John Edward

The only son of an Irish-American police officer and an Italian-American working mother,[2] Edward was raised Roman Catholic. Although Edward later stopped practicing that faith, he has said he never stopped feeling connected to God and is still closely connected to his Catholic roots.[1] Edward once said, "This is something that is driven by a belief in God. It's the energy from that force that I think allows us to create this energy."[3]

According to Edward, when he was 15 and "a huge doubter" (in psychic abilities), he was "read" by a New Jersey woman who convinced him that he could become a medium.[4]

"She told me things that there is no way she could have known. And the first part of the reading was that this was the path that I was supposed to be on and that I was supposed to be a teacher and help people and – I thought she was nuts."[4] Speaking of the same encounter in a 2002 interview, Edward said, "She told me I would one day become internationally known for my psychic abilities through lectures, books, radio and TV. I thought she was full of it until she started to tell me things no one in my life knew about... The details were unbelievable."

Later, Edward worked as a phlebotomist while pursuing a degree in health care administration at Long Island University.[5] He met his wife, Sandra McGee, when he was a student in a dance studio, and he became a ballroom dancing instructor before entering his current field of work.[4] He and his wife had their first child, Justin, on September 25, 2002, and their second child, Olivia, on January 25, 2007.

Edward published his first book, One Last Time, in 1998. His related appearance on Larry King Live later in the year prompted enough phone calls to overload the show's switchboard.[6] The next year, Edward had a show of his own.

Edward's tours outside the USA have included performances in Canada, Australia, the UK, and Ireland.[13] In response to the announcement of his 2019 Australian tour, The Sydney Morning Herald published an article by Peter FitzSimons which called Edward a fraud, saying:

What chance you might stop this fraud? I am not sure it gets much lower than capitalising on people's grief by taking money for talking to the dead, but the whole thing is selling snake-oil to mugs; an old story. ... I can feel a word coming on ... it starts with an "f" ... and ends in a "d" ... Fraud? That's it! FRAUD! ... The only amazing thing is that it still goes on this far into the 21st century.[14]

FitzSimons concluded:

No less than Time Magazine has suggested that beyond the vague questioning, much of his more specific stuff depends on having his own people mill around the foyer before the show, looking for hard info. You get the drift. FRAUD. He is not talking to dead people, and it is like his damn hide to take money from the grieving while pretending to do so – even while saying other psychics are frauds! The sheer chutzpah! I repeat: “So here is the question, one more time. While we have all kinds of laws against false advertising, how is it that they don’t cover this? How is it that a show ... can be brought to Australia and put in big stadiums to prey on the grieving, and take their money for him pretending to do something that he is NOT DOING?” Last time he came I wrote: “Too harsh? So sue me, John Edwards, you fraud.”[14]

Critics of Edward assert that he performs the mentalist techniques of hot reading and cold reading, in which one respectively uses prior knowledge or a wide array of quick and sometimes general guesses to create the impression of psychic ability.[15][16][17][18] Choosing the first reading from a two-hour tape of edited shows as a sample, illusionist and skeptic James Randi found that just 3 of 23 statements made by Edward were confirmed as correct by the audience member being read, and the three statements that were correct were also trivial and nondescript.[19] In another incident, Edward was said to have used foreknowledge to hot read in an interview on the television show Dateline.[20] James Underdown of the Independent Investigative Group (IIG) attended a Crossing Over show in November 2002 and said "there were no indications of anyone I saw collecting information... none of his readings contained the kind of specific information that would raise an eyebrow of suspicion. ... John Edward was a bad cold reader. He, too, struggled to get hits, and in one attempt shot off nearly 40 guesses before finding any significant targets."[21]

Underdown also claimed that Edward's apparent accuracy on television may be inflated by the editing process.[16] After watching the broadcast version of the show he had attended and recorded, Underdown attributed a great deal of Edward's accuracy on television to editing and wrote, "Edward's editor fine-tuned many of the dead-ends out of a reading riddled with misses."[21] In 2002, Edward said, "People are in the studio for eight hours, and we have to edit the show for time, not content. We don't try to hide the 'misses'."[22] Edward has denied ever using hot or cold reading techniques.[23]

In March 2018, skeptical activist Susan Gerbic published an article in Skeptical Inquirer summarizing a number of techniques which she says are used by psychics, such as Edward, to achieve their effects.[24]

In a 2019 segment of Last Week Tonight, Edward and other prominent TV psychics were featured. Several clips of Edward attempting cold reading and failing to get "hits" were included, as well as a clip of Edward telling an audience member, "I can only tell you what they're showing me, and if he's calling your mother a bitch, I'm gonna pass that on." John Oliver criticized the predatory nature of the psychic industry, as well as the media for promoting psychics, because this convinces viewers that psychic powers are real, and so enables neighborhood psychics to prey on grieving families. Oliver said "...when psychic abilities are presented as authentic, it emboldens a vast underworld of unscrupulous vultures, more than happy to make money by offering an open line to the afterlife, as well as many other bullshit services."[25][26][27]

Edward has appeared or been mentioned in many television shows, including ABC's 20/20,[32] The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch,[33] The Crier Report,[33] Dateline,[33] The Early Show,[33] Entertainment Tonight,[33] Family Guy, Fox and Friends,[33] Jimmy Kimmel Live!,[33] Larry King Live,[33] the HBO Special Life After Life: America Undercover,[33] Live with Regis & Kelly,[33] Maury,[33] Oprah,[33] Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, The 7pm Project, The Tony Danza Show, The View,[33] Smallville, The Wayne Brady Show, Will & Grace, Keeping up with the Kardashians,[33] Kourtney and Kim Take New York[33] and Dr. Phil.[34] as well as in Law and Order S14 Ep9 "Compassion".

The adult animated TV series South Park featured Edward in the episode "The Biggest Douche in the Universe", where Edward is portrayed as a cold reading conman.[35] The series' co-creator, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, credit James Randi for Stan's explanation of cold reading.[36]

• Official website
• John Edward at IMDb
• John Edward at Curlie
• Crossing Over at TV.com
• John Edward Cross Country at TV.com