As we all know, psychics are a bunch of arse. People like Derrek Acorah have been trounced as charlatans and Derren Brown laughs in the face of mediums world-wide. Even Lindsay Lohan punched a psychic in the face once. The fact that mediums have been shown to be nothing but balderdash hasn’t detracted from their popularity with the older generations though. To many,  these full-time liars are still revered as doorways to the nether regions. People, it seems, are eager to believe they can contact the dead, and who can blame them? It’s a lovely comforting idea, it’s just guff unfortunately.

So, as the festive season rolls around the corner why not play a trick on your aging aunts and uncles? If you’re heading home from University this Christmas, why not tell Aunt Mable that you’ve done a module on psychic readings and fortune-telling? Or, if you’ve got a job, simply inform Uncle Barry that your business has a new board of Directors who are eager to hone their employee’s psychic skills with tarot card workshops.

Simply follow the steps below and you too could pull of being a psychic for a day. The basic rules set out below will enable you to nail a “cold reading” i.e. without prior knowledge of anything your subject has been up to, you can convince them you have a firm attachment to the other side.

1) Set The Stage

You need to look and feel the part. Use a room where there are a lot of important looking and scholarly books lying around. Set up two comfortable chairs, get some soft lighting involved and have a small table between the chairs covered by a lace table-cloth: that’s text-book psychic stuff. Pop on some candles and rob one of your sister’s incense sticks and you’re done.

The room has to look and feel like somewhere your aunt would associate with a psychic. If the setting is believable half the battle is won.

As a prop you can use tarot cards or a crystal ball, but if you don’t have either of them knocking about you can go down the palm reading route. You need at least one of these props to make yourself look and feel legit; also, staring at whichever prop you are looking at with a furrowed brow will give you thinking time if your words run dry.