Speaking of mediums, cold readings, and telepaths . . . I wrote a satirical short story about alien telepaths that was published in the December, 2004 issue of Analog (see below).
I have been angry about such charlatans for a long time, as I have seen (when I was a paramedic) such people charge money for doing readings to put lonely, grieving widows in touch with their dead spouses, or peddling fake cures for cancer to desperate people.
I even witnessed this during nursing clinicals when a cancer patient spent money on a device that put out a “healing sound” (which seemed like a monotonous repitition of some low-key electronic techno music) in the hopes of curing her aggressive form of liver cancer.
People ask: “If it gives them comfort, then what’s the harm?”
The harm is that it distracts and takes away from the little time that they have left . . . which is time that should be focused on closure, resolution of long term conflicts, and having fun with parties, ice cream, and adventures done as a family.
These types of charlatans are the worst kind of parasites.