Personal Life
Sylvia Browne, born Sylvia Shoemaker, grew up in Kansas City, Missouri. Her father was Jewish and had many jobs, including mail delivery, jewelry sales and time as the vice president of a major freight line. Her mother was Episcopalian, and her maternal grandmother Ada Coil was a devout Lutheran. However, Browne said in 2001 that she was Jewish.
Browne says that visions started appearing at age five and that her grandmother Ada Coil, who she said was a psychic medium, helped her understand why she had them. Browne also asserts that her great-uncle was also a psychic medium and was "rabid about UFOs."
Browne started to give claimed psychic readings in 1974 and has attracted followings of supporters and detractors. She has given thousands of one-on-one readings and with a wide variety of groups and individuals. As of 2008, she charges $850 for a 20-30 minute telephone reading. Browne claims to have provided information to police departments and the FBI as a psychic detective. In at least one case that James Randi researched, a police officer that Browne claimed to work with did not work at the police department.
In April 2008, Sylvia Browne launched a website billed as "an online spirituality destination that includes articles, blog postings, and videos from Sylvia."
On March 21, 2011 Browne suffered a massive heart attack in Hawaii and her website asked supporters for donations to her church. In May 2003, she had told Larry King in an interview that she will die when she's 88 years old.
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“The dialectic between change and continuity is a painful but deeply instructive one, in personal life as in the life of a people. To ‘see the light’ too often has meant rejecting the treasures found in darkness.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)