Susan Gerbic says that psychics are grief vampires—taking advantage of our broken hearts.

She asks, “Why isn’t anybody doing something about this?” Susan Gerbic is just like you and me. She has a normal job working as a baby photographer. But at night, she is a badass vigilante hunting psychics. Susan says, “One of my favorite things to do is try to expose people we call grief vampires. People who claim to speak to the dead.”

Her motivation is not to settle a vendetta. In fact, she says she’s never really been the target of a psychic. Susan simply doesn’t like them and the way they profit off of people’s grief. The US market for psychic services is worth about $2 billion annually according to IBIS World, a market research firm based in Los Angeles California.

On this episode of Pretend, Susan attempts to capture psychics lying on tape. These psychic hunters spent months setting up fake Facebook pages, hoping that a so-called psychic uses the falsified information during a psychic reading. It took a few tries, but she finally got one on tape.

Links:

Silvia Browne gets punked by skeptic Mark Edward

Tim Braun (psychic)

Chip Coffey (psychic)

Thomas John (psychic)

New York Times article:

Inside the Secret Sting Operations to Expose Celebrity Psychics - The ...https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/26/magazine/psychics-skeptics-facebook.html

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This episode was written and produced by Javier Leiva

Theme music by Joe Basile with thechicken.net

Additional music by Glad Rags

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