Darren Brown LIVE seance(channel 4)

[Syn^opsIs]

Less than 5mins away.Anyone interested in this sort of stuff I suggest you watch it, I think it's going to be great. I'll report back after its finished.

 

[GPRT]

Think its is a bad idea getting joe public involved in a seance.. creeps the crap out of me these sorts of things...

Any one try it?

 

[DarkStar]

Is this that joker with the voodoo doll and the hot lady-friend?

 

[Murray_H]

He certainly knows his psychology, good skills Derren for fooling those people into thinking a spirit was present :thumbs:

 

[Sashswash]

is this in the U.S.? If so, whats the channel's name? (channel numbers are different in different areas)

 

[Sui]

Its the UK. its over now, i watched a bit of it, it looked pretty freaky. But darren brown... just to let you know, its all real. its no crappy trick- its all science. He can do all this fancy stuff, like tell where you live and how you live just by looking at you and your reactions... but its nothing to do with being "phycic". the only way to explain id for you to watch it yourself... theres a weekly program of him on channel 4, i think. check it out

 

[Murray_H]

Its the UK. its over now, i watched a bit of it, it looked pretty freaky. But darren brown... just to let you know, its all real. its no crappy trick- its all science. He can do all this fancy stuff, like tell where you live and how you live just by looking at you and your reactions... but its nothing to do with being "phycic". the only way to explain id for you to watch it yourself... theres a weekly program of him on channel 4, i think. check it out

That's what i like about him, he doesn't make it out to be more than it is. He is bloody good at what he does, the show is really good!

 

[Chris D]

There's got to be slightly more to it than coincidence with Derren. There is something to him. He says he doesn't have any special powers but he has an amazing psychological mind. There's some way he can get information from you. How? I don't know. It's not magic, I don't think it's all fake, there is just something that he can do. I've seen quite a bit of his stuff now and it always makes me wonder.

Did anyone see him play russian roulette live on channel 4 a few months back. That was some pretty interesting stuff.

Even if it was all staged in some farm house in the south of England, even if there were no real bullets in the gun, the fact that he knew which chamber the bullet was in is pretty spectacular in itself, whether he was in danger or not.

 

[Sui]

in reply to the roulette, i belive that it was both staged AND real.

yes, you herad me. i mean, look at what he does. look at the things he performs on the shows. i have never seen him make more than a couple of mistakes, and the rest is sublime. to him, this would be a peice of cake- its just his life rests on whether he gets it right or not (which he will do).

But then, imaging if he had walked in there, fired 5 bullets then fired the last one on the wall. no fuss. no hassle. easy. I belive thats what he could have done... but it doesnt make very good TV, does it?? so i think he staged it so that he looked like he got it wrong, when in fact he was doing it perfectly to plan all along... why? to make it tense, and to make good TV.

but thats just my veiw. it could have been that he actually just fu**ed it up, and fired the blank at the wall. i guess theres only one person who will ever truly know.

 

[Shippi]

I watched it, and thought it was extremely interesting. So, is he on Channel 4 every week?

There's one thing that I don't understand though, how did they get the objects in the room to move? Did I miss something? Everything else I 'understand' but not that...

 

[Farrowlesparrow]

Wished i watched it now....ah well, im sure there must be a repeat or something on E4.

 

[Murray_H]

I watched it, and thought it was extremely interesting. So, is he on Channel 4 every week?

There's one thing that I don't understand though, how did they get the objects in the room to move? Did I miss something? Everything else I 'understand' but not that...

Cup could have been knocked over by some sort of charge, ball could be on a wire (hence the pitch black) or it could just be some sort of projection

There are a number of ways in which they could have moved the stuff, lets get Jonathan Creek on the case

 

[Shippi]

Cup could have been knocked over by some sort of charge, ball could be on a wire (hence the pitch black) or it could just be some sort of projection

There are a number of ways in which they could have moved the stuff, lets get Jonathan Creek on the case

Yeah, I was wondering whether that was fake or not (I assumed it was)

 

[Murray_H]

Yeah, I was wondering whether that was fake or not (I assumed it was)

The whole thing is 'fake' - as proved by Derren fetching the supposedly dead Jane from a TV van

Here's my take on the psychology behind it (i posted this on another forum)

The location and time of day shits them up first - stories of suicide, same type of person (students) led by one charasmatic man (assuming Derren was talking about himself) - makes them think they are up shit creek and gets them in the mood. Abandonded building - why was it abandoned, what went on in there? Deriliction also gives an unsafe feeling. Night time - can't see much, everyone has had a fear of the dark (obvious really )

The curtain thing - tells them a little story about people doing weird stuff behind it, puts the girl in a trance (so some sort of hypnosis was involved) and she throws the tambourine. He shows the video to show that he was 'controllling' her mind. Then he gets the guy supposedly under no trance, but i'm willing to bet Derren did something to him that made him keep his eyes open.

The picking of Jane - Derren explained this one, the layout of the photos meant that 9 times out of 10 Jane would be picked. There was a free choice at the beginning but (and this is guess work because i didn't actually do this part of the programme (making toast )) the photo he showed near the beginning of the guy who supposedly instigated the mass suicide looks suspiously like one of the men in the photos on the table - maybe somesort of guide.

The london thought transference thingy - could have been a number of hidden references to London/captials/big cities/etc, was the programme filmed in London too? It's like asking someone to name a flower and they'll probably say a rose, you just have to ask the right people - Derren did this because he tested people who would react as he wanted for this 'seance'.

I would be confident in saying that the people he picked were religious/spiritualists/believed in horroscopes/conspiracy theorists, or anybody that had some sort of 'secret' belief that was opposite to mainstream theories.

The girl who picked room 7 as the room to sit in - there may have been rooms that corresponded to the number of people that died in the suicide so people would avoid that, other numbers may have been said while Derren was talking in a context that was either positive or negative thus drawing people towards the room or repelling them

The board - he explained this one too - people move the glass without realising it

When the girl had been told that she was in the room Jane was in - that shits her up, then the reaction from the blatently obvious staged mic feedback makes them all more scared and open for the next trick

The round the table bit - dark = scary, hold hands - one person grips tightly, chain reaction follows, makes them all more pumped up, look at the cup - nothing happens so look at the ball, but then the cup moves all of a sudden (possibly by a very small explosive) distracts them then the ball moves (could be on a wire, some trickery there). This will get them scared because they don't know where the next action is coming from. The supposed channeling - hyposis looks like the main technique employed again - talking to Jane at different times in her life means Derren can take the girl in and out of different trances.

The short discussion after - Derren says something about the girl originating from Manchester, now i didn't hear this during the channeling beacuse my bro was talking to me/it wasn't said, but the group said they mentioned Manc earlier - Derren picks up on this and sticks it in to scare even more.

 

[lePobz]

A possible explanation being passed around by scientists at the moment (that explains a truth seances, psychic mediums, talking with the dead, and mind-reading) is very hard to grasp but does explain a lot of things...

...Joint human subconcious - a sort of 'borg collective' that is active between humans in the presence of each other... not on the concious level, so we are never aware of this... although people like mediums (and derren, obviously) can focus their minds in such a way that they can manipulate this subconcious channel to plant suggestions and retrieve data from people.

This is also an explanation of seances - if you'd watched the show you'd realise that Jane wasn't actually dead (as he brought her into the spooky hospital at the end to meet the students) - but this did not stop the students from believing it was her spirit in the room - it also did not stop the girl that got 'posessed' from saying detailed information about Jane (cats name, the village, her friends, etc) whilst she was 'posessed'.

Since Jane was not dead, it is only logical to assume that this data was available to her subconcious because she believed she was posessed.

In the same way, the 13 of them round the table believed so strongly that Janes spirit was in the room. Each of them expected the Silver Cup to move. With so many people focusing, a collective conciousness must have the power to manipulate objects.

This could explain levitations etc.

There are numerous theories anyway, this one just explains a hell of a lot... plus I've always know the human mind has much more power than any of us believe, or understand.

 

[Shippi]

The whole thing is 'fake' - as proved by Derren fetching the supposedly dead Jane from a TV van

Here's my take on the psychology behind it (i posted this on another forum)

The location and time of day shits them up first - stories of suicide, same type of person (students) led by one charasmatic man (assuming Derren was talking about himself) - makes them think they are up shit creek and gets them in the mood. Abandonded building - why was it abandoned, what went on in there? Deriliction also gives an unsafe feeling. Night time - can't see much, everyone has had a fear of the dark (obvious really )

The curtain thing - tells them a little story about people doing weird stuff behind it, puts the girl in a trance (so some sort of hypnosis was involved) and she throws the tambourine. He shows the video to show that he was 'controllling' her mind. Then he gets the guy supposedly under no trance, but i'm willing to bet Derren did something to him that made him keep his eyes open.

The picking of Jane - Derren explained this one, the layout of the photos meant that 9 times out of 10 Jane would be picked. There was a free choice at the beginning but (and this is guess work because i didn't actually do this part of the programme (making toast )) the photo he showed near the beginning of the guy who supposedly instigated the mass suicide looks suspiously like one of the men in the photos on the table - maybe somesort of guide.

The london thought transference thingy - could have been a number of hidden references to London/captials/big cities/etc, was the programme filmed in London too? It's like asking someone to name a flower and they'll probably say a rose, you just have to ask the right people - Derren did this because he tested people who would react as he wanted for this 'seance'.

I would be confident in saying that the people he picked were religious/spiritualists/believed in horroscopes/conspiracy theorists, or anybody that had some sort of 'secret' belief that was opposite to mainstream theories.

The girl who picked room 7 as the room to sit in - there may have been rooms that corresponded to the number of people that died in the suicide so people would avoid that, other numbers may have been said while Derren was talking in a context that was either positive or negative thus drawing people towards the room or repelling them

The board - he explained this one too - people move the glass without realising it

When the girl had been told that she was in the room Jane was in - that shits her up, then the reaction from the blatently obvious staged mic feedback makes them all more scared and open for the next trick

The round the table bit - dark = scary, hold hands - one person grips tightly, chain reaction follows, makes them all more pumped up, look at the cup - nothing happens so look at the ball, but then the cup moves all of a sudden (possibly by a very small explosive) distracts them then the ball moves (could be on a wire, some trickery there). This will get them scared because they don't know where the next action is coming from. The supposed channeling - hyposis looks like the main technique employed again - talking to Jane at different times in her life means Derren can take the girl in and out of different trances.

The short discussion after - Derren says something about the girl originating from Manchester, now i didn't hear this during the channeling beacuse my bro was talking to me/it wasn't said, but the group said they mentioned Manc earlier - Derren picks up on this and sticks it in to scare even more.

That's basically what I figured, but I'm too tired to type it all out. If you're in an area where something like a mass suicide supposedly happened I can imagine that you're more susceptible to, well, everything. You'd be jumping at nothing, especially after hearing the stories and seeing the tambourine thing. And with the right bits of trickery you can be made to believe anything..