People are often mistaken and lie almost constantly - so you are right to question Phil - especially if you do not have the experiences for yourself. It's the sign of a healthy mind.
Phil, you don't think I would actually name people here do you?
Ok, here's an example since it's already in print, but I can't remember the book and my books are in storage. I read a book on the stock market - It might have been Market Masters, when I find it again I will tell you, but I can't remember now it's been so long - but one thing I still remember decades later is that the author, as stodgy as you can get stock market dude monitoring trading, noticed that one person was able to predict the commodity futures in a way that was virtually impossible. He tracked the little old man down and asked him what his secret was. The unassuming old one said that God was telling him what to buy and when to sell. The impossibly masterful trading stopped when the old man died not that long afterwards.
Now, in the book the author was laughing at this - saying that there were ALL sorts of ways to get good information.
The old man could have been lying, the author could be lying, maybe it was actually aliens talking to the old man.
None-the-less - it was a good story and no one really knows who knows things and from whence the information comes because I assure you, if that man hadn't died he would have probably been killed by others trying to get to him. No one in their right mind would come forth and tell you that they go to casinos or play the ponies using their sixth sense even if they truly did!
There are also all sorts of different kinds of precognition, some of them that are not controllable so not really testable, but that for the person that experiences them reliable sources of information when they do happen. I assure you, my husband has learned not to walk down a street or go some place when I stop in my tracks and say I refuse to go or that I don't want him to go. He's always seeing the little things and some times the big things that I talk about that come to pass - but making money out of it is a whole other ball of wax. It's not something that I consciously control. It just happens when it happens if it happens.