Episode Notes

Was Sylvia Browne the real deal? Yes. Was she a fraud? Yes. Is this all complicated and tied to a bunch of weird things that will be covered in the podcast over time? Yes. I look at Sylvia Browne as a phenomena, tie in personal stories, a look at Alastair Crowley's one true magick trick, and more!

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Transcript

WideUnclaspd-SylviaBrowne Wed, 8/3 2:04PM • 12:09 SUMMARY KEYWORDS sylvia browne, talk, sylvia, cents, pocket, house, mediums, saratoga, matter, honestly, ability, figure, weird, crash, collective unconsciousness, happen, fraud, parapsychology, sprinklers, dad SPEAKERS Christopher Garcia Christopher Garcia  Welcome to wide unclasped. I'm Chris Garcia. Today is going to be very house light for a couple of reasons. When I come back, I'm going to talk about the daisy windows in the daisy bedroom, and a lot of stories. But I wanted to talk about Sylvia Browne. And some of you may not cotton to Sylvia, I have a certain love and respect for her. Because of my dad who knew her fairly Willie would guess, enough that she remembered him when we talked last time. But what's interesting is that Sylvia was the real deal. 100% She had a gift. Christopher Garcia  Also Sylvia was a fraud. Christopher Garcia  This is what's maddening. And when I talk about the Warrens, which I'll do ad nauseam. I'll get into why those two things are actually connected. Because the truth is she had sight. And I don't know if it's like she always talked about it with her guidance, so forth. And she was not always right, of course. And I think this is actually part of the problem was that at times she caught glimpses of things. I'm not saying 100% all mediums are true. Most are garbage. But there's something there's something weird, maybe it's a collective unconsciousness. Maybe it's spirit guides, who knows. And frankly, who cares. For me, this isn't a great example of something that I've never been able to explain me and a bunch of friends of mine, I think it was my birthday. We went out and I felt weird. We'd had pizza. So it wasn't that but I just I kept saying over and over, something's about to happen something strange. And while we were walking by what used to be my middle school, a car comes careening around the corner, and the sprinklers had been on so the road was wet. And it fishtailed literally in front of us hit the center median, jumped up in the air about five feet landed and then took off. And afterward that feeling that I had that something was going to happen was gone. I honestly think that's what most mediums are is moments like that, that are connected by putting the pieces together. Christopher Garcia  But I also don't think it's reliable. Christopher Garcia  And I think when you built a reputation on those things, that you start to try to, well, okay, you could try to force it. Or you could just lie. Either way. I 100% believe that that's what Sylvia Browne was the clearest example I have of her powers. And I really don't want to say powers, but I don't have a better way to put it up her ability. was the last time I saw her. I ran into her at a I think she was at a signing up in somewhere. Maybe it was Campbell, might have been at Westgate or something like that. But I got to our table and we talked for a bit and she said, you know your dad's very proud of you. And I'm like, Well, you knew dad, and you know he's dead. So you obviously are trying to use that. But we talked for a few minutes. And it was really nice. Actually, I always liked her. I know a lot of people thought she was hardcore unpleasant. And I do not doubt them for a minute. But she was always nice to me. This happens to me a lot. So at the end, I'm about to walk away and she calls and says, you still don't believe Do you. You're still skeptical. I said, Yeah, I am. She said, You've got 37 cents in your pocket. And you're gonna give it to someone named Juan. I said Good job, Jeff and took off. And as soon as I was outside, I looked in the pocket of the jacket I was wearing cuz I was wearing this white jacket that I wore all the time. And I looked in it, and I had 37 cents. Exactly. I had gotten it earlier in the day. I believe it's 711. So I put the money back in my jacket and I put it on my seat and I drove home a few days later I go to the Safeway in think the one off of De Anza Boulevard in Saratoga. And every year around Christmas, they have a bell ringer. So the Bell Ringer was ringing and I just said oh, I'm gonna put my hand in and give him some change because one, I don't like change of any sort. And I tossed the 37 cents in my pocket into the can. And then I looked and the guy had a name tag, Juan. Christopher Garcia  Now you can make all sorts of connections there. How did she know that? I had 37 cents on my wall. My pocket. Christopher Garcia  Well that's if you're going to make a guess figuring you have a quarter nickel, a quarter, a dime and a couple of nickels and a couple of pennies. My money numbering is off. If you know that, you know it's a pretty standard number, it's not a, you know, if she had honestly said you have $27.02 in your pocket, I would have said, Never, I wouldn't even bother looking honestly, because I never had $27 cash on me. But the 37 cents, it's a guess you could make. But then there's something about the one thing you're gonna give it to a man named one. I did. We were nowhere near that safe way. So she couldn't have known Oh, there's a guy named Juan and Saratoga then you obviously go to this. That's weird, that wouldn't happen. She accessed something that allowed her to see those things. And they're both innocuous, it doesn't really matter that I have 37 cents in my pocket. Except to her and me, for the matter of the transaction of belief between us. I honestly think that's where most psychical things happen is in the moments of banality, when it makes it easier to guess, if you think about it, but the reality is, it doesn't really matter on most of these things. You know, the couple of wavy lines and triangle in the testing you do, that makes some sense to me, because it's this idea that you're interacting with someone else, specifically, you're interacting with someone who knows what the thing is. Now, I've seen a lot of people do this sort of cyclical test where you have it on, you have the thing down, you flip, you say what card it is, and you flip it over. And I've never seen that work more than like 40% of the time, which is actually not a bad rating. If you think about it. I've seen people do it with individuals and get it like 70% of the time. And there are ways you do you know, you could see it in the eyes, blah, blah, blah. Christopher Garcia  Sylvia Browns place in the Bay Area parapsychological world was interesting because she has as many detractors as she did, supporters, she didn't do a lot in how she knew my dad was he did a lot of parapsychology sort of study. She did the over the famous overnight at the Toys R Us which I'll talk about at some point. She did, I believe she did one at the Winchester house as well. I know for a fact that there's a house in Santa Clara, that she was invited to come to to try and figure out what it was. And she said, flat out it was a demon that was attached to the family. Could it have been? Well, I happen to know the kid. And there was definitely poltergeist activity all over that house. I never witnessed any with my eyes, I did hear I was we were actually playing upstairs and I heard a crash from the kitchen and the only other person in was his sister who was in her room and went down and you know, the classic pullout drawer of silverware goes crashing to the floor. Her investigation, she didn't really give many details, but said it's definitely a demon. It's definitely attached to the family. And it is in the house only because you are in the house. She doesn't matter approach it the way, you know most ghost hunters or demon slayers or whatever would she just identified what it was. And I don't think she even tried to communicate with it, which I think is the stupidest thing that psychics and mediums do is try to communicate, or at least to present the idea that they are communicating with some sort of higher plane. I've lost some of you I know. It is difficult to be a believer who also believes that a lot of it is phony. And who has this idea that a thing can be two things. And Sylvia Browne is the best example of that. She did help out on several cases over the years. And she also blew a number of other cases. She made grandiose claims that never happened. I personally heard her say that there would be an earthquake on I believe January 15 1993. That didn't happen. But at the same time, she had something was it useless? Possibly. Like There's that famous Christopher Walken sediment life bit of mundane? Psychic, you're gonna get the coffee, the coffee is gonna be hot. Christopher Garcia  There may be some of that to it. It may be that the ripples out from major events aren't what attached to whatever it is that people who are sensitive can detect. Maybe it's only the little things maybe it's only the personal things. I do believe that Sylvia Browne and several other psychics had some of abilities, but I also think for the most part, they had to Trump them up to keep the illusion going. And the problem is we always try to attune to either they were successful once and everything else was just misunderstandings, or they were wrong once and everything's a fraud. It's obviously in between the two. Like, I can't say Aleister Crowley was the greatest magician of all time. But the story of him walking behind the guys taking on his gait, exactly a few steps behind him. And then after a few few steps, Crowley crouched down, and the guy in front of them's feet to shut out from under him. Now, this could be a form of biofeedback, it could be a form of touching into his portion of the collective unconscious, and then using that, but I don't believe 99.95% of the stuff that Crowley reportedly was able to do. So if you browse the same way, I know Silvia visited the house more than once. I believe her overnight there was covered, I believe, I'm 95% sure it was for KTVU. Channel two, she did a lot of stuff with him, but it might have been for channel 11. But I will say she's a difficult figure, and was not very pleasant to a lot of people. But I do hope that we examine her phenomenon, because she really was a phenomenon and see what it says to us about people who have an ability even if it's not the universal ability that they claim. Thank you for listening to wide unclasp we'll be back in a few weeks. I really want to do the episode about the days in Windows, but I gotta go on the tour again. So I might take my little Benji aka Bella, aka pumpkin. Thanks for listening to widen class.

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