When Uri Geller was booked to appear on The Tonight Show, host Johnny Carson (a former magician himself) was understandably skeptical about Geller's claims and had called up professional illusionist and psychic head-stomper James Randi to ask how the tricks might really be done. As Randi explained, the easiest way to bend a spoon with your mind would be to spend a few minutes before the show bending the spoon back and forth with your hand until the metal is so weak that it just falls limp when you hold it up to the camera.

With this in mind, Carson surprised Geller on the show by presenting a table full of assorted spoons and knickknacks, rather than letting him bring his own props, and gave Geller free reign to pick whatever trick he wanted to perform. You can watch Geller slowly descend into panic mode, knowing that his trick won't work and millions are watching.

NBC
He thought it would be a canned, no-sweat interview, like he was on [network you hate].

It just gets harder to watch as it goes. Carson looks on, annoyed, as Geller tries to stall by ineffectually waving his hands over the table while he works out how the hell he's going to get out of this one.

For the first time, he found himself genuinely trying to call on a higher power.

After a series of the most incredibly awkward silences you will ever witness on a television broadcast, Geller eventually squirms out of the segment by claiming that he's just not feeling strong enough tonight.

Geller spent the rest of his career trying to sue James Randi over the humiliation, and after consistently losing his legal battles, he eventually quietly admitted that he was nothing more than an entertainer and not a wizard who could wield the powers of black magic. No shit?

A British television entertainer wanted to test the abilities of three psychics, inviting them to an abandoned chocolate factory to try to summon the spirit of its long-deceased owner. Amazingly, the psychics were all able to channel the ghost of the man -- an American named George Bull -- and provide a startlingly accurate account of his life on the spot. He had managed the factory in the late 1800s. Angry, aggressive, and generally the opposite of Willy Wonka, Bull got himself killed on the job when he caused a team of delivery horses to panic and trample him.

That's incredible information the psychics were able to glean just from speaking to the spirit, especially considering that Bull never existed and his story was completely made up on the spot.

In preparation for the show, the producers had planted fake information about George Bull on the chocolate factory's website and hung a fake photograph of him in the foyer. Even though they were told nothing about the story beforehand, the mediums still managed to channel a guy named George who got trampled by horses -- in other words, they revealed that they possessed the amazing power to do a basic Google search.

A power that you can now use to track the mediums down.

The host, who could not resist making the psychics look stupider than they already did, suggests to one of the mediums that it might help if she went into a trance. She replies that she could "probably go into a semi-trance, but not a full trance." Presumably a full trance could kill her with the sheer volume of bullshit. Turning off the lights, she closes her eyes and summons the ghost of, we reiterate, a man who never existed, and slurs "the horses, they ran me over."

Of the three psychics participating, only one of them had not clearly researched George Bull beforehand and relied on trying to draw information from the environment to construct his story. After seeing the portrait of George in the foyer, he suddenly channeled the name "George Bull." When it was pointed out that the portrait had a name plaque, he said he couldn't see it without his glasses.

BBC
"An' if I were going to sneak a peek, I'd na' have done it right in front of the camera, would I have?"

Ultimately, the host pointed out to all three psychics that the whole thing was made up and pressed them for an explanation. The trance lady bafflingly claimed she'd known it was bullshit all along, while the second theorized that he'd been drawing his information from the host's mind. The third, the guy who forgot his glasses, decided to argue with the guy who made up the story about the truthfulness of the story. Because when you've dug yourself into a hole that deep, the only option is to keep digging in the hope that you can escape to China.

Ostensibly, his question was about whether he would ever meet up with his old crew from Philadelphia again. Missing the ruse entirely, Wayne shuffles his tarot cards and advises "Will" that he should try getting in touch with them through social media, which is exactly the kind of advice that you need from a phone psychic who is charging you several dollars per minute.

Getting bored, "Will" starts to see how far he can push it. Going on to say that he used to be a rapper, but because there wasn't much market for that kind of music in the '80s, he moved on to an entertainment career. In the end, he comes out and says "I'm Will Smith," which was literally the only point at which the other shoe dropped for poor Wayne. Probably too late for his career.

Four out of 10 contestants were able to find the helicopter, but that sounds less impressive when you know that they had a map of the area and the chopper was uncreatively located in the opposite corner from where they started. This goes to show that a couple of years in the Boy Scouts is probably more useful in the long run than psychic powers.

For the rest, they ran around totally randomly while spouting psychic-sounding nonsense about "feeling a pull" and listening to their angel guides. At one point, one of them "feels" a strong pull to the right when the helicopter is clearly visible to his left.

Seven Network
Angel guides don't like psychics any more than we do.

Another loops around and ends up back at the car that dropped her off, while a third says a voice kept telling her to "run." As opposed to what, sit down and hope a friendly kangaroo carries you to the goal? Remember, these are Australia's top psychics. If they had recruited some of their lesser colleagues, they would have ended up dead in New Zealand somehow.

Generally when you're filming a psychic who you want to make look good, you'll edit out the stuff they get wrong so that it looks like they're only getting "hits." If you forget to do that, you might wind up with something like Van Praagh's appearance on Australian talk show The Circle:

Van Praagh starts out by asking a lady about her dead mother, correctly guessing that she took some kind of medication. You know, like every old woman ever. From there it went downhill, as he asks whether she had arthritis (no), a back problem (nope), or trouble with her legs (nuh-uh) -- all common ailments that he assumed had a good chance of a hit. Realizing that he's starting to sink, he asks whether someone else has leg problems, and learns that her father had two hip replacements. Bingo! But then:

"So he can't walk as well as he used to."

"No, he walks very well."

(Dejected sigh)

Network Ten
"But he walks on legs, right? Which are below his waist? So I'm clearly on to something?"

Backpedalling frantically, he asks about a Cathy or a Catherine. No dice. He correctly guesses that they are Catholic (like a quarter of Australians) and amazingly has a vision of a picture of Mother Mary in someone's house. A picture of Mary in a Catholic household? Why, this man must have a direct phone line to the afterlife.

The marathon of failure continues when he asks who in her family plays music (nobody), at which point he abandons ship and starts questioning someone else, asking a lady whether her dead father liked cars. She replies with an eye roll that would utterly shrivel your balls.

Network Ten
And a pause so they could add a laugh track in post-production.

After another string of guesses that yielded only puzzled and slightly amused glares, the host of the show mercifully ended the segment, telling him that it was "very ... intriguing." Presumably quite a few people went home no longer believing in ghosts.