Does anyone actually make money from mediumship or is it all nonsense?

Right, I'll be honest - I'm a proper skeptic. But my mum paid £85 to see some medium in Cheltenham last month and swears blind she predicted stuff about my late nan. I want to know: are these people genuinely in touch with the other side, or are they just really good at reading people and taking educated guesses?

Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like a nice little earner if you're good at cold reading and you've got the patter. But I'm open to being wrong. Has anyone here actually had a genuine experience with a medium that made you believe?

Your mum probably just experienced something called the Barnum effect, mate. That's where vague statements feel personally meaningful because your brain fills in the gaps. Every medium says stuff like "I'm getting a feeling about someone with an initial M" and half the people in the room have someone named Michael or Margaret in their past.

I've been doing EVP work for three years and I can tell you the difference between genuine spirit communication and audio pareidolia. Real mediums exist - the problem is 90% of people claiming to be mediums are charlatans. I'd only recommend someone if they've been independently verified by proper researchers, not just people saying nice things on Trustpilot.

are they just really good at reading people and taking educated guesses?

That's literally it though isn't it? I've been to three different mediums and they all said almost identical things. The last one told me someone with a chest problem wanted to get in touch - my granddad had pneumonia. But so did about 50 million other people in the last century. Statistically guaranteed hit.

Some of us actually work with genuine spirit guides and the cynicism in this thread is frankly exhausting. I've had private sittings where information came through that was completely unknown to me at the time but verified afterwards. Not everyone's a charlatan just because you haven't experienced it yourself.