cold reading

This particular excerpt caught my eye because it reminded me of a few things I’ve seen or read about. First of all, it made me think of the movie Ghost with Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore, and Whoopie Goldberg, In the movie Whoopie Goldberg’s character was a phony, swindling medium that discovers in actuality, she really is gifted. There are so many people in the world that are like Whoopie’s character. There is a scene where they first introduce her character and she is holding a séance with an elderly woman for her late husband. Whoopie stirs up the whole know it all act and then mentions that there is a supposed presence of the womans husband in the room. She starts to say really generic things like “he’s wearing a suit” or “he’s smiling.” Then she mentions names of supposed people that might have had a connection with the woman’s husband. Upon noticing that the woman was of a Latin race, whoopie started relaying a bunch of Latin sounding names to the woman until there was one she was familiar with. She knew that eventually one would work.

These cold readings can be quite easy to do especially if the person you are reading believes in it. Even something as simple as fortune cookies, or astrological signs, people tend to believe these things because instinctually they want to believe it, regardless if it makes any sense or not. If you’re an Sagittarius and your horoscope says, “you are the perfect lover, sometimes stubborn but you are also very adventurous.” Everyone will believe that particular horoscope was made especially for them, because they will find supposed things in the fortune that matches their personality like “oh I am stubborn.” People tend to forget that A LOT of people are! And there is nothing special about these supposed horoscopes. Whoever wrote the horoscope just made up the most generic information, and personality traits that a majority of people have, thus making them believe that it is really for them.