Has there been a more absurd segment ever on UM?

I'm not even going to debate her "psychic" abilities, but when they show the gold "sweat" and the gems falling out of her eyes, it borders on a level of crazy that has never been seen. You can actually watch her fingers separate as the gems are said to fall out of her eye.

The funniest part to me is that they have witnesses who swear the gold foil just materialized in front of their eyes. Nope. Total fake.

Not surprisingly, this woman seems to have disappeared from the public eye.

Magic Rock & Aphrodisiac Chocolate were more absurd. At least with the stuff coming out of eyes it is more plausible that something supernatural could be happening. It was certainly an incredible visual watching it as a 14 year old without much critical thinking. As a 12 year old I just laughed at the Magic Rock.

Magic Rock & Aphrodisiac Chocolate were more absurd. At least with the stuff coming out of eyes it is more plausible that something supernatural could be happening. It was certainly an incredible visual watching it as a 14 year old without much critical thinking. As a 12 year old I just laughed at the Magic Rock.

Magic Rock FTW. At least there's some trickery going on in the Katie segment no matter how obviously fake it is. The Magic Rock was just a story about how a family had a run of good luck and oh yeah our kid found a rock in the woods. Maybe the two are related.

The Magic rock episode was pretty ridiculous, but I was more irritated by the Katey "gold" segment because she was not only clearly and deliberately crafting a hoax, but she was also very audacious about it. Every time I watch that segment, I want to reach into the screen and smack her.

Magic Rock & Aphrodisiac Chocolate were more absurd. At least with the stuff coming out of eyes it is more plausible that something supernatural could be happening. It was certainly an incredible visual watching it as a 14 year old without much critical thinking. As a 12 year old I just laughed at the Magic Rock.

I'll take the magic rock over gold tears. The magic rock could just be seen as a good luck charm ala rabbits foot, a four leaf clover.

I really don't see how golden tears is more plausible than a good luck charm, but otay.

The fertility statues are up there, too. I'd be more impressed if these women didnt have a significant other.

I'll take the magic rock over gold tears. The magic rock could just be seen as a good luck charm ala rabbits foot, a four leaf clover.

I really don't see how golden tears is more plausible than a good luck charm, but otay.

It's not more plausible, but there's a mystery to the sweating gold and crying gems even though the answer was obvious and it was a hoax. There's no mystery to solve with the magic rock. Those people just had some good fortune. You can't come on a show called Unsolved Mysteries without having some mystery to your story.

It's not more plausible, but there's a mystery to the sweating gold and crying gems even though the answer was obvious and it was a hoax. There's no mystery to solve with the magic rock. Those people just had some good fortune. You can't come on a show called Unsolved Mysteries without having some mystery to your story.

There's no mystery to her magic tricks, they're just magic tricks. I can cuff jewels in my hands and pour them down my face to give the illusion that I'm crying jewels.

And apparently you can come on Unsolved Mysteries without mystery to your story, they did. Who's to say their rock wasn't magical? I can't disprove it, but I can disprove her magic tricks. I prefer to see a family fall on good luck with an obvious good luck charm, than a scam $5 "magician".

I get what you're saying though, but get what I'm saying, her magic tricks aren't more convincing than a magical rock.

The fertility statues are up there, too. I'd be more impressed if these women didnt have a significant other.

Oh God, we occasionally get those stories here in the UK to this day on news shows & in the papers-usually based in a supermarket & 'every' woman that sits on a certain chair on a particular checkout falls pregnant.

I haven't seen the magic rock segment in forever.

I loved that segment as a little kid. But yeah. I imagine if I watched it now, it would be pretty silly.

Just watched the Katie segment for the first time in years.

Having watched The Magic Rock numerous times, this one is worse....Don't remember the infamous aphrodisiac chocolate segment, so can't comment on that one.

I'm ashamed to admit that as a young child the "sweating gold" freaked me out, watching it as an adult it's beyond ridiculous that something so obviously fake would scare me as a kid; especially as a horror movie fanatic, The Exorcist, Nightmare On Elm Street, Halloween and Friday The 13th (along with countless other horror watched as a child didn't scare me at all) but somehow gold sweat lady did....Ugh!

I remember watching this as a kid and was bewildered. Now I love how they had people disprove her condition right on the show!

I remember watching this as a kid and was bewildered. Now I love how they had people disprove her condition right on the show!

I know exactly what you mean. I felt the same way when I saw this as a 9-10 year old when it first aired.

Just watched the Katie segment for the first time in years.

Having watched The Magic Rock numerous times, this one is worse....Don't remember the infamous aphrodisiac chocolate segment, so can't comment on that one.

I'm ashamed to admit that as a young child the "sweating gold" freaked me out, watching it as an adult it's beyond ridiculous that something so obviously fake would scare me as a kid; especially as a horror movie fanatic, The Exorcist, Nightmare On Elm Street, Halloween and Friday The 13th (along with countless other horror watched as a child didn't scare me at all) but somehow gold sweat lady did....Ugh!

Exactly, that & the haunted bunk beds segments look ridiculous as a critical thinking adult, but as a fairly uncritical adolescent come across scary as hell because of the visuals. As a 14 or so year old I had no real concept of whether ectoplasm or this kind of stuff was legit, I was only reading books or newspapers that promoted that stuff as real.

I know exactly what you mean. I felt the same way when I saw this as a 9-10 year old when it first aired.

Because it's nasty. Someone crying jewels, or having gold come from their skin makes me itch.

Can I just comment on how much I *love* the title of this thread? "Katie, the Gold Sweating Psychic" just sounds like a bad B-film.... :D

Can I just comment on how much I *love* the title of this thread? "Katie, the Gold Sweating Psychic" just sounds like a bad B-film.... :D

HAHAHA! I didn't think of that, but you are right. That would make for a great movie title in the game Beyond Balderdash. Can you come up with the plot for the movie "Katie, the Gold Sweating Psychic"? :lol:

HAHAHA! I didn't think of that, but you are right. That would make for a great movie title in the game Beyond Balderdash. Can you come up with the plot for the movie "Katie, the Gold Sweating Psychic"? :lol:
Make the movie and let Elvira host it! It'd be pure gold, pun intended.

What season was this from?

Season 3 episode 7

I kept waiting for an update on the Magic Rock and...nothing.

This one is way up there on my list of the biggest BS mysteries UM ever featured.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Kind of goes for basically most of the 'Unexplained' segments.

Watching it aged 14 scared the hell out of me. Watching it aged 41 it just makes me laugh. Sticking tin foil card on herself & palming objects. Predicting a large amount of ganja will be found where everybody there knows it regularly comes in there. The chances of her having not looked through her husband's photo albums or him not having framed photos of him in the house previously are remote. The only one of any mild interest was the burglary, but most likely the investigator had shared info with her about it, or she had coaxed it out of him without him realising.

:D Thanks for bumping this, I LOL'd just seeing the thread title again

I wish Katie would drip some of that gold sweat in my mouth, nomsaiyan

I can understand being a phony psychic (it’s reprehensible but I understand), but claiming to be able to sweat gold and cry diamonds?! You’re just setting yourself up for failure, whereas if you claim poorly, vaguely defined powers that would only have negligible physical proof to begin with, you can sucker people out of money for years.

I can understand being a phony psychic (it’s reprehensible but I understand), but claiming to be able to sweat gold and cry diamonds?! You’re just setting yourself up for failure, whereas if you claim poorly, vaguely defined powers that would only have negligible physical proof to begin with, you can sucker people out of money for years.

Would be interesting to know what happened to her. Did she end up becoming one of those awful cable television psychics so popular during the 1990's & doing private readings or did she just fade into obscurity/suffer an early death? Since no name or details of her were given we have no way of knowing. Certainly of the many famous or exposed psychics out there I haven't seen any of them who look like her. Could be she just wanted her five minutes of fame & was satisfied with it.

just watched this segment today again for the first time in a very long time. I generally never even bother with these psychic things but was on the computer and decided to let it play in the background. They start off the segment with her accomplishment of figuring out what house was robbed and she went as far as to convince this hard nosed detective who was a skeptic but decided to try her out anyway (they never explain why he would waste his time) and she picks the house out and figures out what was stolen. Hooray! Of course they never mention if she actually helps track down the criminal who robbed the contents of the wooden box in the "blue room". From there her psychiatrist goes on to show us incredible film footage of her sweating gold. Next a diamond appears to fall out of her eye and some other kind of rock falls out of her ear! I do remember watching this like many of you guys as a kid and I didnt really question it much now I am shocked they would even waste the time to film and air such nonsense. At the end to quote Dennis Farina "Is Katie a talented fraud? If so it seems odd that she has never tried to profit in anyway from her abilities" Oh come on guys you put her on a nationally syndicated tv show thats profit pure and simple.

One last bit. Kudos to the magician that explained the palming technique not that anyone needed it explained it was clear as day what she was doing with her hands and of course the two girls who went out and bout foil paper painted gold and "with a little hairspray" was bale to get it to stick to my face, stomach and tongue "and I cant talk and sometimes swallow" She gets the prize for going over board to disprove what needed no disproving.

I typically scoff at these ridiculous segments, but after reading this (http://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/071527.html) lengthy background on Katie, I don't know anymore. Never saw this article before until I saw the UM wiki article about this case. Ignoring the gold foil crap, which I've always thought was bogus, but focusing on the psychic aspect of this case, and I can see why UM profiled it. She did solve the burglary, and did predict the drugs washing up on shore, which is pretty remarkable, IMO. Especially for someone who dropped out of school in the 2nd grade to take care of her mother and was functionally illiterate. Granted, someone could have been feeding her this information, but why? Just to help some random cops on a burglary on some hoity toity area in Florida?

The article I linked is pretty fair in terms of discussing her, and seems more interested in her apparent psychic abilities. It kind of dismisses the gold foil (emphasis mine):

In any case, there’s another reason to doubt that the foil is exuded through Katie’s skin. Several different analyses of many samples reveal that the gold-colored foil is actually brass, roughly 80 percent copper and 20 percent zinc. Considering the quantity of foil removed from Katie’s body, for Katie to have “sweated” the foil through the pores of her skin would have required lethal amounts of the metals in her system. Besides, blood work on Katie has never turned up the abnormalities one would expect if Katie had been “manufacturing” the brass from substances already inside her.

I’ve had Katie’s foil analyzed at several labs, and none have found anything obviously remarkable about it. We looked at it under scanning electron microscopes at two University of Maryland campuses, and analytical chemists on my campus also began work on a careful study. I’ve also had the foil scrutinized at Denver University, Johns Hopkins University (JHU), and the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). My experience with the Johns Hopkins Department of Materials Science and Engineering is especially noteworthy.

At first, department chair Bob Green and his colleagues were intrigued when I introduced them to the details of the case, including the strong reasons for thinking that the foil manifestations were not fraudulent. They graciously agreed to see whether anything in the foil’s underlying structure distinguished it from commercially available samples of brass leaf, usually called “Dutch metal” or “composition leaf.” Their analysis determined that Katie’s foil had the same granular structure as ordinary pressed or rolled leaf, like that of the commercial samples.

Also something that I found interesting was that this article claims that Katie's psychic visions started after her 2nd marriage, which apparently was abusive. It also gives a somewhat reasonable hypothesis as to why she would apparently fake the gold foil and/or psychic abilities:

Although Katie clearly shows no interest in making a name for herself as a psychic, even the reasonably suspicious might still wonder about possible, and perhaps less obvious, secondary gains. Perhaps there are other reasons why Katie might want to manufacture evidence of golden leaf appearing on her body. After all, even if Katie seems disinterested in fame and fortune, it would be foolish to claim that she gets no psychological benefit from her apparent psychic abilities. For one thing, Katie gets a lot of respectful attention from people who ordinarily would never have come into contact with her, including scientists and other academics. And it’s likely that Katie holds the somewhat naive view that these people are distinguished and deserving of admiration, simply because they’re members of the scholarly community. (Those who are actually members of that community seldom make this mistake.) Furthermore, Katie’s psychic achievements might also help shift the balance of power in her marriage in ways she finds advantageous, although my impression is that Tom wavers between liking the attention he receives in Katie’s wake and resenting the fact that Katie is the real person of interest.

Isn't it possible that she actually did have some sort of psychic visions, and used the gold foil as a way to gain more "power" (for lack of a better word) in her abusive 2nd marriage?

[QUOTE=TheCars1986] She did solve the burglary, and did predict the drugs washing up on shore, which is pretty remarkable, IMO. Especially for someone who dropped out of school in the 2nd grade to take care of her mother and was functionally illiterate. Granted, someone could have been feeding her this information, but why? Just to help some random cops on a burglary on some hoity toity area in Florida?

Not remotely-she likely gleaned or was told all the information she needed by the detective while traveling in the car-this is easy to do & a common factor in the psychic community. The drugs was totally unremarkable as everybody in that area knew drugs washed up there on a regular basis. Why feed her the information? The cop being a true believer perhaps, or for publicity, money etc. Most people don't even know they are feeding people information, or having it squeezed out of them


Also something that I found interesting was that this article claims that Katie's psychic visions started after her 2nd marriage, which apparently was abusive. It also gives a somewhat reasonable hypothesis as to why she would apparently fake the gold foil and/or psychic abilities: Isn't it possible that she actually did have some sort of psychic visions, and used the gold foil as a way to gain more "power" (for lack of a better word) in her abusive 2nd marriage?

It is highly likely that her visions started after an abusive relationship-suddenly she was on her own, damaged & started inventing things to fill the void left. Of course we have no way of knowing whether she has psychic powers as she refused to submit to independent testing, or to even reveal her name so nobody can look into her & her past. So all we have are the farcical edited videos by somebody with a vested interest & the ex cops testimony. That we have heard nothing from her in the nearly 30 years since speaks volumes-she tried it on, but was exposed palming & her other feats were able to be reproduced.

It is highly likely that her visions started after an abusive relationship-suddenly she was on her own, damaged & started inventing things to fill the void left. Of course we have no way of knowing whether she has psychic powers as she refused to submit to independent testing, or to even reveal her name so nobody can look into her & her past. So all we have are the farcical edited videos by somebody with a vested interest & the ex cops testimony. That we have heard nothing from her in the nearly 30 years since speaks volumes-she tried it on, but was exposed palming & her other feats were able to be reproduced.

I guess my main issue is why did she resort to the gold foil, if she truly were having "visions"? And in terms of the burglary, I could see her being led by the detective to find the house and know other details, but he specifically told her there were 2 suspects (in an attempt to trick her into agreeing), but she corrected him and said there were 3.

I guess my main issue is why did she resort to the gold foil, if she truly were having "visions"? And in terms of the burglary, I could see her being led by the detective to find the house and know other details, but he specifically told her there were 2 suspects (in an attempt to trick her into agreeing), but she corrected him and said there were 3.

She probably correctly figured that UM were likely inundated with psychic claims-90% of which probably get rejected, but a psychic phoning up claiming she can also excrete gold foil & stones from her eyes etc is pretty much a visual that is guaranteed to make the air.

Again we only have his word for this-recordings of psychic conversations with people for a show James Randi did here in the UK showed people had no memory of how many names had been thrown out by the psychic giving them a reading, they only remembered the hits which were what you would expect from random chance of throwing dozens of names out there.

Katie can team up with Brett Butler, who claims to be psychic now. LOL

I just saw this for the first time in my own memory. What got me was the “video evidence” of the gold sweats. All that was shown was after it had started. Video of gold emerging from her pores would carry the burden of proof much better.

Yeah just like others I loved the unexplained segments as a kid but now I find them by far the worst part of UM.
It's embarrassing watching them and it bothers me that they gave a worldwide platform for con artists.

If we could get Katie to sit in the Chair of Death, all the while touching the Magic Rock and eating chocolate...

She would be fun at parties, get togethers. She could of appeared at freak shows before they went away.

https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/gold-leaf-lady

And here I was, just thinking--with the absurdity of living in 2020, I should go on a nostalgia trip, watch 1980s and 1990s TV, and immerse myself in the past when everything was more normal.

I look at this segment and I scroll down a social media site and I ask myself....what has really changed in the last quarter century. not much. people believe what they want to believe. so I'm not going to over analyze it. for its day UM was a good show that covered a lot of different material.

https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/gold-leaf-lady

I think that article has a good point towards the end about the analysis of the foil. The UM segment shows that female using hairspray to stick foil to her body, but there was no foreign material or chemicals found on the foil that is alleged to have come from Katie.

If we could get Katie to sit in the Chair of Death, all the while touching the Magic Rock and eating chocolate...

You left out “touching the fertility statues.” :p

I just saw this for the first time in my own memory. What got me was the “video evidence” of the gold sweats. All that was shown was after it had started. Video of gold emerging from her pores would carry the burden of proof much better.

That’s what I don’t understand. I just watched this one again, and from what I could tell, she was just showing up this way? There was no video or photographic evidence of her actually sweating gold. It was absolutely bizarre how this was able to be aired.