Sylvia Browne

Sylvia Browne was one of the most popular, self-serving, and blatantly callous "psychics" out there. Now she is just one of the deadest. Browne was the leader of an allegedly Gnostic church called the Society of Novus Spiritus, based around the teachings of her channeled "spiritual guide" Francine; she promoted both a mother and father God, and claimed to teach Christianity the same way Jesus did. She publicly espoused both an afterlife (and afterlife communication) and reincarnation.

Career highlights and problems
Browne was a regular on the now-canceled, where she was known for claiming to speak with the dead, and famous for several notorious flameouts. Her failures included mis-predicting the outcomes of the case, and on the syndicated radio show Coast to Coast AM, the. Her method of "psychic" operation seems to be simple cold reading.

Browne attempted to claim James Randi's Million-Dollar Challenge, but after agreeing to the initial terms she made no further effort after 2001. In addition, those who consulted with Browne said that she seemed quite fond of lecithin supplements for some reason.

Due to her disproportionate fame for her cold reading ability, she managed to attract the attention of Robert S. Lancaster, an anti-bullshit writer who started a two-year exposure campaign to point out just how much of a fraud she was.

A 2010 Skeptical Inquirer article examined 115 missing person and murder cases Browne commented on, and discovered she was correct zero times.

"You had one job. One. Job."

 * Browne made a spectacular mistake when she used her "powers" to gain insight into the outcome of a mining accident. First reports suggested all but one of the miners had survived so Browne said this was not a "gloomy moment" and "I knew they would be found."  Later, when it became clear in fact all but one of the miners had been killed she changed her story and said the dead miners were crazy to report they were alive and she meant their bodies would be found.  Most people would consider finding bodies a very gloomy time.
 * Browne went on The Montel Williams Show to inform Louwana Miller, mother of Ohio kidnapping victim Amanda Berry, that her missing daughter was dead. As it turns out, Berry was very much alive. According to Joe Nickell, editor of Skeptical Inquirer, "The [Ariel Castro abduction] is a test case for all psychics. Why didn't one psychic wake up in the middle of the night and know where they were?"
 * She once predicted that Bill Bradley would win the 2000 U.S. presidential election and that the Reform Party would come in second. Neither event occurred.
 * She predicted that she knew Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were "hiding in caves." Hussein was found in a "spider hole", which could be described as a cave, but bin Laden was hiding in a mansion, surrounded by an army base.
 * She said that Bin Laden was dead long before his 2011 death.
 * She predicted a guilty verdict in the 2005 child molestation trial of Michael Jackson Jackson was acquitted of all charges.
 * She died aged 77 and never saw it coming, having forecast that she would live to be 88.

Runs in the family
Browne's son, Chris Dufresne, is also in the business of psychic readings. Browne claimed that her son's psychic abilities are equal to her own—which, to be fair, is technically true. In 2012, Browne charged $850 for a 30-minute phone reading and Dufresne charged $500 for a 30-minute phone reading. In 2020, Dufresne's cost for a thirty minute phone reading is $219.