Sylvia Celeste Browne (née Shoemaker; October 19, 1936 – November 20, 2013)[1] was an American writer and self-proclaimed medium and psychic.

[4] Sylvia Browne grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, the daughter of William Lee and Celeste (née Coil) Shoemaker.

[5][6] Her father held several different jobs, working at times in mail delivery, jewelry sales, and as a vice president of a freight line.

[citation needed] Although Browne was raised mostly as a Catholic, she was said to have an Episcopalian mother, a Lutheran maternal grandmother, Jewish father, and relatives from all these faiths.

[16] She also professed the ability to speak with a spirit guide named Francine, and to perceive a wide range of "vibrational frequencies".

Among the more notable incidents were the following: In 2000, Brill's Content examined ten recent Montel Williams episodes that highlighted Browne's work as a psychic detective, spanning 35 cases.

[31] In 2010, the Skeptical Inquirer published a detailed three-year study by Ryan Shaffer and Agatha Jadwiszczok that examined Browne's predictions about missing persons and murder cases.

The study concluded that the media outlets that repeatedly promoted Browne's work had no visible concern about whether she was untrustworthy or harmed people.

News coverage of the alleged similarity appeared in March 2020, and was picked up by celebrities with large social media platforms such as Kim Kardashian.

[1][17] Robert S. Lancaster maintained an exhaustive record of her inaccurate predictions and criminal activity,[15] and described her pronouncements relating to missing children as "incredibly offensive".

[46] On September 3, 2001, Browne stated on Larry King Live that she would prove her legitimacy by accepting the James Randi Educational Foundation's One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge to demonstrate supernatural abilities in a controlled scientific test.

[48] Randi responded by mailing a notarized copy of the prize account status showing a balance in excess of one million dollars; Browne refused to accept the letter.

[48][49] In late 2003, despite challenge rules that money could not be placed in escrow, Randi announced that he was willing to do so for Browne; she did not accept or acknowledge this offer.

[51] In a 2019 segment of HBO's Last Week Tonight, John Oliver criticized the media for promoting Browne and other psychics and enabling them to prey on grieving families.

Oliver said, "When psychic abilities are presented as authentic, it emboldens a vast underworld of unscrupulous vultures, more than happy to make money by offering an open line to the afterlife, as well as many other bullshit services.

The Superior Court of Santa Clara County, California, found Browne and her husband had sold securities in a gold-mining venture under false pretenses.