Jon Donnis of Bad Psychics talks to Ghost Connections

Jon Donnis has achieved a certain notoriety among the psychic and paranormal practitioners of this world. Using an alter ego has become accepted by members of his websites and forums by virtue of the death threats and abuse that he has received, both directly and indirectly, which we can attest to.

Jon is the mastermind behind websites Bad Psychics, Stargoss Bloopers, Been to the Movies, and his most recent addition Bad Ghosts, and a hotly debated forum. Besides showing the social side of Jons interests, the first and last of these are perhaps those which attract the most attention, and indeed the threats mentioned above. Jon is frank about his beliefs and is a man driven by achieving the truth and exposing the fraudulent and foolhardy in the fields of mediumship and paranormal investigators and related subjects.

Jon is vague about his interests which also include martial arts, football and Nintendo Wii. He is 28 years old and from Birmingham, England.

Ghost Connections contacted Jon who kindly agreed to take part in an interview with the team and you can read this interview below.

GC – Jon, you are the owner of Bad Psychics website and forum. How long has this Bad Psychics been running and what were its original objectives?

My cousin Nik started the site back in 2003, I took over a year later.

The original objectives were to expose Most Haunted as fake, as well as the two main UK psychics at the time in Colin Fry and Derek Acorah.

GC- Can you tell us how these objectives came about?

Through an annoyance of being around people who were convinced programs like Most Haunted were real, but later on for me, it became more of moral crusade, to stop the vunerable being taken advantage of by people who were using known mentalist techniques.

GC – Along the way have these objectives been changed and if so why?

Yes, we no longer actively try to expose Most Haunted or Derek Acorah, we believe they have been totally exposed, so see no reason to waste our time.

I would also say that we have made a concerted effort to look at more than just psychics, we have looked at paranormal groups, so called ghost investigative equipment as well as expanding the site into Australia, and also into other sister sites looking at other areas of the paranormal.

GC- Do you feel that in that time that these objectives have been reached and in what way?

I think many of our objectives have been reached, but for every instance where we feel we have made a difference, along comes another 10 issues that we need to try and look at.

It is a never ending world of credulity.

GC – Can you give us an example that you are proud of?

I could go on about all the things that we have achieved, but for me personally I feel most proud when I receive a simple email from someone thanking me for opening their eyes, it is a great feeling knowing we have made a difference to someones life, even if small.

GC – During the time that Bad Psychics has been around there have been instances of threats being received by yourself and members. What do you believe this shows about what you achieve?

I think it shows that we are a major force, and that our voice has importance and authority in the psychic industry.

I know of one such psychic who openly blames us for his dwindling audiences, in fact the first 30 minutes of his show is taken up with slagging off us sceptics.

GC – You yourself went to a medium to develop your psychic skills. What were your findings?

I took part in a mediumship course after being challenged by a medium. I was calling mediumship "bullshit" without ever trying it, and in that I was wrong. So I turned up, and applied myself to the course as best I could, with the only promise made being I would not cheat in any way.

I finished top of the class, but I learnt some very hard lessons along the way.

I stopped seeing all mediums as frauds, I learnt that there are many honest mediums out there, just deluded by a lack of knowledge of what they were doing.

I also learned that the best mediums always seem to have a history working in sales or even the police in some cases.

GC – Do you feel this experience has given you more incentive to expose frauds or given you more understanding of the phenomena known as psychic ability?

Definitely the latter, I had a unique experience which I enjoyed, but it also cemented my sceptisism about psychic ability.
The fact I was able to equal or even better, anyone and everyone in that mediumship class, and without cheating, or using any psychic ability taught me alot about delusion and how easy it is to con yourself.

GC – Several of your members (including yourself) have joined other forums and found yourselves excluded from some. What do you think this shows about the forums members / owners?

It shows ignorance, but also it shows that some people want to live in a world of fantasy, and a sceptic will only ever spoil that delusion.

I never exclude anyone from joining my forum, regardless of their beliefs.

GC- Bearing in mind the aims of Bad Psychics do you feel that there is a fair balance of beliefs on your forum and if not how could this be achieved?

It honestly makes no difference to me what ratio of belief to sceptisism there is on my forum. The forum is purely a place for people to chat and interact.
It could be gone tomorrow or not. My main interest is that of the main site.

On the forum I talk as myself, a guy from Birmingham with an educated opinion on things.

But on the site I talk in facts, I present the evidence, we expose the frauds.

As time passes we go through stages where we have more believers on the forum, then it might change to sceptics.

Forums change, and despite what some people think, one member however loud does not make a forum.

It amuses me sometimes how people take it all so seriously, I imagine these noobs in front of their pc, planning out their little "goodbye" speech, in an effort to make the most impact.

I find it all quite childish to be honest, which is why I find it hard to take at all seriously.

Despite my forum being quite large, I only really take part in two sections, that being the sections about psychics and general sceptisism.

GC – Noting that your membership is global do you think there is any difference in views around the world?

The only difference would be the knowledge of the member, for example an Australian member might know more about someone like David Thompson, where as an English member would know more about Acorah, and so on.

Generally I would say that despite where you are from, you are all basically the same in your differences.

GC – You also talk about Paranormal Investigation Groups on Bad Psychics. Bearing in mind some groups are commercial enterprises and some are private teams, do you have a view that any are better than others and what is the distinction?

Yes many are better than others, but I have still yet to come across a single group I would be happy to recommend.

I would say the group I am closest to, and respect the most would be Para.Science, other than them I would say it is purely a level of credulity.

Whether a group uses a psychic, or if they wave about an EMF meter, they are still never gonna prove the existance of the paranormal, I would say that 99.999% of groups are wasting their time.

Paranormal investigation is purely a social activity these days, mainly for housewives and Pagans

GC – Do you have any views on famous photographs that purport to show ghost manifestations?

I like the photos from the Enfield Poltergeist case, mainly because they are so laughable, infact one of your own members made quite a good replications.

To be honest I have little interest in such photos as they are so easily faked.

In the world of big brother, CCTV everywhere, mobile phones with cameras, night vision and so on, we still don't have a single convincing piece of footage, what does that tell you.

GC- Ghost Connections have re-created famous photographs purporting to show ghosts, paranormal phenomena and spirit manifestations, and shown that they can be faked. Does this automatically mean that the originals are fakes or just that its possible to fake them (in your opinion)?

As I touched on in the previous answer.
The fact that something can be so easily faked does cast great doubt on the original.

It is a simple question of rationality, what is more likely when two outcomes are near identicle, only a fool would believe in the explanation that includes breaking the laws of physics.

GC – Sceptics and believers seem to be at loggerheads over what exists and what doesn't in the world of mediumship and the paranormal. Do you think that despite their view points there is room for a common ground and what do you think this is?

Forget the sceptics, the believers cant even agree on what is real.
I could bring you 2 random top mediums from the SNU, and they couldn't even agree what they believe in, so how can they expect us sceptics to take them seriously when they can't even agree themselves?

The common ground for the mediums is money.

I find it hard to give you a common ground for believers and sceptics as there will always be that difference.

GC – Being a sceptic yourself, have you encountered anyone you particularly admire in this field and if so who and why?

There are few people in the field I respect, as it seems that everyone has an alterior motive, sceptics especially.

I would say I have a lot of respect for Philip Escoffey also known as The Grey Man, he is a mentalist and would make almost anyone gasp in amazement at his abilities.

Through my correspondance with him, he is one of the few people I have spoken too that has great morals and is happy to just get by.

GC – Have you had any experiences yourself that have made you think about the possibility of life after death?

I dont need experiences to think about the possibility of life after death. In fact this athiest prays to god every night that he is wrong about the afterlife, because the last thing I want is to die and thats it.
I want to believe more than anything else, the problem is that I need a bit more proof than a medium talking about those legal papers in an old biscuit tin to convince me.

GC – Do you think that somewhere down the line there will be definitive evidence one way or the other and how do you think this will be achieved?

There will never be conclusive evidence that such things dont exist, mainly because that is impossible, you cant prove a negative.

I also think there will not be definitive evidence for such abilities or an afterlife either, I hope I am wrong.

I just think it is so easy to prove the claims of psychics, yet they always fail when you remove the chance to cheat, so if in 70 years of real scientific study they couldn't prove anything, then I dont hold out much hope for the future.

GC - You have recently created Bad Ghosts in the same vein to include the poor side of paranormal investigations as we have outlined above. Did you feel that the amount of material open for debate in this field necesitated another site?

Definitely, in fact if I had the resources and time, I could create another 5 sites on various aspects of the paranormal that all have enough matters of interest to explore, whether it be the more religious side of things with tele-evangelists, or voodoo curses, at the end of the day all of these industries have one thing in common, and that is fooling people.

I created BadGhosts after getting a nudge from one of my admins, I have yet to find a single paranormal group I would be willing to put a "BadPsychics Recommend" banner too, I hope one day to find such a group.

GC - Stargoss Bloopers is another of your sites. Can you tell us a little about that?

It is a site created when I was bored, I found myself with quite a few clips from Most Haunted rehersals of the crew messing about, these clips didn't really have much value for BadPsychics, but thought they would make people laugh.

That site now has a few hundred clips of various things.

Your readers should check it out at www.stargoss.co.uk

GC - You are obviously quite a movie buff too with your Been to the Movies site. Do you feel that the relatively recent increase in films is a paranormal vein has been spurred on by more interest created by the likes of Most Haunted or vice versa?

I like to think I am quite the movie buff, www.beentothemovies.com even got mentioned on the BAFTAS by Jonathan Ross in front of 500 million viewers, which was nice.

As for Most Haunted it is a tiny show on a cable TV channel, it simply does not get enough viewers to affect something as big as the Hollywood movie industry.

In fact the Most Haunted style is a direct copy of films such as Blair Witch Project, before this film there were very few if any paranormal investigative tv shows that use the "handycam" model.

The movie industry tends to create its own phazes, when one film that is released is popular then all of the main film companies will jump on the bandwagon, recently it was Greek Mythology with films such as 300, Troy, Alexander and so on.

The paranormal has been of great entertainment value in movies for many many years, I dont think that now there is a greater or lesser amount of such films released than there has been in the past.

Ghost Connections would like to thank Jon for undertaking this interview.