Prediction Hoaxes

Mother Shipton was said to be a sixteenth-century Yorkshire seer who made a number of startlingly accurate predictions. However, it is uncertain whether she actually existed, and many of the predictions attributed to her are outright hoaxes written long after the sixteenth century. During the period when she was supposedly alive, there were no written references to her or her predictions. More…

A few days after President Reagan was shot in March 1981, a startling piece of footage ran on many news programs, including NBC's Today show and CNN. It appeared to show that psychic Tamara Rand had accurately predicted that the attempt on Reagan's life would occur when she had appeared on a Las Vegas TV show, Dick Maurice and Company, two months earlier. If genuine, it was a remarkable prediction. But an AP reporter discovered that the footage had actually been taped the day after Reagan was shot. The Las Vegas show had collaborated in making it appear as if her prediction had been made before the assassination attempt, not after it.