Richard Saunders reports on how ‘mediums’ turn tragedy into bad taste entertainment.
In May – June 2026 American Allison Dubois is once again visiting Australia, this time with her “Cold Case” tour, claiming that she will be “working some cold cases that are close to your hearts“.
Twenty years ago she was the latest psychic wonder kid on the block with an unearned reputation for solving crimes for police. The premise of using ‘mediums’ or ‘psychics’ in this way led to the production of the fictional TV show Medium (2005 – 2011).
Writing in Skeptical Inquirer(Vol. 35 No. 4 – 2011) Ryan Shaffer pointed out that:
“In 2010, DuBois was asked by KPHO-TV, a Phoenix, Arizona, CBS affiliate, about a missing baby. The case marks the first publicly reported event in which DuBois has been specific in her predictions and offered a timeline for a criminal case. As it turns out, DuBois’s predictions not only failed to solve the crime but were completely wrong.“
“CBS cancelled Medium, but there is little doubt that the real-life Allison DuBois will continue to claim that she helps law enforcement even if she can’t supply evidence for her claims.“
In 2005 speaking to Rachael Kohnon ABC Radio National’s The Spirit of Things, Dubois wrote off skeptics saying:
“They can be pretty hostile. I think that speaks volumes. They have a chip on their shoulder. Skeptics who do it professionally help nobody in their lifetime. How many people have they really helped to have a better life or to feel better and I think not many if any at all.”
It is too easy for ‘mediums’ to use a strawman argument and paint people who have genuine inquiries and reasonable doubt as just nah-saying, closed-minded, hostile curmudgeons. It’s a cop-out.
Dubois is just one among a very long list of international ‘mediums’ (those who claim to talk to or at least get messages from the dead) who have toured, or are touring Australia. These include names such as Doris Stokes, John Edward, Sally Morgan, Tony Stockwell, David Thompson, Doris Collins, James Van Praagh, Lisa Williams, Nikki Kitt and Margaret Birkin. They pack theatres and are all but guaranteed uncritical free publicity via TV programs, newspapers, magazines and radio.
Dubois has had many appearances on Australian TV over the years with programs such as 9am with David and Kim, Rove, Mornings with Kerri-Ann, Good Morning Australia with Bert Newton, Mornings, Sunrise and The Morning Show giving her major publicity.
Apart from the standard stage show of the genre (“Is there someone in this section of the audience who can relate to a mother figure… on the other side? Had chest pains? Could have an ‘E’ name?”) Dubois, in one of her promotional videos on social media, says of her 2026 tour that “I’m going to be working some cold cases that are close to your hearts.” The cases she has chosen are;
- The Beaumont Children
- William Tyrrell
- Margaret and Seana Tapp
The Beaumont Children
January 2026 marks the 60th anniversary of the disappearance from an Adelaide beach of the three Beaumont children. One of the reasons this case became so famous was the involvement of a so-called ‘psychic’, Gerard Croiset, who was flown out from the Netherlands later that year to use his claimed powers to locate the children. Ultimately this was a fiasco that only served to give false hope and waste police time and resources. A full report of this event can be read in the pages of The Skeptic magazine and heard on the Skeptoid podcast.
In 1990 a ‘psychic’ named June Cox was interviewed by police after she claimed her ‘powers’ led her to the burial place of five missing Adelaide children, including the Beaumonts. She was even allowed to visit a site being searched by police at the time, the Myponga Reservoir south of Adelaide. Again, this came to nothing.
Dolly Adamson, on the Kyneton Paranormal Podcast in April, 2025, claimed to have contacted the ghosts of the Beaumont children using a radio known as a ‘Spirit Box’. She says the ghosts gave information, such as that the abductor was a cannibal. She passed on information to the police but as yet this is just another false trail.
William Tyrrell
This three-year-old boy disappeared from Kendall, NSW in 2014 and is still missing. Among those claiming mystical insights into this case are;
- ‘Australia’s Celebrity Psychic’ Lizzy Rose
- ‘Psychic Detective’ Debbie Malone
- ‘Psychic Medium’ Karen of ‘The High Priestess Studio’ via a ‘Spirit Box’
- The ‘Paranormal Y. E. S. Crew’ (who visited Kendall and wandered about the bushland with a toy Spider-Man to entice the ghost of William to make an appearance by saying “Show us ya bones darlin’.”)
- ‘Psychic Detective’ and ‘Intuitive Reader’ American Pam Coronado
- ‘Psychic Medium’ Roberto Carletti
- Liz Beth Tarot
- Aurora Beth Tarot
- ‘Medium Psychic’ Margaret Divko
There have been no results from all these ‘insights’, with police saying in 2017 “please don’t waste our time; we’re not interested in information from clairvoyants”.
Margaret and Seana Tapp
The mother and daughter were murdered in Ferntree Gully, Victoria in 1984. Mercifully there are no reports of ‘mediums’ trying to contact them, until now.
“Psychics’, ‘Mediums’, ‘Seers’, Diviners’, Tarot ‘Readers’ and their ilk have been wasting police time and resources for decades. As far back as 1935 a report in The Australian Women’s Weekly quotes a Detective-Sergeant saying that “the writers [psychics] are not encouraged and in no single instance known to me has anything of value come from them.”
The Sydney Morning Herald in 1986 reported on missing eight-year-old John Purtell with Chief Superintendent Bob Bradbury saying, “We give no credibility at all to those people [psychics] and we don’t use them in our investigations.”
In 1991, speaking in the Cairns Sunday newspaper, Sergeant Mick Morrison is quoted, “They [psychics] give us some faint hope and build everyone up and then let the family down with a great big thud – I’ve had a gutful of it. There should be a law against it.”
Allison Dubois is ill-advised to exploit these cases as publicity for her tour and in doing so stir up false hope and possibly, owing to public pressure, once again wasting police time and resources on yet another paranormal wild goose chase.
The victims and their families deserve dignity and respect, not exploitation. They should not be turned into yet another ‘psychic sideshow’ to promote a travelling ‘medium’ and sell tickets to a performance. If the aim is justice, resources should be directed where they actually make a difference, that is toward the disciplined, scientific, and forensic work of the police that does solve cold cases, year after year.
Refs:
Medium Allison DuBois Is Tested–and Fails–in the Real World
https://skepticalinquirer.org/2011/07/medium-allison-dubois-is-tested-and-fails-in-the-real-world/
Mark Mayer’s research on Allison DuBois, recorded in 2005
https://skepticzone.libsyn.com/the_skeptic_zone_8_12_dec_2008_
The Blind Seer – Gerard Croiset and the Beaumont Children
https://www.skeptics.com.au/wp-content/uploads/magazine/The%20Skeptic%20Volume%2038%20(2018)%20No%201.pdf
The Case of the Missing Beaumont Children
https://skeptoid.com/episodes/992
Beaumont children: clairvoyant lead
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/120888797
Arnna Beaumont’s Cry for Justice – Kyneton Paranormal Podcast – “He was a cannibal.”
https://kynetonparanormalpodcast.buzzsprout.com/2435430/episodes/17053716-arnna-beaumont-s-cry-for-justice-a-1966-australian-cold-case-solved-with-connections-from-arnna
William Tyrrell Asking Spirit again – “Can I speak to William Tyrell please?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZsj03hfL54&t=907s
William Tyrrell with Verena Y.E.S Crew Hauntings – “Show us ya bones darlin.'”
https://youtu.be/GiHtwV9kDTA?t=1071
Liz Beth Tarot – Who took William Tyrell?
https://youtu.be/l2sEeKYFKVk?t=482
STAR-GAZERS who WANT to Solve CRIMES – The Australian Women’s Weekly 26 Jan 1935
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/page/4607834
Richard Saunders is chief investigator for Australian Skeptics Inc.
