Let's save some animals together.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: Hello, baby flamingo.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: Back to the show.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: Now we have number nine, the haunted collector, John Zaffis.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: The man who collected your valuables, okay? Now this one
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: genuinely made my jaw drop when I researched it. John,
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: the nephew of the infamous Ed and Lorraine Warren, hosted
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: a show on SyFy called Haunted Collector, which ran.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: From 2011 to 2013. The premise of this, John.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: would show up at someone's home that was allegedly haunted.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: He would investigate, and then he would identify a specific
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: object in the home that was the source of the
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: paranormal activity, and then he would remove it, taking it
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: back to his personal museum of haunted objects, which, by
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: his own account, contained over 1,000 items.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: Now, here's the.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Detail that literally sent me off a cliff, okay? The
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: objects he tended to identify that were the source of
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: the haunting were almost always antiques. and valuable ones. A
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: pocket watch from the 18th century, a vintage billiard set,
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: a Civil War era sword. In one documented case, John
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: found an engraved pocket watch dating from the late 1700s
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: and declared that it had bad energy, citing that the
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: town records showed the couple who lived in the house
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: back then had once gotten.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: A divorce. A divorce.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: That was the evidence. A divorce from the 1700s is
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: apparently enough to curse the antique watch for 250 years.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: He took the watch.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: Critics pointed out something uncomfortable. John was essentially convincing frightened
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: people to hand over their valuable antiques for free. by
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: telling them that the objects were causing their problems. Whether
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: he believed it or not, the effect was the same.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: He left with the goods.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: They were left with nothing but the comfort of a
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: now-empty ghosty house. John still maintains his museum of haunted
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: objects and continues to work in the paranormal field. His collection, presumably,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: continues to grow.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: So, is it real? Is it not?
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: I don't know what I believe. But this takes us
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: to number eight, the Amityville Horror Story.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: And the Warrens rule.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: Now, this is the case that launched a franchise off
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: of a simple confession. Before we get into the Warrens themselves,
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: let me tell you the Amityville story if you don't
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: already know what it is. Because you need to understand
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: what they built an empire on. In November 1974, Ronald
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: Butch DeFeo Jr.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: Shat in parents.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: And four siblings in their home at 112 Ocean Avenue
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: in Amityville, New York. He was convicted of six counts
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: of murder and sentenced to life in prison. A year later,
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: the Lutz family had moved in, and 13 months after that,
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: they moved out, claiming the house was infested with demons,
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: that green slime oozed from the walls, and that family
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: members were levitating, and that a ghostly pig with glowing
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: eyes appeared in one of the windows outside. The story
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: became a best-selling book and then a blockbuster movie. Now,
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: here's the part that tends to get left out. DeFeo's
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: own lawyer, William Weber, he later admitted that he had
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: sat down with the Lutz family and discussed constructing the
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: haunting story over, and I quote, many bottles of wine
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: as a potential basis for a possession defense for his client.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: He admitted it.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: Publicly, and the story was concocted. Many people have lived
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: in the house since, and no one has reported any
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: paranormal activity whatsoever. Then enter Ed and Lorraine Warren. Ed
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: Warren was a self-taught demonologist. No academic credentials, no formal training,
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: just a guy who read a lot of Catholic literature
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: and decided that he was an expert. Lorraine is a
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: clairvoyant and a trancing medium. Together, they founded the New
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: England Society for Psychic Research, and in 1952, built themselves
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: a reputation as as America's premier demonologist. Their connection to Amityville,
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: a local TV crew invited them to conduct a televised
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: seance in the house in 1976. A journalist who attended
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: later said the most dramatic thing happened was that his
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: camera crew were wondering when they would be able to
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: eat their sandwiches. Lorraine Warren described it as feeling like
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: she was as close to hell as she would ever get.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: sandwich hell, presumably, the Warrens spent decades publicly claiming their
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: involvement in the Amityville case, despite having arrived after the
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: Lutz family had already left, and despite the story having
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: been such a largely admitted to his fabrication. The Conjuring franchise,
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: which is based on the Warrens' cases, has now grossed
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: over $ 1 billion at.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: The box office.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: The Amityville haunting was debunked, and the franchise lives on.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Then we have number seven, Miss Cleo and the Psychic
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: Readers Network. Now this is one billion. That's with a B, okay?
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: That's a billion dollars, okay? She made a billion dollars.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: We need to talk about Miss Cleo. If you've never
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: had a reading from a real psychic, try us right
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: now for free. If you were alive in the 1990s,
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: you know the late night infomercials, the gold bangles, the
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: colorful rap, the Jamaican accent, the call me now. Miss Cleo,
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: whose real name was Uri Del Harris, was the face
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: of the Psychic Readers Network. a Florida-based company that ran
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: a psychic hotline through the late 90s and the early 2000s.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: I remember this being on really late at night.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: Do you remember it? The pitch was simple.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: Call in, get a free reading from Ms. Cleo herself,
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: and get answers about love, money, future, reality.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: The calls were not free.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: The free first three minutes were spent entirely on hold,
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: while the clock ran at $ 4. 99 per minute. Callers received
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: these bills in the hundreds of dollars. When they disputed
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: those charges, they were sent to collections. Some customers reported
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: receiving up to 10 harassing calls per day after complaining.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: Ms.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Cleo was not actually doing readings. A network of operators,
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: some of whom had responded to ads for phone actors,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: were trained to keep callers on the line for as
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: long as possible. Former employees allegedly said they were given
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: scripts and the accent, the Jamaican mysticism, the whole identity.
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: Ms.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: Cleo was born in Los Angeles to American parents. Her
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: birth certificate confirmed it. She was not from Jamaica. She
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: was not a Jamaican miss. She was an actress who
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: had previously written plays in Seattle. And when the FTC
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: came for the Psychic Readers Network in 2002, the numbers
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: were staggering. The company had earned an estimated $ 1 billion
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: in total revenue. Guys, this is the 90s and 2000s.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: That's such a bigger number. And at its peak, it
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: was generating approximately... $ 25 million per month. The settlement, the
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: FTC ordered $ 500 million in an outstanding consumer and gave
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: the imposed $ 5 million fine on the company's operators. Yuri
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: Del Harris, Ms. Cleo herself, was never charged. The prosecutors
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: determined that she was a paid actress with no ownership
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: or stake in the company. She was simply the face.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: She died in 2016 at 53. Her obituary called her
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: Miss Cleo. She had spent years frustrated by being associated
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: with the FTC lawsuit, insisting that her own psychic gifts
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: were genuine, but the operators who built the billion-dollar empire,
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: they kept most of the money. I'm so mad that
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: they kept all the money. Anyways, let's move on to
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: number six, Peter Popoff, the faith healer who wore an Earpiece.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: The most embarrassing exposure in paranormal history, this is the
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: one that I think of the most technically impressive debunking
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: ever done. Peter Popoff was a televangelist, a faith healer
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: who performed massive stadium shows throughout the 1970s and 80s.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: His signature move? He would walk through the crowd, stop
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: at random people, call them by name, knowing their home address,
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: their medical condition, details of their personal life that he
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: had no apparent way of knowing.
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: Audiences were stunned.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: The sick and the desperate came from everywhere, convinced that
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: God was speaking through Peter Popoff. In 1986, the magician
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: and skeptic James Randi revealed how it actually worked. Before
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: each show, audience members filled out a prayer request card.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: Their name, their address, their ailment, their prayer needed. Popoff's wife, Elizabeth,
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: collected those cards, reviewed them backstage, and then transmitted the
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: information to her husband, through a radio earpiece during the show.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: Randy's team had intercepted the radio frequency, and they had
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: recordings of Elizabeth Popoff's voice in his ear, reading him
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: the exact information he was using on stage, which then
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: he had divined for the audience. The full exposure happened
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in front of
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: millions of viewers. Popoff declared bankruptcy in 1987. And you'd
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: think that'd be the end, wasn't it? No, it was
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: not the end.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: By the 2000s, Popoff was back.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: His new TV show, The Miracle Product, The Miracle Spring Water,
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: which he had mailed to viewers for free, promising it
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: would cure illnesses and bring financial blessings. Donors were then
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: solicited for their increasingly large sums of money, sometimes.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: In the thousands of dollars.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: By 2005, Popoff's ministry was reportedly generating over $ 23 million
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: per year in donations. He was exposed on national television again.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: The recording exists and you can look it up right now.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: He came back and he did it again and made
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: $ 23 million a year doing it. That is either the
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: most depressing thing I've ever heard or the most impressive
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: and I honestly cannot decide.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: What do you think, bad guy?
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: Anyways, that takes us to number five. Now, we have
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: James Van Prock. This is the cold reader who built
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: a TV empire.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: I love one of his books.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: It actually changed my life, so I don't know if
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: I'm ready to hear this drama. Now, if you don't
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: know him, he is one of the most famous mediums
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: in America, author of multiple New York Times bestsellers, creator
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: and producer of the CBS show The Ghost Whisperer, regularly
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: on talk shows, morning news, and celebrity circuits throughout the
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: 90s and 2000s. His whole thing, he speaks to the dead.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: He connects grieving families with their lost loved ones. He
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: delivers messages from beyond. Critics, including James Randi and Barbara
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: Walters and John Oliver, have different explanations. They call it
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: cold reading. Cold reading is a technique where you ask vague,
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: open-ended questions to pick up on responses, verbal, physical, emotional,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: and feed that information back to the person as you
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: receive it, as if it's from a mystical source. Here's
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: an example from a documented analysis of Van Praagh's.
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: Reading on Larry King.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: He opens with a wink.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: Who was the drinker? Or someone with alcohol? The caller says,
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: it's my father.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: Van Praagh then says, because I feel like it was
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: something he had to get over.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: The alcohol, when he passed over. See what happened there?
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: He asked a question, got an answer, and then repeated
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: the answer back as if he had to find it.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: Out of 15 readings analyzed on that broadcast, Van Praagh
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: led with a question in 12 of them. He wasn't
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: receiving information, he was collecting it. Paranormal investigator Joe Nickel
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: also noted that Van Praagh used hot reading, gathering information
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: on audience members beforehand. ABC's primetime Nightline actually caught him
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: doing this, stuffing a reading with personal facts that were
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: publicly available through a simple internet search, which then claimed
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: that it was delivered to him through spirits. His show
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: was also caught editing footage before broadcast. The Independent Investigations
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: Group attended a live taping of his show, Beyond, and
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: documented significant differences between what happened at the live and
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: what was presented on air. James Randi offered Van Praagh,
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: $ 1 million to demonstrate his abilities under controlled conditions that
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: prevented cheating. Van Praagh never responded. Barbara Walters called him
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: dangerous on live television after he falsely told her backstage
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: that something was wrong with her blood. She got tested
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: and there was nothing wrong with her blood. He never
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: took the million dollar challenge. He never addressed the hot
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: reading allegations.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: He just kept going.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: And his books are all still bestsellers. This takes us
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: on to number four, the Enfield Poltergeist and the Warrens.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: Again. Because once was not enough.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: There is a lot of divide between the Warrens.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: Some believe, some not. I think there's truth in lies.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean with them? The Warrens deserve a.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: Second entry because the Amityville was not their only case
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: built on shaky foundations. It was just the most famous one.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: The Enfield Poltergeist case, which took place in North London
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: in 1977 to 1979, was one of the most documented
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: poltergeist investigations in all of history. And it's the basis
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: for the movie The Conjuring 2. The case involved the
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: Hodgson family, a single mother and her four children who
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: claimed to be experiencing extraordinary phenomenon. Objects flying across rooms,
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: children being levitated out of their beds. One daughter, Janet,
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: allegedly speaking in a deep gravelly voice that she claimed
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: belonged to a man named Bill who had died in
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: their house. Multiple investigators spent their time in the house.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: Some came away convinced that something genuinely paranormal was occurring,
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: where others thought that children were faking. On multiple occasions,
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: including being photographed bending spoons themselves and being caught that
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: were taken normally immediately before and after the possessed voice recordings,
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: the Warrens visited in just.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: one day.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: Based on the single visit, they declared it one of
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: their most dangerous cases they had ever investigated and used
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: it for years in their lectures, books, and personal appearances.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: The main investigator, who spent weeks on the case, had
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: far more nuanced view. The film, naturally, went with the
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: Warrens' version. Ed Warren was later also accused by a
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: woman named Judith Penny of being in a sexual relationship
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: with her when she was just 15 years old. I
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: don't know how that relates, but it's here. A fact
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: that stands in striking contrast to the deeply Catholic morality
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: of the uptight image the Warrens cultivated through their career.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: A co-author once said that Ed told him in the
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: middle of writing a book about a case that they
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: both knew was exaggerated. Make it scary, people come to us,
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: they buy scary. And that sentence tells you everything.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: Everything.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: Now let's head to number three, Uri Geller, the spoon bender.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: Now this is a man who sued everyone who said
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: that he was fake. Uri Geller is technically not a
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: paranormal scammer. He calls himself a mystifier.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: And a performer.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: But this decades-long campaign could be taken seriously as a
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: genuine psychic. Combined with his equally decades-long campaign to sue
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: anyone who calls him a fraud makes him impossible to
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: leave off this list. Geller, who rose to fame in
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: the 1970s for his alleged ability to bend spoons with
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: his mind, telekinesis, metal bonding, psychic powers, he appeared on
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: the television worldwide as he performed for royalty, heads of state.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: and was tested by various institutions, including Stanford Research Institute.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: James Randi, who spent years investigating Geller, demonstrated repeatedly that
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: every single thing Geller did on stage could be replicated
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: through basic stage magic, sleight of hand, and misdirection tricks
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: any competent magician could reproduce. Here's where it gets interesting.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: When Geller appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson,
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: who himself was a former magician, Carson took precautions. He
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: had his own crew supply all the props, with none
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: from Geller's team, and he was not allowed to handle
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: anything beforehand. Geller was unable to perform a single demonstration.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: He told the audience that he wasn't feeling strong enough
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: that night. The psychic powers were just not feeling it
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: that one night when no one from his team had
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: touched the spoons. What makes Geller particularly notable is his
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: use of lawsuits to silence critics.
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: He sued Randy.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: He had sued Skeptical and Organizations. He sued a Pokemon
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: trading card for naming a spoon-bending character after him without
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: his permission.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: It's Kadabra.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: He has been involved in dozens of legal actions against
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: people who publicly questioned him. Critics say the lawsuits themselves
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: are the trick. Not everyone has the money to fight them.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: And in the meantime, the questioning gets quieter. Now, he
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: remains famous.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: He still performs.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: He still bends spoons.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: And he still, to this day, insists.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: His abilities are genuine. Now, let's go to number two.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: James Van Praagh and Sylvia Brown. The missing children cases.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: This one's insane. And I see these clips online all
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: the time and.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: They blow my mind. A special segment on the real
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: human cost, I want to take a step back from
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: sarcasm on this one because this is the part of
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: the paranormal scam that genuinely deeply upsets me. Both James
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: Van Praagh and especially Sylvia Brown made regular appearances on
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: television to help families of missing children find answers. These
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: families were desperate, absolutely desperate, and they were told on
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: national television that a psychic could help them. In 2004,
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: a woman named Luana Miller appeared on the Montel Williams show.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: Her daughter, Amanda Berry, had been missing for a year
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: luana had come to ask sylvia brown where her daughter
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: was brown told her she's not alive honey your daughter
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: is not the kind that wouldn't call luana broke down
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: on camera she later told a reporter that she believed
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: brown 98 she died of heart failure in 2006 i
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: believing that her daughter was dead. In May 2013, Amanda
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: Berry escaped from a house where she had been held
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: captive for 10 years by kidnapper Ariel Castro.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: She was alive. She had survived.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: And Luana never knew. This was not Brown's only failure
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: in missing children. In 2003, she told the parents of
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: an 11-year-old Sean Hornbeck on the same show that their
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: son was dead, kidnapped by a dark-skinned man in dreadlocks.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: She gave them a specific description. of two jagged boulders
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: where his.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: Body could be found.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: Police reportedly diverted search efforts based on the predictions of Brown.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: Brown offered further consultation to the family for $ 700 an hour.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: In 2007, Sean Hornback was found alive, held in an
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: apartment by a Caucasian man with short hair. Brown's response
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: to the backlash?
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: Only God is right all the time.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: One of Brown's former husbands once claimed that he had
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: asked her how she could tell people things that weren't true.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: She replied, screw him.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: Anybody who believes this stuff ought to be taken. She
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: denied saying it, calling him a liar and dark and
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: a sour entity. But Luana Miller believed her, 98%, and
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: she died not knowing that her daughter was still alive.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: And that is not a ghost story. That is a
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: real woman and a real cost. Now this takes us
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: to number one. And we're going to talk again about
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: her herself, Sylvia Brown, America's most famous psychic, and what
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: she actually was. Okay, Sylvia Brown, you might have seen
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: some of those random clips. We've already covered the missing
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: children cases. But I want to give you the full
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: picture because Sylvia Brown is, in my opinion, the most
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: consequential paranormal scammer in American history. Sylvia Celeste Brown was
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: born in 1936 in Kansas City, Missouri. She started working
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: as a psychic in 1973. By the 2000s, she was
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: one of the most recognized names in America, a regular
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: on the Montel Williams Show, a guest on Larry King Live,
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: the author of 40 books, several of which hit the
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: New York Times bestseller list. She had a four-year waiting
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: list for personal readings. Hundreds of people paid thousands of
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: dollars for joined her on psychic cruises. Her business grossed
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: an estimated $ 3 million a year. She presented herself as.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: Warm, grandmotherly, direct.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: She would look a grieving parent in the eye and
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: say with complete confidence things like her response when asked
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: about a six-year-old Opal Jo Jennings who was missing in 1999.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: Brown told the child's grandmother on national television that the
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: girl had been taken into slavery in Japan. In 2006,
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: Opal Jennings' dental records matched the remains that had been
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: found in San Diego in 1996.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: She had been murdered She was never in Japan.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: In 1992, Brown pleaded no contest to securities fraud and
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: investment fraud charges. She had solicited investors for a gold
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: mining company that turned out to not even exist.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: What?
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: On Larry King Live in 2003, Brown said that she
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: would accept Jane Randi's $ 1 million paranormal challenge. She would
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: prove her abilities were real.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: She never did. Randi waited. Years passed, and she never
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: followed through.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: Then, the Sago Mine disaster happened in 2006. 13 miners
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: trapped underground. Brown was on coast-to-coast radio. And when the
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: host asked her about the miners based on initial reports
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: that they had all survived, Brown said she knew that
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: they were all going to be found. Minutes later, the
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: host corrected the reporting. All but one miner had died.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: Brown said, I don't think there's anybody alive. Maybe one.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: She updated her prediction in real time after hearing the
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: correction on live radio. But here's the thing I want
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: to leave you with about Sylvia Brown. Because it's not
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: just the failures. It's honestly the scale. Across 116 documented cases,
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: missing persons, death, criminal investigations... Her confirmed success rate is
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: effectively zero.
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: And she was.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: Wrong about Amanda Berry. She was wrong about Sean Hornbeck.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: She was wrong about Holly Crewson. She was wrong about
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: the Miners. She was wrong on Larry King. She was
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: wrong in person. And she made $ 3 million a year
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: doing it. She died in November 2013. She was 77
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: years old and she had predicted on Larry King that
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: she would live to 88.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: She was wrong about that too.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: Okay, my friends, that's the list. 10 paranormal scammers, from
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: toe-cracking fox sisters who accidentally launched an entire religion, to
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: Sylvia Brown who told a mother that her daughter was
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: dead when that daughter was still alive somewhere waiting to
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: be found.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: I want to be clear about something before I go.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: I am not here to tell you that the paranormal
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: isn't real, as we all know that is my passion,
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: and that is 100% something I believe in, but that
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: is not what this video is about.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: This video is about the people who exploited the belief.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: Who look at someone in their most desperate, most grieving,
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: most vulnerable moment and see an opportunity barf. This is
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: actual horror story here. And the reason it works is
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: because the need is real.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: The grief is real.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: The desperation to believe that the people we've lost are
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: somewhere is real and that they're still reachable. That is
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: one of the most deeply human feelings there is. These
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: people didn't create that need. They just figured out how
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: to charge for it. And if you want more content
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: like this, deep dives into the darker side of the
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: paranormal world, let me know in the comments. I have
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: a lot more material where this came from. Like the
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: video if this sent you into a rabbit hole, made
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: you Google something weird. Subscribe if you like content that's.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: A little more morally complicated.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: And if a mysterious woman with a Jamaican accent calls
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: you at 3am and tells you she had a dream
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: about you, hang up, my dude. Until next time, bye.
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: Oh, you're still here?
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: Well, you should download Paradise Pause right now. Meet you there.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: And they merged.