Yes, you are right, I am not really promoting any of these, I do not really believe in ghosts, I was only saying that there are alternative hypoteses for ghosts than that they are dead people.

As for the time sents remain, well, it is really hard to say, it depends on the remains and the environment they are in, cadaver dogs are sometimes used after several weeks or months, but I really do not know the detectable time for things like blood absorbed by flooring...

It would be quite feasable to look for say a grave that was a few centuries old with a dog trained in historical grave detection, and decades old bones are used for training of detection dogs, so they might find bone fragments from a body, so there may be some smell from dried blood too, I just do not know...

Of course, it is quite unlikely that any animal would evolve an instict for keeping on their gard when the killing is that old, it would have a rather limited usefulness and the dogs in question is specialy trained, they wouldn't mark anything if not, and dogs are very sensitive to smells. Anyway, I admit it was a rather far out idea.

__________________
Game over, you lose, we hope you enjoyed playing the exciting game of Thermodynamics...

That's the sort of stunt Harry Houdini would simply have loved to have pulled had he thought of it. Shame, really.

__________________
And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling [faces] lyin' to ye' everywhere ye' go
Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.

He did think of it! Sort of, anyway. He was going to communicate with his wife. As far as I know, he never did.

__________________
Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

From inside the sanctuary of my padded cell. From this place where my mind can look upon this subject and giggle uncontrolably...Stop pulling your punches and be true to your self!... This subject mater is nonsense and is based on the fear and ignorance of the masses., Hysterical laughter is heard from down the corridor at the mention of 'Ghosts'.
What are they suggesting is a ghost?
Is it the dead. Not likely as death seems to prohibit life. So when you or anyone can demonstrate this to me, I will listen.
I can best say that as 'Neverfly' has so clearly said already. Weak minded individuals will continue to believe in the paranormal. The rest of us know better.

Well, the scent is a different matter. It is the remains decomposing, which is entirely different from an Imprint in the area of an Event that occurred.

And I've seen enough of your posts, TrAI, to make a guess as to where you stand. But the way your post was worded, it supported something that contradicts a lot of evidence and begged to be addressed. I just fired upon laurele's post for the exact same reason: These arguments are used over and over and over by believers in an attempt to justify a belief without having to provide any kind of evidence.
Remember the 10% myth? We only use 10% of our brains? That piece of misinformation was purported by believers to create an air of mystery that allows for the possibility of paranormal abilities.
I myself mentioned it in a thread and Gillianren corrected me on it.

Since the debate in this thread is the OP's question- "Do you believe...", a simple yes or no will not suffice, a reason must be given. If a given reason fails, it should be hammered.

I would hope that should I demonstrate such a lack of critical thinking here that someone gives me a swift kick in the butt and get me back on track too.

And around here, I'm sure I would receive several in a matter of seconds

He's right. mickal's about the equivalent of Jacob Marley around here, so he would be an expert.

Yeah, I know. It's why I brought it up and slapped on the wink.

Mr and Mrs Houdini had gone as far as to set up a code word between them to validate any such contact. I can't remember if any "psychics" had ever had the guts to try and guess the word.

__________________
And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling [faces] lyin' to ye' everywhere ye' go
Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.

Ok, so lets say that coincidently, my brother 'guessed' my friends dads appearance. That is all well and good, but lets remember that neither myself or my brother met his dad or had any idea what he looked like. How many people do you know who would wear a flat cap? Also take on board the fact that my brother started picking up on his dad at the exact spot where he died. A fact that neither me, my brother, or our other friend knew beforehand.

I have never heard my brother give wrong information. He isn't the type of person who gives out messages all the time. But when he does it is always accurate. And as for animal ghosts, he sees those too. In fact there have been times where he has been in somebodies house and said 'did you used to have a tabby cat'. Of all the times he has said that he is always right, even down to the colour of the cat.

Sorry but your wrong. My beliefs are based on personal experience. I have lived in 3 haunted houses and have experienced paranormal activity since early childhood. Just because science cannot measure the phenomenon does not mean that it cannot exist. There are countless examples of information being picked up from the spirit world that would not have been known otherwise by a medium.

I can give you another good example that happened just last week at my brothers spiritualist church. The spirit of a teenager who had died in a motorcycle accident just 2 weeks before appeared at their circle last week. On that evening 2 new ladies turned up and sat in with the circle. It just so happened that both women knew the boy, even though they had never met each other before. How much of a coincidence is that

As the Native American saying goes: 'Never judge a man until you have walked a mile in his mocassins.' If somebody gave you evidence of your grandmother, where they lived and what they looked like - would you still say it is just guess work or would you change your belief?

Two weeks ago my brother gave a message at church where he even named the street where the spirit lived at. That isn't cold reading, having a belief in something that doesn't exist or just making things up on the spot.

But you are entitled to your opinion. You obviously have not encountered anything in your lifetime that you haven't been able to explain with science - or if you have, you have just put it down to 'that couldn't have happened.'

__________________
There are several of us who do believe in UFOs and who have had occasion to see a UFO on the ground, or from an airplane. There was only one occasion from space which may have been a UFO."

Gordon Cooper, Astronaut (Mercury-Atlas 9, May 15, 1963; Gemini 5, August 21, 1965), Col. USAF (Ret); letter to Granada's Ambassador Griffith at the United Nations, November 9, 1978

http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk - Europe's biggest UFO database.

OK then - explain this. We had a pair of scissors that were always kept in a certain drawer. Those scissors went missing for 3 months. Nobody in the house had touched them and yet they appeared back in the draw (right on top) as if they had never disappeared.

I would be interested to hear your explanation as to why we couldn't see those scissors for 3 months.

__________________
There are several of us who do believe in UFOs and who have had occasion to see a UFO on the ground, or from an airplane. There was only one occasion from space which may have been a UFO."

Gordon Cooper, Astronaut (Mercury-Atlas 9, May 15, 1963; Gemini 5, August 21, 1965), Col. USAF (Ret); letter to Granada's Ambassador Griffith at the United Nations, November 9, 1978

http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk - Europe's biggest UFO database.

How do you explain that he got somebodies surname simply from body language?

As far as your idea goes. I dont think it will work, because spirit contact is a one way radio. He cannot ask questions, he just gets information that the spirit world wants to give him. If you had a room of 30 people, he may just have information for a couple of them. It doesn't matter if 'you' want a reading, its all up to spirit to what messages they give.

But I know that it can work over the internet. I have a myspace page and was talking to a woman in the States once. My brother entered the room and started picking up on her. That session turned into a 30 minute reading that I copied and have today if you wish to read it.

__________________
There are several of us who do believe in UFOs and who have had occasion to see a UFO on the ground, or from an airplane. There was only one occasion from space which may have been a UFO."

Gordon Cooper, Astronaut (Mercury-Atlas 9, May 15, 1963; Gemini 5, August 21, 1965), Col. USAF (Ret); letter to Granada's Ambassador Griffith at the United Nations, November 9, 1978

http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk - Europe's biggest UFO database.

From what you said earlier, he didn't exactly describe him in detail. Did he draw a picture or pick him out of a photograph?
Plenty. I also know they were common back in the day.
Add to that, Mooses replies in this thread about reading cues.
Then how did they know afterward?
EXACT spot? How do you even know that at all?
People, when confronted with even the Possibility of psychic occurrences tend to 'bend the facts' unknowingly.
I remember a depressed friend receiving a phone call from another friend and commenting on how their timing was perfect. The friend said on the phone that she "just had a feeling" she needed to call him. Later, she admitted to me when I questioned her about it that she had had no such feeling, she was bored and also wanted to ask a question about tires (car tires). She said she didn't know why she said that to him on the phone but she must have "gotten caught up in the moment."
Yeah.
I see that one happen a LOT. And they ooh and ahh over it.


So you claim, but I have no reason, whatsoever, to even believe your claim is accurate.
It's always a cat- I hear about ghost cats jumping on the bed a lot too.
I should have phrased that one differently- Animals get honorable mention- nothing more.
And how do you know if he's always accurate or always right- are you ALWAYS there when he makes these Psychic Connections? If you say yes, I'll call you on it. Unless you're Siamese twins.

Can you not see how you are pulling facts out of your magicians hat to support your claims? There's no way you could even know if your claims are actually true or not.
I'm not saying you're lying. I am saying you are justifying your belief. In the same fashion that believers always do.

Actually, no. I'm not.
Your beliefs are based upon your perceptions that you have attributed to the common existing legends and folklore.
So you claim- but again - it is ONLY a claim that is lacking any evidence whatsoever. I can make up similar claims about fairies and elves and dragons or even Survivng T-rex's.
Why not? If it cannot be measured, what grounds is there to think it can still exist? It may not mean it cannot exist, but it can mean that it most likely does not exist. To pander to the idea it can exist is to justify belief without having to back it up with evidence.
And keep up with the posts here. We have not just discussed what can't be measured- but also Glaringly wrong and Inaccurate Information and claims made out of Ignorance about the Actual Principles Known in Chemistry, Spectrophotography and Neuro-activity.
What spirit world? I say no such thing exists. Nor do we have souls or spirits. We DO have Brains. And without a brain, we are just plain dead.
There are not countless examples. There are countless claims that have no basic evidence. Just claims. I can claim I saw the tooth fairy or Santa Clause too.
Try making your arguments without making baseless claims and see how much you can post.

Called Hysteria. They CLAIM to have seen a Ghost.

When I was a kid, I claimed to see ghosts too. I admit it. I claimed it.
It wasn't true though.

But I got lots of attention over it. I was a kid.

What coincidence- so two ladies made a claim they saw his ghost at a SPIRITUALIST church? I'm surprised more of them didn't claim such a thing. It's to be expected in the crowd. They're spiritualists. That's what they do. It's their thing.
Funny how the teenager didn't show up at his friends house looking for the X-Box, though.

Another baseless claim.

Explain to me why this situation even makes sense?

How do you KNOW - yes- How can you make such claims with so much conviction and faith if
... You did Not KNOW where the scissors were?

Sheesh... So the scissors went on Sabbatical. I have stuff around the house I can't find half the time.

This is just more evidence that you spend more time justifying your faith than looking at the facts.

Your story keeps changing. Radically.

You don't think- in your expert opinion?
Who invented THAT rule- You? Why is that the case? What spirit world? Where is it? Can you provide any evidence- at all- that such a thing exists? You MUST be able to because you cite the Rules of Interaction with it with Overwhelming confidence.
What a quaint justification.
"I can't produce the required information because it isn't up to me. I pass the buck onto the ghosts. It's their fault. They are withholding on me."
Nevermind that the rest of your claims say that your brother magically pulls it out of the aether- NOW it's being dispensed by Spirits in sound bites.
Make up your mind.

Sure. Let's read it.

I would agree with you in regards to some psychics. In fact the first time I ever went to a psychic evening, I was picked out and all the guy could say to everybody in the room was 'You've got a problem and only you can sort it out.'

But with my brother it is different. How could he pick up somebodies surname from body language? How could he start talking about a guy who died in a motorcycle accident and then guess exactly where that accident took place?

Here's another great example which shoots down the cold reading theory. Last year during a circle my brother gave a fellow medium a message and said that he could see a 'white gladioli.' The lady he gave the message could not think what that meant - until the following week.

She turned up and straight away headed for my brother. She told him that his message of the white gladioli was amazing, because, although unknown to her at the time, her sister had traveled down to visit their mothers grave during that week (which was after his message.) She had popped into a local garden centre to pick up some flowers, but unfortunately they were closed. However, as she was exiting the carpark she noticed a white gladioli growing on a verge, so got out, picked it and placed it on her mothers grave.

I think you'll agree that that isn't cold reading and a pretty specific event that happened involving quite an unusual flower that he got during his reading.

Another time I remember was when we were playing in our band at a pub in Monmouth in Wales. After the gig we got talking to the landlady and her husband. My brother asked if they used to have an old guy with a pipe and trilby hat come in and sit in the corner? The landlady confirmed what he said as fact.

__________________
There are several of us who do believe in UFOs and who have had occasion to see a UFO on the ground, or from an airplane. There was only one occasion from space which may have been a UFO."

Gordon Cooper, Astronaut (Mercury-Atlas 9, May 15, 1963; Gemini 5, August 21, 1965), Col. USAF (Ret); letter to Granada's Ambassador Griffith at the United Nations, November 9, 1978

http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk - Europe's biggest UFO database.

cosmicdave, to semi-quote JayUtah, I can substitute "deranged mutant elven goblin crossbreed who went Postal at Santa's workshop" for the word "Ghost" or "spirit" in all your claims and not lose any of the effect you are shooting for.

I think we can all agree that you are making a whole lot of claims here.

You rely on vague information and our Inability to check any of your claims as well as your failure to recognize known scientific principles, human behavior and psychology and interaction. You rely on promoting an air of mystery or citing the supposed possibility of- yet you provide Nothing that has any substance.

My Grandmother picked up the phone before it rang and addressed the caller, correctly, by name once. How did she do that?
I've done similar myself.
Trouble is- it happens once out of every millionth try.

They have but you still get sceptics who say there aren't such things. Ghosts usually appear because they have trouble crossing over. Sometimes ghosts don't even realise that they are dead.

__________________
There are several of us who do believe in UFOs and who have had occasion to see a UFO on the ground, or from an airplane. There was only one occasion from space which may have been a UFO."

Gordon Cooper, Astronaut (Mercury-Atlas 9, May 15, 1963; Gemini 5, August 21, 1965), Col. USAF (Ret); letter to Granada's Ambassador Griffith at the United Nations, November 9, 1978

http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk - Europe's biggest UFO database.

How do you know?

Sounds like your repeating the same legends and wives tales we've all heard growing up.

I bet if you grew up in China, you would tell different legends. But they would still be the same legends that you heard growing up.

CosmicDave, How can make such confident statements as if they are fact when the other half of the time you are justifying your belief by claiming that it's 'unknowable'?

I only just now bothered to read CosmicDaves sig line...:

As well as see what his home page link on his profile is:
http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk

Definitely up against a believer... "Gentleman, don't confuse me with facts... My mind's made up."

Maybe I should count myself out of the only thread I'm participating in at this point...

ghost are real! in (all) sharmanic cultures and religions.

ghost are etheric entities , invisible,abstract in form, similar to human astral body, (if you have had an OBE then you will understand what I mean),they can also be a blue smokey grey colour they are malevolent spirits that can kill you and suck energy from you by feeding off your fear,they can pass through solid matter because they are etheric in nature,they are demons,they are astral entities,they living forms of conscious energy, in NewZealand the Maori word for spirit is Wairua, the Maori word for malevolent spirit is Keehua, the maori word for spirit voice is Irrarangi..it sounds like heavy breathing coming from the trees(like Darth Vader), I have spoken to a Tohunga about this he know what I am saying.

I think I have had experiences with ghost, I was working with the police and spoke to a guy about the night my mother died and I had my hand hanging out the side of my bed..it felt like an invisible presence holding my hand...he said "was it cold?" and I replied with a shiver up my spine "yep!" it was such a creepy experience, also in the Tararua ranges (hiking) my friend and I were in a hut and it was like an invisible force trying to break the door down..and my friend was next to me in his sleeping bag and we were so scared we could not speak to each other..I am not going to go into details you need experience to understand it...it is of an occult nature.

Paul

He did describe him in detail. It happened 2 years ago so I haven't given you all the details.

Quote:
Originally Posted by cosmicdave
Also take on board the fact that my brother started picking up on his dad at the exact spot where he died. A fact that neither me, my brother, or our other friend knew beforehand.

Because if you had read my original post regarding the incident you would realise that the guys son and daughter in law were there with us. There was me, my brother, friend and the guys son and daughter in law on the ghost hunt. The spot where his dad died was at the top of the drive of her fathers house. How could my brother possibly even guess that our mates dad was at the father in laws house when he died? Also, the spot where he died was on a country road in the middle of knowhere.

Quote:
Originally Posted by cosmicdave
I have never heard my brother give wrong information. He isn't the type of person who gives out messages all the time. But when he does it is always accurate.

And that is perfectly fine because you dont even know me. But it amazes me that you jump to such conclusions and put everybody into the same mindset as yourself when you have never experienced the phenomena that I have.

Yes actually I am. We house share and work at the same job.

I have nothing to justify. What I am telling you is 100% truth. If you wish to not believe it then that is your choice.

You know what they say... 'you have to see to believe.'

The ghosts that appeared in my house and things that were going missing or noises were not legend or folklore - they were true events.

Quote:
Originally Posted by cosmicdave
I have lived in 3 haunted houses and have experienced paranormal activity since early childhood.

What evidence do you require?



And science isn't the be all and end all of everything either. It cannot even cure the common cold.

In your opinion. What law says that your right? The difference between myth and reality is witnesses, and there have been plenty during my experiences.

Quote:
Originally Posted by cosmicdave
I can give you another good example that happened just last week at my brothers spiritualist church. The spirit of a teenager who had died in a motorcycle accident just 2 weeks before appeared at their circle last week. On that evening 2 new ladies turned up and sat in with the circle. It just so happened that both women knew the boy, even though they had never met each other before. How much of a coincidence is that?

I didn't say that the ladies saw the ghost - my brother did. And neither of them were spiritualist either, they were just members of the public who for some unknown reason decided to visit the church that evening and it just so happened that the spirit of a boy that both of them knew turned up.

__________________
There are several of us who do believe in UFOs and who have had occasion to see a UFO on the ground, or from an airplane. There was only one occasion from space which may have been a UFO."

Gordon Cooper, Astronaut (Mercury-Atlas 9, May 15, 1963; Gemini 5, August 21, 1965), Col. USAF (Ret); letter to Granada's Ambassador Griffith at the United Nations, November 9, 1978

http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk - Europe's biggest UFO database.

You don't understand do you? A pair of scissors that were always kept in the same drawer disappeared for 3 months. They then miraculously reappeared in that draw 3 months later. Neither I or my brother had put them back.

__________________
There are several of us who do believe in UFOs and who have had occasion to see a UFO on the ground, or from an airplane. There was only one occasion from space which may have been a UFO."

Gordon Cooper, Astronaut (Mercury-Atlas 9, May 15, 1963; Gemini 5, August 21, 1965), Col. USAF (Ret); letter to Granada's Ambassador Griffith at the United Nations, November 9, 1978

http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk - Europe's biggest UFO database.

And as I said earlier, its called perception. Its rather like you claiming that somebody with the skill of Sebastian Bach cannot possibly compose a concerto because you cannot do it yourself.

Most of the events I have told you have involved other people so that it can be verified. Especially in the bottle top case. This isn't just stories about me and my experiences, this is about another person and many of our friends who have been there to verify it.

How am I being vague?

You know Neverfly, there was a guy with exactly the same standpoint as you around a year ago on the Most Haunted forum. He didn't believe anything and said that because science couldn't prove it then it was all nonsense. The only thing is that over the past few months, things have started to move around in his house and he has seen shadow people. Now he is a true believer. I wish to God that the same thing happens to you my friend then perhaps you wont be so closed minded and abrupt to people who have witnessed things that neither you or I can rationally explain.

__________________
There are several of us who do believe in UFOs and who have had occasion to see a UFO on the ground, or from an airplane. There was only one occasion from space which may have been a UFO."

Gordon Cooper, Astronaut (Mercury-Atlas 9, May 15, 1963; Gemini 5, August 21, 1965), Col. USAF (Ret); letter to Granada's Ambassador Griffith at the United Nations, November 9, 1978

http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk - Europe's biggest UFO database.

So, obviously a purple breathing monster eater stole them - temporarily- to trim his mane. His mane is quite long you see, and takes three months to trim.

As far as your post above this one- it is so full of rhetoric and backpedaling as well as your feeble attempt to claim that I am the one jumping to conclusions here (which I have not done so- you have. About Ghosts and everything else) and your misconception that reality is somehow defined by the observer (no, reality just exists. Your opinions or perceptions are irrelevant as to the true nature of reality) and lastly, your Claims that you have shared "The Truth™"

I really don't see much point in continuing the debate from my end. I would only end up listing fallacy after fallacy after fallacy in your arguments.
You can learn about your fallacy's Here: http://www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/fallacies.html

Now thats just wrong, music is something that can be learned and tought is there is no mysticism involved. It also is universal and does not require a belief to work. There is no comparison to psychics, who just claim their somehow 'special' or 'gifted'.

Cosmicdave, the OP seems to be a gentle enquiry regarding everyones experiences. But you now seem to be asserting that the paranormal is real. Off-topic babbling is not the place to stand on a soapbox and proclaim you particular belief system. May i suggest you ask a moderator to move this thread to the ATM section?

__________________
The most important mental attribute anyone can have is the ability to recognize when one's own comprehension of a topic is insufficient. Without that, one's knowledge simply becomes tautological: it is "impossible" for there to exist wisdom one does not already possess. - JayUtah

There is no light in space. - Moon Man

Not really. Because I can hear the music he composed. It would be more like if I went to a concert and saw him sitting there on the bench without doing anything, and the person next to me said, "isn't that a wonderful piece he's playing?" and I said, "no, I can't hear anything."

Other people may have different views, but I would tend to take a libertarian stance on this and say, hey, you're free to believe what you want to believe. I've never experienced any of the things that you claim to have experienced, so I don't believe in it.

__________________
As above, so below

That sounds like some kind of bizarre paranormal threat; if it does happen, can he blame you for the inconvenience?

__________________
New Orion's Arm Site . The Starlark . Against a Diamond Sky (OA Novella Collection) . OA Flickr set

Yeah, that's just weak. A depressingly large percentage of the population will lap it up, though.

Before I comment further, I want you to realize that I don't know your brother, and in no way am I drawing conclusions, making assumptions, or implying anything about his character. But you didn't ask what your brother did. I can't answer that. Instead, you asked how he could have done it, and that's the question I'm going to answer.

That said, given a hypothetical third party about which the same claims were made, the very first thing I would investigate is the possibility of hot reading.

Professional psychics and faith healers often use techniques called hot reading to augment their cold reading performances. Hot reading is where you have specific knowledge of the subject before the reading.

Ancestor surnames aren't hard to get. You'd be surprised just how many genealogy databases there are out there, and what's in your local public archives. If you're catholic and haven't moved around a lot, you can usually get fairly detailed family tree records to a few generations back. (I worked on my church's parishioner census updating these records before I renounced, before I started my second year of college. There's a fair chance that given some personal information about you, and the run of your home area, that I could have gotten your granddad's surname without much trouble or expense.

Pointing out the exact spot of a death isn't difficult. There are two ways to do it. Let me pose you a hypothetical: you and I are walking down a certain street in my parents' city. I grab your arm very suddenly, and say that a motorcyclist died at this very spot, and that I sense great regret. How would you say I did that?

Well, if you were me, you'd know two things:

1) A motorcyclist really did die at that spot, being just up the street from my folks' house. The guy was street racing with two of his buddies. An elderly driver pulled out of a blind intersection behind two of the bikers and took out the third who left his bike in the old guy's engine compartment. He probably had just enough time to realize he was dead before he landed. According to the news report, he died shortly after the paramedics arrived.

I saw the leading bike scream past, while the trailing biker looked over his shoulder, stopped, turned around and went back to see where his buddy disappeared to. I went up the hill myself to have a look, and saw the wreck. A school acquaintance of mine witnessed the crash, and she told me the rest of the detail.

2) You'd have no convenient way to verify that sort of claim in my folks hometown, especially if I left out a few details, such as the year. You'd either have to accept the claim on its face, or decline to believe it.

Either way, I'd have replicated your brother's feat through trickery.

This is basically called the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy, which psychics use to reinforce vague predictions.The Texas Sharpshooter fallacy is where you throw a guess out there, see if and where it hits, then paint the bullseye around the bullet hole. (Remember that the misses basically get forgotten, while the hits get reinforced. Confirmation bias is a very well known phenomenon in psychology. It's the main reason science has to be very strict about experimental design controls.)

I'm going to make you a roughly equivalent prediction: "I see a silver or grey Corolla in your future. I don't know where, or how, but you're going to encounter one in some unspecified time frame. Beware this Corolla. But be reassured, if you are vigilant, you can avoid harm."

Get back to me in the next week or two, and give me a rough guess how many silver or grey Corollas you've seen, and how many times you've managed to survive seeing one. Serious aside: if you do somehow manage to get taken out by a Corolla at some point in the next 80 years or so, there's a money-back guarantee on this prediction.

[Edit to add: I should note that even if you do get killed by a Corolla, if you'll forgive the pun, it's still a hit. You simply weren't vigilant enough. Psychics have been known to play the blame the victim card. Sylvia Browne is notorious for this sort of atrocity.]

Not really. See my Corolla example. Feel free to replace the word Corolla with something less common, like a white '57 T-Bird or something. So long as I decline to give you a time frame, the prediction remains equally valid. Sooner or later, you'll see one in a car calendar belonging to your mechanic, and you'll live to walk away from it. And that's every bit as much a hit as it was for your flower lady.

Except for the pub in Wales part, you've just described my mother's adoptive dad, as well as my unofficial granddad, and at least a half-dozen of my great-uncles. It would not surprise me if there were at least one granddad of 80% of the western population of 30-somethings. Pipes and tribys were exceptionally popular in the later stages of life of that generation.

And this leads to my last point for tonight: psychics make better guesses when they play to the probabilities. Like my Corolla prediction above. Here in Eastern Canada, it's very likely you'd survive seeing a Corolla within minutes of next leaving your house. In the UK, I'd probably issue such a prediction citing a silver Mercedes or BMW, with considerable confidence. Although I wouldn't be quite as certain about your survival. How on earth do you folks cope with driving on the left through those insane rotaries?

I'll check in tomorrow, but the short answer is, everything you've said your brother has done is well within my ability to duplicate through some combination of trickery or applied psychology. I know how. I have the technology.

It is possible that your brother may be using these methods, or similar means, either consciously, or (less likely, but still possibly) instinctively. He wouldn't be the first by any stretch.

__________________
And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling [faces] lyin' to ye' everywhere ye' go
Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.

I do agree that it's a very specific event. However, your brother did not describe said event. He only described one component of it, and that object may have been encountered in any number of other circumstances. You are doing what everybody does, taking a vague piece of information and applying to a specific "hit" that is related, but only because of the vagueness of the original information.

Last point for tonight, I promise. A few years ago, I spent no less than 30 minutes searching for my glasses. I ransacked the house, no glasses.

The penny dropped when it dawned on me that I could see far better than I should have been able to. The glasses turned out to be exactly where I'd left them. On my nose.

1) Your pair of scissors were always kept in the same drawer, except apparently for those three months where you, or someone else, used them elsewhere and didn't put them away at the same spot, then promptly forgot about it. They turned up later when someone else found them, put them back in the drawer and forgot they'd done so.

2) Alternatively, the scissors got covered up at some point. Three months later, someone used them and put them down at the top of the drawer.

__________________
And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling [faces] lyin' to ye' everywhere ye' go
Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.