Psychic Reading

Spiritualism and the rapping at Hydesville

A scholarly history of the occult and the sciences in modern Britain dates the emergence of modern Spiritualism to 1848 at Hydesville, New York, where mysterious rapping noises produced around the Fox sisters were interpreted as communication from spirits. The same chapter says the movement spread across the Atlantic and had gained millions of adherents by the end of the century. Its supporters described their investigations as empirical, inductive and rational inquiry.

The chapter also records scepticism at the time. Faraday and Carpenter attributed the phenomena they examined to unconscious muscular action and not to spirits or new forces. The chapter covers developments between the 1780s and the 1860s, so it does not follow the later history of paid consultations.

Psychical research from 1882

The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) was established in London in February 1882, with the philosopher Henry Sidgwick as its first president. Its founding statement spoke of investigating a large group of debatable phenomena labelled mesmeric, psychical and Spiritualistic, in a spirit of exact and unimpassioned inquiry. Its six original committees covered the Reichenbach experiments, mesmerism, thought transference, apparitions and haunts, a literary committee and physical phenomena in the seance room.

The SPR's own encyclopaedia says membership did not require acceptance of any particular paranormal explanation. This account comes from the society's publication, and it describes an organisation that investigated claims, not one that ran readings for clients. The sources reviewed here do not cover divination traditions before the nineteenth century or the history of paid consultations.

Psychic, medium and related labels

The SPR used the word psychical for the phenomena it investigated at its founding in 1882, and its encyclopaedia says the term telepathy came later as researchers developed more precise language. In everyday use, psychic describes both a person who claims such ability and the claimed phenomena. A psychic reading, as discussed on this page, is the consultation in which that claimed ability is applied to a client's questions. No source reviewed gives a formal definition of the term.

Related labels cover different practices. A review of cold reading lists astrologers, palm readers, aura and tarot readers and spirit mediums as readers encountered in face-to-face interviews, and a 2025 Pew Research Center survey groups astrology, tarot cards and fortune tellers as separate items. Mediumship is defined in controlled-study papers as a claim to communicate with deceased people or spiritual beings, which is a narrower claim than a general psychic reading.

Research vocabulary

Researchers use neutral labels for the claimed effects. Ganzfeld studies are described as testing a communication anomaly referred to as psi, and mediumship studies speak of anomalous information reception, meaning accurate information obtained by unknown means. These labels name what is tested and do not assume that the effect exists.

Two terms come from critical psychology. Cold reading is defined as a process in which a reader makes calculated guesses about a client's background and problems and, depending on the reaction, elaborates a reading that seems uniquely appropriate. The Barnum effect is the tendency to accept generalised personality descriptions as one's own.

Formats described in the sources

The cold reading review concerns face-to-face interviews between a reader and a client, and it lists the kinds of reader encountered in them. The sources reviewed do not describe telephone or online readings, so this page gives no account of how remote consultations work. The mediumship experiments cited below used written output and blind proxy sitters, which is a testing arrangement and not an ordinary consultation.

How readings have been set up for testing

Researchers who tested professional mediums devised a method intended to avoid problems that had affected earlier work. In a 2020 Brazilian study of mediumistic writing, eight mediums produced letters in sessions with blind proxy sitters, and each of 94 sitters later scored the target letter and five control letters without knowing which was which. Test conditions of this kind differ from ordinary consultations, where the reader usually talks with the client.

What the sources do not describe

None of the sources reviewed describes a typical session length, a usual price, the training of readers or a standard sequence of a reading. Practitioners' own descriptions of methods such as tarot, oracle cards or intuitive impressions were not verified for this draft, so no account of how an individual reader works is given here.

Why people report consulting readers

A Pew Research Center survey of 9,593 US adults, interviewed from 21 to 27 October 2024, found that 30% consult astrology or a horoscope, tarot cards or a fortune teller at least once a year, and about 6% consult a fortune teller. Around 20% of adults said they do so mostly just for fun and about 10% mostly because they believe the practices give helpful insights. Only 1% said they rely a lot on what they learn when making major life decisions, and a further 5% said they rely on it a little. The survey groups three practices, so these figures are not specific to psychic readings.

Mediumship claims

Mediums claim to be able to communicate with the deceased. The mediumship studies cited on this page test whether the information produced is accurate beyond chance, not whether sessions comfort or harm sitters. Evidence on those outcomes was not found in the sources reviewed.

Controlled tests of mediums

A 2005 paper reviewed more than a century of medium testing and then described a method designed to prevent earlier problems. Its authors tested several professional mediums, reported that the results did not support the existence of genuine mediumistic ability and discussed competing interpretations. A 2020 experiment with eight mediums and 94 sitters, using blind proxy sitters and five control letters per target, found no difference in scores between target and control letters.

A 2020 meta-analysis of 14 papers, covering 18 experiments from 2001 to December 2019, estimated a standardised effect of 0.18 above chance (95% confidence interval 0.12 to 0.25). Its authors concluded that the results support the hypothesis that some mediums retrieve information about deceased people through unknown means. These results conflict with the null findings above, and the studies differ in design.

Laboratory tests of extrasensory perception

A 1999 meta-analysis of 30 ganzfeld studies from seven laboratories did not confirm an earlier above-chance effect (mean effect size 0.013) and concluded that the technique did not then offer a replicable method. A 2010 meta-analysis of 29 ganzfeld studies from 1997 to 2008 reported a mean effect size of 0.142, and a small negative effect (-0.029) in 14 standard free-response studies. Three pre-registered replications of a retroactive recall experiment, with 150 participants, found no effect.

These studies test claimed extrasensory transfer under laboratory conditions with set tasks and scoring. They do not test commercial readings, and findings from one setting cannot be transferred automatically to the other.

Cold reading and the Barnum effect

A 1988 review proposed that face-to-face readings from astrologers, tarot readers and mediums often rely on cold reading, which depends initially on the Barnum effect. It reported analysis of the performances of one spirit medium and noted that future research should ask whether cold readers have convinced themselves that they have psychic ability. A study of 130 participants, published online in 2010, found that self-referential thinking and positive schizotypy predicted agreement with generalised descriptions, including horoscope-based readings. The sample was mostly students.

What has not been studied

No randomised trial or systematic review of psychic readings for wellbeing, anxiety or grief outcomes was found. PubMed searches run for this draft on 5 October 2026 returned no records for the phrase psychic readings in titles or abstracts and four for mediumship with bereavement or grief. A broader search of psychic in titles with trial or review filters returned records using psychic in the sense of psychological. Other databases were not searched.

What the sources reviewed do not cover

The sources reviewed do not report adverse psychological effects of readings, contraindications or a recognised training standard for readers, and Ireland and other jurisdictions were not checked. They also say nothing about how readers are chosen, how long sessions last or what clients are told in advance. Where the sources are silent, this page makes no statement.

Care boundaries

A reading is not a medical, mental health, legal or financial assessment, and it should not delay or replace necessary care. The sources reviewed describe the claims made and what tests and surveys have found. None of them evaluates a reading as a form of support, so they offer no basis for using one in place of professional advice.