Sylvia Browne made a name for herself in the true crime world on talk shows, giving psychic readings to the families of the missing and the murdered. But an evaluation of her success rate shows that she was probably just guessing and she wasn’t that good of a guesser. 

Skeptical Inquirer articles:

https://skepticalinquirer.org/2020/03/psychic-defective-sylvia-brownes-history-of-failure/

https://skepticalinquirer.org/2020/03/the-psychic-defective-revisited-years-later-sylvia-brownes-accuracy-remains/

Guardian article by Jon Ronson:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/oct/27/usa.jonronson

Pretend Podcast Grave Detector Part 1

https://player.fm/series/pretend-1846581/ep-1602-the-grave-detector-part-1

See me at the True Crime Podcast Festival! https://www.truecrimepodcastfestival.com/

Sponsor

Support the show!

Get the exclusive show Beyond the Files plus Crimelines episodes ad free on

Supercast: https://crimelines.supercast.com/

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/crimelines

Apple Subscriptions: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crimelines-true-crime/id1112004494 

For one time support:

https://www.basementfortproductions.com/support

Links to all my socials and more:

https://linktr.ee/crimelines

Sources:

2025 Crimelines Podcast Source List 

Transcript: https://app.podscribe.ai/series/3790

If an exact transcript is needed, please request at crimelinespodcast@gmail.com

Licensing and credits:

Theme music by Scott Buckley https://www.scottbuckley.com.au/

Cover Art by Lars Hacking from Rusty Hinges

Crimelines is a registered trademark of Crimelines LLC.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.