Was she a true medium or a scam artist?

Here's my tuppence worth: No one has ever produced a shred of evidence that mediums are other than a con game. Others here have noted Houdini's efforts in this area. Just as I cannot prove that there isn't a small, invisible cow sitting atop the Washington Monument, I cannot prove that the deceased are something other than deceased. I'll simply note the utter lack of credible evidence for either. (I don't consider people's beliefs or things written in an old book to be credible evidence of anything other than the fact that some people believe things for which there is no credible evidence.)
Myra seems to have suffered from mental illness, starting perhaps with wanting so painfully to fit in with her older relatives' supposed "gifts", coupled with the trauma of her child's stillbirth. Only an emotionally damaged person would be so willing to kill a child for her own aggrandizement. The film seems to go both directions at times as to whether Myra believed her own stories.

I have seen enough to know I have seen too much. -- ALOTO

In the book she is a true psychic but not a medium. She uses her psychic abilities to convince people she is a true medium. The book ends very differently than the movie. If you never plan on reading the book scroll down....

























In the book, the husband accidentally kills the little girl. They go ahead with the kidnapping, but obviously the little girl is never returned. The parents of of the girl visit her hoping she can connect them with the spirit world. But the father of the girl is himself a latent medium, he just doesn't know it (the book has a bit on this earlier on). He triggers a genuine spirit connection, invoking he ghost of the girl who describes her own murder.

[deleted]

Wow, I somehow didn't think there was any other option other than her just being a scam artist.

She actually does say in the movie that she began the practice of telling herself she had special powers because facing the alternative was too difficult.

There are no 'true mediums', in the movie or elsewhere.

I guess you missed the whole climax of the film. The point of the movie, the twist at the end, is that she read her husbands mind at the end, she has a psychic episode while holding Billy's hand, she read his mind, she saw the child was under a tree not dead. That is the irony since her crazy plot was to gain fame and accolades by proving to the world that she was a real psychic, and to make herself feel like a hero, since she was mocked and humiliated as a child by her mother for not being psychic like they were. This was the psychology behind her psychosis. She was a psychopath and had no intention of ever returning the child from the beginning.

A scam, who used the seances to exteriorize her psychological problems. If she knew the girl wasn't dead, I think it has more to do with subconsciously knowing her husband would not and could not do it than paranormal clue-dropping.

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