Things that go bump

At least one hotel in the area holds a clairvoyant or spiritualist meeting on a regular basis. Now, both these 'disciplines' are interesting, not least because of those who most vociferously oppose them.

Clairvoyants are seen mainly as carnival entertainers; Gypsy Rose Jones or some such who, after having had their palm crossed with silver (or, more likely, a fiver or two) will spout meaningless twaddle about you and your future, hoping desperately you won't ask them why - if they can see any of the future at all - they didn't sell their shares in British Gas before the last slump so they wouldn't have to spend eternity talking rubbish to the terminally naive (assuming they didn't want a career in politics).  Those who claim to be able to see the future are also usually expert at seeing the past. The tabloids delight in plucking the hitherto unknown from their justified obscurity to claim foreknowledge of a dreadful event, as witness the papers immediately following the 9 / 11 terrorist atrocity.

Some of these people are markedly more dangerous, however, and label themselves 'prophets', formulating prognostications of doom and gloom which - because of the vague and enigmatic manner in which they're presented - can always be claimed later to refer to a specific event.  Which begs the question as to why they weren't a tad more specific in the first place. 

Curiously, given that their day jobs revolve around the unfathomable, unprovable and supernatural, church leaders are usually the first to condemn those who seek to suggest that the church doesn't have a monopoly on such goings-on. Some churches espouse faith healing - an even more dangerous variant on the Gypsy Rose product line - and their proponents merrily wheel out lines of 'witnesses' who willingly testify that they were healed through prayer or the 'touch', who can always be relied upon to quote a 'Doctor' or 'Doctors' who all swore that they'd never seen anything like it, leaving aside that if faith healing actually worked, doctors by now would be bored silly with tribes  of terminally ill patients leaping to their feet in the 'Faith' OR and dancing away into the twilight.

The biggest crime committed by the charlatans, however, is to breed an inherent mistrust and disbelief in the claimed powers. By using fakery, accomplices and observing subtle clues they can put on a good show, with bitter disillusion usually being the only fallout product, although in a society which worships the supernatural and which seeks to elevate the inexplicable to sainthood, the exacerbation of incipient serous mental illness can be a risk.

But the real problem is that it might all be possible.  Who knows?  Only the genuine clairvoyant, probably.