Predictions That Didn't Work Out

It is the time of the year when psychics trot out their predictions for the new year, and in this case, the new decade, if you believe the decade begins with a zero... and no, I don’t want to start a debate on this.

I bring this up because I have been converting my audio tapes to CDs, and in 1996, I interviewed Irene Hughes on my old radio show on KTSM-AM in El Paso, Texas. I wanted to get some predictions from her so that we might revisit them in the future and see how she had done. Well, she didn’t give us much to go on, remaining vague about what was going to happen, but we did pin her down a couple of times... and I have found other predictions she made over the years, predications, rather than claims of accuracy that were published after the fact.

One of the callers to the January 6, 1996 show wanted to know what the Stock Market would do. She talked about a four hundred point difference and how she had made that prediction prior to the crash of 500 points in the days before that happened in the late 1980s, all without answering his question. The caller asked where the market would be on December 31, 1996.

She said, "Sir, it will have crashed... I think it’s going to go way down... it’s going to lose a thousand points... this market is going to start losing a lot of points, like a thousand points and two weeks later, it may lose a thousand and then you see it trickle down a little, come up a little and trickle down... by the end of this year and April of next [1997] that [it’s] maybe 400 points..."

By the end of 1996, the Stock Market was up1400 points at 6448.27. The trend for the entire year was upward with the normal little retreats as the climb continued.

I tried to pin her down on the presidential election. She said that the Republicans were leaning toward Buchanan and that Dole would retire... but anyone paying attention to the election news at the time might have been able to predict that. The Republicans eventually selected Dole over Buchanan, but she was vague enough about exactly what she said and what she meant that she could call it a hit. I was left underwhelmed.

She said that Clinton would win in a landslide in 1996. But Clinton was the president and they aren’t defeated often. Clinton won, but not in a landslide. He didn’t even get 50% of the popular vote with a third party candidate bleeding off some of Dole’s support.

In a similar vain, back in the 1970s, Hughes predicted that Jimmy Carter would win a second term and he would have a black vice president. She said that Barack Obama would not win the presidency, and now says that he will be a one term president. She said that the president elected in 1980 would die in office and it would be somewhere near Russia. So far she was wrong on just about everything. We don’t know if Obama will only have one term.

She also suggested, back in the 1980s, that the two-party system would expand to three and that this new party, whatever it was, would win in 1984. Of course, there have been many attempts at creating a viable third party, but all have failed. Ross Perot came the closest but he self-destructed and we still have the two parties in power.

Of the Super Bowl that year, she said that it would be Kansas City and Green Bay, though that might change. In the end it was Dallas and Pittsburgh, which is what I said. I even said that Dallas would win by ten. She couldn’t even predict which two teams would be in the game, let alone predict the winner.

She predicted in 2007 that the Cubs would win the Pennant in 2008. They won their division but not the Pennant and they did not appear in the World Series.

She predicted that the Ayatollah Khomeini would be assassinated in 1983. He died of a heart attack, in a hospital, in 1989

I could go on, but is there a point? Her answers, for the most part were vague, and as she discussed things with the callers, I could hear her gathering information and then giving it back in different words. If a caller asked about finances, she talked a little about that and then said things should improve in the next year, especially after she learned that a caller was moving to another job.

She told a caller that he was involved with two children, meaning that there were two children somewhere in his life. He had no kids, he had no nieces or nephews, he wasn’t dating a woman with kids, but she insisted that there were two kids somewhere... maybe in the future.

I though she was rude to some of the callers but she was quick to take me to task as she was grilled by a caller. I should have stopped the call she said. But he was saying all the things I wanted to say, but felt, as the host, I had to be polite. Besides, had she been a true psychic, she should have known it was coming and been able to deal with it. She couldn’t... and that I suppose, says all that needs to be said.