Psychic Sylvia Browne could find missing people
| Psychic Sylvia Browne could find missing people | |
|---|---|
| FALSE | |
| "Television psychic Sylvia Browne used her powers to locate missing people and tell families what had happened to them." | |
| Domain | Paranormal & Supernatural |
| Tactic | Fraud or Scam Pseudoscience / Junk Science |
| Era | Historical |
| First seen | 1970s |
| Origin | Browne's books and regular appearances on The Montel Williams Show from the 1990s |
| Last reviewed | 2026-10-29 |
| Further reading: books on Paranormal & Supernatural | |
Sylvia Browne was one of America's best-known psychics, offering readings about missing people on national television. In November 2004 she told Louwana Miller on The Montel Williams Show that her missing daughter, Amanda Berry, was dead. Miller died in 2006. In May 2013, Amanda Berry escaped from a house in Cleveland, Ohio, where she had been held captive for about a decade.
The claim
Browne claimed to have helped police in many cases and offered readings for hundreds of dollars.
What the evidence shows
- Berry case. Browne's statement that Berry was dead was wrong, and it devastated Berry's mother.
- Track record. A 2010 review by skeptic Ryan Shaffer and researcher Agatha Jadwiszczok of Browne's predictions in missing-person cases found that none had been correct.
- Police. No law enforcement agency has credited a psychic with solving a case.
Why it matters
False readings inflict cruel harm on families of the missing.
Sources
- Ryan Shaffer and Agatha Jadwiszczok, "Psychic Defective: Sylvia Browne's History of Failure," Skeptical Inquirer 34, no. 2 (2010).
- Associated Press, coverage of the rescue of Amanda Berry, May 2013.