Sylvia Browne Popular Books

Sylvia Browne Biography & Facts

Sylvia Celeste Browne (née Shoemaker; October 19, 1936 – November 20, 2013) was an American writer, medium, and psychic. She appeared regularly on television and radio, including on The Montel Williams Show and Larry King Live, and hosted an hour-long online radio show on Hay House Radio. Browne frequently made pronouncements that were later found to be false, including those related to missing persons. In 1992, she plead no contest to securities fraud. Despite the considerable negative publicity, she maintained a large following until her death in 2013. Early life Sylvia Browne grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, the daughter of William Lee and Celeste (née Coil) Shoemaker. Her father held several different jobs, working at times in mail delivery, jewelry sales, and as a vice president of a major freight line. Browne was raised mostly as a Catholic, and was said to have an Episcopalian mother, a Lutheran maternal grandmother, Jewish father, and relatives from all these faiths. Browne said that she started seeing visions at the age of three, and that her grandmother, who she said was also a psychic medium, helped her understand what they meant. Browne also said her great-uncle was a psychic medium and was "rabid about UFOs". Career Browne started working as a psychic in 1973. In 1986, she founded a "Gnostic Christian" church in Campbell, California, known as the Society of Novus Spiritus. She was also head of the Sylvia Browne Corporation and Sylvia Browne Enterprises. In a 2010 interview, Browne's business manager said that her businesses earned $3 million a year. Browne said she observed Heaven and angels. She also professed the ability to speak with a spirit guide named "Francine", and to perceive a wide range of "vibrational frequencies". Books Browne authored some 40 books on paranormal topics, some of which appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list. Many of these books were acknowledged as resulting from collaborations with other writers such as Lindsay Harrison and Chris Dufresne. Television and radio Browne was a frequent guest on U.S. television and radio programs, including Larry King Live, The Montel Williams Show, That's Incredible!, and Coast to Coast AM. During these appearances, she usually discussed her purported abilities with the host and then performed readings for audience members or callers. On certain occasions she was paired with other guests, including skeptics, often leading to debate about the authenticity of Browne's psychic abilities. Browne hosted her own hour-long online radio show on Hay House Radio, where she performed readings and discussed paranormal issues. Browne appeared in a 1991 episode of Haunted Lives: True Ghost Stories. In the segment "Ghosts R Us", she portrayed herself in a recreation of events that purportedly took place in a haunted Toys R Us store. Browne also appeared as herself on the CBS television soap opera The Young and the Restless in December 2006. False predictions Browne made many public pronouncements which were subsequently proven false. Among the more notable incidents were the following: In 2002, Browne informed the parents of 11-year-old Shawn Hornbeck, who had disappeared earlier that year, that he had been kidnapped by a dark-skinned Hispanic man with dreadlocks and was now deceased. Hornbeck was found alive in 2007; his kidnapper was Caucasian and short-haired. In June 2008, the UK television network ITV2 was sanctioned by Ofcom for re-airing the episode of The Montel Williams Show featuring Browne's original prediction. In November 2004, Browne told the mother of kidnapping victim Amanda Berry, who had disappeared nineteen months earlier: "She's not alive, honey." Browne also said that Berry was "in water", and that she had had a vision of Berry's jacket in the garbage with "DNA on it". Berry's mother died two years later believing her daughter had been killed. Berry was found alive in May 2013. On Larry King Live in 2003, Browne predicted that she would die at age 88. She died in 2013, at age 77. Psychic detective cases In 2000, Brill's Content examined ten recent Montel Williams episodes that highlighted Browne's work as a psychic detective, spanning 35 cases. In 21 cases, the information predicted by Browne was too vague to be verified. Of the remaining 14, law enforcement officials or family members stated Browne had played no useful role. In 2010, the Skeptical Inquirer published a detailed three-year study by Ryan Shaffer and Agatha Jadwiszczok that examined Browne's predictions about missing persons and murder cases. Despite her repeated claims to be more than 85% correct, the study reported that "Browne has not even been mostly correct in a single case." The study compared Browne's televised statements about 115 cases with newspaper reports and found that in the 25 cases where the actual outcome was known, she was completely wrong in every one. In the rest, where the outcome was unknown, her predictions could not be substantiated. The study concluded that the media outlets that repeatedly promoted Browne's work had no visible concern about whether she was untrustworthy or harmed people. Among the predictions examined in the study were the following: In 1999, Browne said that six-year-old Opal Jo Jennings, who had disappeared a month earlier, had been forced into slavery in Japan. Later that year, a local man was convicted of kidnapping and murdering Jennings. In 2003, an autopsy of Jennings' remains found that she had died within hours of her abduction. In 2002, Browne said that Holly Krewson, who had disappeared in 1995, was working as an exotic dancer in a Hollywood nightclub. In 2006, dental records were used to positively identify a body found in 1996 in San Diego as Krewson's. In 2002, Browne said that Lynda McClelland, who had disappeared in 2000, had been taken by a man with the initials "MJ"; was alive in Orlando, Florida; and would be found soon. In 2003, McClelland's son-in-law David Repasky, who had been present at Browne's reading, was convicted of murdering McClelland; her remains were found near her home in Pennsylvania. In 2004, Browne said that Ryan Katcher, a 19-year-old who had disappeared in 2000, had been murdered, and his body could be found in a metal shaft. In 2006, Katcher's body was found in his truck at the bottom of a pond, where he had drowned. In a 2013 follow-up article, Shaffer reviewed more recent predictions by Browne, as well as predictions whose outcomes had been earlier classified as undetermined but were now largely resolved. According to Shaffer, Browne was mostly or completely wrong in 33 cases and mostly accurate in none. Sago Mine disaster On January 2, 2006, an explosion at Sago mine in West Virginia trapped several miners underground. The following day, Browne was a guest on the radio program Coast to Coast AM with George Noory. At the start of the broadcast, it was believed that twelve of thirteen miners trapped by the disaster had .... Discover the Sylvia Browne popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Sylvia Browne books.