People laugh while scrolling their phone. Sylvia Browne looks concerned.
If you lived through the '90s and early aughts and happened to watch The Montel Williams Show or Larry King Live, you probably remember their "resident psychic," Sylvia Browne. With her flaxen blonde hair and very short bangs, Browne claimed to be a medium for "angels" and purported to be clairvoyant when audience members asked her questions.
Of course, it wasn't just Millennials watching. Many members of previous generations would, often secretly, enjoy her segments with abandon like a sci-fi zombie B-movie. It wasn't until we had a little hindsight that we could measure her extremely confident-sounding statements and understand that...many of them simply were not true.
Near the end of last year, people who grew up in this era began making compilations of some of Browne's most outrageous, inappropriate, and often laughably wrong predictions. The trend went so incredibly viral that it has picked up steam again, and these clips continue making the rounds.
In one montage of clips, we see person after person bravely stand up and ask Sylvia questions. Often they'll ask about someone who has gone missing. Browne's answers are curt and to the point. "He drowned" seems to be a big one. To one woman who asked about her father, Sylvia matter-of-factly states, "He's alive. He's in Florida."
A common question Montel often asked after Browne's declarations was, "Does that make sense?" Usually the answer was, "No, but thank you," as the audience member gingerly took their seat.
The best part of watching these clips continue to go viral is the communal joy it's bringing to the comment sections (not to mention the nostalgia and the jokes). One person writes that their life schedule was dependent on whether or not Browne was booked as a guest that day. "If Sylvia was on, I'd skip school."
Amanda Seyfried in a scene from the movie Mean Girls. Giphy, Paramount Pictures
This person jokes after seeing the woman who was told her father has been in Florida for decades: "Her dad in Florida watching this: Darn it!"
Another acknowledges Browne's go-to answer. "Sylvia, I forgot my middle name…." "It drowned." "Okay, thank you."
And here's another spin on it: "5 years ago my father went missing while climbing Mount Everest I was wonde....." "He drowned in the Titanic." "Thank you."
Over on Threads, @Robbylernan posted quite a few Browne clips, claiming, "I went down a Sylvia Browne rabbit hole last night and I laughed my a-- off for an hour."
One person on the thread reminisces about their favorite Browne moment: "The best one was when she told that reporter that the girl in the picture was kidnapped and dead and the reporter said, 'That picture is me.' And she looked at the woman and said, 'You weren't kidnapped?' BRUHHH."
Note: Her predictions weren't all completely wrong. In fact, The Daily Mail recently shared a Browne prediction that went viral during the COVID-19 pandemic. Browne reportedly stated, "In around 2020, a severe pneumonia-like illness will spread throughout the globe, attacking the lungs and bronchial tubes and resisting all known treatments."
That said, skeptics debunked her claims for years. In a piece for TV Insider, freelance entertainment Martin Holmes reminds readers of the time "Browne told Louwanna Miller her missing daughter, Amanda Berry, was 'not alive,' explaining to the distraught mother, 'Your daughter's not the kind who wouldn't call.'" Holmes adds, "Berry was found alive in 2013 after she escaped years of captivity."
In 2010, Skeptical Inquirer Magazine noted, "Despite her repeated claims to be more than 85 percent correct," a study reported that "Browne has not even been mostly correct in a single case."
Wrong or right, it's the wrongness that seems to bring the most delight to those who are dipping into the nostalgia. Even Saturday Night Live got in on the fun.
Amy Poehler spoofs Sylvia Browne on SNL. www.youtube.com, Saturday Night Live, NBC Universal