Subtle distinction: I think it's not justified to assume that people can speak to the dead AND that it's justifiable to be skeptical when someone claims they can.
"uping themselves at the same time. It's no wonder they seem so honest."
Many people who claim to perform miraculous things like faith-healing, talking to the dead, predict the future, remotely view - many of these people - are frauds and profiteers. But some of them really do believe in what they're doing and are absolutely stunned when they subject themselves to truly objective tests that fail to support their beliefs.
Edgar Cayce is an interesting case.
http://skepdic.com/cayce.html for starters.
He had little to no formal education, but read a lot. Probably he read well, but had poor reasoning ability. When I read the stuff he writes, it sounds like long strings of scientific sounding jargon strung into meaningless phrases. (I get the same feeling of dysphoria when I read Cayce, et. al., that I do when I read deconstructionist "essays.")
