Preview
The Other Side and Back:
The Farewell Tour
. Sylvia Browne
. Centennial Concert Hall
. 7 p.m. Thursday
. Tickets: $89-$139
Browne's 2008
Predictions
Brad Pitt . and Angelina Jolie will
adopt another child, but the couple
will not stay together.
.
. Actor Owen Wilson will have
another dip in his depression.
.
. The next president of the United
States will be from the Democratic
Party.
.
. Whooping cough, mumps and
measles will be on the rise.
.
. The stock market will be like a
roller coaster.
Most people pay a lot of money to ask questions of American psychic Sylvia Browne.
Currently, there is an eight-year wait to get a one-on-one reading from the 72-year-old Browne, who not only sees dead people but chats with them. Since she will be at the Centennial Concert Hall Thursday on her farewell tour called The Other Side and Back, this is the last chance to slip in a personal question during a half-hour telephone gab with the popular purveyor of the paranormal.
While inquiring about the famous dead people she had communed with, I ask about my deceased mother.
"She's doing really good," replies Browne immediately in a low, raspy growl. "What's wrong with her chest? She keeps saying something about her chest."
Hmmm. My mother died four years ago from a heart attack. Was that a lucky guess by Browne? Educated shot in the dark? The skeptic in me says most people die from some kind of chest problem so she just made a general statement that had the best odds of being right.
That's the thing about the polarizing Browne: she leads an enormous following while also being the despised target of determined debunkers who condemn her as a fraud with theatrical flair.
Browne, a frequent guest on the Montel Williams Show and Larry King Live, heads a sprawling industry selling her psychic claims. Besides her lucrative tours, she sells hundreds of thousands of her 45 books, a dozen of which have become bestsellers. Then there are her $750 personal readings, her monthly stints at the Excalibur Hotel in Vegas, lectures, cruise ship appearances, tours and CD sales.
Her last appearance in Winnipeg was on her 2004 Visits from the Afterlife tour and she drew about 1,600 paying customers for what at the time was one of the most expensive tickets ever on sale at the Concert Hall. For Thursday's performance most tickets are $139 or $119 (a seat in the second balcony sells for $89 plus agency fees) and a similar turnout is expected.
Her fans will be hearing her urgent and repeated message that the soul survives death and the hereafter is not to be feared.
"It's a beautiful place," says Browne, from her San Jose home. "You go through a tunnel and meet all your loved ones and pets.
"You go with your (spirit) guide to a large temple and view your life and then you decide whether you are going to come back or not. We all have, I don't want to say jobs, but are commissioned to do things like researcher, artisan or teacher. Everybody over there does something. We just don't float around on a cloud with a harp."
It's a good time to be flying high in the murky spirit world, since the public is suddenly open to the concept of communication with the dead, extrasensory perception and spirit channelling.
A Gallup poll in the United States found that three-quarters of Americans believe in the paranormal and that ghosts are spirits of the dead.
"That's why ghosts are so popular," says the Kansas City-born Browne. "People say, 'Oh my God, if I've seen a ghost then we must survive death. If that ghost still exists, then I will still exist.'"
It's the inherent fear of dying that spurred Browne to launch her The Other Side and Back tour that will end early next year. For her part, she is scared of the here and now.
"I'm more afraid of living," says Browne, who has grown tired of touring. "This is the place where so many horrible things happen. I've always believed this is where hell is."
Psychics have moved into the mainstream, almost enjoying the respected status of therapists, social counsellors and life coaches. They help law enforcement agencies solve crimes and find missing persons. Often distraught parents of missing children have turned to Browne for information as to what happened to their kids.
In 2002 Shawn Hornbeck's parents approached her about the whereabouts of their missing 11-year-old, who went for a bike ride in Missouri and never came home. When Shawn's mother asked whether he was still alive, Browne told her he was dead and buried beneath two jagged boulders. Four years later, he was found alive, living with his purported abductor in nearby Kirkwood.
"Every psychic I knew thought the boy was dead," she says. "What they didn't tell us in Kirkwood was that there was another missing boy and that's what I think we picked up on. Who cares? I'm not going to defend myself on anything.
"I'd say 85 per cent of the time I am right. You can't be right all the time. Only God is right all the time."
During her appearance here Browne will randomly select audience members for on-the-spot readings. The most asked-about subject is about the questioner's love life, followed by finances and family. Also, she encounters a fascination with dead celebrities, which will be the subject of her next book.
"People want to know what Marilyn (Monroe) was doing, what Clark Gable was doing or whether he was still with Carole Lombard," she says.
"And your mother says that you are going to be writing a book."
kevin.prokosh@freepress.mb.ca
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