Ghost whisperer FAIL

James Van Praagh (supposed medium, best-selling author, and producer of Ghost Whisperer) was on my local cable news this morning… and it was awesome. He said the basic stuff about being able to see floaty spirit things since childhood, children being more open to this sort of thing,* and ghosts trying to sabotage the filming of Ghost Whisperer (at least they realize the show sucks). He even did a sort of shout-out to skeptics, claiming he was one too (how skeptical can you be when you thought you saw ghost children at church?) and saying it’s good to be a skeptic… as long as you’re not a cynic.

Anyway, the best part was when he decided to do a reading for the anchorwoman interviewing him. Cold reading FAIL to the extreme. She asked him to contact her maternal grandmother. He starts off asking about a bike.

A bicycle? Exercise bike? Daughter’s bike maybe? Confused smile from the anchorwoman (you can tell she is trying really hard to be nice to the guest… Van Praagh also has a homely, effeminate-and-less-handy-version-of-Al-Borlan air to him that really just makes you want to help him not fail at some parts of life).

Okay, so no bike… well there’s DEFINITELY someone called “Teresa” related to this mysterious message. More confused smiling. Oh dear… well, uh, shout-out to your mother from grandma in the afterlife!

There’s definitely something about breast cancer, though. The anchorwoman’s confused smile now says: “…You’re cursing us with CANCER?!”

Okay, let’s end on a happy, lovey note. There’s something about recipe books… your grandmother’s? “She didn’t cook at all!” (Exact quote.) Okay, do YOU have cookbooks? One… ghosts are CLEARLY telling her to cook more Greek food.

They decided to stop there. Later on, she was talking about how creepy the cold reading was (probably just to be nice to the guest), and the weatherman zinged Van Praagh pretty hard by telling the anchorwoman not to worry because he got everything wrong anyway.

How exactly did he become a best-seller when he couldn’t even pull one by a local news station?

*It always bothers me how people claim supernatural reasons for their lack of understanding of how children think (news flash: it’s the result of actual differences in brain structures, and NOT floaty spirit things).