Turning a Miss Into a Hit | Skeptical Inquirer (2025)

Turning a Miss Into a Hit | Skeptical Inquirer (1)

No, psychic medium Tyler Henry did not tell TV personality Ricki Lake that her house would burn down and three months later it did.

Turning a Miss Into a Hit | Skeptical Inquirer (2)

But it’s all over the entertainment news! Ricki Lake is pushing the narrative, writing January 11 on her Instagram, “The great @tylerhenrymedium called it! Less than three months ago, on Oct 15th, 2024 Ross and I were on Tyler’s show and guys, he SAW the fire. The show is on @netflix. I urge you to watch it. Omg.”

Always the spoil sport, let us take a look at the full transcript of the October 15 prediction. Perhaps there is more wisdom to be unfurled in his golden words?

The clip that is being shared across the internet is one-minute long:

Tyler Henry: This is good to keep in mind. There might end up being a coincidence where not only do we lose something, and I’m trying to articulate this without it sounding concerning. I think this may have already happened. If there was a loss of material objects from both fire and water, and water though, that’s the kind of weird distinction. It’s two separate things.

Ricki Lake: Okay.

Henry: So we’re going to end up finding that there’s a story where there was a housefire or something along those lines, a fire risk.

Lake: There was a housefire.

Henry: But separate from that and this might end up being a little bit more pertinent. We had a really bad storm and our basement flooded and it got a bunch of pictures ruined and we couldn’t ever bring them back. There’s just something about watching water seepage into a place where it shouldn’t and damaging it.

Lake: Okay.

Henry: So, keeping both of those things in mind

Lake: Okay. But the fire already happened.

Henry: The fire already happened.

Lake: You don’t see another fire coming because I live in Malibu.

Henry: Nooooooooooooo! Oh Gosh, I get it every ten years, I feel like they get a big one.

Lake: Yeah.

Henry: But the kind of emphasis here is for some reason on water

Lake: On water

Henry: Fire and water, we gotta watch out (giggling laughter)

Lake: Okay

The whole conversation took less than one minute. Lake is clearly concerned at first and then relieved after Henry’s very firm reassurance that the housefire he saw was in the past and that water had done a lot of damage to material things. He likened this to a basement flooding and ruining photos stored there. He even states that he does not want to be too “concerning.”

As you can read from this transcript, Henry is not encouraging Lake to pack up her belongings or cut back dry vegetation near her home or even to pack a “go-bag” to keep near the door. Lake shrugs it off as just an interesting moment in her reading. Something to think about.

The reality is very different from Lake’s Instagram post.

To be fair to the Tyler Henry camp, I’m writing this on January 20, only a week later, and I haven’t seen anything from Henry saying that he made an accurate prediction. Only Lake and the entertainment media are saying that Henry had “called it.”

Though there is some equivocating by the media, ENews writes, “In the clip, Henry can be heard telling Lake and her loved ones about a potential ‘house fire’ and loss of material items from both fire and water damage” (emphasis mine). He didn’t say a “potential” fire but a “past” fire.

Access Hollywood on YouTube titles their video with “Footage Shows Tyler Henry PREDICTED Ricki Lake’s Home Would Burn Down Months Before L.A. Fires.” Clearly Tyler Henry did not predict the fire. Even using all caps in the entire title won’t make it so. In the description of the video, Access Hollywood writes, “In the clip, the host tells the couple that he envisioned the ‘loss of material objects from both fire and water,’ cautioning that there will be a ‘story’ of a house fire.”

Page Six captions their story with “Ricki Lake resurfaces video of medium Tyler Henry seemingly predicting she’d lose her house in a fire: He ‘called it.’” They at least added the word seemingly, even though there is not even “seemingly” anything of an actual prediction in the clip.

People is careful not to say that Henry did predict but that Ricki Lake posted that she thought Henry had. People’s headline “Ricki Lake Says Medium Tyler Henry Predicted She Would Have a House Fire 3 Months Before L.A. Fires: ‘He SAW the Fire.’” Their reporter Raven Brunner writes, “Ricki Lake is revisiting an eerie interaction with medium Tyler Henry” and then “Henry cautioned her of the tragic event.” I don’t know if you would agree that a reading with Tyler Henry would be eerie or not, but he did not caution her of any event, tragic or otherwise.

Being very factual, NBC and Fox News both shared the Instagram post Lake made and only commented on what she said; no use of words such as caution or prediction.

Why did Ricki Lake make the Instagram post at all if it isn’t what Henry said? She had shared two videos from that day, one with her and her husband and a friend watering down the property as the fires grew closer, and one with her filming at 8 p.m. driving her car down the hillside saying she was praying for all the homes she was passing, for the firefighters, and for her home. She said she had her pet sitting on her lap and her husband was following behind in another car. She said, “I don’t know what I grabbed.” That does not sound like someone who was prepared to be evacuated. If she could see the fires and was receiving warnings from firefighters and “The great @tylerhenrymedium called it!” only three months before, you would think Lake would have been better prepared.

Personally, I think that Ricki Lake posted without thinking much about it. This was only a couple days after learning her house was burnt down (note: no water damage). She is no different than all the other victims from readings; they are upset and looking for meaning in a world of confusion and seeming randomness. She is what I refer to as a motivated sitter. She will find meaning in her reading. Possibly it is comforting to her; I really don’t know. I’m not psychic … and neither is Tyler Henry—as if we needed more evidence than from the dozens of articles I’ve written since his career started in 2016.

In the evacuation video he posted on his social media, Henry states:

Largely on fire right now, so we got an evacuation warning. There is no power and we really don’t have cell service beyond right now where I’m uploading this, but I want everyone to know that we are okay. We’re safe, we’re keeping an eye on buildings and how things are going. I really feel for my neighbors, all the pets, it’s just devastating beyond words, so it is what it is in this sense I can only do so much currently. I’m just trying to take it one moment at a time and keep you posted. I’ll let you know what there is to return to.

You can watch that video here.

So unpacking this, Tyler Henry did not know if his home would be safe from the fire (at the time of this article, it was) nor does it sound like he knew he would need to be evacuated; he waited until he was told to go. The car he was in wasn’t piled full of his belongings; it looked like he didn’t bring much with him. If he is so worried about his neighbors, why didn’t he warn them? Why not warn all of Los Angeles? A heads up for the various agencies might have been helpful also.

I know fans of Henry will heap scorn on me saying that Henry isn’t able to give himself readings and must seek out other psychics for advice. Okay, I don’t think that is a “thing,” but let’s just say for the moment it is. He didn’t know if his home would survive. Still he would have known about the fire in his neighborhood and the surrounding areas, right? And still no warning?

The other excuse I often hear from believers is “It doesn’t work like that.” My answer is always the same: “Well then how does it work?” Which usually is not answered. The goal posts get moved, and the subject is changed, or they leave the conversation. Seriously, what good is a psychic if they can’t tell you true things, warn you when something bad might happen, and have some kind of accuracy rate? Would you want to fly in a plane with a pilot who only sometimes knew what they were doing? And only when in retrospect you could kind of see that they sort of managed to land the plane?

Either Henry warned Ricki Lake about her house burning down and she chose to ignore it and not prepare for her loss, or Henry didn’t issue a warning but rather gave her a Barnum statement about the possibility of her eventually learning that someone, somewhere, maybe in her family had a housefire that destroyed something on the scale of a basement flooding. And remember this statement: “from both fire and water, and water though, that’s the kind of weird distinction. It’s two separate things.” Whatever that means, Ricki Lake has yet to piece this together. Maybe someday it will make sense? But more likely it will get forgotten. The only thing really true is that whatever that nonsense was that came out of Tyler Henry’s mouth that October evening, it was of no help at all for Ricki Lake and all of Los Angeles.

Let me end with a wise comment I received on the PsychicsExplained video about this subject. It’s from Janyce Boynton, who writes, “Tyler Henry assured her that the fire was in the past. Clearly she’s misremembering what he said and retrofitting the “reading” to fit the present situation. Maybe she finds comfort in magical thinking in a time of profound stress?” I think Janyce is spot on; the media tweaked the headlines to be more click-bait, and Ricki Lake isn’t necessarily thinking clearly. She sure isn’t remembering clearly.

Susan Gerbic

Affectionately called the Wikipediatrician, Susan Gerbic is the cofounder of Monterey County Skeptics and a self-proclaimed skeptical junkie. Susan is also founder of the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia (GSoW) project. She is a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, and writes for her column, Guerilla Skepticism, often. You can contact her through her website.

Turning a Miss Into a Hit | Skeptical Inquirer (2025)

References

Top Articles
Latest Posts
Recommended Articles
Article information

Author: Aracelis Kilback

Last Updated:

Views: 5953

Rating: 4.3 / 5 (64 voted)

Reviews: 87% of readers found this page helpful

Author information

Name: Aracelis Kilback

Birthday: 1994-11-22

Address: Apt. 895 30151 Green Plain, Lake Mariela, RI 98141

Phone: +5992291857476

Job: Legal Officer

Hobby: LARPing, role-playing games, Slacklining, Reading, Inline skating, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Dance

Introduction: My name is Aracelis Kilback, I am a nice, gentle, agreeable, joyous, attractive, combative, gifted person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.