Their 2005 was supposed to be the year every major disease was cured, terrorists started World War III by shooting a nuclear missile into China, and world hunger ended when scientists developed a tasty crossbreed between a camel and an iguana.

That view of world events was prophesized a year ago by a blue-ribbon panel of psychics, prophets and visionaries assembled by the supermarket tabloid The Sun, according to Gene Emery, who has been tracking the accuracy of psychic predictions since 1979.

Emery, a writer for Skeptical Inquirer magazine, said the psychics and seers did just as badly this year as they have for every other year, not only predicting astounding events that never came true, but failing to forecast tragedies like the London terrorist bombs in July that were the talk of 2005. Psychic warnings to the people of New Orleans about Katrina would have been helpful too.

“It’s amazing that people still take stock in psychics when their success rate is so close to zero,” said Emery. “In fact, many tabloids such as the National Enquirer, that were once filled with predictions, seem to have given up reporting psychic forecasts. Their editors probably realized that the predictions do nothing but give publicity to people who can’t live up to their claims.”

For example, the psychics never foresaw the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, nor did any psychic issue a warning about the tidal wave that killed over 150,000 in southern Asia the day after Christmas. “It’s hard to think of two events that reverberated around the globe as much as those did, yet the psychics never picked up on them,” said Emery. “It’s just more evidence that people who claim to have psychic powers really don’t.”

The Sun and National Examiner, however, continued to carry predictions.

For 2005, the Sun didn’t even try to make their seers accountable. Instead, they lumped the predictions of living psychics together with dead ones like Nostradamus and Edgar Cayce, “probably so they can’t embarrass the living ones,” said Emery.

This “blue-ribbon panel” said a year ago that in 2005 there would be cures for just about every medical malady including Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, Alzheimer’s, psoriasis, alcoholism, heart disease, arthritis, strokes, and obesity.

But they also said communications would be disrupted when Earth’s magnetic field reverses, a California inventor would cause earthquakes in Los Angeles and San Francisco, NASA astronomers would find a ruined city on Mars, Israel and the U.S. would invade Syria and Iran, edible furniture (designed for couch potatoes) would have to be recalled because of a sanitation problem, and millions of dollars in divorce fees would be saved when disgruntled couples were allowed to play a new computer game where the loser dies in real life.

Some of the forecasts are less spectacular than they sound, said Emery. The Examiner features Tony Leggett, who is probably taking credit for predicting the death of John Paul II. But Leggett only predicted “a new Pope” in the Dec. 27, 2004 issue, not saying if would be by death or resignation. People, not just psychics, had been predicting the Pope’s death for years. In addition, he said the new Pope would be from Italy. The big news was that Pope Benedict XVI was the first German Pope in centuries.

Leggett also couldn’t decide whether “romantic drama ahead for Chelsea Clinton” meant marriage or a total breakup, and he predicted that container ships would be blowing up in ports on the East and West coasts.

Emery said the tabloids have been known to bend the facts a bit to try to give their psychics credibility. For example, the Examiner said Leggett correctly predicted five major hurricanes hitting the U.S. in 2004. But a check of National Weather Service records showed there were only four. Bonnie, listed as one of the five by the Examiner, never made it above a tropical storm.

“When you look at the forecasts with a critical eye, it’s clear that psychics have no special powers,” said Emery.

Not all forecasts for 2005 were made a year ago. Emery’s files from 2001 show that in the Sun, Cayce predicted that “The long-anticipated massive earthquake along the San Andreas Fault in California will take place on June 17, 2005 at 7:18 a.m. The final death toll will equal 4,568,304.”

Other things that were supposed to happen in 2005:

• “The government rolls out new rules allowing flying cars into the airways.”
• “A plane crashes into the Egyptian pyramids.”
• “Twenty astronauts sent on a Mars mission return to Earth and promptly resign from NASA to join the priesthood.”
• “A new reality TV show is mired in scandal when it is revealed that a winning participant killed and ate one of the competitors.”
• “NASA astronauts surveying a planned lunar colony find a Nazi flag planted on the dark side of the Moon.”

The Super Bowl will be cancelled after the first half of play. People will be able to go back in time, although there won’t be any way to bring them back home.

Psychic forecasts for 2003? Nope.

Those are events that were supposed to come true in 2002 according to the supermarket tabloids whose editors say they gathered the forecasts from some of the world’s best psychics.

Actually, psychics and astrologers seems to have fallen on tough times recently, said science writer Gene Emery, who has been following tabloid forecasts since 1979 in the still-fruitless quest to find just one psychic with predictive ability. Emery’s annual evaluations frequently appear in Skeptical Inquirer magazine.

“The September 11 terrorist attacks graphically illustrated the idea that people who claim to have psychic powers are frauds or are deluding themselves. Witness the fact that nobody predicted the destruction of the World Trade Center towers, otherwise thousands of deaths would have been averted,” said Emery. “Here was an event whose impact resonated around the globe, yet it never resonated with the folks who tell you with great certainty where you misplaced your TV remove control.”

As a result, most of the tabloids that still publish forecasts have now resorted to using “psychics” who may not even exist. They don’t show up on Internet search engines. That turns out to be true for the Sun and Weekly World News. The best known tabloid, the National Enquirer, gave up its tradition of publishing beginning-of-the-year psychic predictions a few years ago.

One exception is the Jan. 8, 2002 edition of the Star, where Kenny Kingston, a real person, makes not-surprising, often-vague, or frequently unconfirmable forecasts on 20 celebrities. (For example, he predicts that “a secret trial separation is ahead for Barbra [Streisand] and hubby James Brolin.” If it’s secret, how are we supposed to confirm it?). He said Nicolas Cage and Lisa Marie Presley would marry, and that “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” would be cancelled. But his Martha Stewart prediction makes no mention of her stock market scandal, and he says Hillary Clinton will be "much in the headlines with a scandal that will rival anything involving her husband Bill.”

Emery said he looks for forecasts of truly unexpected events that only a psychic could foresee, not educated guesses from people who follow the entertainment industry.

The latest batch of predictions did not forecast the Florida election fiasco, Jimmy Carter winning the Nobel Peace Prize or the Maryland sniper case. Instead, the tabloid psychics were saying 2002 would be the year:

• Satan would be discovered working in a homeless shelter, reading to the blind and delivering Meals on Wheels.
• The Super Bowl would be cancelled after the first half because team owners would refuse to cough up an extra $10,000 for each player.
• A time tunnel would be created to allow people to make a one-way trip back into time. (A way to make the return trip is supposed to be discovered in 2006.)

The accuracy of the other tabloid forecasts made at the beginning can’t be judged, Emery says, because the psychics never say when the predictions will come to pass.

For example, the “world’s top psychics and seers” say in the Sun that Prince Charles will marry Camilla Parker-Bowles in a royal shotgun wedding, the U.S. capital will move to Wichita, a gorilla fluent in sign language will lead a new religion, Elvis will be found buried next to Princess Di, animal performances will be banned, and Dick Clark will become a much-lauded ballet dancer. But they don’t say when.

That means Clark, Prince Charles and Parker-Bowles will have to die before it becomes certain that these ‘psychics’ were incorrect, according to Emery, saying that’s a common technique used by psychics, astrologers and other seers. “They love it when you can’t prove them wrong.”

Emery said he does his annual tracking of the tabloids and their sometimes-silly predictions to give consumers a reality check and show them that psychics, when put to the test, can’t live up to their claims.

Skeptical Inquirer magazine is the official journal of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). Issued bimonthly, Skeptical Inquirer publishes critical scientific evaluations and informed discussions of paranormal and pseudoscientific claims. For more information, visit http://www.csicop.org/si.

At least that’s what should have occurred if the world’s top psychics had been correct. People may be celebrating the new millennium, but the world’s top psychics shouldn’t be raising a glass of champagne to celebrate their successes for the 1990s, according to Gene Emery, a contributor to the magazine The Skeptical Inquirer, who has been tracking the hits and misses of the tabloid psychics for two decades.

And, Emery says, the folks who claim to be able to see the future also didn’t do very well in their forecasts for 1999. The psychics said 1999 would be the year that:

• A pollution cloud forced New York City to be quarantined;
• Wynonna Judd quit country music to become a women’s wrestler;
• Marijuana replaced petroleum as the nation’s chief source of energy;
• The cast of 60 Minutes II was replaced by Candice Bergen, Mary Tyler Moore and Margot Kidder;
• The Statue of Liberty lost both arms in a terrorist blast;
• Monica Lewinski became a millionaire after opening a New York boutique for the full-figured women called Monica’s Closet;
• O.J. Simpson confessed to Howard Stern on the air that he killed his ex-wife, and
• Roseanne shed her clothes to do a week’s worth of talk shows from a nudist colony.

“It’s always hard to find evidence that a psychic predicted an unexpected event BEFORE the fact,” said Emery, a science writer based in Providence, R.I. For example, the forecasts published with great fanfare in the supermarket tabloids failed to mention such surprising events as the massive earthquakes in Turkey and Taiwan, the nuclear accident in Japan, or the death of John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife and sister-in-law.

Instead, said Emery, Anthony Carr, billed as “the world’s most documented psychic” by the National Examiner, is documented as predicting that Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy would give birth to healthy twins. And Sanjiv Mishra of India, described by the tabloid Sun as one of the ten ‘‘greatest psychics on Earth,” made the not-so-great forecast that JFK Jr. would fly “on a space shuttle mission in August,” with John Glenn as his co-pilot.

Tracking the psychics is fun, but it has a serious side, said Emery. ‘‘Every time the media hypes psychics, it encourages consumers to waste large amounts of money calling psychic hotlines. Most can ill afford it. It also encourages some police departments to listen to psychics who claim to be able to solve crimes. Not only do ‘psychic detectives’ waste valuable police resources, the psychics sometimes implicate people who later turn out to be innocent.”

Emery said psychics give the illusion of being accurate when people forget the bad predictions or don’t realize how equivocal the forecasts are. Psychic Sylvia Browne, for example, predicted that in 1999 “the Pope will become ill and could die.” Said Emery: “That means she can claim success if the Pope suffers anything from a head cold to a fatal heart attack.” (Browne’s notable predictions for 1999 included forecasts of cures for breast cancer and sudden infant death syndrome [SIDS]. She also said that “The world will not end anytime soon.”) Some of the unambiguous forecasts the psychics were making for the 1990s:

• “Soviet cosmonauts will be shocked to discover an abandoned alien space station with the bodies of several extraterrestrials aboard.
• Fidel Castro will be jailed after his government is overthrown “in a massive revolt.”
• “The U.S. Postal Service will cancel mail delivery on Saturdays.”
• “Cancer will be cured.”
• “Oprah Winfrey will marry the next mayor of Washington, D.C.”
• Liz Taylor will marry Malcolm Forbes.
• “The first successful human brain transplant will be performed.”
• “Public water supplies will be treated with chemicals that will prevent AIDS.”
• “American voters will be able to cast their ballots using touch tone telephones.”
• Deep sea vacation dives to the Titanic will become commonplace.

• Rats carrying the deadly bubonic plague will overrun Los Angeles, sparking mass evacuations.
• Patsy Ramsey will confess that she and her husband killed JonBenet Ramsey.
• Bill Cosby will quit show business and become a born-again preacher.

Psychic predictions for 1999?

Nope.

Those are some of the events that were supposed to have come true during 1998, according to Gene Emery, a contributor to Skeptical Inquirer magazine who has released his annual look at how the psychics fared over the past year.

Emery, who began logging predictions since 1979 to see if the world’s top prognosticators can live up to their claims of being able to forecast the future, said his list for ‘98 shows that, “once again, when it comes to forecasting major, unexpected events, the best psychics have as much clairvoyance as Forest Gump on a bad day.”

Although the Zippergate scandal was clearly the big story of 1998, none of the psychics made any allusions to it in the forecasts he collected a year ago.

“Psychic Sylvia Browne, a frequent guest on the syndicated Montel Williams Show, predicted that ‘Bill Clinton will be exonerated in the Paula Jones case.’ In fact, Jones got a big settlement, and it was Clinton’s deposition in the Jones case that let to the impeachment effort,” Emery said.

Astrologer Athena Starwoman, quoted a year ago in the supermarket tabloid Star, said in her 1998 forecasts that Frank Sinatra’s “cards show him still to have plenty of zing left in his zodiac.” Instead, Sinatra died.

“It was the same in 1997, when the psychics were predicting all kinds of things for Princess Diana, except her death,” said Emery. (For example, the late Jeane Dixon had said 1998 would be the year “Queen Diana will be embroiled in a royal scandal.”)

According to the psychics in the supermarket tabloids, 1998 was also supposed to be the year that:

• Oprah Winfrey bought CBS and made it “the first major network to turn its back on TV violence.”
• Elizabeth Taylor married Burt Reynolds.
• Eddie Murphy ballooned to 300 pounds.
• Kathie Lee Gifford ended up straitjacketed and in a mental institution after her morning show was canceled.
• Laws would be passed requiring kittens and cats to be destroyed after scientists discovered that they are responsible for a mysterious virus that blinds thousands of people in the U.S.
• Nighttime joggers and cyclists began taking a drink that makes their skin glow bright green in the dark.
• Fidel Castro moved to Beverly Hills following the overthrow of his government, and
• “Rising insurance costs (forced) the NFL to eliminate tackle football in favor of two-handed touch.”

Emery said he encourages people to collect their own forecasts for the coming year, pick out the ones that predict truly unexpected events, and wait a year to see for themselves if psychic powers are a lot of hype.

If you look closely at the forecasts, Emery said, it’s amazing how wishy-washy some of them turn out to be, allowing psychics to claim success no matter what happens.

“Many predict things that are already obvious at the beginning of the year, such as media hype over El Nino, skirmishes with Iraq, or Microsoft getting into trouble over its monopolistic practices. Or they forecast things that are bound to happen, such as the stock market going up and down, or erosion on the East Coast,” he said.

With the year 2000 approaching, the hunger for predictions about the next millennium is likely to grow, Emery predicted. “Consumers should realize that if they're paying a psychic to give them special insight, they're probably wasting their money.”

AMHERST, NY— With 1997 drawing to a close, a lot of astonishing things are going to be happening over the next several days.

• Martha Stewart will become the fifth wife of the Sultan of Brunei.
• Jerry Seinfeld will have his character killed off in a freak bathroom accident.
• Bryant Gumbel will have five different wives when he joins a religious cult that preaches polygamy.

Those are the events that are supposed to occur in 1997 if you believe the top psychics, who made their predictions a year ago in publications like The National Enquirer, the Star and the National Examiner.

The biggest embarrassment for the psychics is what they didn’t forecast: the sudden death of Princess Diana. In 1997, Princess Diana was supposed to announce that she would be “moving to Africa to train as a long-distance runner for the Summer Olympics in the year 2000,” according to Shawn Robbins, who claims to have foreseen the assassination attempt on the Pope and is one of the National Enquirer’s “10 top psychics". The psychic who had the best chance of forewarning Diana of possible danger was Derbyshire psychic Rita Rogers. Diana and Emad (Dodi) Fayed visited Rita Rogers on August 13, shortly before their death two and a half weeks later. Obviously the visit made no difference.

Gene Emery, a columnist for SKEPTICAL INQUIRER magazine, who has made a hobby of keeping the forecasts and seeing if they come true, says the psychics seem to have scored as badly in 1997 as they have in past years. “These are supposed to be the best psychics in the country or, in some cases, the world. If these are the best, imagine how bad your neighborhood psychic or favorite hotline psychic would be if put to the test,” said Emery.

Depending on which psychic was writing, 1997 was to be the year that O.J. Simpson would (a.) have his ex-wife’s murder solved by “Murder, She Wrote” star Angela Lansbury, (b.) be “locked away for running over an elderly woman after a night of boozing it up on the town,” or (c.) become a huge hit on French television hosting a “who-dunit” show that investigates unsolved murders in France.”

Among the other forecasts for 1997:

• Pamela Anderson Lee and Howard Stern will star in the title roles in a rock musical version of “Gone With the Wind.”
• Kathie Lee Gifford will disappear for five weeks, “setting off a massive search in several countries.” She will supposedly be found wandering in the Colorado wilderness, suffering from amnesia after being abducted by space aliens.
• Sarah “Fergie” Ferguson will join the cast of “Melrose Place” and, in real life, marry Calvin Klein.
• Madonna will become “so concerned about the quality of children’s TV shows she buys the rights to the Mickey Mouse Club, revives the show and stars in it herself.”

Emery said it’s ironic that the supermarket tabloids, many of which have been striving for credibility in recent years, beginning with their coverage of the O.J. Simpson case, keep publishing the predictions of the same psychics year after year “when it’s clear to anyone who checks that these psychics can’t live up to their claims of being able to predict major, unexpected news events.”

The last tabloid psychic to score on a major prediction was Clarissa Bernhardt, a regular for the National Enquirer. The tabloid gives her credit for predicting “the devastation of Florida by Hurricane Andrew in 1992. In June, 1992, Bernhardt said “Scientists will be shocked in October when ‘earthquake proof’ Florida is hit by a tremor — only weeks after being slammed by the worst hurricane in the state’s history.” The quake didn’t happen, but Andrew did.

However, her other forecasts for that same year (and in subsequent years) reveal that her 1992 prediction was simply a half-lucky guess. Bernhardt said kilts would “become the hottest new fashion since bell-bottoms” (1992), space debris will crash in Lima, Peru “leveling government buildings and killing many of that nation’s leaders,” Rush Limbaugh will save Ted Kennedy from a car wreck just before it bursts into flames, deep-sea explorers will discover a "miraculous over-the-counter baldness cure” in a rare aquatic plant (1993), a "compass” gene will be implanted into dogs and cats so they can always find their way home, Jay Leno will lose his “Tonight Show” job to Johnny Carson and Geraldo Rivera will have his nose broken during an on-air fistfight with Madonna (1996).

In Bernhardt’s crystal ball, 1997 was to be the year “Aliens from an oil- hungry planet will descend on earth and siphon our oil reserves into huge tanker spacecraft for two weeks before vanishing.”

As for 1998, the psychics are already predicting it will be the year when:

• All kittens and cats have to be killed because they carry a virus that is blinding humans;
• Doctors cure the common cold;
• Fidel Castro is overthrown and moves into a Beverly Hills mansion;
• A special drink that makes your skin glow bright green in the dark becomes popular with nighttime joggers and cyclists;
• Deserts will bloom like gardens after scientists create ‘walking vegetables’ that can move from place to place in the quest for water.

Other predictions for 1997 and 1998 can be found in the current edition of the Skeptical Inquirer magazine, which looks at the science behind supernatural claims. The bimonthly magazine is found in bookstores with a good magazine collection, or by subscribing at 1-800-458-1366. Media copies may be obtained by calling Matt Nisbet at 716-636-1425.

If you don’t remember those headlines, you’re not alone. They didn’t happen. But those are some of the events that were supposed to occur in 1996 according to the top psychics who reported their predictions a year ago in the supermarket tabloids such as the National Enquirer, the Sun, and the ever-wacky Weekly World News.

As in previous years, their batting record for forecasting major unexpected news events for the coming year was abysmal.

Here’s a tabloid-by-tabloid rundown of the year that should have been, according to some of the world’s best “psychics.”

The National Enquirer:

• Jay Leno will lose his Tonight Show job to Johnny Carson.
• O. J. Simpson will become a minister after confessing during testimony in a civil suit that he killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
• Good Morning America hostess Joan Lunden will become engaged to Shaquille O'Neal.
• O.J. attorney Johnnie Cochran will be hailed as “the new Bill Cosby” when he plays a defense attorney in a TV comedy that becomes “a smash” hit.
• Barbara Walters will be kidnapped by Middle East terrorists, “but will be freed after ABC agrees to let the terrorists air their views on a three-hour broadcast hosted by Barbara.”

The Globe:

• O. J. prosecutors Marcia Clark and Chris Darden will marry; meanwhile Simpson will join a monastery.
• Susan Lucci finally wins an Emmy but breaks a toe when she drops it on her foot.
• Angela Lansbury will devise “a dramatic departure from Murder, She Wrote by casting herself as the show’s final victim.”

The National Examiner:

• Michael Jackson will undergo a “complete sex change and insist that everyone call him Michelle. . . . His wife, Lisa Marie, will stick by him and they'll develop an even closer relationship."
• Rush Limbaugh will quit his career as a conservative political spokesman to star “in a remake of the series Jake and the Fat Man."
• Comic actor Jim Carrey will get an Oscar after his face freezes in a twisted expression.
• Nuclear missiles will be used to break up a giant asteroid found to be hurtling toward Earth.

The Sun:

• An American astronaut “will give birth to a healthy baby girl during a six-month mission aboard the Russian space station Mir."
• Rush Limbaugh will be the Republican nominee against Bill Clinton, picking Sonny Bono as his running mate.
• The South Pacific island nation of Tonga will land and then strand people on the moon. The U.S. will rescue them.
• The American and National leagues will be disbanded after another baseball strike and NFL owners will sell their teams to the players.

On the medical front, 1996 was supposed to be the year that Star Trek star Patrick Stewart discovered an herbal cure for baldness, actor James Garner discovered a cure for arthritis that people could make in their own kitchens, and a miracle cure for AIDS was found.

The prize for the most embarrassing prediction goes to Mystic Meg, a psychic for the Globe. In the January 2, 1996, issue she said, “Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin reunite for an emotional reunion on TV.” Martin died in December of 1995, around the time the prediction hit the newsstands.

The psychics’ horrible batting average isn’t surprising. They've gotten very few hits since I began saving their predictions around 1980. What continues to be surprising is that the tabloids keep carrying the predictions of the same psychics year after year. Any professional ball player who missed as often as these folks would have been sent to the showers.

A year ago, in response to a similar analysis, National Enquirer executive editor Steve Coz told a reporter from the Dallas Morning News that the list of predictions “isn’t something to be critiqued” because “it’s a fun read, and it’s meant to be taken as that.”

Okay. But in the same interview, Coz said the predictions are published to tell readers, “Here’s what you can look forward to."

In short, the Enquirer tries to have it both ways by trying to build up the credibility of their psychics when they publish the predictions, yet billing the predictions as entertainment when the editors are forced to confront the fact that they keep quoting psychics whose predictions, year after year, have failed.

So what’s in store for 1997?

According to the tabloid psychics, it will be the year plastic surgeons discover a way to give dogs the faces of movie stars, Tammy Faye (wife of disgraced tele-evangelist Jim Bakker) is appointed ambassador to Israel, Americans get a $1,000 tax deduction for every career criminal they kill, scientists discover how to communicate with the dead, time travel becomes as affordable as a Disney World vacation, and Madonna makes a successful run for U.S. Senate.

According to the top psychics who published their prognostications in the supermarket tabloids such as the National Enquirer, the National Examiner and Weekly World News, 1995 was supposed to be the year Rush Limbaugh was forced to go on welfare, Whitney Houston married Mike Tyson, Peter Jennings became the first journalist in space, and Disney World was wiped out by a hurricane.

“Once again, even the most talented psychics seem to have had trouble predicting the major unexpected events of the year,” said Gene Emery, a veteran science writer who compiled the 1995 predictions for the new issue of the Skeptical Inquirer, the country’s first magazine devoted to scientifically exploring claims of the supernatural.

The National Enquirer's stable of psychics, in the tabloid’s January 10 and June 20, 1995, issues, predicted that:

• Socks the cat will be kidnapped and held for $1,000 ransom by a homeless driver who is captured after he also tries to snatch Vice President Albert Gore’s poodle.
• Burt Reynolds and Loni Anderson will remarry.
• Peter Jennings will do the evening news from orbit aboard the Space Shuttle.
• “A child genius will stun judges at a 7th-grade science fair when he presents a working time machine” made from parts of a microwave oven.
• Jay Leno will become David Letterman’s sidekick on Letterman’s “Late Show.”
• “Scientists will discover a beneficial virus that can turn ordinary rocks into a protein-rich food. And some experts will predict the find will lead to the end of world hunger.”
• Tonya Harding will be “denied permission to open the nation’s first all-nude ice skating rink.”

• President Clinton is shot in the jaw by a disgruntled postal worker.
• “A meteor the size of a Buick will strike a used car dealership in Las Vegas. No one will be injured in the crash, but the crater will open up a vast underground reservoir of drinking water, solving the desert town’s water shortage.”
• Basketball player Shaquille O'Neal quits basketball to become Rookie of the Year in baseball.
• Michael Jackson’s “already weakened schnozz” will “permanently collapse” after an outraged mom punches him in the nose during a public appearance.
• Rush Limbaugh will “lose his fortune and become destitute. Forced on welfare, Rush will become a Democrat.”

The psychics at Weekly World News predicted that in 1995 a volcanic eruption would create a new land mass that ties the United States to Cuba, frog legs would become the rage in fast-food restaurants, and 80 percent of Americans will totally shave their heads.

Jeane Dixon, one of the country’s best known psychics, in the July 25, 1995, issue of the Star forecast “a stunning outcome to the O. J. Simpson trial will bring a result no one predicted. I can see that O.J. will walk.”

She was right. But Dixon could just as easily claim success if Simpson had been found guilty or the jury had failed to reach a decision.

“A guilty verdict or hung jury will keep O. J. Simpson in jail through most of this year,” she predicted in the January 17, 1995, issue of the Star. “I don’t see him walking away a free man until an appeal,” Dixon predicted in the April 25, 1995, issue of the tabloid. And in the October 10, 1995, issue, published after the verdict, Dixon predicted that “O.J. will be released from jail, but there will be a second trial and he will be incarcerated at least one more year.”

As always, there were the typical forecasts: of celebrities taking new occupations (psychic Shawn Robbins said Hugh Hefner will give up his Playboy empire and become a sunflower cultivator); promises of cures for AIDS, arthritis, diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease; and predictions that space aliens would be discovered.

Also, there was the usual crop of vague predictions that left plenty of wiggle room in case they didn’t come true.

In the December 13, 1994, issue of the Globe, for example, Mystic Meg forecast that Liz Taylor “will stumble across a formula that could [emphasis added] spell an AIDS breakthrough.” Jeane Dixon said, “A scandal in a religious cult could [emphasis added] lead to murder, suicides, and a doomsday vigil in the spring.”

Sometimes the predictions are laughable because they reflect so little knowledge of the real world, such as when psychics predict that someone will be elected president during the years when a presidential election isn’t scheduled.

Dixon falls into that category with her prediction in the January 17, 1995, issue of the Star, saying, “A new, antibiotic-resistant strain of influenza causes coast-to-coast misery in early winter and again in early spring. Scientists will trace the virus to polluted water.” It’s not surprising. Antibiotics don’t work on viruses, which is why you don’t prescribe them for the common cold, flu, AIDS, etc.

Unfortunately, the psychics gave no warning of the Oklahoma City bombing, they haven't been able to find the Unabomber, and they apparently had no inkling of Christopher “Superman” Reeve’s tragic accident.

As for 1996, the psychics have already said it will be the year Hawaii sinks into the ocean, banana peels are found to cure cancer, Rush Limbaugh becomes the Republican nominee for President, Lance Ito becomes Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, the federal government decides to turn the Grand Canyon into a nuclear waste dump, and all the athletes in the ‘96 Olympics are forced to undergo species tests—after officials learn that a woman who won the gold medal in the shot put is really a girl gorilla.

Hillary Clinton will plead guilty to shoplifting lipstick, an earthquake will turn Florida into an island, and Madonna will marry Boy George.

In addition, the U.S. Surgeon General will announce that TV watching makes men impotent, and Princess Diana will reveal that an appliance repairman and a postal worker fathered her two sons.

Who says? The world’s top psychics.

Those are just a few of the events that were supposed to come true before the end of 1994, according to the forecasts of the self-appointed psychics, whose predictions are published in supermarket tabloids like the National Enquirer, The Star, The Sun, and the Weekly World News.

Because none of the extraordinary predictions have come true yet, “we're either going to see a lot of amazing news over the next few days or it will become clear, once again, that the nation’s psychics aren’t as skilled at predicting the future as some people think,” according to Gene Emery, a science writer and frequent contributor to the Skeptical Inquirer, a magazine that takes a scientific look at claims of supernatural abilities and events and, beginning with the Jan./Feb. 1995 issue, will be published bimonthly in a larger, standard magazine format.

If the forecasts don’t come true, it won’t surprise Emery, who has been collecting predictions in the tabloids since the 1970s. “When it comes to forecasting unexpected events, psychics historically have had an abysmal track record,” said Emery.

According to these top prognosticators, 1994 was destined to be the year:

• Cindy Crawford and Richard Gere became “the proud parents of triplets” (as predicted by Judy Hevenly in the National Enquirer).
• Charles Manson got a sex change operation and was set free from prison (Peter Meers, Weekly World News).
• Scientists “perfected a small four-cylinder car that can run on tap water” (Leah Lusher, Enquirer).
• Jay Leno quit “The Tonight Show” (Barbara Donchess, Enquirer).
• Madonna married a Middle Eastern sheik and became “a totally traditional wife,” complete with long robes and veil (Mystic Meg, Globe).
• Frank Sinatra was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Italy (Micki Dahne, Enquirer).
• Whoopi Goldberg gave up acting to join a convent (John Monti, Enquirer).
• Pope John Paul II decreed that married couples can only have sex on the first Friday of each month (Maria Graciette, Enquirer).
• Office workers fled from the Sears Tower in Chicago after it began to lean like the Tower of Pisa (Maria Graciette, Enquirer).

“As always,” said Emery, “the tabloid psychics missed all the truly unexpected news of 1994, such as the O.J. Simpson case, the Nancy Kerrigan-Tonya Harding affair, the baseball and hockey strikes, and the takeover of Congress by the Republican Party.

“Instead, we had psychics predicting that the Dow-Jones would rise to 5,000, that a national lottery would cut taxes in half, and that a teenager would build (and accidentally detonate) a nuclear bomb in Pageland, South Carolina.”

For 1995, the psychics have already predicted that O.J. Simpson will be acquitted, singer Whitney Houston and boxer Mike Tyson will marry, a plant that grows in northern Florida will cure AIDS, and volcanic eruptions in August will create a new land mass joining Cuba with America.

Will it happen? Emery advises: “Don't hold your breath.”

Psychology Behind Psychic Predictions

One group of scientists and scholars in Buffalo, New York, the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), has been publishing the year-end tally of psychic predictions for the past several years in its quarterly journal (now bimonthly), the Skeptical Inquirer. According to CSICOP, psychics don’t appear to be improving upon their “hit rate” with the passage of time, and currently CSICOP has yet to find any convincing evidence that psychics possess extraordinary talent for seeing the future, finding missing people, or helping solve crimes.

When psychics are tested under conditions that eliminate luck or fraud, their powers evaporate.

Emery said some people argue that the forecasts in the supermarket tabloids are too outrageous to be taken seriously. “But extraordinary things do happen,” he said. “If I predicted a year ago that Michael Jackson would marry Lisa Marie Presley, that would seem pretty outlandish. Yet I would have been right.”

What did the tabloid psychics actually say about Jackson? “They predicted that he would marry Oprah Winfrey, become a traveling evangelist, or have a sex-change operation,” according to Emery.

The science writer said that scientists who have researched psychics and probed the psychology behind their predictions have discovered that prognosticators use a variety of techniques to make the public think they're giving accurate forecasts.

Jeane Dixon, for example, likes to be vague. One of her predictions for 1994 was that “Mike Tyson may soon marry behind prison bars and could become the father of a child in the near future” (emphasis added).

“Other times they predict things we'll probably never hear about,” said Emery. One of Monti’s predictions was that Sally Jessy Raphael and Rush Limbaugh “will become secret sweethearts.”

“If it’s a secret, the prediction becomes impossible to prove wrong,” he said.

In hopes of finding one psychic who can actually predict the future, Emery accepts written forecasts from psychics “as long as they involve unexpected events guaranteed to make headlines. Don't expect me to be impressed if you tell me there will be a scandal in Washington or an earthquake in California.”