ANTEBELLUM: Soulless
By: Matt Blickenstaff
Issue date: 2/4/10 Section: Opinion/Editorial
Presented with a rare opportunity to step beyond my corporeal boundaries and a welcome chance to make some quick cash, I spent my Sunday night reviewing a performance by Lisa Williams - a self-professed clairvoyant. Williams was the star of two Lifetime network shows, Lisa Williams: Life Among the Dead and Lisa Williams: Voices from the Other Side.
Williams has a gift - she hears messages from the dead. On her shows, and on her live tour, she relays voices from the ever after from the departed to their grieving families. Of course, these ethereal e-mails will cost you a pretty penny. The ticket price for the Roberts Orpheum Theater show was more than $100.
The audience, comprised of a plurality of middle-aged women, was eager to reconnect. Some even wept in anticipation.
Williams took to the pink and periwinkle stage with a few instructions to help tune in the astral reception.
"It's a three-way conversation," Williams said. "The spirits talk, I talk and I would like you to talk as well. If you can relate to information, please say yes, and if you can't, then please say no."
She began with a name, Sid or Sidney. She said she could see a bandaged leg in her mind's eye, perhaps injured or amputated.
The audience was silent. No one could relate, and Williams turned to the spirits for guidance. She spoke to the void, begging it for more clues and asking it to focus its directions.
Williams continued to toss her psychic spaghetti until something stuck. Eventually, someone in the audience would react to a name or an object or a particular ailment. Williams zeroed in and invited the bereaved to a microphone for a more in-depth reading.
Now, I'm a born skeptic, a real Show Me type of guy, and I thoroughly doubt the validity of these so-called psychic abilities. The technique Williams employs is called cold reading, a method used by mentalists to gather information about a stranger by analyzing body language or making logical assumptions based on a person's age, sex or race.
Williams has a gift - she hears messages from the dead. On her shows, and on her live tour, she relays voices from the ever after from the departed to their grieving families. Of course, these ethereal e-mails will cost you a pretty penny. The ticket price for the Roberts Orpheum Theater show was more than $100.
The audience, comprised of a plurality of middle-aged women, was eager to reconnect. Some even wept in anticipation.
Williams took to the pink and periwinkle stage with a few instructions to help tune in the astral reception.
"It's a three-way conversation," Williams said. "The spirits talk, I talk and I would like you to talk as well. If you can relate to information, please say yes, and if you can't, then please say no."
She began with a name, Sid or Sidney. She said she could see a bandaged leg in her mind's eye, perhaps injured or amputated.
The audience was silent. No one could relate, and Williams turned to the spirits for guidance. She spoke to the void, begging it for more clues and asking it to focus its directions.
Williams continued to toss her psychic spaghetti until something stuck. Eventually, someone in the audience would react to a name or an object or a particular ailment. Williams zeroed in and invited the bereaved to a microphone for a more in-depth reading.
Now, I'm a born skeptic, a real Show Me type of guy, and I thoroughly doubt the validity of these so-called psychic abilities. The technique Williams employs is called cold reading, a method used by mentalists to gather information about a stranger by analyzing body language or making logical assumptions based on a person's age, sex or race.
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