Gawd, do I hate bullies; even watching film depictions of bullying makes my blood boil. Having the media fan the flames of bullying with ill advised skeptically biased articles demeaning psychics. This week it was the San Francisco Chronicle and writer Steve Rubenstein. On the one hand, we have an experienced psychic Sheldon Norberg who specializes in house clearing with over 200 satisfied clients spanning 20 years, and on the other hand, we have a reporter who had his mind made up even before he wrote his article about house clearing:
If so, it couldn’t hurt to call in an expert. And there is no greater expert in persuading stubborn and obstinate ghosts to leave a haunted house than Sheldon Norberg, 48, a slender man with a shaved head who has been driving demons, devils and negative energy from Bay Area houses for the past two decades, at $1,200 per dwelling.
In the interview, Norberg made no mention of demons and devils; the writer made up that part. How do I know? Norberg wrote a rebuttal in the comment section. In his rebuttal he goes on to state:
The article also has a distinct focus on my fee, with four mentions and a boastful sounding “I’m not cheap.” This comes despite explaining to him that my fee has increased from $250 to its current state over a period of 20 years, and at the insistence of my clients, and told me I need to price myself realistically to the value of my service. I know money is an issue, but considering that the house is now sold, if my work had any effect, was it worth $1,200? The article points out that staging cost $10,000, yet there is a subtle insistence that I’m running a scam. Believe me, I appreciate and demand real muckraking authorship, but that would require research into new models of physics and interviews with more than one of my clients (which would support my work).
As for interviewing, I understand the importance of not leading a client to answers. I know how odd my work is, and how variable people’s perceptions of it are, so I try not to demand that my clients share my perceptions of things. The lead into the next to last paragraph however, “Perhaps her optimism in Norberg was misplaced, she acknowledged”, betrays the fact that the question was not open ended, as an objective reporter might have asked, but hinting at chicanery. (…) The print article has seriously damaged my reputation, and the editors have chosen not to make any corrections, as in an article rife with opinion and omission, there are no “factual errors”, but you as a reader owe it to yourself to review it in light of these comments and make your own decision.
(With regards to his fee, it is a normal charge for a self employed professional with a specialized skill in my region. As a comparison, for me, his fee is equivalent to 14 hours of work and for my wife, a computer specialist,it’s 9.6 hours of work.)
Hi Craig, what a thoughtful piece. I was stumbled into it, years later now, but appreciate that someone read my response, understood it, and thought it worth sharing. I was really hoping that article would help me cement the practice which was so valuable for so many clients, but all I got was a fantastic photo!
If you’d like a copy of Healing Houses, I’d be happy to send it to you.
I’ve very careful not to share my experiences openly. As a child I became very distrustful of adults because I felt that they wanted me to be dishonest. I had to lie about what I was seeing and experiencing to make them happy. If I admitted to having experiences, I was sent for counselling to cure me of those things. The school even tried to insist I be given harmful drugs, but thankfully my dad wouldn’t give in to that demand . It didn’t matter that my experiences were not only harmless, but in many cases beneficial. I still had to deny them.
I became a very wild teenager in response. It seems like such a waste. I was a basically good kid with “imaginary friends” who was doing fine in school. I became a wild teenager who didn’t see the difference between lying about my experiences and lying about how much beer I had been drinking.
I’m fortunate that when I got older I understood that most adults were not having these experiences and they often found them frightening if they did have them. As a kid, I tended to see it as some sort of adult conspiracy. I thought adults were basically dishonest because they pretended not to see what was obviously there. I was able to forgive them for putting me through hell once I understood how they see the world. I still have trouble trusting people with my experiences though. I don’t think I’ll ever get over that part.
I totally understand. It’s sad really, that people get freaked out by something that is really quite natural.
Hi, Craig — I didn’t see the share button, alas. Only the option of commenting by logging-in to either Twitter or FB. Perhaps my browser obscures it?
What a thoughtful post connecting the dots between “skepticism” and simple bullying behaviors (as well as bias and prejudice). I’ve noticed this traditional-media tendency to create a hook for an article or a show by using a sarcastic, wink-wink tone relative to what they inevitably refer to as “woo-woo” subjects of all kinds — not just professional psychics — and it’s a way to get attention for a piece or radio or TV show segment cheaply.
But when it maligns working professionals who help people with their gift, it’s especially negative and even malevolent.
Kudos to you for articulating what so many of us have noticed for years.
(It would be great if you had Facebook and Twitter buttons to post a link to your post to our Social Media accounts, too.) Thanks so much.
Hi Laurel,
Thanks for your comment. The feedback is nice. There is a share button at the bottom of the articles if you wish to use it.
Craig
Thank you for your well formulated response Craig, I completely agree ..
I’m completely with you on this.
I learned that lesson when I told my mother about my gift and she assumed it was a way of calling her a bad mother. Now I’m older, and my own ‘coping mechanism’ is to assume that no one, ever, can be trusted, except on the Internet.
I just can’t shut up the part of my mind that tells me it should be better. And kids shouldn’t have to shut that part up. Kids shouldn’t have to even see it as anything but themselves.
What the hell are medical professionals and psychologists DOING? “Oh, yes, here’s a group of people who have gifts that might explain how the universe works, and if the military figures out how to turn them all into living weapons first we’ll have enough PTSD cases on our hands to turn the world inside-out, but hey, it’s not happening NOW, right?” Good lord, you guys. Ethical behaviors. Learn them.
And any kids reading–have a big, big hug and a zillion smilies. 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 (x a zillion)
i liked the part that you learned that “no one can be trusted” – not even on internet