Post by Mr. Jon Donnis on Jan 19, 2011 14:31:35 GMT
On reading another Woman’s Day at lunchtime (it was just there… honest!) I came across another article about a psychic, and I realised that the magazine posts an article about feng shui, astrology, psychics, numbers, clairvoyance or dreams each week, in a section called Your Destiny.
In this issue (September 11 2006), Your Destiny is an advertorial for a book called Psychic Detective by Scott Russell-Hill. He apparently is one of the psychics featured on Sensing Murder; a television programme I have yet to watch.
The magazine’s senior writer Jenny Brown says she has heard ‘proof’ that Russell-Hill prophesied the death of Princess Diana, and the attack on the World Trade Centre. Unfortunately none of the rest of us have had the privilege of seeing or hearing this ‘proof’, and it is obvious that Jenny Brown is a devotee of Russell-Hill from the accolades she heaps on him in her introduction to the advertorial. She claims his extraordinary gifts unravel the truth of unsolved murders and bring closure to grief stricken families.
I have to ask, why would any psychic with any measure of ethics, predict the death of anyone still living, as she was at the time? That’s just plain disgusting. Jenny Brown says that the ‘proof’ was broadcast on Adelaide radio, years before Diana’s death. Even if it’s true, it proves nothing, and it’s nasty. As for the WTC; well doh – we knew it was a target – terrorists tried to blow it up in 1993. And in any case I would want to read the transcripts of what Russell-Hill actually said. Selective memory and all that. We tend to remember the psychic’s (alleged) hits and forget the misses.
And so to the advertorial, containing edited extracts from Russell-Hill’s book. He talks about the murder of child Daniel Morcombe in Queensland, and the dreams he had about Daniel. Did he actually locate Daniel or solve the crime? No he didn’t. Did he actually solve the mystery of the disappearing Beaumont Children, that he also mentions copious times? No he didn’t. Do any of these psychic detectives actually do anything useful to solve crimes? No they don’t. Can you imagine if they could, and they did? There would be no cold cases on police files. Osama Bin Laden’s capture would have been a doddle. He’d have been locked up years ago. So rather than doing anything useful, they flail about gushing about the ‘feelings’ they are getting and they achieve absolutely nothing. And people believe them and buy their books.
Russell-Hill certainly has an imagination. In his book, he writes, ‘The overpowering heat of the Pilbara transformed itself into desert chill once the sun went down, its unrelenting glare replaced by a veil of night. In any direction I looked, a thin band of deep blue marked the horizon, silhouetting the craggy peaks of distant hills.’
Perhaps he could make an honest living writing travel brochures, or Mills and Boon Romances. Both are rather more honest forms of escapism than expensive books that offer nothing to the solving of crime or mysteries, and only serve to line the pockets of the unscrupulous with the monies of the gullible.
Here's a link to more of Russell-Hill's blatherings:
womansday.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=52777