When I was young I was very theatrical and made up profoundly stupid stories and observations of "the unknown" super-natural for the intent of placing my peer audience in a state of awe. talking to the dead or predicting the future is a subset of this type of make believe storytelling. This practice had a few unforeseen outcomes as in addition of to developing a narrative voice that captured the imagination of those I was speaking with, I became acutely aware of how easy it is to mess with as in take advantage of the thought process of people who were not skeptical. I quickly figured this practice did not suit my definition of "moral" so I always make sure my audience realizes they need to evaluate stories based on facts. Not assertions.

@NoMagicCookie I did that once, I was in high school at the time and had gone with a friend to visit her cousin. The cousin talked about an aunt who had passed away in the house.

I don’t know why I did it but I pretended to see the aunts “ghost” and that she had a message from beyond. My conscious got the best of me and I couldn’t keep lying so I told her It was a joke.

My friend believed he was doing a good thing. He truly believed the stuff he was telling people was true. Of course when the things he would predict didn’t manifest he had excuses as to why. He was also a high Druid priest. Poor guy, he was much better to others than to himself.

@helionoftroy

Your "ghost" story reminds me of a similar experience in the International Music Camp night by a fire along the lake: good sized group of fellow campers: and I was telling BS stories about the unknown dangers of the Bermuda Triangle, Time travel interdenominational space etc.

Once, as an experiment, I convincingly preached to a couple of children age 7 and 9 to be very careful to avoid the green couch in my family room as as it eats children. Seriously, if you are young It will consume you there will be nothing left. . . .I repeated this "absolute nonsense" warning many times with a high level of - - -"serious urgency"- - - After about a half hour, they were both fully convinced the couch ate children. Of course, once they were terrified about my child eating couch, I told them I was just messing with them and that my couch did not actually eat children but for me the ease in promoting nonsense was a lesson in how easy it is to peddle faith based BS as facts.