Derren Brown – Faith Healing and the Psychic backlash!
Derren Brown appears to have touched some raw nerves in his latest production titled “Miracles for Sale“ where he bravely tackles a tough and very lucrative world of blind belief in faith healing where desperate people are willing to pay any price tag to be healed or have a loved one healed. Derren pointed out some very valid and heart breaking points in that individuals have given up their medication when they believe, parents have stopped their children from receiving vital treatment because they believed and in the end a love one is lost because as humans they chose to put our faith in some Pastor, some divine entity whom will save our lives.
Losing a loved one is heart breaking, but then to add insult to injury when those suffering question the Pastor as to why the healing didn’t work despite paying thousands of pounds or dollars and believing 100% they are told it must be their fault or the suffering persons fault for not believing enough or for having sinned. If you lost a child to faith healing where medical science could have helped and possibly saved lives, how would you react?
Throughout the internet I’ve come across comments calling the believers idiots, I have even seen some stating they deserve the consequences. I personally find such comments disgusting we have to keep in mind that to some people in desperate times will take desperate and drastic measures, we might not always agree, we might even think the notion of placing our faith in some money hungry con artists is ridiculous but the simple fact is that we are not all the same and when all else seems to be failing, faith can be blinding. We should not blame the believers, we should blame the brain washers
In this production Derren took a scuba diver and trained him up within 6 months to be able to convince the world he was a faith healer, they jetted off to Texas in America where they attempted convince believers and other Pastors that he was the real deal. During the production they exposed con artists and what can only be named as legalised theft.
So Why Were Some Of The Psychics In Uproar, they were not the target of this show?
Did they feel threatened? Did they notice some of the confidence tricks are similar to that use within their own industry? How different is Faith Healing to Spiritual Faith Healing, are they not one in the same?
What some of the Psychics said (quotes may contain spelling mistakes), Angie Kruger was amongst the most vocal in their dislike of Derrens show:
Sigh – didn’t think much of the Derren Brown Fiasco.
He & his team spent more time deceiving innocent people than the *Douches* they were targeting.
Derren needs to move on give his ego a rest the show waz pittiful
Sad, bitter, twisted little man who’s ashamed of his own sexuality.
Its the believers faults there idiots.
He delights in ridiculing medium and psychic ability.
I cant watch him after seeing him produce a coin for a lady with inscription relating to a deceased loved one . He really overstepped the mark on that one Poor,poor lady . If she believed his trickery … it may have been enough for her never to consider a true communication via a true and compassionate medium . Shameful… just unbelieveable.
Derrens a little man trying to belitle people to make him look big.
He always comes across as extremely pompous and condescending because he thinks he ‘knows it all’ – which he clearly doesn’t.
To me it was yet again, another chance for Derren to wank his ego.
Most of the quotes above did in fact emanate from one medium and her followers in particular but that same feeling does come from a good few in the spiritual community. As a result, one of the consultants for Derren’s show and co-owner of Leaving Bethel, Woody Woods has come forward in voicing his defence to some of the statements above.
“We at Leaving Bethel are very driven to investigate and expose all who attempt to use “spirituality” to mislead and take money from others. The response made by these “psychics” only lead us to believe that they felt threatened by the show as maybe they too have something to hide as this programme was exposing the techniques used by the faith healing movement, a movement that is totally opposed to psychics. We would like to inform Angie and her fellow “psychics” that they have now been added to our list of belief systems to investingate and if relevant, expose in the future. We also want to acknowledge that real psychics do exist, people who do have the ability too see and hear beyond the veil. You know who you are and you have nothing to fear from us, but for those who are using false psychic, medium, clairevoyant abilites to make a fast buck…be afraid, be very afraid.
Is this war on all charlatans?
Leaving Bethel went on to state they were in the process of assigning specialist researchers who would look into cases of fakery where the aim is to deceive and defraud others. Later in the week though I believe conversations opened up through the power of Facebook between Leaving Bethel and Angie where Woody stated his article was not a direct attack on Angie Kruger despite it naming her personally.
I have it on good authority that Woody Woods will also be a guest speaker on this weeks show of Haunted Cornwall where co-host and psychic Angie Kruger will also be present, this could make for an explosive debate. I was also informed that Derren Brown is not yet aware of this movement by Leaving Bethel, I’m sure these things won’t take long to get back through the grape vine.
If you wish to know more about Angie Kruger and her work, you can check out her website http://www.angandrich.co.uk/
To read the full article from Leaving Bethel http://leavingbethel.webs.com/apps/blog/show/6915377-psychics-kick-out-at-derren-brown-s-miracles-for-sale
Haunted Cornwall airs 8pm – 10pm BST (For our international readers – The British Summer Time period begins on the last Sunday of March and ends on the last Sunday of October. The rest of the years is GMT)
Promotional video by Leaving Bethel:
This article was written for Supernatural World
Toys R Us Brings You The Pink Ouija Board For Girls! – Originally published in 2009 on Ghosts-UK
A Ouija board for the girls inclusive of a pink planchette and it’s very own pink carry case to keep it safe!
Now this is not all together new news and I’m really not sure how the hell I missed it but I sure did. Hasbro (Parker Brothers) the guys beyond this colourful board have been marketing this product since last year (2008).
Now regardless of whether you believe in the power of Ouija or not, I’m sure most would agree that it’s psychological affects can be disastrous especially on those with a fragile, easily led and I suppose gullible mind. So if it can have dangerous affects on adults I wonder how it could affect a child’s mind especially considering that their body and minds are still developing plus until a certain age fiction is still mixed with fact, a child can not always differentiate and belief can be a powerful thing not to mention scary at times.
As a kid most would fear the monster under the bed and the witch in the closet so the moral question I would raise is, is it right to subject kids to this by saying they can speak with the dead?
This board and how it is marketed is clearly aimed at young children, most likely those whom still obsess over Barbie and Ken.
Ahh that will most likely be the next angle their marketing will take “Buy your Barbie the perfect pink Ouija board and let her communicate her long lost Ken”.
Or alternatively for all those kiddies out there that really did chop of Barbies head, you can now be reunited with her once again!
I’ve not yet seen this board sold in the UK, but someone somewhere will no doubt be taking advantage of the apparent gap of pink Ouija boards in the UK market.
Here is how Toys R Us in America are describing it:
Quote:
It has always been mysterious. It has always been mystifying. And now the OUIJA Board is just for you, girl. With 72 fun questions included, you’ll never run out of things to ask. Who will call/text me next? Will I be a famous actor someday? Who wishes they could trade places with me? Gather your friends around, draw a card, place your fingers on the planchette and ask your question. Concentrate very hard and watch as the answer is revealed in the message window. Make up your own questions, and let the OUIJA Board satisfy your curiosity in virtually endless ways. OUIJA Board will answer. It’s just a game – or is it? Includes OUIJA Board, message indicator (planchette), card deck with 72 questions, carrying case with storage pockets and instructions.
Quote:
Pink OUIJA Board predicts the future
Who will call you next? Will you be famous? Who wants to trade places with you? All these questions and more can be answered with the mystifying OUIJA Board.
Quote:
Card deck with 72 questions
Use the card deck to ask 72 thought-provoking questions about your future. When you’ve gone through the deck, make up your own question and watch as the answer appears in the message window.
Quote:
Included pink carrying case with storage pockets
Take the OUIJA Board over to your friend’s house in the included carrying case so you can play anytime.
Quote:
Pink planchette (message indicator)
The included planchette moves across the OUIJA Board, driven by mysterious forces to answer your questions about the future.
Hasbro and Toys R Us both have a recommended age group of 8 – 12 years.
Would you buy your child a Ouija board?
Despite the blatant ploy to entice kids into wanting one of these, I’m sure now all the ladies out there will be looking to accessorise making this the newest addition to their ghost hunting kit.
Will this new board still entice the male ghosts or will it be to girly for them? Is this the new medium for a child to find out who their secret crush is in class and if the love is both ways?
All they have to do is ask the dead!
Stockists include Toys R Us and Amazon, but both only seem to supply from their American websites.
UPC/EAN/ISBN: 653569353942
Price: $19.99 – $39.99
Paranormal Pettiness
In October of last year an article was published titled “One Ego or Two?” within this article I spoke about the paranormal and the many conflicts which give raise to bad name and publicity it can often receive. Still a year on and the rivalry seems to continue.
One of the other websites we run titled “Haunted England – Top 100” (sister website to “Haunted England Search Engine“) is a voting website where paranormal groups and individuals can list their website and have members of the public vote and comment, now in a just world you expect adults to be able to behave and act in a professional manner when proclaiming to be professional. Not the case!
We get three kinds of comments on Haunted England, self reviews where they praise themselves, Team rivalry where 1 person or a team makes attacks against others they dislike for what ever reasons and the third are accusations we fix the rating, here are some of them:
Self Reviews:
Great website, great team!
This team is the best in the worlds.
Aggressive Rivalry:
Boring site, boring content and boring people, half of whom havnt the faintest idea what exactly they are talking about!!! To be sucessful, you must offer something your competitors do not….and sadly, you dont!
dogsmess
What a pile of sh**
total rubbish what a complete con this group are the worst event i have ever been to no organisation and fraud mediums dont bother is my advise.
Accusations Against Haunted England:
Haunted England is fixed for all you mardy I have a nice hats
Haunted England only publish the positive comments.
Addressing intellectually retarded individuals
I’ve not published all the comments here, some are really nasty which can often be real personal and won’t ever see the light of day. I think we’ll address the comments in reverse and talk about the ones made against Haunted England.
The reason we don’t list our main website which we run, “Ghosts-UK” is because it could seem unfair and like a fix, if we wanted to fix the ratings we’d add our own main sites to further self promote but we don’t and we don’t influence the voting in anyway. We don’t touch the database except in occasions where we believe people may have found a way to cheat the system, we then examine the data and take whatever action we deem appropriate. We believe in allowing people a fair chance to be listed without our influence.
So, we have nothing to gain by “fixing” it as some Muppet wrote.
Now to address the issue of only allowing positive comments, I suppose you could say this is true in most cases but only because people struggle to string together even one constructive sentence. Its like a war in the comments section with people having a go at each other because they have some differences or because their groups are competing or just because someone left one group and made their own.
Everybody wants to be a founder!
If you can’t be constructive rather than resorting to animalistic attacks then don’t bother, we won’t set them live.
The self-reviewers, it’s obvious when you do it. You write in the same style, same gramma, same bad spellings and pretty much saying the same thing over and over and over again. It’s boring, stop it!
We once allowed simple comments, but no longer set them live so comments like “good site”, “Brilliant”, and “Fantastic Team” will not go live, there maybe some older ones still in our system though.
The comments feature is not to abuse other websites or to make personal attacks, it’s to give constructive feedback, if their going wrong with their website then how can they fix it, what can they do. If it’s feedback on an event then how could they improve, or what did you love about it and what didn’t you love and why.
Be constructive in your comments, don’t be personal, don’t be aggressive, stop being petty and for goodness sake grow up and be adults for once in your life. There is nothing remotely scientific or professional about some of the conduct we’ve seen.
This is obviously not true in all cases and doesn’t apply to all websites, it’s just a select few and they know who they are. If it doesn’t stop then we’ll simply turn comments off, end of story.
Life is to short to be angry all the time, if you can’t accept your differences and get on, then just move on.