They're always good for a laugh, but the predictions of tabloid psychics are not known for their accuracy. 1997 Psychic Predictions in Review: What They Don't Want Enquiring Minds to Know by D. Trull Enigma Editor dtrull@parascope.com Supermarket tabloids love to ring in the new year with their lists of celebrity predictions as foreseen by "psychic experts." Most readers of these publications skim through the reams of bizarre and far-fetched divinations and promptly forget them after the brief chuckle or moment of wonder they elicit. The tabloids probably prefer it that way, since no one can check to see if the predictions came true if they don't bother to remember them. Fortunately, science writer Gene Emery has been doing us all a valuable service by tracking the tabloids' annual predictions and scoring their accuracy. Since 1979, Emery has been grading the psychic forecasts of the National Enquirer and its ilk in the pages of that similarly titled but otherwise completely different periodical, the Skeptical Inquirer. In keeping with their established standards of performance, the gossip-rag prophecies for 1997 demonstrated all the visionary acuity of Mr. Magoo in a sandstorm. Collected from an assortment of tabloids, here is a sampling of the many predictions that fell somewhat short of coming to pass: Hillary Clinton would become pregnant at the age of 50, bearing a second daughter to be named Virginia in honor of the President's late mother. O. J. Simpson would find success as the host of a "whodunit" TV program that investigates true unsolved murders in France. Mick Jagger would be elected to Parliament. Walter Cronkite would start a new career as a lounge singer. Howard Stern and Pamela Anderson Lee would star in a rock musical version of Gone With the Wind. Barbra Streisand would convince Rush Limbaugh to become a liberal Democrat. Kathie Lee Gifford would be abducted by aliens and then abandoned in the Colorado wilderness for five weeks. John Travolta, a pilot in real life, would be called upon to land a commercial jetliner after the crew is incapacitated by food poisoning. (Strangely, three different "psychics" in three different tabloids foresaw this same scenario.) In a rare prediction that does not involve top celebrities, scientists were supposed to capture a live, 7-foot, 450-pound Yeti, which speaks an intelligent language with crude similarities to English. The event most conspicuously absent from the 1997 predictions is the untimely death of Princess Diana. The psychics had presaged that she would somehow be crowned Queen Diana of England, or that she would move to Africa and train to compete in the 2000 Olympics as a long-distance runner. To be fair, there were some predictions of misfortune for Diana in 1997: namely, that she would balloon to 215 pounds because of a thyroid disorder, and that she would "get stood up on a date by heartthrob Kevin Costner." But apparently nothing more troublesome than that was seen to lie in Diana's future. In his nearly twenty years of duty as a "psychic prediction" watchdog, Emery has encountered only one prediction that partially seemed to come true. In 1992, psychic Clarissa Bernhardt contended in the National Enquirer that "Scientists will be shocked when 'earthquake-proof' Florida is hit by a tremor -- only weeks after being slammed by the worst hurricane in the state's history." This turned out to be a reasonable approximation of the devastating arrival of Hurricane Andrew, although there was no earthquake of any kind that followed in the storm's wake. The Enquirer has since touted Bernhardt as the "accurate" psychic who foresaw Hurricane Andrew, conveniently disregarding the specifics about the earthquake -- not to mention her otherwise shoddy track record, which includes predictions that space debris would decimate Peru (1993), Johnny Carson would reclaim the Tonight Show from Jay Leno (1996), and "aliens from an oil-hungry planet" would abduct all of the Earth's petroleum reserves (1997). "I do this as an annual reality check to people who really want to know whether these folks have any talent," Emery said, "and it's become clear over the years that they don't." Sources: Skeptical Inquirer, Jan./Feb. 1998; Associated Press. © Copyright 1998 ParaScope, Inc. Enigma: Paranormal Phenomena Paranormal message board: Share your views