Bad Psychic Gordon Smith

Alright, admittedly “bad psychic” is redundant, but this morning I got a comment on my old blog from a post I did about seeing a psychic where I used to work:

Ashley, people do not pretend its a gift. It is a gift. Because you do not have the gift is why you respond in this way. Its not a technique anyone can learn from a book. Its called altered consciousness. Do your research before writing about Gordon Smith in such a negative fashion. He is a top of the range medium. The real deal. Not the best of articles, very poor in fact. Go and see Gordon Smith live, you will not be disappointed. Then you will see his accuracy. Street names, names etc. – Mystic Kaz

Because the comment was clearly so traumatized by the idea of bad publicity for Gordon Smith, I thought I would share the story again, for a wider audience at FreethoughtBlogs.

I had the unique opportunity to see a psychic called Gordon Smith.  I hadn’t heard of him until today, but I took the liberty of google searching him before seeing him and learned a bit about him.  He’s not just a psychic, he’s also a medium, which means that in addition to seeing the future or reading your mind he can talk to dead people.  He is quick to reassure that this isn’t scary, because spirits are nice.

He once amazingly predicted that the body of someone last seen trying to cross a dangerous river would be found somewhere downstream, but his normal schtick is telling people that their recently deceased relatives love them and are happy on the other side.  Whether you find that to be taking advantage of people who are desperate and grieving or as comforting them is up to you.

But when I see things like he read about a dead kid in the newspaper and then used that information to do a hot reading on the parents and put it on TV to get publicity and money, I confess I get a little queasy.

It turned out to be a group reading for a crowd that was probably half hostile, half believers.  He started with a directive to be open and communicative with him if he talked to us, not to be afraid, and that it was all to do with love.  We were directed to try to make mental contact with a person who had passed.

He started by talking with an older woman I know who is well known for her love of all things woo — she likes to do astrological charts and thinks aliens built the pyramids — and who dresses that way as well.  I believe I saw her talking to him beforehand, but if not it would have been easy for him to get info on her or just guess it based on her looks.  She was an ideal target because she obviously wanted to believe.  Also, as much of the crowd was young, she was more likely to know people who’d died.

I won’t bore you with the cold reading details, suffice to say they were pretty standard.  ”An Older Man?  Your Father?  He loves you.  He had a nice smile.”  He went into histrionics and said that her father had had trouble breathing when he died.  How vague and necessarily true.  He said there were connections in Boston or NY, which really implies the whole northeast, which is how much of the population of the US?  She didn’t seem to know specifically what it was referring to nonetheless.

He said the name “Michael” was coming through, but this didn’t mean anything to her.  He insisted it would.  He started talking about wallets, photographs, and “the house”, all of which was incredibly vague.  He ended with “He’ll be with you in September.”  The entire thing was vague and banal, but she seemed happy with it.

Then he pointed to a group of three men standing together, and said he was sensing a man who’d had a heart attack and died and it was connected to “You, sir”, but he pointed so vaguely that it could have been any of the three.  Alas, it was not a hit with any of them.  He kept pressing and said someone had lost an older man, father perhaps.  A skeptical man in a mustache said, “Yes, about a year ago, but he didn’t die of a heart attack.”  Oh, snap.

Then Gordon proceeded to pretend that he’d heard about the one year thing from the ghostie, not from the guy, and the guy wasn’t buying any of it.  Gordon said that he had unfinished business, there was so much they never did.  There was a single rose, a symbol of love.  And the guy said, “I understand what you’re saying, but you’re way off the mark.”  Snickers.

GS: There are many unfinished things…
M: Like what?
GS: He’s telling me something about phone calls…
M: …
GS: He’s proud of you, he’s happy with your life.  Something about photos on a computer…
M: That doesn’t mean anything to me.
GS: There’s a dog with him?  He loved being with family.

I imagine had we been a less polite crowd, had we paid to see this, or had alcohol been involved, there would have been jeering and heckling at this point. Flop sweat is not a pretty thing, and as much as I wanted him to crash and burn, it was difficult to watch.

He obviously couldn’t end on that, so he pointed to a different trio of guys and said he was sensing an older woman. A guy I know pretty well took the bait.

GS: The last 18 months a lot as happened. Are we near some sort of anniversary?
M: … Yeah.
GS: She says you need to tidy your mess. Her hair is lovely, she got her hair done.
M: OK.
GS: Feeling something in my throat, she loved to sing?
M: Yeah
GS: She’s saying three’s company, two’s a crowd.
(What kind of embarrassingly trite bullshit is that, btw)
M: OK.
GS: She’s saying there are wires everywhere. You need to clean up the wires so there’s not a fire — that’s not a prediction, just a worry. There are too many phones.
M: OK, yeah.
GS: She’s saying the name “Anne” or “Annie”?
M: Yeah
GS: There’s a ring… she’s saying wear the ring so they’ll remember her
M: I don’t know of any ring.
GS: There’s a ring, look for it.
M: K.
GS: She had trouble with her legs, or her feet, difficulty walking in her old age
(Who doesn’t?)
M: She had a walker.
GS: She’s saying don’t worry about the money.
(Because like no one has money problems)
GS: She’s saying there’s a connection to Ireland?
M: … sure
GS: She’s saying get a passport to Europe, someone’s been talking about Europe
M: Italy
GS: That’s in Europe!
(killmenow)
GS: There’s something to do with the fourth of July, or near the fourth of July, not American Independence day, but something different
M: Yes.
GS: Complaining about a sore back?
(Everyone ever)
GS: There’s a spaniel, a little dog
M: … no
GS: You love animals
M: Yes
GS: There’s a watch?
M: Not that I know of.
GS: Maybe your grandfather’s. The name Tom, does that mean anything to you?
(Can’t they ever just use an interesting and uncommon name for shits and giggles?)
GS: Look for the watch. She’s saying that you’ve had two lives, that you’re very different now. The year 1981 does that mean anything?
M: No…
GS: She’s saying look to the early 80s. You’re a different person now than you were then.
(No shit, it’s been 30 fucking years)
GS: She says something about Rose? Not the flower, she’s with Rose?
M: Don’t know that…
GS: She says the best is yet to come.

At this point, he said no more spirits were coming to him but he’d take questions about what he did. There were a few questions and he told a lot of stories, including a particularly good one where he contacted someone named Jared and the lady said that was her husband, and he wasn’t dead, she’d just left him, and he said sometimes he made mistakes, but when she got home he was dead on the couch.

Then he said dead people were like angels, or light beings, and they were kind. Sometimes they’d apologize for abuse. All humans are spirits. Everyone has a sixth sense (I assume he means everyone has some sort of extra sense, because people have more than just five) but not everyone is a medium.  And then we were dismissed.

He was a perfectly pleasant man with a Scottish accent and a sense of humor, but I just don’t understand how people can do this and pretend it’s a gift not a technique anyone can learn from a book.

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Bad Psychic Gordon Smith
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19 thoughts on “Bad Psychic Gordon Smith

  1. 3

    I went to see Gordon Smith for the first time and was astonished. This man could not have known what he came out with – he could not have researched or probed information from us. He stated quite clearly my father -in -laws name- not unusual you may think – but only the family called him this name it was not his given name nor was it on any certificate

  2. 4

    You are a sad young lady who has no knowledge of the true nature of life and that death is only an illusion. Someday you will broaden your perspective. It may take many lifetimes.

  3. 5

    This is the first negative story I’ve read about Gordon Smith, and I am glad to hear true stories about people who are con merchants I don’t like people scamming other peoples money and taking the piss. Although I’ve never heard that Gordon Smith takes any money for readings, I thought he did it to console the grieving. He will of course get paid for his books or his workshops, tho he may take for his time I don’t know, I personally don’t mind that as long as it’s approplriate. I had considered getting a reading with him, and that is why I’ve found your post. 🙂

    I was given a free reading in the 1980’s by a man called Albert Best. Strangely he looked me up, because I’d had no intention of going to see him. I was a person of no consequence a young woman working doing clerical work. Nobody knew my name. He found me and made an appointment with me for free, in order to let me know something he said spirit really wanted me to know about myself, In order to convince me he was genuine, he told me something that only I knew about. I had done this when a neighbor I didn’t know committed suicide in a house a few streets behind mine. I had never mentioned about this to a soul before, only I knew the information he gave me. I had never met the man who killed himself and had no connection with him except my husband had known him at school and he lived a few streets away from us, but the mans name and the fact I’d been staying in a house near me when he died, what I’d done after he died, the fact that only I knew this and that spirit had chosen this information for that reason, was all given back to me in order to prove something far more important to me, which I then had to listen to. Albert gave names addresses and minute details about things, times numbers, co lours you name it.

    I know there is more to life than basic existence because I’ve had a few weird experiences in my own life. So I can believe that others could have more of that than me. When I was 14 I woke up one night standing on the middle of the floor and wondered who was sleeping in my bed, I was completely awake and thought I’d been sleep walking, when I went over and looked it was my own body asleep and I was slammed back into my body, like lightening…. most of the normal people I know, about a third of people have had a psychic experience, I think everyone could. Once in my home years later I was overwhelmed with the smell of cannabis for no reason, (I don’t smoke it but recognize it) and had a dizzy turn and felt like one of my sons was tumbling over. My younger son was driving my car at the time, and although I tried to reason that I was imagining things, I was struck with panic that he might have tumbled my car. it took me a little while to get hold of him at his friends house but when I did I told him to come straight home. When he did arrive he was really annoyed with me for thinking he was doing this, and before he returned I had got a phone call from my other sons part time carer who’d just been contacted by the hospital, It turned out that my special needs son who was living in independent living accommodation in another town, had been out with friends and had collapsed on the street and been taken to hospital, Being open and childlike he had told the nurses at the hospital that he had been smoking cannabis.

    Albert Best WAS the real deal, I have absolutely no doubt and he believed in Gordon Smith so maybe you just caught Gordon on a bad day lol.

  4. 6

    Hello.
    Saw Gordon Smith a second time last night here in Copenhagen. Again he was astonishing accurate to 5-7 people in the audience. He took information down from the “other” side – which he could not possibly have known on before hand. My friend got information from her dead father, Things no one else knew, besides her.
    To me Gordon Smith is the real thing. I regard him as a very humble mann, and what he does, no way he could have learnt that from a book. He is truly gifted with what he is doing.

  5. 8

    I can’t comment on how accurate Gordon Smith is as the messages vary from person to person with some being vague and some seeming to be spot on. What I can comment on however is that Gordon does not charge bereaved persons for one to one sittings. After I lost my mother a kind lady called Roz who runs a spiritualist church in Notting Hill arranged for me to see Gordon as I was in such a terrible state. I had a sitting with Gordon that was about an hour long. He absolutley refused to take payment and wouldn’t even accept money for charity. In the end I gave the money to the lady called Roz for an animal charity she runs. I have had readings with mediums and one reading can be brilliant and the next vague even with the same medium.

  6. 9

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    My tuppence worth… I have been a practicing medium for the past Ten years and I would like to share my thoughts with you all. I will start with an analogy: There is a local builder in your area who has amazing reports through word of mouth and reviews online and you require some building work done in your home. At the time when this builder starts the work involved he has a lot of personal issues going on. He is behind on his bills for example. His Teenage daughter has just announced she is pregnant and his Mother is in hospital in a serious condition. Do you want to know about all of this? Would it be professional for the builder to tell you his circumstances? No, of course not… In this circumstance, all of the above happenings in his personal life led him to make some mistakes. Simple stress related mistakes that in his Twenty years as a builder had never happened before. He forgets to call the plumber in time, there is a mix up with the builders merchants order being delivered and has to be put right and to top it all off the plasterer is AWOL getting ‘plastered’ with his friends! The hypothetical builder’s intentions and at times intensions when insisting on the afore-mentioned facts that were out of his control has so far given you ‘the customer’ a really bad taste in your mouth and you insist on venting your frustrations online in reviews, kick the builder out of your home shouting ‘cowboy’ as he walks off to climb into his van and tell anyone who will listen how unorganised he was in this instance. How could he possibly have the rave reviews on that go-to ‘rate a tradesman’ site? Why did so many of your friends and family tell you that he was the real deal? why did you bother since you are left with a half finished job? Does any of this sound familiar? How about your trusted GP trying every pill in the book before they find the right one? How about that amazing father you know who isn’t allowed to see their child because of a vindictive ex? How about the continued suffering around the world at the hands of those in power? I could go on but for the sake of keeping this post semi – on topic the point I am making is that things don’t always go according to plan. There are always extenuating factors in our lives. That is what makes US human! Human nature dictates who we are as individuals. Not every builder is a cowboy, some doctors get it right first time, some fathers are bad ones and not every politician has a bad agenda. Some of us however continue to be exceptions to the rule! Gordon Smith is not super- human. I am not super human. No genuine medium is. We come at this with the best of intentions, pure of heart and 90% of the time gain the most amazing validation of the continual survival of the human consciousness. On a week to week basis for the past Ten years I have proven to people from all walks of live and all over the world (Mediumship through MSN or similar messaging programs does work, there goes the reading body language theory) that their loved ones in spirit are alright and watching over us. Names, descriptions, personalities, family jokes and history, the list goes on… Spirit are the amazing ones, we in the very nature of who we are get it wrong sometimes and forget to call the plumber. To this day I tell clients that: 1. Every time I attempt mediumship it is an experiment. 2. If you are not totally convinced that a loved one is communicating with me there is no fee whatsoever. 3. If ‘I’ am not happy with the quality of the sitting there will be no fee. Three rules that I live by to ensure that ALL of my clients are happy with the outcome. Fact: I have never not been paid through inadequacy on my part, only through my personal recommendation that a sitting hasn’t went as well as I would have liked, which is so rare it is hardly worth mentioning but I mention it nevertheless as it backs up my theories on the matter at hand. In Ten years averaging at one reading a fortnight( I can go for an hour or two with maybe only 5 minutes ‘downtime’) I have given 250-300 mediumship readings and can count on one hand clients who were not happy. Not bad. I wonder how many builders, doctors e.c.t can say the same? So Ashley .F. Miller, maybe you caught Gordon on a bad day? Gordon has been doing this a long, long time and this is the first negative review I have come across and as a fellow medium I though I would post my views on the subject. P.S If you would like to consider catching a medium on a good day get in touch. I am not out to prove anything, simply to give our loved ones in spirit the chance to have a chat, and in my opinion out of ALL the main religions in the world who talk about ‘life after death’ the spiritualist movement is the only one who is putting there beliefs where there mouths are on a regular basis much to the on-going reaction of the masses. Even the Catholic Church have developed their own mediums recently to find out if there is anything in it! To the conclusion of – Yes it works and as long as you are doing it for the right reasons, mediums are ok. Look into it. Yes there are cowboys out there, charlatans in the psychic world, not so well read doctors and lawyers…the list goes on. Does that mean that all are tarred with the same brush? Of course not… Attend a Spiritualist church regularly or have a one off sitting with a genuine medium and you will have the answer. Don’t give up the minute you get spooked. Make it more of an in-depth investigation over a period of time and not based simply on a stab in the dark experience with a medium who was a bit off on one particular day. And to anyone reading this I would say the same. I even took me a year of weekly experience and investigation of the spiritualist world to be convinced, and I am a medium!!! Don’t buy into the propaganda en-mass, Look for the truth yourselves and may you find the answers you are looking for as I have! Love ‘n’ light, God/ Goddess bless and blessed be in this life and the next! Amen and so mote it be! Michael Aralim

  7. 11

    You already know so considerably as regards to this particular theme, produced everyone in my view imagine the idea from quite a few a variety of facets. It has the for instance individuals are not curious until it is actually something related to Pixie lott! Your own stuffs good. Constantly deal with this!

  8. 12

    Gordon smith is a genuine fantastic medium who has brought comfort to so many people. Skeptics need to open their mind instead of just trying to be right all the time, even when it is obvious there is a gift at work with this man. I have seen him live and was stunned by his accuracy. I also watched a programme where Gordon was put up against a cold reader to see the difference, the people who had the readings all found the cold reader vague and were unimpressed, but when it came to Gordon they said it was spot on. No cold readers get the names right the first time they say them, without having to spew out a list of common names to get a hit. Gordon doesn’t just get English names correct, he also gives relatives names from countries all over the world. Cold reading? More like disgruntled skeptics who get frightened, angry and bitter at the thought of anything they can’t put a label on. Open your mind and wake up to the bigger picture.

  9. Di
    13

    Interesting article Ashley. Michael. Um, builders and doctors? Really? With those said professionals their work is tangible. There is physical proof of what the do; unlike your “work”. The pattern and style in which you wrote your comment screams to me that you try to confuse and manipulate people for your own ends. To charge somebody money for a “service” that, really, is most likely crookery is most definitely repugnant.

    A.Diane Arrheal PhD

  10. Jon
    14

    So much doubt but so much proof. There will always be non believers. My advice, instead of listening to what your parents told you, open your mind and find your own truth. I once doubted but now totally believe. Why? Because i researched it and went looking…
    Jon

  11. 15

    Gordon smith is my uncle ..my mums little brother and he is defo not a fake you have went into that night with the mind that he was already going to be shit so why even comment

  12. 16

    You forgot to put in the “About the Author” section that you’re a total ASSHOLE. You really have nothing better to do that write horrible things about people? There’s enough hate in the world to go around. Why do you have to add to it? By the way you need spell check. It just makes you look like a bitch who can’t spell.

  13. 17

    True story. I went to see Gordon Smith in Birmingham. I really wanted to believe. When I entered the auditorium to my surprise, nay shock, everyone’s surname was on a piece of paper on their seats. I mean everyone. How can this be justified when he so clearly uses surnames as validations? About halfway through the show this use of information would bite him square on the backside. In a moment of divine inspiration he heard a voice from the spirit world calling him to the other side of the room and a family called Hamilton. A confused lady stood up, holding the a4 piece of paper with the Hamilton on it. She went on to explain that Mrs Hamilton, a neighbour, had booked the tickets on her credit card but was unable to attend. It was a moment of excruiating awkwardness. Smith tried to fudge his way out of it with some nosense. When i got home i put on the DVD from his book and lo and behold – all his shows had pieces of a4 paper with surnames on seats. My faith in him and his craft, like the people he claims to communicate with, is dead.

  14. 18

    If Gordon Smith has seen members of his dead family (as he claims in his book) when he was young he probably does have frequent psychic abilities but when faced with thousands of people in a theatre I suppose he has to have some kind of back-up system in case he’s unable to turn these on. If people have been lucky with his readings then he may have been able to tune in that day. Personally, if I was having a reading one of my questions to my departed love one, having been established in my mind that she/he was, would be; “What is it like in Heaven darling? “What was it like to ‘pass over”? All clients are seemingly told is, that they are happy but not why they are happy? etc. The feed back from most mediums seems too vague but I’m open- minded as I’m sure there are some genuine ones out there. In fact, some who keep their ability a secret and use on the odd occasion to help someone facing danger. To me this would be medium with a truly unique and God given ability.

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