Twenty years ago, The Skeptic Society released a TV series called Exploring the Unknown, with Michael Shermer as producer. In an episode of that series, mentalist Mark Edward was asked to explain how psychic medium Suzane Northrop appeared to be speaking over the radio to the dead family members of sitters (persons receiving a reading). Fast forward over twenty years, and Northrop has come to the attention of the Guerrilla Skeptics mainly because of her partnership with medium Thomas John, whom we have researched and written extensively about over the past few years.
Northrop has mostly disappeared from the semi-celebrity she enjoyed back in 1999 when Exploring the Unknown was filmed. She was known for passing whatever author Gary Schwartz claimed was a test of psychic abilities in The Afterlife Experiments. The scientific skeptic community at the time reviewed Schwartz’s scholarship and found it lacked controls. There was no effort to keep the experiments blinded; the psychics were together, interacting with each other. See Ray Hyman’s review for Skeptical Inquirer, “How Not to Test Mediums: Critiquing the Afterlife Experiments.”
Shermer tasked Mark Edward with explaining why the rapid-fire exchanges with the sitters seemed so accurate. The first we see of Northrop on the clip is her claiming to know that the sitter’s grandmother’s name is Rose. Without knowing the sitter or having received research on the sitter (readings in which the psychic medium has gathered information about the sitter in advance is called hot reading), how would Northrop have known the grandmother’s name?
As I mentioned before, Northrop has been around for decades, and lately she has been appearing with Thomas John in Zoom events during the COVID lockdown in 2020. In fact, the Guerrilla Skeptics have been attending her events, sometimes as sitters, and interacting with the organizers as well as the psychics. (They never seem to realize we are attending for some reason, but I digress.) In this article, I’m going to take a look at her style from 1999 and see what she is doing psychic-wise these days. I’ll then use the example of one of the events the team attended on December 4, 2020.
First, let’s take a look at that 1999 exchange in more detail. Northrop is conducting this reading over the radio; she has her eyes closed and is very expressive with her hands. She speaks quickly, often talking over or interrupting the sitter.
“His mom is also gone. Am I correct about that, Kerryann?” The sitter responds “yes” but is quickly cut off by Northrop’s next statement. “Yes, because he is saying ‘my momma’s with me,’ and I don’t know who he is making reference to. I don’t know if somebody liked roses or was named Rose …” Northrop is cut off by the sitter saying, “My grandmother was Rose.”
So much is going on in this brief exchange. When the sitter said yes, almost before the sitter had started to form the “ya” sound, Northrop was cutting her off and responded as if she knew all along the answer was yes. In fact, Northrop repeats it in her response, “Yes, because he is saying … .” Northrop didn’t say the sitter’s grandmother’s name was Rose, but that is how the sitter will remember this reading. Likely she will tell everyone that she got a reading from a psychic who knew her grandmother was named Rose. As you can see when you read this exchange, Northrop was talking about someone liking roses or was named Rose or … and was about to continue with more rose possibilities when the sitter cut her off.
According to the Social Security baby names database, the name Rose was sixteenth in popularity for a female’s first name in the 1910s. In the 1920s, it moved to twenty-fourth place. By the 1930s it had moved to thirty-sixth place—and that’s just as a first name. If we count Rose as a middle name or as a nickname, then the odds of getting a hit with a grandmother are pretty high. And if it didn’t hit, then she might have succeeded with someone who liked roses or whatever Northrop was about to say when she was cut off.
What we are witnessing in this exchange is called cold reading: using general statements that are typical of most people. It’s helpful to know some basics of the sitter: the gender, approximate age, ethnicity, and accents, all of which can be inferred over the radio.
When you add in the fast talking and acknowledging whatever the sitter just confirmed for you as if she knew it all along, the psychic is going to appear to be accurate. Northrop is quite practiced; unless you know what you are looking for, she is going to appear to be speaking to someone in Spirit (someone who has died).
In the 1999 interview on Exploring the Unknown, Northrop explains that she has been doing readings her entire life. Considering she was born in 1948, that’s a lot of experience. Do not underestimate this skill.
Mark Edward responds in 1999 by saying, “The technique is to talk really fast. Say a lot of things, so fast that the normal average person doesn’t have a chance to respond or reconstruct what you just said.” During the time when Mark Edward was working undercover to get the facts for a chapter in his book Psychic Blues on how radio psychics are able to do this, he worked at a Hollywood radio venue that took calls exactly like Northrop. Having the outside screener help supply information during the breaks made it even easier, but that’s another story.
Let’s move on to 2020 to see what Suzane Northrop has been up to.
The first thing to mention is that for someone who claims to be communicating with the dead, she does not get a lot of attention. Check out the independent tool for measuring general interest in a person, place, or thing: Wikipedia. This website allows us to see how many times a Wikipedia page has been viewed, an indication of how interested the public is.
These numbers run from 2015 to 2020 and show the Wikipedia page for Suzane Northrop has been viewed 12,975 times. On average, that’s seven times a day. She had some spikes between November 2018 and Spring 2019, but even then, about seventy-five people a day were visiting the Wikipedia page. That is embarrassing. This woman was one of Gary Schwartz’s top psychics from The Afterlife Experiments. She claims she can communicate with the dead, yet people don’t seem to be interested in knowing more about her.
Out of curiosity, I used the same dates and compared Sylvia Browne, who also claimed to be able to speak to the dead, to the Suzane Northrop Wikipedia page views. Northrop received 1,200 pageviews; Sylvia Browne received 2,598,841. On average, that’s 1,307 views a day (and remember, Sylvia Browne died in 2013). Maybe if Northrop could catch up with Sylvia for us and let us know how it is going over in the Spirit world and who she is hanging out with, then maybe people will take notice of Northrop.
Northrop has authored a few books over the years:
Her 1995 book The Séance: Healing Messages from Beyond is about as popular as the other books; it has twelve ratings on Amazon.
In 2005, she wrote A Medium’s Cookbook: Recipes for the Soul: A Step-By-Step Guide toward Creating a Banquet of Connections to Those Who Have Passed Over; it has only fourteen ratings.
Everything Happens for a Reason: Love, Free Will, and the Lessons of the Soul, which came out in 2014, has nineteen ratings on Amazon for the paperback. Also in 2014, she released Second Chance: Healing Messages from the Afterlife, which has fifteen ratings.
Her website tells us that she has an Emmy-nominated TV series called The Afterlife. (Note: don’t get it mixed up with Ricky Gervais’s 2019 series After Life.)
The YouTube video Northrop has chosen to highlight on her website, which was uploaded in 2011, has only 14,459 views. Her YouTube channel has 585 subscribers. Pretty sad for someone communicating with dead people.
The video explains quite a lot. In this video, she is
speaking to an audience of twenty people sitting in director
chairs. She stands in front of them. The entire room is in
black except for Northrop and the sitters. Note that
everyone is dressed to be on TV: casual clothing but no
logos, no sports teams, etc. In other words, these people
were pre-chosen to be on the set, which means they signed up
for this. The producers of the show know each one of these
people’s names, and, like Dr. Gary Schwartz’s Afterlife
“Experiments,” there probably are few if any controls. These
people could all have been previously read by Northrop; they
could be hired actors; they could be friends and family.
What they are not
is random, unknown audience members.
After she gives the audience a welcome and says something about how “love is limitless,” she says:
I tend to speak very fast, and I also tend to get information very, very fast. If you think it is for you, it’s better to say something than not say something; and I tend to hear names and don’t just listen to people that have passed over’s name because remember, they can be connected to the living people, so I may hear one or both. And I can be over here [pointing to one side of the audience] and I hear something over there [pointing to the other side] and we are back and forth. It’s real important, if you think it is with you, to say something, because if it’s not, trust me I’m telling you it won’t come through.
She is giving herself a lot of options: a name she mentions might be about someone who has died, or maybe it is someone in the room, or someone else who you might know, and it might be all of the above. The message could be here or there or anywhere. She is giving herself so many outs; if she mentions a name and it sort of fits one person and then she starts to get misses, then she can say that it must apply to another person who is piggy-backing on the first reading. “Piggy-backing” is another known tactic many mediums use. That is, they warn the audience out front that if what they are saying doesn’t make sense to that specific person the medium is talking to, “Spirit” can ricochet to another person if they see a response. They dump that person and quicky move to that other person. It can get pretty confusing, but it’s about whatever makes her look accurate. It’s all on the table.
And then she is off getting a message from a “younger male
coming through.” A woman raises her hand and says, “That’s
my brother.” How the audience member was able to know that
she was the only person in the audience that had a dead
younger male is lost on me. Possibly the audience member
knew she was going to be first up. Maybe her brother told
her that he was there? Or maybe there was an edit that
eliminated the rest of the exchange between Northrop and the
audience? I don’t know. I only note how strange it
was.
My team is looking for verification that The Afterlife was indeed an Emmy-nominated show. The Afterlife with Suzane Northrop was a Canadian documentary TV show launched in 2008. The premise, according to its IMDb page, is that Northrop, along with host David Millbern, held a séance with approximately twenty members of the LGBTQ community in the hopes of “connecting with their deceased loved ones.” According to IMDb, this is the only show that Northrop is associated with. There is nothing about an Emmy nomination. The only mentions we can find that this is an Emmy-nominated show is on the back cover of her book, in the bio on Amazon, and on her website. All three are places where she could have written the text.
While researching, we came up with some interesting sources of information. One was an April 29, 1999, Dayton Daily Newspaper about an upcoming workshop. Another was a 2004 blurb on a website called Unexplained Research that interviewed her for “Talking to the Dead Week.” In the 1999 and the 2004 sources, there are a couple statements that our team looked into.
The 1999 newspaper article shows her teaming up with fellow psychic John Edward. They both were “tested” by Dr. Gary Schwartz in the 1997 Afterlife Experiments. This must have been when John Edward was just getting his start, because Suzane Northrop is the focus of this interview. Only her photo is shown, and they are giving this workshop at an Best Western Hotel. Woo-Hoo! Northrop says she graduated with a music degree at California State University of Los Angeles in 1979 and then moved to New York City to work in theater and dance. She gravitated to mediumship soon after, working at street fairs. She has a control named Elizabeth who speaks in a “voice laced with an Irish-Scottish brogue.” (I think Elizabeth and the accent are long gone these days.)
Then here it comes, “She has been a consultant to police departments in New York City, Los Angeles and Hartford Conn. When Demi Moore needed a medium to teach her how to portray a psychic in the 1991 movie The Butcher’s Wife, she called Northrop. (‘She wanted to know how I get the information and how it really happens.’)” In the 2004 source, she mentions the exact same police departments and adds “as well as assists in grief counseling for victims of the recent World Trade Center tragedy. … In addition, she has hosted a pilot for cable television and acted as a consultant to Demi Moore for The Butcher’s Wife.”
Let us break this down.
A consultant to police departments? Where have we heard that before? Oh yeah, every single grief vampire ever has said that while mentioning no evidence or even giving names that can be verified. One of our team members called these police departments and asked about Suzane Northrop. He just got laughs in return.
I would not be surprised if Northrop had sitters who were tied to people who had died during September 11. She can call it “grief counseling” if she wants, but we all know it as a grief vampire taking advantage of a desperate, vulnerable person. It’s all semantics. You know what would have been really helpful, Suzane? Maybe a heads up that there were terrorists boarding planes they planned to highjack. Maybe a quick call to one of your police department buddies who normally consults with you would have been a great idea. No?
And this Demi Moore claim that Northrop makes over and over. Our team did some research, and we didn’t come up with anything. Yeah, that means that it is still possible to have happened, but we found zilch. All Google searches for Northrop and Moore or the movie name come back with places that only Northrop had control over. Nothing from Moore or the production company, and no mention on IMDb. No photos of them together either.
In this article from AFI catalog, they talk about some of the very small details of the film: the clothing, the sets, and how trees where stripped of their leaves and then flocked to look like snow. Then there is this: “the producers and screenwriters researched the subject of clairvoyance in Asheville, NC a town ‘known for the many psychics who live there’ … Moore was coached by psychic consultants Maria Papapetros and Laura Day. Papapetros instructed her in ‘meditation, psychic tuning and clairvoyant reading.’” Here you can see Maria Papapetros got an official credit for the movie. There is no mention of Suzane Northrop in the AFI catalog anywhere.
In this interview by Roger Ebert of Demi Moore, she does say this: “One of the women that I worked with in New York was tested scientifically as a young woman when she discovered that she had a gift. She’s worked with the police department, and I think that the fact gifts like hers are being used in more legitimate ways now also makes it a lot easier to believe.” Well, that might be Northrop, depending on what your definition of young is. Northrop would have been in her late forties. The “testing” done of Northrop was during the Afterlife Experiments, which was around 1997—long after Demi Moore’s interview. So, it’s not likely that Moore is talking about Northrop.
I’ll be happy to update this article if someone can show an independent source for her show having been nominated for an Emmy or that she worked with Demi Moore or with police departments. (Suzane, you know how to get a hold of me with that information.)
In August 2020, Northrop launched a monthly show called The Dead Peoples’ Society Podcast. The show has zero ratings and zero reviews as of the end of December 2020.
According to her website, we can become official members of The Dead People’s Society (DPS). With the membership, we get monthly guided meditations, private video lectures, on-demand content, a supportive Facebook community, exclusive live sessions, and monthly giveaways. The cost for six months is $199.00; a year is $295.00. We can get a platinum membership that includes access to monthly group webinars, gallery sessions, and previously recorded webinars—plus a signed copy of The Medium’s Cookbook—for only $719 a year.
Moving to the present: Thomas John and Northrop did a Facebook Live event that was mostly just a commercial for the December 4 joint event that cost $27.50 to attend. In this promo, they do a few readings and talk about whether there is any difference between phone/Zoom readings and in-person readings. Basically, they say that they are experienced mediums and know what they are doing; if a reading is going to come through, it will come through.
Then there is this bit from Northrop: “The last event I had was a brother, sister, and the mom who were literally in the home and they couldn’t see her because of COVID and, you know, and on top of it she was experiencing Alzheimer’s. It was really, really hard. It was so nice for them to feel like they could make the connection with somebody connected to their mom in Spirit because their dad had passed; he was coming through a lot. He was around Mom and having her feel that and you know people can’t see people now in hospitals and or certainly nursing homes. This is a whole other connection; make people feel a little better about what’s going on.” My team member first listening to this said, “What the heck?” It sure is interesting that Northrop is saying the children of an Alzheimer’s patient in a nursing home are relying on their dead dad to keep them updated on their mom. What? Do they not have phones to call the nursing home? What a convoluted way to know what is going on. I’m not surprised that these grief vampires are taking full advantage of this time we are in. If only one of them had given us a heads up that might have been helpful. But I suppose I’m asking too much; they are too busy talking to the Elf on the Shelf at the rest home to get to the mundane things like predicting a pandemic.
Many Guerilla Skeptics were in attendance at the Zoom event;
in total, about 160 people attended. Thomas John and Suzane
Northrop were the mediums; Stephanie, an administrator for
Thomas John, managed the Zoom end of things. Each ticketed
attendee receives a video of the event by email. At $27.50
per ticket, and after throwing Stephanie a few hundred
dollars, the mediums probably made about $2,000 each. Plus,
they sell books and other things from their websites and, of
course, private readings. Mediumship is quite lucrative. I
hope they are declaring all the proceeds on their taxes as
income. It wouldn’t be difficult for the IRS to track this
down if they were interested.
We took a lot of notes, plus we were emailed the video the day after the event, which makes the readings easy to review. Thomas John and Suzane Northrop take turns giving readings of the sitters.
Thomas John starts out by throwing out some information and waiting for someone in chat to “claim” the dead person. After a minute, Thomas John says, “We are getting someone in chat saying, ‘that’s me,’ looks like her name is Pat.” And Suzane leans forward, points her finger and almost shouting says, “AH, it is Pat! Cause I’m hearing a Pat so that means we are on the same program around here, ’cause I was going to say someone has gotta have a Pat, somebody is a Pat … that’s what I heard also … I can’t believe we got that at the same time ’cause I don’t know if I’m getting a Pat or you’re getting a Pat …” Thomas John says he will start the reading and Suzane says, “You go ahead, I got her name.”
This next part is gold. Thomas John, speaking to Pat, asks about her father: “Something about the military, the war, would you understand that?” Pat answers, “Yeah, I always post pictures, he was in the Navy and I always post pictures of him in the Navy on Facebook.” Thomas John says “right,” and Suzane says, “He likes it.” At this point, one of our team members, using Pat’s last name, which is clearly on her Zoom screen, is opening up her Facebook page and seeing these same photos of Pat’s father in his Navy uniform. As Thomas John continues with Pat, he says that there is a man in Spirit that is drawing hearts over her head, which tells him that it is romantic love like a husband or boyfriend. Pat starts to cry and says, “That’s my husband.” At this time, my team is reading the post on Facebook that her husband died two weeks ago. Pat wrote, “Today I lost my soulmate and love of my life, and the rest of the world lost a caring, funny and sometimes crazy guy.” It’s all right there on her Facebook page: lots of photos, some very old of Pat’s parents, and the relatives are writing condolences. It’s heartbreaking.
When Pat says, “He just died,” Thomas John says, “Yes, he is telling me he just went over … he’s laughing because he says if he doesn’t come through you are going to kick his ass. He just wanted you to know he’s okay. He loved to eat and there is food on the other side, so he is really happy, and he has a great sense of humor.” And: “He is telling me that you two are soul mates.”
This is so hard to listen to; it is so obvious what is happening. There are photos of this man, and it looks like he weighs about 300+ pounds, so that is why Thomas John is talking about him liking food. I’ve heard this from Thomas John before; he does it to get a laugh, and he gets it, but it is cruel. And, as I just explained, Pat posted on her Facebook page only two weeks ago that he was a “funny and sometimes crazy guy … my soulmate.” Why not read her entire Facebook page back to her, Thomas?
Suzane is given a shot at Pat, and she asks, “What’s this about a truck? Why is he talking about a truck? Somebody in the family had a truck.” Pat is looking confused, blowing her nose and wiping her eyes, but still confused where Suzane is going with this truck. “Somebody got the truck, or it’s passed down. I don’t know if it is him or his family or he’s talking about your parents, but they are literally talking about a truck.” Pat is struggling to make the connection and she says “A car? Before he passed, we just sold a car to his brother.” I’m not sure Suzane is remembering that Pat’s husband died two weeks ago, because Suzane is asking if the brother they just sold the car to is still alive. “Would it have been a big deal to be passed down?” Suzane asks Pat. “No, not really.” Suzane now tries to make the truck thing fit. “He’s bringing it up for a reason. Did he use his car like a truck? You know some people schlep things in all kinds of vehicles. They use them like a truck. I mean, I use my car like a truck.” Pat finally makes a connection “The only thing was that his grandfather was a truck driver and he used to go out with him when he was young.” Suzane gets very animated at this connection, waving her arms and nodding in agreement and makes this flub, “Is his grandfather dead?” Pat is in her mid-sixties; her husband’s grandfather would be at the very least about forty years older than Pat’s husband, so if he were alive, he would be about 105 now at least. Suzane makes a big announcement: “Then he is coming with his grandfather.” What? She started out saying that the truck was passed down, then she ends with a memory the husband had with his grandfather when he was a child. During all this, Thomas John is staring at his computer screen.
Suzane is not letting go of this; they have spent almost fifteen minutes with Pat, who said she was about to go pick up her husband’s ashes and bring them home. Other people are looking bored in the room. Suzane says, “That is his validation to let you know he is coming though. There is definitely a heart-felt thing with this truck, that’s why I was asking.”
Thomas John jumps in and tells Pat that her husband’s hip is so much better. And Pat says, “Oh that is wonderful as he had two hips replaced. I knew he would feel better in heaven.” A hip replacement. I figured it was mentioned somewhere on her Facebook page, and I scrolled and didn’t see it, so I clicked on her husband’s Facebook page (they are linked together as husband and wife) and found it. He didn’t post often, so even though the post was from 2012 it didn’t take long to find it. He writes, “Just got back from Atlantic City. The hotel was so gracious that due to my recent surgery they sent us a complimentary one arm bandit for our stand in the room, and also a bar/waitress at their expense. Can’t wait for my next hip replacement and subsequent Atlantic City return.” Bingo!
At this point we think we figured out an answer to a mystery we have been asking ourselves: Why does Thomas John do these Zoom events with other mediums? They clearly have a different style. He does not need them to bring in the sitters; he could be doing that all by himself, and he wouldn’t have to split the ticket sales. Watching him sit there, staring at his computer screen while Suzane rambled on about trucks, it was obvious: he can use the time to troll through the social media of his next sitter. We were able to find the social media and posts stating what he was saying, all in real time as it was happening.
So now we are almost twenty minutes into this two-hour Zoom event, and they have worked with one sitter. Others waiting on the screen look bored. Looking at their faces, I’m not seeing joy or happiness for someone else to get an amazing connection from her husband.
I’m not going to go into all the readings; it is just too much for you to read in one article. Let me give you a few more highlights from this event, and then some conclusions.
One reading was accurate and detailed like the other ones for people with unusual names on their Zoom screen. It also helps if he knows in advance they will be attending. One woman was very emotional during her reading and explained that she was having a difficult time getting onto Zoom, so she emailed Stephanie and was talked though the process. She told Stephanie that she had a strong feeling that her mother was going to come through and didn’t want to miss it, she explained to the group. Thomas John called on her within minutes of her entering the Zoom room.
There was one reading of a woman who had an abusive, controlling, alcoholic mother, and something about getting back into Hollywood, a role coming her way. She had two sisters and a difficult childhood with an absent father. When I was listening to this I was thinking, oh really? This woman is in her seventies. Is she really going to get her big break? Well, the others in the Guerilla Group recognized her; she was a famous child actress. I’m not going to name her here, but I remember her movies and so I went over to read her Wikipedia page. Sure enough, just about everything Thomas John said was mentioned on Wikipedia, including that she had two sisters and an abusive mother and absent father.
Near the end of the event, Thomas John talks about rose bushes and an Italian mother. Check out this statement from Suzane: “Not only was she known for her rose bushes, but I think there is someone connected in her family with that name. I’m hearing it twice. There is somebody I think named Rose in her family as well as her doing the rose bushes.”
Thomas John then calls on Nina.
Breathless, Nina says, “Suzane, this is the fourth time my mother has come through for you, at the last possible moment.” Suzane asks her “Who has twins, Nina?” and Nina says, “I know what you are going to say, she has come through.” Nina continues to agree with everything very excitedly, but as if she has been through this before and knows the drill. Nina goes on to explain that the third time she got a reading it was with Suzane and Thomas John. I know that Thomas John and Suzane have done thousands of readings; I’m sure they don’t remember them all, but Nina could be a closer. She shows a lot of emotion, screams, and has high energy. She wakes up all those bored faces waiting for their turns. A nice way to end an event.
If you have read the book The Psychic Mafia by M. Lamar Keene, you will know that psychics kept an index card file on all the sitters they’ve had. They would share information with other psychics when the sitter went out of town. This was pre-computers, obviously. Mark Edward talks about the ash room, a takeoff on the word ashram. The ash room was what mediums meant when they collected files on their sitters. It also referred to the ashes when the medium was raided by the police: the files were burned.
I don’t know if Thomas John and his peers keep a database of their sitters; I know I would. It would make giving a reading so much faster and detailed. With a spreadsheet and the ability to search quickly for a name, every past sitter’s information would be seconds away. Heck, it didn’t even need to be Thomas John collecting it. The readings are recorded, and a member of his staff could be keeping a database up to date. But then it would have to be a very trusted employee, because if that leaked out, he would be ruined. This is all speculation on my part. I’m just saying it would be easy and inexpensive to do, plus it would give impressive returns.
By the end, the rest of the audience looks bored. Many people have dropped out of the Zoom meeting. It feels like there are a lot of disappointed people wondering why Nina has been read four times by Suzane and they can’t get a reading. One man spent a lot of time on chat typing that he needed to talk to his mom, then it was his dad, then he started typing IN ALL CAPS and he went on and on until Thomas John had to ask him to stop posting. People throughout the two hours were calling out to Suzane and Thomas John on the chat, pleading for readings, posting messages like “I badly need to talk to my husband,” or “This is the first anniversary of my sister’s death, please I need to get in touch with her.” When Thomas John throws out something basic like “I’m getting a mother figure that has a New York connection,” the attendees start calling out to him, “That’s me … that’s my mom!” It’s heartbreaking to watch.
To be clear: there is no entertainment value in this at all. The people paying their $27.50 are not attending to get a laugh. Many are desperate, vulnerable people who are being manipulated by these grief vampires.
To sum up, this is the first time I’ve spent not-so-quality time researching Suzane Northrop. Thank you, Thomas John, for bringing her to our attention. These various grief vampires are all so different. We have been calling this series Operation Lemon Meringue, and I have published on only two others, Maria Verdeschi and Kimberly Meredith, but I don’t expect that they will be the last. We have attended other readings and are doing our research. It’s time consuming, but we will get through it.
One comment from one of my team members:
Suzane’s readings seem to be composed entirely of:
- Things the sitter just said
- Things that Thomas John just said
- Things that are flat-out wrong
From what I’ve seen so far, I can’t argue with that summation. Maybe I’ll add that she seems pretty accurate when she has read the person four times. Also, Northrop has a thing for roses, or maybe that is her name or her mother’s name … or someone in the family is named Rose.
Addendum: I was all finished with this article—it was proofread and sent for publication—when I was rewatching the 1999 Exploring the Unknown episode that I began this with (watch at 6:13). The show gives a few examples of what Mark Edward calls fishing. In one example, Northrop is in full energy mode giving a reading to someone named Joanne. I’m going to transcribe it, and you see if it sounds familiar.
Northrop: “Why would he be talking about a car, Joanne? Did he pass a car down? Was a car a big deal or something?”
Joanne: “No, but my husband is restoring a car.”
Northrop (almost cutting Joanne off): “Ah, that’s what it is! Thank you.”
It’s been twenty years, and Northrop hasn’t changed a bit. The Guerilla Skeptic team looks forward to spending more time researching Suzane Northrop.
