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Wikipedia

Mediumship

January 09, 2023

Mediumship is the practice of purportedly mediating communication between familiar spirits or spirits of the dead and living human beings. Practitioners are known as "mediums" or "spirit mediums".[1][2] There are different types of mediumship or spirit channelling, including séance tables, trance, and ouija.

Séance conducted by John Beattie, Bristol, England, 1872

Belief in psychic ability is widespread[3] despite the absence of objective evidence for its existence.[4] Scientific researchers have attempted to ascertain the validity of claims of mediumship. An experiment undertaken by the British Psychological Society led to the conclusion that the test subjects demonstrated no mediumistic ability.[5]

Mediumship gained popularity during the nineteenth century, when ouija boards were used as a source of entertainment. Investigations during this period revealed widespread fraud—with some practitioners employing techniques used by stage magicians—and the practice began to lose credibility.[6][7] Fraud is still rife in the medium or psychic industry, with cases of deception and trickery being discovered to this day.[8]

Several different variants of mediumship have been described; arguably the best-known forms involve a spirit purportedly taking control of a medium's voice and using it to relay a message, or where the medium simply "hears" the message and passes it on. Other forms involve materializations of the spirit or the presence of a voice, and telekinetic activity.

The practice is associated with several religious-belief systems such as Shamanism, Vodun, Spiritualism, Spiritism, Candomblé, Voodoo, Umbanda and some New Age groups.

Concept

In Spiritism and Spiritualism the medium has the role of an intermediary between the world of the living and the world of spirit. Mediums claim that they can listen to and relay messages from spirits, or that they can allow a spirit to control their body and speak through it directly or by using automatic writing or drawing.

Spiritualists classify types of mediumship into two main categories: "mental" and "physical":[9]

  • Mental mediums purportedly "tune in" to the spirit world by listening, sensing, or seeing spirits or symbols.
  • Physical mediums are believed to produce materialization of spirits, apports of objects, and other effects such as knocking, rapping, bell-ringing, etc. by using "ectoplasm" created from the cells of their bodies and those of séance attendees.

During seances, mediums are said to go into trances, varying from light to deep, that permit spirits to control their minds.[10]

Channeling can be seen as the modern form of the old mediumship, where the "channel" (or channeller) purportedly receives messages from "teaching-spirit", an "Ascended master", from God, or from an angelic entity, but essentially through the filter of his own waking consciousness (or "Higher Self").[11]

History

Attempts to communicate with the dead and other living human beings, aka spirits, have been documented back to early human history, such as the Biblical account of the Witch of Endor.[12]

Mediumship became quite popular in the 19th-century United States and the United Kingdom after the rise of Spiritualism as a religious movement. Modern Spiritualism is said to date from practices and lectures of the Fox sisters in New York State in 1848. The trance mediums Paschal Beverly Randolph and Emma Hardinge Britten were among the most celebrated lecturers and authors on the subject in the mid-19th century. Allan Kardec coined the term Spiritism around 1860.[13] Kardec claimed that conversations with spirits by selected mediums were the basis of his The Spirits' Book and later, his five-book collection, Spiritist Codification.

Some scientists of the period who investigated Spiritualism also became converts. They included chemist Robert Hare, physicist William Crookes (1832–1919) and evolutionary biologist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913).[14][15] Nobel laureate Pierre Curie took a very serious scientific interest in the work of medium Eusapia Palladino.[16] Other prominent adherents included journalist and pacifist William T. Stead (1849–1912)[17] and physician and author Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930).[18]

After the exposure of the fraudulent use of stage magic tricks by physical mediums such as the Davenport Brothers and the Bangs Sisters, mediumship fell into disrepute. However, the religion and its beliefs continue in spite of this, with physical mediumship and seances falling out of practice and platform mediumship coming to the fore.

In the late 1920s and early 1930s there were around one quarter of a million practising Spiritualists and some two thousand Spiritualist societies in the UK in addition to flourishing microcultures of platform mediumship and 'home circles'.[19] Spiritualism continues to be practised, primarily through various denominational Spiritualist churches in the United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. In the United Kingdom, over 340 Spiritualist churches and centres open their doors to the public and free demonstrations of mediumship are regularly performed.[20]

Terminology

Spirit guide

Main article: Spirit guide

In 1958, the English-born Spiritualist C. Dorreen Phillips wrote of her experiences with a medium at Camp Chesterfield, Indiana: "In Rev. James Laughton's séances there are many Indians. They are very noisy and appear to have great power. [...] The little guides, or doorkeepers, are usually Indian boys and girls [who act] as messengers who help to locate the spirit friends who wish to speak with you."[21]

Spirit operator

A spirit who uses a medium to manipulate psychic "energy" or "energy systems."

Demonstrations of mediumship

 
Colin Evans, who claimed spirits lifted him into the air, was exposed as a fraud.

In old-line Spiritualism, a portion of the services, generally toward the end, is given over to demonstrations of mediumship through purported contact with the spirits of the dead. A typical example of this way of describing a mediumistic church service is found in the 1958 autobiography of C. Dorreen Phillips. She writes of the worship services at the Spiritualist Camp Chesterfield in Chesterfield, Indiana: "Services are held each afternoon, consisting of hymns, a lecture on philosophy, and demonstrations of mediumship."[21]

Today "demonstration of mediumship" is part of the church service at all churches affiliated with the National Spiritualist Association of Churches (NSAC) and the Spiritualists' National Union (SNU). Demonstration links to NSAC's Declaration of Principal #9. "We affirm that the precepts of Prophecy and Healing are Divine attributes proven through Mediumship."

Mental mediumship

"Mental mediumship" is communication of spirits with a medium by telepathy. The medium mentally "hears" (clairaudience), "sees" (clairvoyance), and/or feels (clairsentience) messages from spirits. Directly or with the help of a spirit guide, the medium passes the information on to the message's recipient(s). When a medium is doing a "reading" for a particular person, that person is known as the "sitter".

Trance mediumship

"Trance mediumship" is often seen as a form of mental mediumship. Most trance mediums remain conscious during a communication period, wherein a spirit uses the medium's mind to communicate. The spirit or spirits using the medium's mind influences the mind with the thoughts being conveyed. The medium allows the ego to step aside for the message to be delivered. At the same time, one has awareness of the thoughts coming through and may even influence the message with one's own bias. Such a trance is not to be confused with sleepwalking, as the patterns are entirely different. Castillo (1995) states,

Trance phenomena result from the behavior of intense focusing of attention, which is the key psychological mechanism of trance induction. Adaptive responses, including institutionalized forms of trance, are 'tuned' into neural networks in the brain.[22]

In the 1860s and 1870s, trance mediums were very popular. Spiritualism generally attracted female adherents, many who had strong interests in social justice. Many trance mediums delivered passionate speeches on abolitionism, temperance, and women's suffrage.[23] Scholars have described Leonora Piper as one of the most famous trance mediums in the history of Spiritualism.[6][24][25]

In the typical deep trance, the medium may not have clear recall of all the messages conveyed while in an altered state; such people generally work with an assistant. That person selectively wrote down or otherwise recorded the medium's words. Rarely did the assistant record the responding words of the sitter and other attendants. An example of this kind of relationship can be found in the early 20th century collaboration between the trance medium Mrs. Cecil M. Cook of the William T. Stead Memorial Center in Chicago (a religious body incorporated under the statutes of the State of Illinois) and the journalist Lloyd Kenyon Jones. The latter was a non-medium Spiritualist who transcribed Cook's messages in shorthand. He edited them for publication in book and pamphlet form.[26]

Physical mediumship

 
A photograph of the medium Linda Gazzera with a doll as fake ectoplasm.

Physical mediumship is defined as manipulation of energies and energy systems by spirits. This type of mediumship is claimed to involve perceptible manifestations, such as loud raps and noises, voices, materialized objects, apports, materialized spirit bodies, or body parts such as hands, legs and feet. The medium is used as a source of power for such spirit manifestations. By some accounts, this was achieved by using the energy or ectoplasm released by a medium, see spirit photography.[27][28] The last physical medium to be tested by a committee from Scientific American was Mina Crandon in 1924.

Most physical mediumship is presented in a darkened or dimly lit room. Most physical mediums make use of a traditional array of tools and appurtenances, including spirit trumpets, spirit cabinets, and levitation tables.

Direct voice

Direct voice communication is the claim that spirits speak independently of the medium, who facilitates the phenomenon rather than produces it. The role of the medium is to make the connection between the physical and spirit worlds. Trumpets are often utilised to amplify the signal, and directed voice mediums are sometimes known as "trumpet mediums". This form of mediumship also permits the medium to participate in the discourse during séances, since the medium's voice is not required by the spirit to communicate. Leslie Flint was one of the best known exponents of this form of mediumship.[29]

Channeling

A conduit, in esoterism, and spiritual discourse, is a specific object, person, location, or process (such as engaging in a séance or entering a trance, or using psychedelic medicines) which allows a person to connect or communicate with a spiritual realm, metaphysical energy, or spiritual entity, or vice versa. The use of such a conduit may be entirely metaphoric or symbolic, or it may be earnestly believed to be functional.

In Shintoism, the public shrine is a building or place that functions as a conduit for kami (神, "spiritual essence", commonly translated as god or spirit). In Yoruba religion, it is said that Elegba, the son of Osun, became the great conduit of ase (divine energy) in the Universe.

In the later half of the 20th century, Western mediumship developed in two different ways. One type involves clairaudience, in which the medium claims to hear spirits and relay what they hear to their clients. The other is a form of channeling in which the channeler seemingly goes into a trance, and purports to leave their body allowing a spirit entity to borrow it and then speak through them.[30] When in a trance the medium appears to enter into a cataleptic state,[31] although modern channelers may not.[citation needed] Some channelers open the eyes when channeling, and remain able to walk and behave normally. The rhythm and the intonation of the voice may also change completely.[31]

A notable channeler in the early 1900s was Rose Edith Kelly, wife of the English occultist and ceremonial magician Aleister Crowley (1875–1947). She allegedly channeled the voice of a non-physical entity named Aiwass during their honeymoon in Cairo, Egypt (1904).[32][33][34] Others purport to channel spirits from "future dimensions", ascended masters,[35] or, in the case of the trance mediums of the Brahma Kumaris, God.[36] Another widely known channeler of this variety is J. Z. Knight, who claims to channel the spirit of Ramtha, a 30 thousand-year-old man from Lemuria. Other notable channels are Jane Roberts for Seth and Esther Hicks for Abraham.[37]

Another channeler in the early 1900s was Edgar Cayce, who claimed to channel his higher self while in a trance-like state.

Psychic senses

Senses used by mental mediums are sometimes defined differently from in other paranormal fields. A medium is said to have psychic abilities but not all psychics function as mediums. The term clairvoyance, for instance, may include seeing spirit and visions instilled by the spirit world. The Parapsychological Association defines "clairvoyance" as information derived directly from an external physical source.[38]

  • Clairvoyance or "clear seeing", is the ability to see anything that is not physically present, such as objects, animals or people. This sight occurs "in the mind's eye". Some mediums say that this is their normal vision state. Others say that they must train their minds with such practices as meditation in order to achieve this ability, and that assistance from spiritual helpers is often necessary. Some clairvoyant mediums can see a spirit as though the spirit has a physical body. They see the bodily form as if it were physically present. Other mediums see the spirit in their mind's eye, or it appears as a movie or a television programme or a still picture like a photograph in their mind.
  • Clairaudience or "clear hearing", is usually defined as the ability to hear the voices or thoughts of spirits. Some mediums hear as though they are listening to a person talking to them on the outside of their head, as though the Spirit is next to or near to the medium, and other mediums hear the voices in their minds as a verbal thought.
  • Clairsentience or "clear sensing", is the ability to have an impression of what a spirit wants to communicate, or to feel sensations instilled by a spirit.
  • Clairsentinence or "clear feeling" is a condition in which the medium takes on the ailments of a spirit, feeling the same physical problem which the spirit person had before death.
  • Clairalience or "clear smelling" is the ability to smell a spirit. For example, a medium may smell the pipe tobacco of a person who smoked during life.
  • Clairgustance or "clear tasting" is the ability to receive taste impressions from a spirit.
  • Claircognizance or "clear knowing", is the ability to know something without receiving it through normal or psychic senses. It is a feeling of "just knowing". Often, a medium will claim to have the feeling that a message or situation is "right" or "wrong."

Explanations

Paranormal belief

Spiritualists believe that phenomena produced by mediums (both mental and physical mediumship) are the result of external spirit agencies.[39] The psychical researcher Thomson Jay Hudson in The Law of Psychic Phenomena (1892) and Théodore Flournoy in his book Spiritism and Psychology (1911) wrote that all kinds of mediumship could be explained by suggestion and telepathy from the medium and that there was no evidence for the spirit hypothesis. The idea of mediumship being explained by telepathy was later merged into the "super-ESP" hypothesis of mediumship which is currently advocated by some parapsychologists.[40]

Scientific skepticism

In their book How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age, authors Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaughn have noted that the spiritualist and ESP hypothesis of mediumship "has yielded no novel predictions, assumes unknown entities or forces, and conflicts with available scientific evidence."[41]

Scientists[which?] who study anomalistic psychology consider mediumship to be the result of fraud and psychological factors. Research from psychology for over a hundred years suggests that where there is not fraud, mediumship and Spiritualist practices can be explained by hypnotism, magical thinking and suggestion.[42][43] Trance mediumship, which according to Spiritualists is caused by discarnate spirits speaking through the medium, can be explained by dissociative identity disorder.[44]

Illusionists, such as Joseph Rinn have staged fake séances in which the sitters have claimed to have observed genuine supernatural phenomena.[45] Albert Moll studied the psychology of séance sitters. According to (Wolffram, 2012) "[Moll] argued that the hypnotic atmosphere of the darkened séance room and the suggestive effect of the experimenters' social and scientific prestige could be used to explain why seemingly rational people vouchsafed occult phenomena."[46] The psychologists Leonard Zusne and Warren Jones in their book Anomalistic Psychology: A Study of Magical Thinking (1989) wrote that spirits controls are the "products of the medium's own psychological dynamics."[47]

A fraudulent medium may obtain information about their sitters by secretly eavesdropping on sitter's conversations or searching telephone directories, the internet and newspapers before the sittings.[48] A technique called cold reading can also be used to obtain information from the sitter's behavior, clothing, posture, and jewellery.[49][50]

The psychologist Richard Wiseman has written:

Cold reading also explains why psychics have consistently failed scientific tests of their powers. By isolating them from their clients, psychics are unable to pick up information from the way those clients dress or behave. By presenting all of the volunteers involved in the test with all of the readings, they are prevented from attributing meaning to their own reading, and therefore can't identify it from readings made for others. As a result, the type of highly successful hit rate that psychics enjoy on a daily basis comes crashing down and the truth emerges – their success depends on a fascinating application of psychology and not the existence of paranormal abilities.[51]

In a series of experiments holding fake séances, (Wiseman et al. 2003) paranormal believers and disbelievers were suggested by an actor that a table was levitating when, in fact, it remained stationary. After the seance, approximately one third of the participants incorrectly reported that the table had moved. The results showed a greater percentage of believers reporting that the table had moved. In another experiment the believers had also reported that a handbell had moved when it had remained stationary and expressed their belief that the fake séances contained genuine paranormal phenomena. The experiments strongly supported the notion that in the séance room, believers are more suggestible than disbelievers for suggestions that are consistent with their belief in paranormal phenomena.[52]

In a 2019 television segment on Last Week Tonight featuring prominent purported mediums including Theresa Caputo, John Edward, Tyler Henry, and Sylvia Browne, John Oliver criticized the media for promoting mediums because this exposure convinces viewers that such powers are real, and so enable neighborhood mediums 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."[53][54]

Fraud

 
Helen Duncan (age 30) in a séance with dolls (1928).

From its earliest beginnings to contemporary times, mediumship practices have had many instances of fraud and trickery.[55] Séances take place in darkness so the poor lighting conditions can become an easy opportunity for fraud. Physical mediumship that has been investigated by scientists has been discovered to be the result of deception and trickery.[56] Ectoplasm, a supposed paranormal substance, was revealed to have been made from cheesecloth, butter, muslin, and cloth. Mediums would also stick cut-out faces from magazines and newspapers onto cloth or on other props and use plastic dolls in their séances to pretend to their audiences spirits were contacting them.[57] Lewis Spence in his book An Encyclopaedia of Occultism (1960) wrote:

A very large part is played by fraud in spiritualistic practices, both in the physical and psychical, or automatic, phenomena, but especially in the former. The frequency with which mediums have been convicted of fraud has, indeed, induced many people to abandon the study of psychical research, judging the whole bulk of the phenomena to be fraudulently produced.[58]

In Britain, the Society for Psychical Research has investigated mediumship phenomena. Critical SPR investigations into purported mediums and the exposure of fake mediums has led to a number of resignations by Spiritualist members.[59][60] On the subject of fraud in mediumship Paul Kurtz wrote:

No doubt a great importance in the paranormal field is the problem of fraud. The field of psychic research and spiritualism has been so notoriously full of charlatans, such as the Fox sisters and Eusapia Palladino–individuals who claim to have special power and gifts but who are actually conjurers who have hoodwinked scientists and the public as well–that we have to be especially cautious about claims made on their behalf.[61]

Magicians have a long history of exposing the fraudulent methods of mediumship. Early debunkers included Chung Ling Soo, Henry Evans and Julien Proskauer.[62] Later magicians to reveal fraud were Joseph Dunninger, Harry Houdini and Joseph Rinn. Rose Mackenberg, a private investigator who worked with Houdini during the 1920s, was among the most prominent debunkers of psychic fraud during the mid-20th century.[63]

1800s

Many 19th century mediums were discovered to be engaged in fraud.[64] While advocates of mediumship claim that their experiences are genuine, the Encyclopædia Britannica article on spiritualism notes in reference to a case in the 19th century that "...one by one, the Spiritualist mediums were discovered to be engaged in fraud, sometimes employing the techniques of stage magicians in their attempts to convince people of their clairvoyant powers." The article also notes that "the exposure of widespread fraud within the spiritualist movement severely damaged its reputation and pushed it to the fringes of society in the United States."[65]

At a séance in the house of the solicitor John Snaith Rymer in Ealing in July 1855, a sitter Frederick Merrifield observed that a "spirit-hand" was a false limb attached on the end of the medium Daniel Dunglas Home's arm. Merrifield also claimed to have observed Home use his foot in the séance room.[66]

The poet Robert Browning and his wife Elizabeth attended a séance on 23, July 1855 in Ealing with the Rymers.[67] During the séance a spirit face materialized which Home claimed was the son of Browning who had died in infancy. Browning seized the "materialization" and discovered it to be the bare foot of Home. To make the deception worse, Browning had never lost a son in infancy. Browning's son Robert in a letter to The Times, December 5, 1902, referred to the incident "Home was detected in a vulgar fraud."[68][69] The researchers Joseph McCabe and Trevor H. Hall exposed the "levitation" of Home as nothing more than his moving across a connecting ledge between two iron balconies.[70]

The psychologist and psychical researcher Stanley LeFevre Krebs had exposed the Bangs Sisters as frauds. During a séance he employed a hidden mirror and caught them tampering with a letter in an envelope and writing a reply in it under the table which they would pretend a spirit had written.[71] The British materialization medium Rosina Mary Showers was caught in many fraudulent séances throughout her career.[72] In 1874 during a séance with Edward William Cox a sitter looked into the cabinet and seized the spirit, the headdress fell off and was revealed to be Showers.[73]

In a series of experiments in London at the house of William Crookes in February 1875, the medium Anna Eva Fay managed to fool Crookes into believing she had genuine psychic powers. Fay later confessed to her fraud and revealed the tricks she had used.[74] Frank Herne a British medium who formed a partnership with the medium Charles Williams was repeatedly exposed in fraudulent materialization séances.[75] In 1875, he was caught pretending to be a spirit during a séance in Liverpool and was found "clothed in about two yards of stiffened muslin, wound round his head and hanging down as far as his thigh."[76] Florence Cook had been "trained in the arts of the séance" by Herne and was repeatedly exposed as a fraudulent medium.[77]

The medium Henry Slade was caught in fraud many times throughout his career. In a séance in 1876 in London Ray Lankester and Bryan Donkin snatched his slate before the "spirit" message was supposed to be written, and found the writing already there.[78] Slade also played an accordion with one hand under the table and claimed spirits would play it. The magician Chung Ling Soo revealed how Slade had performed the trick.[79]

 
Eva Carrière with cardboard cut out figure King Ferdinand of Bulgaria.

The British medium Francis Ward Monck was investigated by psychical researchers and discovered to be a fraud. On November 3, 1876, during the séance a sitter demanded that Monck be searched. Monck ran from the room, locked himself in another room and escaped out of a window. A pair of stuffed gloves was found in his room, as well as cheesecloth, reaching rods and other fraudulent devices in his luggage.[80] After a trial Monck was convicted for his fraudulent mediumship and was sentenced to three months in prison.[81]

In 1876, William Eglinton was exposed as a fraud when the psychical researcher Thomas Colley seized a "spirit" materialization in his séance and cut off a portion of its cloak. It was discovered that the cut piece matched a cloth found in Eglinton's suitcase.[82] Colley also pulled the beard off the materialization and it was revealed to be a fake, the same as another one found in the suitcase of Eglinton.[83] In 1880 in a séance a spirit named "Yohlande" materialized, a sitter grabbed it and was revealed to be the medium Mme. d'Esperance herself.[84]

In September 1878 the British medium Charles Williams and his fellow-medium at the time, A. Rita, were detected in trickery at Amsterdam. During the séance a materialized spirit was seized and found to be Rita and a bottle of phosphorus oil, muslin and a false beard were found amongst the two mediums.[85] In 1882 C. E. Wood was exposed in a séance in Peterborough. Her Indian spirit control "Pocka" was found to be the medium on her knees, covered in muslin.[86]

In 1880 the American stage mentalist Washington Irving Bishop published a book revealing how mediums would use secret codes as the trick for their clairvoyant readings.[87] The Seybert Commission was a group of faculty at the University of Pennsylvania who in 1884–1887 exposed fraudulent mediums such as Pierre L. O. A. Keeler and Henry Slade.[88] The Fox sisters confessed to fraud in 1888. Margaret Fox revealed that she and her sister had produced the "spirit" rappings by cracking their toe joints.[89]

In 1891 at a public séance with twenty sitters the medium Cecil Husk was caught leaning over a table pretending to be a spirit by covering his face with phosphor material.[90] The magician Will Goldston also exposed the fraud mediumship of Husk. In a séance Goldston attended a pale face materialization appeared in the room. Goldston wrote "I saw at once that it was a gauze mask, and that the moustache attached to it was loose at one side through lack of gum. I pulled at the mask. It came away, revealing the face of Husk."[91] The British materialization medium Annie Fairlamb Mellon was exposed as a fraud on October 12, 1894. During the séance a sitter seized the materialized spirit, and found it to be the Mellon on her knees with white muslin on her head and shoulders.[92]

The magician Samri Baldwin exposed the tricks of the Davenport brothers in his book The Secrets of Mahatma Land Explained (1895).[93] The medium Swami Laura Horos was convicted of fraud several times and was tried for rape and fraud in London in 1901. She was described by the magician Harry Houdini as "one of the most extraordinary fake mediums and mystery swindlers the world has ever known".[94]

In the late 19th century, the fraudulent methods of spirit photographers such as David Duguid and Edward Wyllie were revealed by psychical researchers.[95] Hereward Carrington documented various methods (with diagrams) how the medium would manipulate the plates before, during, and after the séance to produce spirit forms.[96] The ectoplasm materializations of the French medium Eva Carrière were exposed as fraudulent. The fake ectoplasm of Carrière was made of cut-out paper faces from newspapers and magazines on which fold marks could sometimes be seen from the photographs.[97] Cut out faces that she used included Woodrow Wilson, King Ferdinand of Bulgaria, French president Raymond Poincaré and the actress Mona Delza.[98]

The séance trick of the Eddy Brothers was revealed by the magician Chung Ling Soo in 1898. The brothers utilized a fake hand made of lead, and with their hands free from control would play musical instruments and move objects in the séance room.[99] The physiologist Ivor Lloyd Tuckett examined a case of spirit photography that W. T. Stead had claimed was genuine. Stead visited a photographer who had produced a photograph of him with deceased soldier known as "Piet Botha". Stead claimed that the photographer could not have come across any information about Piet Botha, however, Tuckett discovered that an article in 1899 had been published on Pietrus Botha in a weekly magazine with a portrait and personal details.[100]

The trance medium Leonora Piper was investigated by psychical researchers and psychologists in the late 19th and early 20th century. In an experiment to test if Piper's "spirit" controls were purely fictitious the psychologist G. Stanley Hall invented a niece called Bessie Beals and asked Piper's 'control' to get in touch with it. Bessie appeared, answered questions and accepted Hall as her uncle.[101] The psychologist Joseph Jastrow wrote that Piper pretended to be controlled by spirits and fell into simple and logical traps from her comments.[102] Science writer Martin Gardner concluded Piper was a cold reader that would "fish" for information from her séance sitters.[103] The physiologist Ivor Lloyd Tuckett who examined Piper's mediumship in detail wrote it could be explained by "muscle-reading, fishing, guessing, hints obtained in the sitting, knowledge surreptitiously obtained, knowledge acquired in the interval between sittings and lastly, facts already within Mrs. Piper's knowledge."[104]

1900s

In March 1902 in Berlin, police officers interrupted a séance of the German apport medium Frau Anna Rothe. Her hands were grabbed and she was wrestled to the ground. A female police assistant physically examined Rothe and discovered 157 flowers as well as oranges and lemons hidden in her petticoat. She was arrested and charged with fraud.[105] Another apport medium Hilda Lewis known as the "flower medium" confessed to fraud.[106]

The psychical researchers W. W. Baggally and Everard Feilding exposed the British materialization medium Christopher Chambers as a fraud in 1905. A false moustache was discovered in the séance room which he used to fabricate the spirit materializations.[107] The British medium Charles Eldred was exposed as a fraud in 1906. Eldred would sit in a chair in a curtained off area in the room known as a "séance cabinet". Various spirit figures would emerge from the cabinet and move around the séance room, however, it was discovered that the chair had a secret compartment that contained beards, cloths, masks, and wigs that Eldred would dress up in to fake the spirits.[108]

The spirit photographer William Hope tricked William Crookes with a fake spirit photograph of his wife in 1906. Oliver Lodge revealed there had been obvious signs of double exposure, the picture of Lady Crookes had been copied from a wedding anniversary photograph, however, Crookes was a convinced spiritualist and claimed it was genuine evidence for spirit photography.[109]

In 1907, Hereward Carrington exposed the tricks of fraudulent mediums such as those used in slate-writing, table-turning, trumpet mediumship, materializations, sealed-letter reading and spirit photography.[110] between 1908 and 1914 the Italian medium Francesco Carancini was investigated by psychical researchers and they discovered that he used phosphorus matches to produce "spirit lights" and with a freed hand would move objects in the séance room.[111]

In 1908 at a hotel in Naples, the psychical researchers W. W. Baggally, Hereward Carrington and Everard Feilding attended a series of séances with Eusapia Palladino. In a report they claimed that genuine supernatural activity had occurred in the séances, this report became known as the Feilding report.[112] In 1910, Feilding returned to Naples, but this time accompanied with the magician William S. Marriott. Unlike the 1908 sittings, Feilding and Marriott detected her cheating, just as she had done in America. Her deceptions were obvious. Palladino evaded control and was caught moving objects with her foot, shaking the curtain with her hands, moving the cabinet table with her elbow and touching the séance sitters. Milbourne Christopher wrote regarding the exposure "when one knows how a feat can be done and what to look for, only the most skillful performer can maintain the illusion in the face of such informed scrutiny."[113]

 
Stanisława Tomczyk (left) and the magician William Marriott (right) who duplicated by natural means her levitation trick of a glass beaker.

In 1910 at a séance in Grenoble, France the apport medium Charles Bailey produced two live birds in the séance room. Bailey was unaware that the dealer he had bought the birds from was present in the séance and he was exposed as a fraud.[114] The psychical researcher Eric Dingwall observed the medium Bert Reese in New York and claimed to have discovered his billet reading tricks.[115] The most detailed account at exposing his tricks (with diagrams) was by the magician Theodore Annemann.[116]

The Polish medium Stanisława Tomczyk's levitation of a glass beaker was exposed and replicated in 1910 by the magician William S. Marriott by means of a hidden thread.[117] The Italian medium Lucia Sordi was exposed in 1911, she was bound to a chair by psychical researchers but would free herself during her séances. The tricks of another Italian medium Linda Gazzera were revealed in the same year, she would release her hands and feet from control in her séances and use them. Gazzera would not permit anyone to search her before a séance sitting, as she concealed muslin and other objects in her hair.[118]

In 1917, Edward Clodd analyzed the mediumship of the trance medium Gladys Osborne Leonard and came to the conclusion that Leonard had known her séance sitters before she had held the séances, and could have easily obtained such information by natural means.[119] The British psychiatrist Charles Arthur Mercier wrote in his book Spiritualism and Sir Oliver Lodge (1917) that Oliver Lodge had been duped into believing mediumship by trickery and his spiritualist views were based on assumptions and not scientific evidence.[120]

In 1918, Joseph Jastrow wrote about the tricks of Eusapia Palladino who was an expert at freeing her hands and feet from the control in the séance room.[121] In the séance room Palladino would move curtains from a distance by releasing a jet of air from a rubber bulb that she had in her hand.[122] According to the psychical researcher Harry Price "Her tricks were usually childish: long hairs attached to small objects in order to produce 'telekinetic movements'; the gradual substitution of one hand for two when being controlled by sitters; the production of 'phenomena' with a foot which had been surreptitiously removed from its shoe and so on."[123]

In the 1920s the British medium Charles Albert Beare duped the Spiritualist organization the Temple of Light into believing he had genuine mediumship powers. In 1931 Beare published a confession in the newspaper Daily Express. In the confession he stated "I have deceived hundreds of people…. I have been guilty of fraud and deception in spiritualistic practices by pretending that I was controlled by a spirit guide…. I am frankly and whole-heartedly sorry that I have allowed myself to deceive people."[124] Due to the exposure of William Hope and other fraudulent spiritualists, Arthur Conan Doyle in the 1920s led a mass resignation of eighty-four members of the Society for Psychical Research, as they believed the Society was opposed to spiritualism.[125]

Between 8 November and 31 December 1920 Gustav Geley of the Institute Metapsychique International attended fourteen séances with the medium Franek Kluski in Paris. A bowl of hot paraffin was placed in the room and according to Kluski spirits dipped their limbs into the paraffin and then into a bath of water to materialize. Three other series of séances were held in Warsaw in Kluski's own apartment, these took place over a period of three years. Kluski was not searched in any of the séances. Photographs of the molds were obtained during the four series of experiments and were published by Geley in 1924.[126][127] Harry Houdini replicated the Kluski materialization moulds by using his hands and a bowl of hot paraffin.[128]

The British direct-voice medium Frederick Tansley Munnings was exposed as a fraud when one of his séance sitters turned the lights on which revealed him to be holding a trumpet by means of a telescopic extension piece and using an angle piece to change the auditory effect of his voice.[129] Richard Hodgson held six sittings with the medium Rosina Thompson and came to the conclusion she was a fraud as he discovered Thompson had access to documents and information about her séance sitters.[130]

On 4 February 1922, Harry Price with James Seymour, Eric Dingwall and William S. Marriott had proven the spirit photographer William Hope was a fraud during tests at the British College of Psychic Science. Price wrote in his SPR report "William Hope has been found guilty of deliberately substituting his own plates for those of a sitter... It implies that the medium brings to the sitting a duplicate slide and faked plates for fraudulent purposes."[131] The medium Kathleen Goligher was investigated by the physicist Edmund Edward Fournier d'Albe. On July 22, 1921, in a séance he observed Goligher holding the table up with her foot. He also discovered that her ectoplasm was made of muslin. During a séance d'Albe observed white muslin between Goligher's feet.[132]

The Danish medium Einer Nielsen was investigated by a committee from the Kristiania University in Norway, 1922 and discovered in a séance that his ectoplasm was fake.[133] In 1923 the Polish medium Jan Guzyk was exposed as a fraud in a series of séances in Sorbonne in Paris. Guzyk would use his elbows and legs to move objects around the room and touch the sitters. According to Max Dessoir the trick of Guzyk was to use his "foot for psychic touches and sounds".[134]

The psychical researchers Eric Dingwall and Harry Price re-published an anonymous work written by a former medium entitled Revelations of a Spirit Medium (1922) which exposed the tricks of mediumship and the fraudulent methods of producing "spirit hands".[135] Originally all the copies of the book were bought up by spiritualists and deliberately destroyed.[136] In 1923, the magician Carlos María de Heredia revealed how fake spirit hands could be made by using a rubber glove, paraffin and a jar of cold water.[137]

The Hungarian medium Ladislas Lasslo confessed that all of his spirit materializations were fraudulent in 1924. A séance sitter was also found to be working as a confederate for Lasslo.[138][139]

 
Mina Crandon with her "spirit hand" which was discovered to be made from a piece of carved animal liver.
 
Stanisława P. with ectoplasm.

The Austrian medium Rudi Schneider was investigated in 1924 by the physicists Stefan Meyer and Karl Przibram. They caught Rudi freeing his arm in a series of séances.[140] Rudi claimed he could levitate objects but according to Harry Price a photograph taken on April 28, 1932, showed that Rudi had managed to free his arm to move a handkerchief from the table.[141] According to Warren Jay Vinton, Schneider was an expert at freeing himself from control in the séance room.[142] Oliver Gatty and Theodore Besterman who tested Schneider concluded that in their tests there was "no good evidence that Rudi Schneider possesses supernormal powers."[143]

The spiritualists Arthur Conan Doyle and W. T. Stead were duped into believing Julius and Agnes Zancig had genuine psychic powers. Both Doyle and Stead wrote that the Zancigs performed telepathy. In 1924 Julius and Agnes Zancig confessed that their mind reading act was a trick and published the secret code and all the details of the trick method they had used under the title of Our Secrets!! in a London Newspaper.[144]

In 1925, Samuel Soal claimed to have taken part in a series of séances with the medium Blanche Cooper who contacted the spirit of a soldier Gordon Davis and revealed the house that he had lived in. Researchers later discovered fraud as the séances had taken place in 1922, not 1925. The magician and paranormal investigator Bob Couttie revealed that Davis was alive, Soal lived close to him and had altered the records of the sittings after checking out the house. Soal's co-workers knew that he had fiddled the results but were kept quiet with threats of libel suits.[145]

Mina Crandon claimed to materialize a "spirit hand", but when examined by biologists the hand was discovered to be made from a piece of carved animal liver.[146] The German apport medium Heinrich Melzer was discovered to be a fraud in 1926. In a séance psychical researchers found that Melzer had small stones attached to the back of his ears by flesh coloured tape.[147] Psychical researchers who investigated the mediumship of Maria Silbert revealed that she used her feet and toes to move objects in the séance room.[148]

In 1930 the Polish medium Stanisława P. was tested at the Institut Metapsychique in Paris. French psychical researcher Eugéne Osty suspected in the séance that Stanislawa had freed her hand from control. Secret flashlight photographs that were taken revealed that her hand was free and she had moved objects on the séance table.[149] It was claimed by spiritualists that during a series of séances in 1930 the medium Eileen J. Garrett channeled secret information from the spirit of the Lieutenant Herbert Carmichael Irwin who had died in the R101 crash a few days before the séance. Researcher Melvin Harris who studied the case wrote that the information described in Garrett's séances were "either commonplace, easily absorbed bits and pieces, or plain gobblede-gook. The so-called secret information just doesn't exist."[92]

 
Helen Duncan with fake ectoplasm, analysed by Harry Price to be made of cheesecloth and a rubber glove.

In the 1930s Harry Price (director of the National Laboratory of Psychical Research) had investigated the medium Helen Duncan and had her perform a number of test séances. She was suspected of swallowing cheesecloth which was then regurgitated as "ectoplasm".[150] Price had proven through analysis of a sample of ectoplasm produced by Duncan, that it was made of cheesecloth.[151] Helen Duncan would also use a doll made of a painted papier-mâché mask draped in an old sheet which she pretended to her sitters was a spirit.[152] The photographs taken by Thomas Glendenning Hamilton in the 1930s of ectoplasm reveal the substance to be made of tissue paper and magazine cut-outs of people. The famous photograph taken by Hamilton of the medium Mary Ann Marshall depicts tissue paper with a cut out of Arthur Conan Doyle's head from a newspaper. Skeptics have suspected that Hamilton may have been behind the hoax.[153]

Psychologists and researchers who studied Pearl Curran's automatic writings in the 1930s came to the conclusion Patience Worth was a fictitious creation of Curran.[154][155] In 1931 George Valiantine was exposed as a fraud in the séance room as it was discovered that he produced fraudulent "spirit" fingerprints in wax. The "spirit" thumbprint that Valiantine claimed belonged to Arthur Conan Doyle was revealed to be the print of his big toe on his right foot. It was also revealed that Valiantine made some of the prints with his elbow.[156]

The medium Frank Decker was exposed as a fraud in 1932. A magician and séance sitter who called himself M. Taylor presented a mail bag and Decker agreed to lock himself inside it. During the séance objects were moved around the room and it was claimed spirits had released Decker from the bag. It was later discovered to have been a trick as Martin Sunshine, a magic dealer admitted that he sold Decker a trick mail bag, such as stage escapologists use, and had acted as the medium's confederate by pretending to be M. Taylor, a magician.[157] The British medium Estelle Roberts claimed to materialize an Indian spirit guide called "Red Cloud". Researcher Melvin Harris who examined some photographs of Red Cloud wrote the face was the same as Roberts and she had dressed up in a feathered war-bonnet.[92]

In 1936, the psychical researcher Nandor Fodor tested the Hungarian apport medium Lajos Pap in London and during the séance a dead snake appeared. Pap was searched and was found to be wearing a device under his robe, where he had hidden the snake.[158] A photograph taken at a séance in 1937 in London shows the medium Colin Evans "levitating" in mid air. He claimed that spirits had lifted him. Evans was later discovered to be a fraud as a cord leading from a device in his hand has indicated that it was himself who triggered the flash-photograph and that all he had done was jump from his chair into the air and pretend he had levitated.[159]

According to the magician John Booth the stage mentalist David Devant managed to fool a number of people into believing he had genuine psychic ability who did not realize that his feats were magic tricks. At St. George's Hall, London he performed a fake "clairvoyant" act where he would read a message sealed inside an envelope. The spiritualist Oliver Lodge who was present in the audience was duped by the trick and claimed that Devant had used psychic powers. In 1936 Devant in his book Secrets of My Magic revealed the trick method he had used.[160]

The physicist Kristian Birkeland exposed the fraud of the direct voice medium Etta Wriedt. Birkeland turned on the lights during a séance, snatched her trumpets and discovered that the "spirit" noises were caused by chemical explosions induced by potassium and water and in other cases by lycopodium powder.[161] The British medium Isa Northage claimed to materialize the spirit of a surgeon known as Dr. Reynolds. When photographs taken of Reynolds were analyzed by researchers they discovered that Northage looked like Reynolds with a glued stage beard.[92]

The magician Julien Proskauer revealed that the levitating trumpet of Jack Webber was a trick. Close examination of photographs reveal Webber to be holding a telescopic reaching rod attached to the trumpet, and sitters in his séances only believed it to have levitated because the room was so dark they could not see the rod. Webber would cover the rod with crepe paper to disguise its real construction.[162]

 
Kathleen Goligher with fake ectoplasm made of muslin.

In 1954, the psychical researcher Rudolf Lambert published a report revealing details about a case of fraud that was covered up by many early members of the Institute Metapsychique International (IMI).[163] Lambert who had studied Gustav Geley's files on the medium Eva Carrière discovered photographs depicting fraudulent ectoplasm taken by her companion Juliette Bisson.[163] Various "materializations" were artificially attached to Eva's hair by wires. The discovery was never published by Geley. Eugéne Osty (the director of the institute) and members Jean Meyer, Albert von Schrenck-Notzing and Charles Richet all knew about the fraudulent photographs but were firm believers in mediumship phenomena so demanded the scandal be kept secret.[163]

The fraudulent medium Ronald Edwin confessed he had duped his séance sitters and revealed the fraudulent methods he had used in his book Clock Without Hands (1955).[164] The psychical researcher Tony Cornell investigated the mediumship of Alec Harris in 1955. During the séance "spirit" materializations emerged from a cabinet and walked around the room. Cornell wrote that a stomach rumble, nicotine smelling breath and a pulse gave it away that all the spirit figures were in fact Harris and that he had dressed up as each one behind the cabinet.[165]

The British medium William Roy earned over £50,000 from his séance sitters. He confessed to fraud in 1958 revealing the microphone and trick-apparatus that he had used.[166] The automatic writings of the Irish medium Geraldine Cummins were analyzed by psychical researchers in the 1960s and they revealed that she worked as a cataloguer at the National Library of Ireland and took information from various books that would appear in her automatic writings about ancient history.[167]

In 1960, psychic investigator Andrija Puharich and Tom O'Neill, publisher of the Spiritualist magazine Psychic Observer, arranged to film two seances at Camp Chesterfield, Indiana, using infrared film, intending to procure scientific proof of spirit materializations. The medium was shown the camera beforehand, and was aware that she was being filmed. However, the film revealed obvious fraud on the part of the medium and her cabinet assistant. The exposé was published in the 10 July 1960 issue of the Psychic Observer.[168]: 96–97 

In 1966 the son of Bishop Pike committed suicide. After his death, Pike contacted the British medium Ena Twigg for a series of séances and she claimed to have communicated with his son. Although Twigg denied formerly knowing anything about Pike and his son, the magician John Booth discovered that Twigg had already known information about the Pike family before the séances. Twigg had belonged to the same denomination of Bishop Pike, he had preached at a cathedral in Kent and she had known information about him and his deceased son from newspapers.[169]

In 1970 two psychical researchers investigated the direct-voice medium Leslie Flint and found that all the "spirit" voices in his séance sounded exactly like himself and attributed his mediumship to "second-rate ventriloquism".[170] The medium Arthur Ford died leaving specific instructions that all of his files should be burned. In 1971 after his death, psychical researchers discovered his files but instead of burning them they were examined and discovered to be filled with obituaries, newspaper articles and other information, which enabled Ford to research his séance sitters backgrounds.[171]

Ronald Pearsall in his book Table-rappers: The Victorians and the Occult (1972) documented how every Victorian medium investigated had been exposed as using trickery, in the book he revealed how mediums would even use acrobatic techniques during séances to convince audiences of spirit presences.[172]

In 1976, M. Lamar Keene, a medium in Florida and at the Spiritualist Camp Chesterfield in Indiana, confessed to defrauding the public in his book The Psychic Mafia. Keene detailed a multitude of common stage magic techniques utilized by mediums which are supposed to give an appearance of paranormal powers or supernatural involvement.[173]

After her death in the 1980s the medium Doris Stokes was accused of fraud, by author and investigator Ian Wilson. Wilson stated that Mrs Stokes planted specific people in her audience and did prior research into her sitters.[174] Rita Goold a physical medium during the 1980s was accused of fraud, by the psychical researcher Tony Cornell. He claimed she would dress up as the spirits in her séances and would play music during them which provided cover for her to change clothes.[175]

 
The spirit guide Silver Belle was made from cardboard. Both Ethel Post-Parrish and the lady standing outside of the curtain were in on the hoax.

The British journalist Ruth Brandon published the book The Spiritualists (1983) which exposed the fraud of the Victorian mediums.[6] The book received positive reviews and has been influential to skeptics of spiritualism.[176] The British apport medium Paul McElhoney was exposed as a fraud during a séance in Osset, Yorkshire in 1983. The tape recorder that McElhoney took to his séances was investigated and a black tape was discovered bound around the battery compartment and inside carnation flowers were found as well as a key-ring torch and other objects.[92]

In 1988, the magician Bob Couttie criticized the paranormal author Brian Inglis for deliberately ignoring evidence of fraud in mediumship. Couttie wrote Inglis had not familiarized himself with magician techniques.[177] In 1990 the researcher Gordon Stein discovered that the levitation photograph of the medium Carmine Mirabelli was fraudulent. The photograph was a trick as there were signs of chemical retouching under Mirabelli's feet. The retouching showed that Mirabelli was not levitating but was standing on a ladder which was erased from the photograph.[178]

In 1991, Wendy Grossman in the New Scientist criticized the parapsychologist Stephen E. Braude for ignoring evidence of fraud in mediumship. According to Grossman "[Braude] accuses sceptics of ignoring the evidence he believes is solid, but himself ignores evidence that does not suit him. If a medium was caught cheating on some occasions, he says, the rest of that medium's phenomena were still genuine." Grossman came to the conclusion that Braude did not do proper research on the subject and should study "the art of conjuring."[179]

In 1992, Richard Wiseman analyzed the Feilding report of Eusapia Palladino and argued that she employed a secret accomplice that could enter the room by a fake door panel positioned near the séance cabinet. Wiseman discovered this trick was already mentioned in a book from 1851, he also visited a carpenter and skilled magician who constructed a door within an hour with a false panel. The accomplice was suspected to be her second husband, who insisted on bringing Palladino to the hotel where the séances took place.[180] Massimo Polidoro and Gian Marco Rinaldi also analyzed the Feilding report but came to the conclusion no secret accomplice was needed as Palladino during the 1908 Naples séances could have produced the phenomena by using her foot.[181]

Colin Fry was exposed in 1992 when during a séance the lights were unexpectedly turned on and he was seen holding a spirit trumpet in the air, which the audience had been led to believe was being levitated by spiritual energy.[182] In 1997, Massimo Polidoro and Luigi Garlaschelli produced wax-moulds directly from one's hand which were exactly the same copies as Gustav Geley obtained from Franek Kluski, which are kept at the Institute Metapsychique International.[183]

A series of mediumistic séances known as the Scole Experiment took place between 1993 and 1998 in the presence of the researchers David Fontana, Arthur Ellison and Montague Keen. This has produced photographs, audio recordings and physical objects which appeared in the dark séance room (known as apports).[184] A criticism of the experiment was that it was flawed because it did not rule out the possibility of fraud. The skeptical investigator Brian Dunning wrote the Scole experiments fail in many ways. The séances were held in the basement of two of the mediums, only total darkness was allowed with no night vision apparatus as it might "frighten the spirits away". The box containing the film was not examined and could easily have been accessible to fraud. And finally, even though many years have passed, there has been no follow-up, no further research by any credible agency or published accounts.[184]

Recent

 
Joe Nickell, a notable skeptic of mediumship. According to Nickell, modern mediums use mentalist techniques such as cold reading.

The VERITAS Research Program of the Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health in the Department of Psychology at the University of Arizona, run by the parapsychologist Gary Schwartz, was created primarily to test the hypothesis that the consciousness (or identity) of a person survives physical death.[185] Schwartz claimed his experiments were indicative of survival, but do not yet provide conclusive proof.[186][187] The experiments described by Schwartz have received criticism from the scientific community for being inadequately designed and using poor controls.[188][189]

Ray Hyman discovered many methodological errors with Schwartz's research including; "Inappropriate control comparisons", "Failure to use double-blind procedures", "Creating non-falsifiable outcomes by reinterpreting failures as successes" and "Failure to independently check on facts the sitters endorsed as true". Hyman wrote "Even if the research program were not compromised by these defects, the claims being made would require replication by independent investigators." Hyman criticizes Schwartz's decision to publish his results without gathering "evidence for their hypothesis that would meet generally accepted scientific criteria... they have lost credibility."[190]

In 2003, skeptic investigator Massimo Polidoro in his book Secrets of the Psychics documented the history of fraud in mediumship and spiritualistic practices as well as the psychology of psychic deception.[55] Terence Hines in his book Pseudoscience and the Paranormal (2003) has written:

Modern spiritualists and psychics keep detailed files on their victims. As might be expected, these files can be very valuable and are often passed on from one medium or psychic to another when one retires or dies. Even if a psychic doesn't use a private detective or have immediate access to driver's license records and such, there is still a very powerful technique that will allow the psychic to convince people that the psychic knows all about them, their problems, and their deep personal secrets, fears, and desires. The technique is called cold reading and is probably as old as charlatanism itself... If John Edward (or any of the other self-proclaimed speakers with the dead) really could communicate with the dead, it would be a trivial matter to prove it. All that would be necessary would be for him to contact any of the thousands of missing persons who are presumed dead—famous (e.g., Jimmy Hoffa, Judge Crater) or otherwise—and correctly report where the body is. Of course, this is never done. All we get, instead, are platitudes to the effect that Aunt Millie, who liked green plates, is happy on the other side.[191]

An experiment conducted by the British Psychological Society in 2005 suggests that under the controlled condition of the experiment, people who claimed to be professional mediums do not demonstrate the mediumistic ability. In the experiment, mediums were assigned to work the participants chosen to be "sitters." The mediums claimed to contact the deceased who were related to the sitters. The research gather the numbers of the statements made and have the sitters rate the accuracy of the statements. The readings that were considered to be somewhat accurate by the sitters were very generalized, and the ones that were considered inaccurate were the ones that were very specific.[192]

On Fox News on the Geraldo at Large show, October 6, 2007, Geraldo Rivera and other investigators accused Schwartz of being a fraud as he had overstepped his position as a university researcher by requesting over three million dollars from a bereaved father who had lost his son. Schwartz claimed to have contacted the spirit of a 25-year-old man in the bathroom of his parents house and it is alleged he attempted to charge the family 3.5 million dollars for his mediumship services. Schwartz responded saying that the allegations were set up to destroy his science credibility.[193][194]

In 2013 Rose Marks and members of her family were convicted of fraud for a series of crimes spanning 20 years entailing between $20 and $45 million. They told vulnerable clients that to solve their problems they had to give the purported psychics money and valuables. Marks and family promised to return the cash and goods after "cleansing" them. Prosecutors established they had no intent to return the property.[195][196][197]

The exposures of fraudulent activity led to a rapid decline in ectoplasm and materialization séances.[198] Investigator Joe Nickell has written that modern self-proclaimed mediums like John Edward, Sylvia Browne, Rosemary Altea and James Van Praagh are avoiding the Victorian tradition of dark rooms, spirit handwriting and flying tambourines as these methods risk exposure. They instead use "mental mediumship" tactics like cold reading or gleaning information from sitters beforehand (hot reading). Group readings also improve hits by making general statements with conviction, which will fit at least one person in the audience. Shows are carefully edited before airing to show only what appears to be hits and removing anything that does not reflect well on the medium.[199]

Michael Shermer criticized mediums in Scientific American, saying, "mediums are unethical and dangerous: they prey on the emotions of the grieving. As grief counselors know, death is best faced head-on as a part of life." Shermer wrote that the human urge to seek connections between events that may form patterns meaningful for survival is a function of natural evolution, and called the alleged ability of mediums to talk to the dead "a well-known illusion of a meaningful pattern."[200]

According to James Randi, a skeptic who has debunked many claims of psychic ability and uncovered fraudulent practices,[201] mediums who do cold readings "fish, suggest possibilities, make educated guesses and give options." Randi has a standing offer of $1 million US dollars for anyone who can demonstrate psychic ability under controlled conditions. Most prominent psychics and mediums have not taken up his offer.[202]

The key role in mediumship of this sort is played by "effect of subjective confirmation" (see Barnum effect) — people are predisposed to consider reliable that information which though is casual coincidence or a guess, however it seems to them personally important and significant and answers their personal belief.[203]

The article about this phenomenon in Encyclopædia Britannica places emphasis that "… one by one spiritual mediums were convicted of fraud, sometimes using the tricks borrowed from scenic "magicians" to convince their paranormal abilities". In the article it is also noted that "… the opening of the wide ranging fraud happening on spiritualistic sessions caused serious damage to reputation of the movement of a Spiritualism and in the USA pushed it on the public periphery".[204]

In March 2017, medium Thomas John was targeted in a sting operation and caught doing a hot reading. The sting was planned and implemented by skeptical activist Susan Gerbic and mentalist Mark Edward. The unmarried couple attended John's show using aliases, and were "read" as a married couple Susanna and Mark Wilson by John. During the entire reading, John failed to determine the actual identities of Gerbic and Edward, or that they were being deceptive during his reading. All personal information he gave them matched what was on their falsified Facebook accounts, rather than being about their actual lives, and John pretended he was getting this information from Gerbic and Edward's supposedly dead—but actually nonexistent—relatives.[205]

As Jack Hitt reported in The New York Times:

"Over the course of the reading, John comfortably laid down the specifics of Susanna Wilson’s life — he named “Andy” and amazingly knew him to be her twin. He knew that she and her brother grew up in Michigan and that his girlfriend was Maria. He knew about Susanna’s father-in-law and how he died."[206]

These details were from the falsified Facebook accounts for the pair which were prepared by a group of skeptics in advance of the reading, and Gerbic and Edward were not aware of the specific information in these accounts.[207] This blinding was done in order to avoid John later being able to claim he obtained the false information by reading Gerbic and Edward's minds.[205] In her report, Gerbic also revealed that during an after-show private event, John disclosed in a group setting that at least one of the people in the audience which he did a reading about was actually his own student.[205]

The same week that the Thomas John sting revelation was made in The New York Times, John's claimed mediumship abilities portrayed in the Lifetime reality TV show called Seatbelt Psychic were challenged by Gerbic in an article published by Skeptical Inquirer. In the show, John is a ride-share driver who surprises “unsuspecting” passengers when he delivers messages from their deceased relatives. Gerbic investigated and revealed that John's passengers are actually actors, several of which are documented in IMDb. Gerbic concluded that the riders were likely hired to ride with John, but were probably not acting when talking with him. She concluded that the details about their lives mentioned by John were easily found on social media sources, and likely fed to John, making the readings actually hot readings. One rider, Wendy Westmoreland, played a character on Stalked by a Doctor, a TV show also produced by Lifetime.[208]

See also

References

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  2. ^ Brandreth, Gyles (November 3, 2002). "Is Anybody There?". The Sunday Telegraph. London.
  3. ^ "Why do a quarter of people across the world believe humans have psychic abilities?". 2019-02-27. Archived from the original on 2022-05-12. Retrieved 2020-09-23.
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  5. ^ O'Keeffe, Ciaran (May 2005). "Testing Alleged Mediumship: Methods and Results". British Journal of Psychology. 96 (2): 165–179. doi:10.1348/000712605X36361. ISSN 0007-1269. PMID 15969829.
  6. ^ a b c Ruth Brandon. (1983). The Spiritualists: The Passion for the Occult in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Alfred E. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-394-52740-6
  7. ^ Milbourne Christopher. (1979). Search for the Soul. T. Y. Crowell. ISBN 978-0-690-01760-1
  8. ^ Terence Hines. (2003). Pseudoscience and the Paranormal. Prometheus Books. ISBN 978-1-57392-979-0
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  24. ^ Deborah Blum. (2006). Ghost Hunters, William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death. The Penguin Press.
  25. ^ Amy Tanner. (1994, originally published 1910). Studies in Spiritism. With an introduction by G. Stanley Hall. Prometheus Press. p. 18
  26. ^ God's World: A Treatise on Spiritualism Founded on Transcripts of Shorthand Notes Taken Down, Over a Period of Five Years, in the Seance-Room of the William T. Stead Memorial Center (a Religious Body Incorporated Under the Statutes of the State of Illinois), Mrs. Cecil M. Cook, Medium and Pastor. Compiled and Written by Lloyd Kenyon Jones. Chicago, Ill.: The William T. Stead Memorial Center, 1919.
  27. ^ "Ectoplasm" def. Merriam Webster dictionary, Retrieved 18 January 2007
  28. ^ Somerlott, Robert, Here, Mr. Splitfoot. Viking, 1971.
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Further reading

  • Ruth Brandon. (1983). The Spiritualists: The Passion for the Occult in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Alfred E. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-394-52740-6
  • Edward Clodd. (1917). The Question: A Brief History and Examination of Modern Spiritualism. Grant Richards, London.
  • Stuart Cumberland. (1919). Spiritualism: The Inside Truth. London: Odhams.
  • Joseph Dunninger. (1935). Inside the Medium's Cabinet. New York, D. Kemp and Company.
  • Willis Dutcher. (1922). On the Other Side of the Footlights: An Expose of Routines, Apparatus and Deceptions Resorted to by Mediums, Clairvoyants, Fortune Tellers and Crystal Gazers in Deluding the Public. Berlin, WI: Heaney Magic.
  • Walter Mann. (1919). The Follies and Frauds of Spiritualism. Rationalist Association. London: Watts & Co.
  • Joseph McCabe. (1920). Scientific Men and Spiritualism: A Skeptic's Analysis. The Living Age. June 12. pp. 652–57. A skeptical look at SPR members who had supported Spiritualism, concludes they were duped by fraudulent mediums.
  • Joseph McCabe. (1920). Is Spiritualism Based On Fraud? The Evidence Given By Sir A. C. Doyle and Others Drastically Examined. London: Watts & Co.
  • Georgess McHargue. (1972). Facts, Frauds, and Phantasms: A Survey of the Spiritualist Movement. Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-05305-1
  • Alex Owen. (2004). The Darkened Room: Women, Power, and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England. University Of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-64205-5
  • Frank Podmore. (1911). The Newer Spiritualism. Henry Holt and Company.
  • Massimo Polidoro. (2003). Secrets of the Psychics: Investigating Paranormal Claims. Prometheus Books. ISBN 978-1-59102-086-8
  • Harry Price and Eric Dingwall. (1975). Revelations of a Spirit Medium. Arno Press. Reprint of 1891 edition by Charles F. Pidgeon. This rare, overlooked, and forgotten, book gives the "insider's knowledge" of 19th century deceptions.
  • Joseph Rinn. (1950). Sixty Years Of Psychical Research: Houdini And I Among The Spiritualists. Truth Seeker.
  • Chung Ling Soo. (1898). Spirit Slate Writing and Kindred Phenomena. Munn & Company.
  • Richard Wiseman. (1997). Deception & Self-Deception: Investigating Psychics. Prometheus Books. ISBN 978-1-57392-121-3

External links

  •   Media related to Mediumship at Wikimedia Commons
  •   The dictionary definition of Mediumship at Wiktionary
  • Houdini v. The Blond Witch of Lime Street: A Historical Lesson in Skepticism – Massimo Polidoro
  • How to Have a Séance: Tricks of the Fraudulent Mediums
  • John Edward: Hustling the Bereaved – Joe Nickell
  • Mediumship – Skeptic's Dictionary
  • The 'Medium' Is Not the Messenger – James Randi
  • – Harry Houdini
  • Psychic Methods Exposed - Cold Reading Tricks
  • Psychics: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

January 09, 2023
mediumship, practice, purportedly, mediating, communication, between, familiar, spirits, spirits, dead, living, human, beings, practitioners, known, mediums, spirit, mediums, there, different, types, mediumship, spirit, channelling, including, séance, tables, . Mediumship is the practice of purportedly mediating communication between familiar spirits or spirits of the dead and living human beings Practitioners are known as mediums or spirit mediums 1 2 There are different types of mediumship or spirit channelling including seance tables trance and ouija Seance conducted by John Beattie Bristol England 1872 Belief in psychic ability is widespread 3 despite the absence of objective evidence for its existence 4 Scientific researchers have attempted to ascertain the validity of claims of mediumship An experiment undertaken by the British Psychological Society led to the conclusion that the test subjects demonstrated no mediumistic ability 5 Mediumship gained popularity during the nineteenth century when ouija boards were used as a source of entertainment Investigations during this period revealed widespread fraud with some practitioners employing techniques used by stage magicians and the practice began to lose credibility 6 7 Fraud is still rife in the medium or psychic industry with cases of deception and trickery being discovered to this day 8 Several different variants of mediumship have been described arguably the best known forms involve a spirit purportedly taking control of a medium s voice and using it to relay a message or where the medium simply hears the message and passes it on Other forms involve materializations of the spirit or the presence of a voice and telekinetic activity The practice is associated with several religious belief systems such as Shamanism Vodun Spiritualism Spiritism Candomble Voodoo Umbanda and some New Age groups Contents 1 Concept 2 History 3 Terminology 3 1 Spirit guide 3 2 Spirit operator 3 3 Demonstrations of mediumship 3 4 Mental mediumship 3 5 Trance mediumship 3 6 Physical mediumship 3 7 Direct voice 3 8 Channeling 4 Psychic senses 5 Explanations 5 1 Paranormal belief 5 2 Scientific skepticism 6 Fraud 6 1 1800s 6 2 1900s 6 3 Recent 7 See also 8 References 9 Further reading 10 External linksConcept EditIn Spiritism and Spiritualism the medium has the role of an intermediary between the world of the living and the world of spirit Mediums claim that they can listen to and relay messages from spirits or that they can allow a spirit to control their body and speak through it directly or by using automatic writing or drawing Spiritualists classify types of mediumship into two main categories mental and physical 9 Mental mediums purportedly tune in to the spirit world by listening sensing or seeing spirits or symbols Physical mediums are believed to produce materialization of spirits apports of objects and other effects such as knocking rapping bell ringing etc by using ectoplasm created from the cells of their bodies and those of seance attendees During seances mediums are said to go into trances varying from light to deep that permit spirits to control their minds 10 Channeling can be seen as the modern form of the old mediumship where the channel or channeller purportedly receives messages from teaching spirit an Ascended master from God or from an angelic entity but essentially through the filter of his own waking consciousness or Higher Self 11 History EditAttempts to communicate with the dead and other living human beings aka spirits have been documented back to early human history such as the Biblical account of the Witch of Endor 12 Mediumship became quite popular in the 19th century United States and the United Kingdom after the rise of Spiritualism as a religious movement Modern Spiritualism is said to date from practices and lectures of the Fox sisters in New York State in 1848 The trance mediums Paschal Beverly Randolph and Emma Hardinge Britten were among the most celebrated lecturers and authors on the subject in the mid 19th century Allan Kardec coined the term Spiritism around 1860 13 Kardec claimed that conversations with spirits by selected mediums were the basis of his The Spirits Book and later his five book collection Spiritist Codification Some scientists of the period who investigated Spiritualism also became converts They included chemist Robert Hare physicist William Crookes 1832 1919 and evolutionary biologist Alfred Russel Wallace 1823 1913 14 15 Nobel laureate Pierre Curie took a very serious scientific interest in the work of medium Eusapia Palladino 16 Other prominent adherents included journalist and pacifist William T Stead 1849 1912 17 and physician and author Arthur Conan Doyle 1859 1930 18 After the exposure of the fraudulent use of stage magic tricks by physical mediums such as the Davenport Brothers and the Bangs Sisters mediumship fell into disrepute However the religion and its beliefs continue in spite of this with physical mediumship and seances falling out of practice and platform mediumship coming to the fore In the late 1920s and early 1930s there were around one quarter of a million practising Spiritualists and some two thousand Spiritualist societies in the UK in addition to flourishing microcultures of platform mediumship and home circles 19 Spiritualism continues to be practised primarily through various denominational Spiritualist churches in the United States Canada Australia and the United Kingdom In the United Kingdom over 340 Spiritualist churches and centres open their doors to the public and free demonstrations of mediumship are regularly performed 20 Terminology EditSpirit guide Edit Main article Spirit guide In 1958 the English born Spiritualist C Dorreen Phillips wrote of her experiences with a medium at Camp Chesterfield Indiana In Rev James Laughton s seances there are many Indians They are very noisy and appear to have great power The little guides or doorkeepers are usually Indian boys and girls who act as messengers who help to locate the spirit friends who wish to speak with you 21 Spirit operator Edit A spirit who uses a medium to manipulate psychic energy or energy systems Demonstrations of mediumship Edit Colin Evans who claimed spirits lifted him into the air was exposed as a fraud In old line Spiritualism a portion of the services generally toward the end is given over to demonstrations of mediumship through purported contact with the spirits of the dead A typical example of this way of describing a mediumistic church service is found in the 1958 autobiography of C Dorreen Phillips She writes of the worship services at the Spiritualist Camp Chesterfield in Chesterfield Indiana Services are held each afternoon consisting of hymns a lecture on philosophy and demonstrations of mediumship 21 Today demonstration of mediumship is part of the church service at all churches affiliated with the National Spiritualist Association of Churches NSAC and the Spiritualists National Union SNU Demonstration links to NSAC s Declaration of Principal 9 We affirm that the precepts of Prophecy and Healing are Divine attributes proven through Mediumship Mental mediumship Edit Mental mediumship is communication of spirits with a medium by telepathy The medium mentally hears clairaudience sees clairvoyance and or feels clairsentience messages from spirits Directly or with the help of a spirit guide the medium passes the information on to the message s recipient s When a medium is doing a reading for a particular person that person is known as the sitter Trance mediumship Edit Trance mediumship is often seen as a form of mental mediumship Most trance mediums remain conscious during a communication period wherein a spirit uses the medium s mind to communicate The spirit or spirits using the medium s mind influences the mind with the thoughts being conveyed The medium allows the ego to step aside for the message to be delivered At the same time one has awareness of the thoughts coming through and may even influence the message with one s own bias Such a trance is not to be confused with sleepwalking as the patterns are entirely different Castillo 1995 states Trance phenomena result from the behavior of intense focusing of attention which is the key psychological mechanism of trance induction Adaptive responses including institutionalized forms of trance are tuned into neural networks in the brain 22 In the 1860s and 1870s trance mediums were very popular Spiritualism generally attracted female adherents many who had strong interests in social justice Many trance mediums delivered passionate speeches on abolitionism temperance and women s suffrage 23 Scholars have described Leonora Piper as one of the most famous trance mediums in the history of Spiritualism 6 24 25 In the typical deep trance the medium may not have clear recall of all the messages conveyed while in an altered state such people generally work with an assistant That person selectively wrote down or otherwise recorded the medium s words Rarely did the assistant record the responding words of the sitter and other attendants An example of this kind of relationship can be found in the early 20th century collaboration between the trance medium Mrs Cecil M Cook of the William T Stead Memorial Center in Chicago a religious body incorporated under the statutes of the State of Illinois and the journalist Lloyd Kenyon Jones The latter was a non medium Spiritualist who transcribed Cook s messages in shorthand He edited them for publication in book and pamphlet form 26 Physical mediumship Edit A photograph of the medium Linda Gazzera with a doll as fake ectoplasm Physical mediumship is defined as manipulation of energies and energy systems by spirits This type of mediumship is claimed to involve perceptible manifestations such as loud raps and noises voices materialized objects apports materialized spirit bodies or body parts such as hands legs and feet The medium is used as a source of power for such spirit manifestations By some accounts this was achieved by using the energy or ectoplasm released by a medium see spirit photography 27 28 The last physical medium to be tested by a committee from Scientific American was Mina Crandon in 1924 Most physical mediumship is presented in a darkened or dimly lit room Most physical mediums make use of a traditional array of tools and appurtenances including spirit trumpets spirit cabinets and levitation tables Direct voice Edit Direct voice communication is the claim that spirits speak independently of the medium who facilitates the phenomenon rather than produces it The role of the medium is to make the connection between the physical and spirit worlds Trumpets are often utilised to amplify the signal and directed voice mediums are sometimes known as trumpet mediums This form of mediumship also permits the medium to participate in the discourse during seances since the medium s voice is not required by the spirit to communicate Leslie Flint was one of the best known exponents of this form of mediumship 29 Channeling Edit A conduit in esoterism and spiritual discourse is a specific object person location or process such as engaging in a seance or entering a trance or using psychedelic medicines which allows a person to connect or communicate with a spiritual realm metaphysical energy or spiritual entity or vice versa The use of such a conduit may be entirely metaphoric or symbolic or it may be earnestly believed to be functional In Shintoism the public shrine is a building or place that functions as a conduit for kami 神 spiritual essence commonly translated as god or spirit In Yoruba religion it is said that Elegba the son of Osun became the great conduit of ase divine energy in the Universe In the later half of the 20th century Western mediumship developed in two different ways One type involves clairaudience in which the medium claims to hear spirits and relay what they hear to their clients The other is a form of channeling in which the channeler seemingly goes into a trance and purports to leave their body allowing a spirit entity to borrow it and then speak through them 30 When in a trance the medium appears to enter into a cataleptic state 31 although modern channelers may not citation needed Some channelers open the eyes when channeling and remain able to walk and behave normally The rhythm and the intonation of the voice may also change completely 31 A notable channeler in the early 1900s was Rose Edith Kelly wife of the English occultist and ceremonial magician Aleister Crowley 1875 1947 She allegedly channeled the voice of a non physical entity named Aiwass during their honeymoon in Cairo Egypt 1904 32 33 34 Others purport to channel spirits from future dimensions ascended masters 35 or in the case of the trance mediums of the Brahma Kumaris God 36 Another widely known channeler of this variety is J Z Knight who claims to channel the spirit of Ramtha a 30 thousand year old man from Lemuria Other notable channels are Jane Roberts for Seth and Esther Hicks for Abraham 37 Another channeler in the early 1900s was Edgar Cayce who claimed to channel his higher self while in a trance like state Psychic senses EditSenses used by mental mediums are sometimes defined differently from in other paranormal fields A medium is said to have psychic abilities but not all psychics function as mediums The term clairvoyance for instance may include seeing spirit and visions instilled by the spirit world The Parapsychological Association defines clairvoyance as information derived directly from an external physical source 38 Clairvoyance or clear seeing is the ability to see anything that is not physically present such as objects animals or people This sight occurs in the mind s eye Some mediums say that this is their normal vision state Others say that they must train their minds with such practices as meditation in order to achieve this ability and that assistance from spiritual helpers is often necessary Some clairvoyant mediums can see a spirit as though the spirit has a physical body They see the bodily form as if it were physically present Other mediums see the spirit in their mind s eye or it appears as a movie or a television programme or a still picture like a photograph in their mind Clairaudience or clear hearing is usually defined as the ability to hear the voices or thoughts of spirits Some mediums hear as though they are listening to a person talking to them on the outside of their head as though the Spirit is next to or near to the medium and other mediums hear the voices in their minds as a verbal thought Clairsentience or clear sensing is the ability to have an impression of what a spirit wants to communicate or to feel sensations instilled by a spirit Clairsentinence or clear feeling is a condition in which the medium takes on the ailments of a spirit feeling the same physical problem which the spirit person had before death Clairalience or clear smelling is the ability to smell a spirit For example a medium may smell the pipe tobacco of a person who smoked during life Clairgustance or clear tasting is the ability to receive taste impressions from a spirit Claircognizance or clear knowing is the ability to know something without receiving it through normal or psychic senses It is a feeling of just knowing Often a medium will claim to have the feeling that a message or situation is right or wrong Explanations EditParanormal belief Edit Spiritualists believe that phenomena produced by mediums both mental and physical mediumship are the result of external spirit agencies 39 The psychical researcher Thomson Jay Hudson in The Law of Psychic Phenomena 1892 and Theodore Flournoy in his book Spiritism and Psychology 1911 wrote that all kinds of mediumship could be explained by suggestion and telepathy from the medium and that there was no evidence for the spirit hypothesis The idea of mediumship being explained by telepathy was later merged into the super ESP hypothesis of mediumship which is currently advocated by some parapsychologists 40 Scientific skepticism Edit In their book How to Think About Weird Things Critical Thinking for a New Age authors Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaughn have noted that the spiritualist and ESP hypothesis of mediumship has yielded no novel predictions assumes unknown entities or forces and conflicts with available scientific evidence 41 Scientists which who study anomalistic psychology consider mediumship to be the result of fraud and psychological factors Research from psychology for over a hundred years suggests that where there is not fraud mediumship and Spiritualist practices can be explained by hypnotism magical thinking and suggestion 42 43 Trance mediumship which according to Spiritualists is caused by discarnate spirits speaking through the medium can be explained by dissociative identity disorder 44 Illusionists such as Joseph Rinn have staged fake seances in which the sitters have claimed to have observed genuine supernatural phenomena 45 Albert Moll studied the psychology of seance sitters According to Wolffram 2012 Moll argued that the hypnotic atmosphere of the darkened seance room and the suggestive effect of the experimenters social and scientific prestige could be used to explain why seemingly rational people vouchsafed occult phenomena 46 The psychologists Leonard Zusne and Warren Jones in their book Anomalistic Psychology A Study of Magical Thinking 1989 wrote that spirits controls are the products of the medium s own psychological dynamics 47 A fraudulent medium may obtain information about their sitters by secretly eavesdropping on sitter s conversations or searching telephone directories the internet and newspapers before the sittings 48 A technique called cold reading can also be used to obtain information from the sitter s behavior clothing posture and jewellery 49 50 The psychologist Richard Wiseman has written Cold reading also explains why psychics have consistently failed scientific tests of their powers By isolating them from their clients psychics are unable to pick up information from the way those clients dress or behave By presenting all of the volunteers involved in the test with all of the readings they are prevented from attributing meaning to their own reading and therefore can t identify it from readings made for others As a result the type of highly successful hit rate that psychics enjoy on a daily basis comes crashing down and the truth emerges their success depends on a fascinating application of psychology and not the existence of paranormal abilities 51 In a series of experiments holding fake seances Wiseman et al 2003 paranormal believers and disbelievers were suggested by an actor that a table was levitating when in fact it remained stationary After the seance approximately one third of the participants incorrectly reported that the table had moved The results showed a greater percentage of believers reporting that the table had moved In another experiment the believers had also reported that a handbell had moved when it had remained stationary and expressed their belief that the fake seances contained genuine paranormal phenomena The experiments strongly supported the notion that in the seance room believers are more suggestible than disbelievers for suggestions that are consistent with their belief in paranormal phenomena 52 In a 2019 television segment on Last Week Tonight featuring prominent purported mediums including Theresa Caputo John Edward Tyler Henry and Sylvia Browne John Oliver criticized the media for promoting mediums because this exposure convinces viewers that such powers are real and so enable neighborhood mediums 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 53 54 Fraud Edit Helen Duncan age 30 in a seance with dolls 1928 From its earliest beginnings to contemporary times mediumship practices have had many instances of fraud and trickery 55 Seances take place in darkness so the poor lighting conditions can become an easy opportunity for fraud Physical mediumship that has been investigated by scientists has been discovered to be the result of deception and trickery 56 Ectoplasm a supposed paranormal substance was revealed to have been made from cheesecloth butter muslin and cloth Mediums would also stick cut out faces from magazines and newspapers onto cloth or on other props and use plastic dolls in their seances to pretend to their audiences spirits were contacting them 57 Lewis Spence in his book An Encyclopaedia of Occultism 1960 wrote A very large part is played by fraud in spiritualistic practices both in the physical and psychical or automatic phenomena but especially in the former The frequency with which mediums have been convicted of fraud has indeed induced many people to abandon the study of psychical research judging the whole bulk of the phenomena to be fraudulently produced 58 Henry Slade In Britain the Society for Psychical Research has investigated mediumship phenomena Critical SPR investigations into purported mediums and the exposure of fake mediums has led to a number of resignations by Spiritualist members 59 60 On the subject of fraud in mediumship Paul Kurtz wrote No doubt a great importance in the paranormal field is the problem of fraud The field of psychic research and spiritualism has been so notoriously full of charlatans such as the Fox sisters and Eusapia Palladino individuals who claim to have special power and gifts but who are actually conjurers who have hoodwinked scientists and the public as well that we have to be especially cautious about claims made on their behalf 61 Magicians have a long history of exposing the fraudulent methods of mediumship Early debunkers included Chung Ling Soo Henry Evans and Julien Proskauer 62 Later magicians to reveal fraud were Joseph Dunninger Harry Houdini and Joseph Rinn Rose Mackenberg a private investigator who worked with Houdini during the 1920s was among the most prominent debunkers of psychic fraud during the mid 20th century 63 1800s Edit Many 19th century mediums were discovered to be engaged in fraud 64 While advocates of mediumship claim that their experiences are genuine the Encyclopaedia Britannica article on spiritualism notes in reference to a case in the 19th century that one by one the Spiritualist mediums were discovered to be engaged in fraud sometimes employing the techniques of stage magicians in their attempts to convince people of their clairvoyant powers The article also notes that the exposure of widespread fraud within the spiritualist movement severely damaged its reputation and pushed it to the fringes of society in the United States 65 At a seance in the house of the solicitor John Snaith Rymer in Ealing in July 1855 a sitter Frederick Merrifield observed that a spirit hand was a false limb attached on the end of the medium Daniel Dunglas Home s arm Merrifield also claimed to have observed Home use his foot in the seance room 66 The poet Robert Browning and his wife Elizabeth attended a seance on 23 July 1855 in Ealing with the Rymers 67 During the seance a spirit face materialized which Home claimed was the son of Browning who had died in infancy Browning seized the materialization and discovered it to be the bare foot of Home To make the deception worse Browning had never lost a son in infancy Browning s son Robert in a letter to The Times December 5 1902 referred to the incident Home was detected in a vulgar fraud 68 69 The researchers Joseph McCabe and Trevor H Hall exposed the levitation of Home as nothing more than his moving across a connecting ledge between two iron balconies 70 The psychologist and psychical researcher Stanley LeFevre Krebs had exposed the Bangs Sisters as frauds During a seance he employed a hidden mirror and caught them tampering with a letter in an envelope and writing a reply in it under the table which they would pretend a spirit had written 71 The British materialization medium Rosina Mary Showers was caught in many fraudulent seances throughout her career 72 In 1874 during a seance with Edward William Cox a sitter looked into the cabinet and seized the spirit the headdress fell off and was revealed to be Showers 73 In a series of experiments in London at the house of William Crookes in February 1875 the medium Anna Eva Fay managed to fool Crookes into believing she had genuine psychic powers Fay later confessed to her fraud and revealed the tricks she had used 74 Frank Herne a British medium who formed a partnership with the medium Charles Williams was repeatedly exposed in fraudulent materialization seances 75 In 1875 he was caught pretending to be a spirit during a seance in Liverpool and was found clothed in about two yards of stiffened muslin wound round his head and hanging down as far as his thigh 76 Florence Cook had been trained in the arts of the seance by Herne and was repeatedly exposed as a fraudulent medium 77 The medium Henry Slade was caught in fraud many times throughout his career In a seance in 1876 in London Ray Lankester and Bryan Donkin snatched his slate before the spirit message was supposed to be written and found the writing already there 78 Slade also played an accordion with one hand under the table and claimed spirits would play it The magician Chung Ling Soo revealed how Slade had performed the trick 79 Eva Carriere with cardboard cut out figure King Ferdinand of Bulgaria The British medium Francis Ward Monck was investigated by psychical researchers and discovered to be a fraud On November 3 1876 during the seance a sitter demanded that Monck be searched Monck ran from the room locked himself in another room and escaped out of a window A pair of stuffed gloves was found in his room as well as cheesecloth reaching rods and other fraudulent devices in his luggage 80 After a trial Monck was convicted for his fraudulent mediumship and was sentenced to three months in prison 81 In 1876 William Eglinton was exposed as a fraud when the psychical researcher Thomas Colley seized a spirit materialization in his seance and cut off a portion of its cloak It was discovered that the cut piece matched a cloth found in Eglinton s suitcase 82 Colley also pulled the beard off the materialization and it was revealed to be a fake the same as another one found in the suitcase of Eglinton 83 In 1880 in a seance a spirit named Yohlande materialized a sitter grabbed it and was revealed to be the medium Mme d Esperance herself 84 In September 1878 the British medium Charles Williams and his fellow medium at the time A Rita were detected in trickery at Amsterdam During the seance a materialized spirit was seized and found to be Rita and a bottle of phosphorus oil muslin and a false beard were found amongst the two mediums 85 In 1882 C E Wood was exposed in a seance in Peterborough Her Indian spirit control Pocka was found to be the medium on her knees covered in muslin 86 In 1880 the American stage mentalist Washington Irving Bishop published a book revealing how mediums would use secret codes as the trick for their clairvoyant readings 87 The Seybert Commission was a group of faculty at the University of Pennsylvania who in 1884 1887 exposed fraudulent mediums such as Pierre L O A Keeler and Henry Slade 88 The Fox sisters confessed to fraud in 1888 Margaret Fox revealed that she and her sister had produced the spirit rappings by cracking their toe joints 89 In 1891 at a public seance with twenty sitters the medium Cecil Husk was caught leaning over a table pretending to be a spirit by covering his face with phosphor material 90 The magician Will Goldston also exposed the fraud mediumship of Husk In a seance Goldston attended a pale face materialization appeared in the room Goldston wrote I saw at once that it was a gauze mask and that the moustache attached to it was loose at one side through lack of gum I pulled at the mask It came away revealing the face of Husk 91 The British materialization medium Annie Fairlamb Mellon was exposed as a fraud on October 12 1894 During the seance a sitter seized the materialized spirit and found it to be the Mellon on her knees with white muslin on her head and shoulders 92 The magician Samri Baldwin exposed the tricks of the Davenport brothers in his book The Secrets of Mahatma Land Explained 1895 93 The medium Swami Laura Horos was convicted of fraud several times and was tried for rape and fraud in London in 1901 She was described by the magician Harry Houdini as one of the most extraordinary fake mediums and mystery swindlers the world has ever known 94 In the late 19th century the fraudulent methods of spirit photographers such as David Duguid and Edward Wyllie were revealed by psychical researchers 95 Hereward Carrington documented various methods with diagrams how the medium would manipulate the plates before during and after the seance to produce spirit forms 96 The ectoplasm materializations of the French medium Eva Carriere were exposed as fraudulent The fake ectoplasm of Carriere was made of cut out paper faces from newspapers and magazines on which fold marks could sometimes be seen from the photographs 97 Cut out faces that she used included Woodrow Wilson King Ferdinand of Bulgaria French president Raymond Poincare and the actress Mona Delza 98 The seance trick of the Eddy Brothers was revealed by the magician Chung Ling Soo in 1898 The brothers utilized a fake hand made of lead and with their hands free from control would play musical instruments and move objects in the seance room 99 The physiologist Ivor Lloyd Tuckett examined a case of spirit photography that W T Stead had claimed was genuine Stead visited a photographer who had produced a photograph of him with deceased soldier known as Piet Botha Stead claimed that the photographer could not have come across any information about Piet Botha however Tuckett discovered that an article in 1899 had been published on Pietrus Botha in a weekly magazine with a portrait and personal details 100 The trance medium Leonora Piper was investigated by psychical researchers and psychologists in the late 19th and early 20th century In an experiment to test if Piper s spirit controls were purely fictitious the psychologist G Stanley Hall invented a niece called Bessie Beals and asked Piper s control to get in touch with it Bessie appeared answered questions and accepted Hall as her uncle 101 The psychologist Joseph Jastrow wrote that Piper pretended to be controlled by spirits and fell into simple and logical traps from her comments 102 Science writer Martin Gardner concluded Piper was a cold reader that would fish for information from her seance sitters 103 The physiologist Ivor Lloyd Tuckett who examined Piper s mediumship in detail wrote it could be explained by muscle reading fishing guessing hints obtained in the sitting knowledge surreptitiously obtained knowledge acquired in the interval between sittings and lastly facts already within Mrs Piper s knowledge 104 1900s Edit In March 1902 in Berlin police officers interrupted a seance of the German apport medium Frau Anna Rothe Her hands were grabbed and she was wrestled to the ground A female police assistant physically examined Rothe and discovered 157 flowers as well as oranges and lemons hidden in her petticoat She was arrested and charged with fraud 105 Another apport medium Hilda Lewis known as the flower medium confessed to fraud 106 The psychical researchers W W Baggally and Everard Feilding exposed the British materialization medium Christopher Chambers as a fraud in 1905 A false moustache was discovered in the seance room which he used to fabricate the spirit materializations 107 The British medium Charles Eldred was exposed as a fraud in 1906 Eldred would sit in a chair in a curtained off area in the room known as a seance cabinet Various spirit figures would emerge from the cabinet and move around the seance room however it was discovered that the chair had a secret compartment that contained beards cloths masks and wigs that Eldred would dress up in to fake the spirits 108 The spirit photographer William Hope tricked William Crookes with a fake spirit photograph of his wife in 1906 Oliver Lodge revealed there had been obvious signs of double exposure the picture of Lady Crookes had been copied from a wedding anniversary photograph however Crookes was a convinced spiritualist and claimed it was genuine evidence for spirit photography 109 In 1907 Hereward Carrington exposed the tricks of fraudulent mediums such as those used in slate writing table turning trumpet mediumship materializations sealed letter reading and spirit photography 110 between 1908 and 1914 the Italian medium Francesco Carancini was investigated by psychical researchers and they discovered that he used phosphorus matches to produce spirit lights and with a freed hand would move objects in the seance room 111 In 1908 at a hotel in Naples the psychical researchers W W Baggally Hereward Carrington and Everard Feilding attended a series of seances with Eusapia Palladino In a report they claimed that genuine supernatural activity had occurred in the seances this report became known as the Feilding report 112 In 1910 Feilding returned to Naples but this time accompanied with the magician William S Marriott Unlike the 1908 sittings Feilding and Marriott detected her cheating just as she had done in America Her deceptions were obvious Palladino evaded control and was caught moving objects with her foot shaking the curtain with her hands moving the cabinet table with her elbow and touching the seance sitters Milbourne Christopher wrote regarding the exposure when one knows how a feat can be done and what to look for only the most skillful performer can maintain the illusion in the face of such informed scrutiny 113 Stanislawa Tomczyk left and the magician William Marriott right who duplicated by natural means her levitation trick of a glass beaker In 1910 at a seance in Grenoble France the apport medium Charles Bailey produced two live birds in the seance room Bailey was unaware that the dealer he had bought the birds from was present in the seance and he was exposed as a fraud 114 The psychical researcher Eric Dingwall observed the medium Bert Reese in New York and claimed to have discovered his billet reading tricks 115 The most detailed account at exposing his tricks with diagrams was by the magician Theodore Annemann 116 The Polish medium Stanislawa Tomczyk s levitation of a glass beaker was exposed and replicated in 1910 by the magician William S Marriott by means of a hidden thread 117 The Italian medium Lucia Sordi was exposed in 1911 she was bound to a chair by psychical researchers but would free herself during her seances The tricks of another Italian medium Linda Gazzera were revealed in the same year she would release her hands and feet from control in her seances and use them Gazzera would not permit anyone to search her before a seance sitting as she concealed muslin and other objects in her hair 118 In 1917 Edward Clodd analyzed the mediumship of the trance medium Gladys Osborne Leonard and came to the conclusion that Leonard had known her seance sitters before she had held the seances and could have easily obtained such information by natural means 119 The British psychiatrist Charles Arthur Mercier wrote in his book Spiritualism and Sir Oliver Lodge 1917 that Oliver Lodge had been duped into believing mediumship by trickery and his spiritualist views were based on assumptions and not scientific evidence 120 In 1918 Joseph Jastrow wrote about the tricks of Eusapia Palladino who was an expert at freeing her hands and feet from the control in the seance room 121 In the seance room Palladino would move curtains from a distance by releasing a jet of air from a rubber bulb that she had in her hand 122 According to the psychical researcher Harry Price Her tricks were usually childish long hairs attached to small objects in order to produce telekinetic movements the gradual substitution of one hand for two when being controlled by sitters the production of phenomena with a foot which had been surreptitiously removed from its shoe and so on 123 In the 1920s the British medium Charles Albert Beare duped the Spiritualist organization the Temple of Light into believing he had genuine mediumship powers In 1931 Beare published a confession in the newspaper Daily Express In the confession he stated I have deceived hundreds of people I have been guilty of fraud and deception in spiritualistic practices by pretending that I was controlled by a spirit guide I am frankly and whole heartedly sorry that I have allowed myself to deceive people 124 Due to the exposure of William Hope and other fraudulent spiritualists Arthur Conan Doyle in the 1920s led a mass resignation of eighty four members of the Society for Psychical Research as they believed the Society was opposed to spiritualism 125 Between 8 November and 31 December 1920 Gustav Geley of the Institute Metapsychique International attended fourteen seances with the medium Franek Kluski in Paris A bowl of hot paraffin was placed in the room and according to Kluski spirits dipped their limbs into the paraffin and then into a bath of water to materialize Three other series of seances were held in Warsaw in Kluski s own apartment these took place over a period of three years Kluski was not searched in any of the seances Photographs of the molds were obtained during the four series of experiments and were published by Geley in 1924 126 127 Harry Houdini replicated the Kluski materialization moulds by using his hands and a bowl of hot paraffin 128 The British direct voice medium Frederick Tansley Munnings was exposed as a fraud when one of his seance sitters turned the lights on which revealed him to be holding a trumpet by means of a telescopic extension piece and using an angle piece to change the auditory effect of his voice 129 Richard Hodgson held six sittings with the medium Rosina Thompson and came to the conclusion she was a fraud as he discovered Thompson had access to documents and information about her seance sitters 130 On 4 February 1922 Harry Price with James Seymour Eric Dingwall and William S Marriott had proven the spirit photographer William Hope was a fraud during tests at the British College of Psychic Science Price wrote in his SPR report William Hope has been found guilty of deliberately substituting his own plates for those of a sitter It implies that the medium brings to the sitting a duplicate slide and faked plates for fraudulent purposes 131 The medium Kathleen Goligher was investigated by the physicist Edmund Edward Fournier d Albe On July 22 1921 in a seance he observed Goligher holding the table up with her foot He also discovered that her ectoplasm was made of muslin During a seance d Albe observed white muslin between Goligher s feet 132 The Danish medium Einer Nielsen was investigated by a committee from the Kristiania University in Norway 1922 and discovered in a seance that his ectoplasm was fake 133 In 1923 the Polish medium Jan Guzyk was exposed as a fraud in a series of seances in Sorbonne in Paris Guzyk would use his elbows and legs to move objects around the room and touch the sitters According to Max Dessoir the trick of Guzyk was to use his foot for psychic touches and sounds 134 The psychical researchers Eric Dingwall and Harry Price re published an anonymous work written by a former medium entitled Revelations of a Spirit Medium 1922 which exposed the tricks of mediumship and the fraudulent methods of producing spirit hands 135 Originally all the copies of the book were bought up by spiritualists and deliberately destroyed 136 In 1923 the magician Carlos Maria de Heredia revealed how fake spirit hands could be made by using a rubber glove paraffin and a jar of cold water 137 The Hungarian medium Ladislas Lasslo confessed that all of his spirit materializations were fraudulent in 1924 A seance sitter was also found to be working as a confederate for Lasslo 138 139 Mina Crandon with her spirit hand which was discovered to be made from a piece of carved animal liver Stanislawa P with ectoplasm The Austrian medium Rudi Schneider was investigated in 1924 by the physicists Stefan Meyer and Karl Przibram They caught Rudi freeing his arm in a series of seances 140 Rudi claimed he could levitate objects but according to Harry Price a photograph taken on April 28 1932 showed that Rudi had managed to free his arm to move a handkerchief from the table 141 According to Warren Jay Vinton Schneider was an expert at freeing himself from control in the seance room 142 Oliver Gatty and Theodore Besterman who tested Schneider concluded that in their tests there was no good evidence that Rudi Schneider possesses supernormal powers 143 The spiritualists Arthur Conan Doyle and W T Stead were duped into believing Julius and Agnes Zancig had genuine psychic powers Both Doyle and Stead wrote that the Zancigs performed telepathy In 1924 Julius and Agnes Zancig confessed that their mind reading act was a trick and published the secret code and all the details of the trick method they had used under the title of Our Secrets in a London Newspaper 144 In 1925 Samuel Soal claimed to have taken part in a series of seances with the medium Blanche Cooper who contacted the spirit of a soldier Gordon Davis and revealed the house that he had lived in Researchers later discovered fraud as the seances had taken place in 1922 not 1925 The magician and paranormal investigator Bob Couttie revealed that Davis was alive Soal lived close to him and had altered the records of the sittings after checking out the house Soal s co workers knew that he had fiddled the results but were kept quiet with threats of libel suits 145 Mina Crandon claimed to materialize a spirit hand but when examined by biologists the hand was discovered to be made from a piece of carved animal liver 146 The German apport medium Heinrich Melzer was discovered to be a fraud in 1926 In a seance psychical researchers found that Melzer had small stones attached to the back of his ears by flesh coloured tape 147 Psychical researchers who investigated the mediumship of Maria Silbert revealed that she used her feet and toes to move objects in the seance room 148 In 1930 the Polish medium Stanislawa P was tested at the Institut Metapsychique in Paris French psychical researcher Eugene Osty suspected in the seance that Stanislawa had freed her hand from control Secret flashlight photographs that were taken revealed that her hand was free and she had moved objects on the seance table 149 It was claimed by spiritualists that during a series of seances in 1930 the medium Eileen J Garrett channeled secret information from the spirit of the Lieutenant Herbert Carmichael Irwin who had died in the R101 crash a few days before the seance Researcher Melvin Harris who studied the case wrote that the information described in Garrett s seances were either commonplace easily absorbed bits and pieces or plain gobblede gook The so called secret information just doesn t exist 92 Helen Duncan with fake ectoplasm analysed by Harry Price to be made of cheesecloth and a rubber glove In the 1930s Harry Price director of the National Laboratory of Psychical Research had investigated the medium Helen Duncan and had her perform a number of test seances She was suspected of swallowing cheesecloth which was then regurgitated as ectoplasm 150 Price had proven through analysis of a sample of ectoplasm produced by Duncan that it was made of cheesecloth 151 Helen Duncan would also use a doll made of a painted papier mache mask draped in an old sheet which she pretended to her sitters was a spirit 152 The photographs taken by Thomas Glendenning Hamilton in the 1930s of ectoplasm reveal the substance to be made of tissue paper and magazine cut outs of people The famous photograph taken by Hamilton of the medium Mary Ann Marshall depicts tissue paper with a cut out of Arthur Conan Doyle s head from a newspaper Skeptics have suspected that Hamilton may have been behind the hoax 153 Psychologists and researchers who studied Pearl Curran s automatic writings in the 1930s came to the conclusion Patience Worth was a fictitious creation of Curran 154 155 In 1931 George Valiantine was exposed as a fraud in the seance room as it was discovered that he produced fraudulent spirit fingerprints in wax The spirit thumbprint that Valiantine claimed belonged to Arthur Conan Doyle was revealed to be the print of his big toe on his right foot It was also revealed that Valiantine made some of the prints with his elbow 156 The medium Frank Decker was exposed as a fraud in 1932 A magician and seance sitter who called himself M Taylor presented a mail bag and Decker agreed to lock himself inside it During the seance objects were moved around the room and it was claimed spirits had released Decker from the bag It was later discovered to have been a trick as Martin Sunshine a magic dealer admitted that he sold Decker a trick mail bag such as stage escapologists use and had acted as the medium s confederate by pretending to be M Taylor a magician 157 The British medium Estelle Roberts claimed to materialize an Indian spirit guide called Red Cloud Researcher Melvin Harris who examined some photographs of Red Cloud wrote the face was the same as Roberts and she had dressed up in a feathered war bonnet 92 In 1936 the psychical researcher Nandor Fodor tested the Hungarian apport medium Lajos Pap in London and during the seance a dead snake appeared Pap was searched and was found to be wearing a device under his robe where he had hidden the snake 158 A photograph taken at a seance in 1937 in London shows the medium Colin Evans levitating in mid air He claimed that spirits had lifted him Evans was later discovered to be a fraud as a cord leading from a device in his hand has indicated that it was himself who triggered the flash photograph and that all he had done was jump from his chair into the air and pretend he had levitated 159 According to the magician John Booth the stage mentalist David Devant managed to fool a number of people into believing he had genuine psychic ability who did not realize that his feats were magic tricks At St George s Hall London he performed a fake clairvoyant act where he would read a message sealed inside an envelope The spiritualist Oliver Lodge who was present in the audience was duped by the trick and claimed that Devant had used psychic powers In 1936 Devant in his book Secrets of My Magic revealed the trick method he had used 160 The physicist Kristian Birkeland exposed the fraud of the direct voice medium Etta Wriedt Birkeland turned on the lights during a seance snatched her trumpets and discovered that the spirit noises were caused by chemical explosions induced by potassium and water and in other cases by lycopodium powder 161 The British medium Isa Northage claimed to materialize the spirit of a surgeon known as Dr Reynolds When photographs taken of Reynolds were analyzed by researchers they discovered that Northage looked like Reynolds with a glued stage beard 92 The magician Julien Proskauer revealed that the levitating trumpet of Jack Webber was a trick Close examination of photographs reveal Webber to be holding a telescopic reaching rod attached to the trumpet and sitters in his seances only believed it to have levitated because the room was so dark they could not see the rod Webber would cover the rod with crepe paper to disguise its real construction 162 Kathleen Goligher with fake ectoplasm made of muslin In 1954 the psychical researcher Rudolf Lambert published a report revealing details about a case of fraud that was covered up by many early members of the Institute Metapsychique International IMI 163 Lambert who had studied Gustav Geley s files on the medium Eva Carriere discovered photographs depicting fraudulent ectoplasm taken by her companion Juliette Bisson 163 Various materializations were artificially attached to Eva s hair by wires The discovery was never published by Geley Eugene Osty the director of the institute and members Jean Meyer Albert von Schrenck Notzing and Charles Richet all knew about the fraudulent photographs but were firm believers in mediumship phenomena so demanded the scandal be kept secret 163 The fraudulent medium Ronald Edwin confessed he had duped his seance sitters and revealed the fraudulent methods he had used in his book Clock Without Hands 1955 164 The psychical researcher Tony Cornell investigated the mediumship of Alec Harris in 1955 During the seance spirit materializations emerged from a cabinet and walked around the room Cornell wrote that a stomach rumble nicotine smelling breath and a pulse gave it away that all the spirit figures were in fact Harris and that he had dressed up as each one behind the cabinet 165 The British medium William Roy earned over 50 000 from his seance sitters He confessed to fraud in 1958 revealing the microphone and trick apparatus that he had used 166 The automatic writings of the Irish medium Geraldine Cummins were analyzed by psychical researchers in the 1960s and they revealed that she worked as a cataloguer at the National Library of Ireland and took information from various books that would appear in her automatic writings about ancient history 167 In 1960 psychic investigator Andrija Puharich and Tom O Neill publisher of the Spiritualist magazine Psychic Observer arranged to film two seances at Camp Chesterfield Indiana using infrared film intending to procure scientific proof of spirit materializations The medium was shown the camera beforehand and was aware that she was being filmed However the film revealed obvious fraud on the part of the medium and her cabinet assistant The expose was published in the 10 July 1960 issue of the Psychic Observer 168 96 97 In 1966 the son of Bishop Pike committed suicide After his death Pike contacted the British medium Ena Twigg for a series of seances and she claimed to have communicated with his son Although Twigg denied formerly knowing anything about Pike and his son the magician John Booth discovered that Twigg had already known information about the Pike family before the seances Twigg had belonged to the same denomination of Bishop Pike he had preached at a cathedral in Kent and she had known information about him and his deceased son from newspapers 169 In 1970 two psychical researchers investigated the direct voice medium Leslie Flint and found that all the spirit voices in his seance sounded exactly like himself and attributed his mediumship to second rate ventriloquism 170 The medium Arthur Ford died leaving specific instructions that all of his files should be burned In 1971 after his death psychical researchers discovered his files but instead of burning them they were examined and discovered to be filled with obituaries newspaper articles and other information which enabled Ford to research his seance sitters backgrounds 171 Ronald Pearsall in his book Table rappers The Victorians and the Occult 1972 documented how every Victorian medium investigated had been exposed as using trickery in the book he revealed how mediums would even use acrobatic techniques during seances to convince audiences of spirit presences 172 In 1976 M Lamar Keene a medium in Florida and at the Spiritualist Camp Chesterfield in Indiana confessed to defrauding the public in his book The Psychic Mafia Keene detailed a multitude of common stage magic techniques utilized by mediums which are supposed to give an appearance of paranormal powers or supernatural involvement 173 After her death in the 1980s the medium Doris Stokes was accused of fraud by author and investigator Ian Wilson Wilson stated that Mrs Stokes planted specific people in her audience and did prior research into her sitters 174 Rita Goold a physical medium during the 1980s was accused of fraud by the psychical researcher Tony Cornell He claimed she would dress up as the spirits in her seances and would play music during them which provided cover for her to change clothes 175 The spirit guide Silver Belle was made from cardboard Both Ethel Post Parrish and the lady standing outside of the curtain were in on the hoax The British journalist Ruth Brandon published the book The Spiritualists 1983 which exposed the fraud of the Victorian mediums 6 The book received positive reviews and has been influential to skeptics of spiritualism 176 The British apport medium Paul McElhoney was exposed as a fraud during a seance in Osset Yorkshire in 1983 The tape recorder that McElhoney took to his seances was investigated and a black tape was discovered bound around the battery compartment and inside carnation flowers were found as well as a key ring torch and other objects 92 In 1988 the magician Bob Couttie criticized the paranormal author Brian Inglis for deliberately ignoring evidence of fraud in mediumship Couttie wrote Inglis had not familiarized himself with magician techniques 177 In 1990 the researcher Gordon Stein discovered that the levitation photograph of the medium Carmine Mirabelli was fraudulent The photograph was a trick as there were signs of chemical retouching under Mirabelli s feet The retouching showed that Mirabelli was not levitating but was standing on a ladder which was erased from the photograph 178 In 1991 Wendy Grossman in the New Scientist criticized the parapsychologist Stephen E Braude for ignoring evidence of fraud in mediumship According to Grossman Braude accuses sceptics of ignoring the evidence he believes is solid but himself ignores evidence that does not suit him If a medium was caught cheating on some occasions he says the rest of that medium s phenomena were still genuine Grossman came to the conclusion that Braude did not do proper research on the subject and should study the art of conjuring 179 In 1992 Richard Wiseman analyzed the Feilding report of Eusapia Palladino and argued that she employed a secret accomplice that could enter the room by a fake door panel positioned near the seance cabinet Wiseman discovered this trick was already mentioned in a book from 1851 he also visited a carpenter and skilled magician who constructed a door within an hour with a false panel The accomplice was suspected to be her second husband who insisted on bringing Palladino to the hotel where the seances took place 180 Massimo Polidoro and Gian Marco Rinaldi also analyzed the Feilding report but came to the conclusion no secret accomplice was needed as Palladino during the 1908 Naples seances could have produced the phenomena by using her foot 181 Colin Fry was exposed in 1992 when during a seance the lights were unexpectedly turned on and he was seen holding a spirit trumpet in the air which the audience had been led to believe was being levitated by spiritual energy 182 In 1997 Massimo Polidoro and Luigi Garlaschelli produced wax moulds directly from one s hand which were exactly the same copies as Gustav Geley obtained from Franek Kluski which are kept at the Institute Metapsychique International 183 A series of mediumistic seances known as the Scole Experiment took place between 1993 and 1998 in the presence of the researchers David Fontana Arthur Ellison and Montague Keen This has produced photographs audio recordings and physical objects which appeared in the dark seance room known as apports 184 A criticism of the experiment was that it was flawed because it did not rule out the possibility of fraud The skeptical investigator Brian Dunning wrote the Scole experiments fail in many ways The seances were held in the basement of two of the mediums only total darkness was allowed with no night vision apparatus as it might frighten the spirits away The box containing the film was not examined and could easily have been accessible to fraud And finally even though many years have passed there has been no follow up no further research by any credible agency or published accounts 184 Recent Edit Joe Nickell a notable skeptic of mediumship According to Nickell modern mediums use mentalist techniques such as cold reading The VERITAS Research Program of the Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health in the Department of Psychology at the University of Arizona run by the parapsychologist Gary Schwartz was created primarily to test the hypothesis that the consciousness or identity of a person survives physical death 185 Schwartz claimed his experiments were indicative of survival but do not yet provide conclusive proof 186 187 The experiments described by Schwartz have received criticism from the scientific community for being inadequately designed and using poor controls 188 189 Ray Hyman discovered many methodological errors with Schwartz s research including Inappropriate control comparisons Failure to use double blind procedures Creating non falsifiable outcomes by reinterpreting failures as successes and Failure to independently check on facts the sitters endorsed as true Hyman wrote Even if the research program were not compromised by these defects the claims being made would require replication by independent investigators Hyman criticizes Schwartz s decision to publish his results without gathering evidence for their hypothesis that would meet generally accepted scientific criteria they have lost credibility 190 In 2003 skeptic investigator Massimo Polidoro in his book Secrets of the Psychics documented the history of fraud in mediumship and spiritualistic practices as well as the psychology of psychic deception 55 Terence Hines in his book Pseudoscience and the Paranormal 2003 has written Modern spiritualists and psychics keep detailed files on their victims As might be expected these files can be very valuable and are often passed on from one medium or psychic to another when one retires or dies Even if a psychic doesn t use a private detective or have immediate access to driver s license records and such there is still a very powerful technique that will allow the psychic to convince people that the psychic knows all about them their problems and their deep personal secrets fears and desires The technique is called cold reading and is probably as old as charlatanism itself If John Edward or any of the other self proclaimed speakers with the dead really could communicate with the dead it would be a trivial matter to prove it All that would be necessary would be for him to contact any of the thousands of missing persons who are presumed dead famous e g Jimmy Hoffa Judge Crater or otherwise and correctly report where the body is Of course this is never done All we get instead are platitudes to the effect that Aunt Millie who liked green plates is happy on the other side 191 An experiment conducted by the British Psychological Society in 2005 suggests that under the controlled condition of the experiment people who claimed to be professional mediums do not demonstrate the mediumistic ability In the experiment mediums were assigned to work the participants chosen to be sitters The mediums claimed to contact the deceased who were related to the sitters The research gather the numbers of the statements made and have the sitters rate the accuracy of the statements The readings that were considered to be somewhat accurate by the sitters were very generalized and the ones that were considered inaccurate were the ones that were very specific 192 On Fox News on the Geraldo at Large show October 6 2007 Geraldo Rivera and other investigators accused Schwartz of being a fraud as he had overstepped his position as a university researcher by requesting over three million dollars from a bereaved father who had lost his son Schwartz claimed to have contacted the spirit of a 25 year old man in the bathroom of his parents house and it is alleged he attempted to charge the family 3 5 million dollars for his mediumship services Schwartz responded saying that the allegations were set up to destroy his science credibility 193 194 In 2013 Rose Marks and members of her family were convicted of fraud for a series of crimes spanning 20 years entailing between 20 and 45 million They told vulnerable clients that to solve their problems they had to give the purported psychics money and valuables Marks and family promised to return the cash and goods after cleansing them Prosecutors established they had no intent to return the property 195 196 197 The exposures of fraudulent activity led to a rapid decline in ectoplasm and materialization seances 198 Investigator Joe Nickell has written that modern self proclaimed mediums like John Edward Sylvia Browne Rosemary Altea and James Van Praagh are avoiding the Victorian tradition of dark rooms spirit handwriting and flying tambourines as these methods risk exposure They instead use mental mediumship tactics like cold reading or gleaning information from sitters beforehand hot reading Group readings also improve hits by making general statements with conviction which will fit at least one person in the audience Shows are carefully edited before airing to show only what appears to be hits and removing anything that does not reflect well on the medium 199 Michael Shermer criticized mediums in Scientific American saying mediums are unethical and dangerous they prey on the emotions of the grieving As grief counselors know death is best faced head on as a part of life Shermer wrote that the human urge to seek connections between events that may form patterns meaningful for survival is a function of natural evolution and called the alleged ability of mediums to talk to the dead a well known illusion of a meaningful pattern 200 According to James Randi a skeptic who has debunked many claims of psychic ability and uncovered fraudulent practices 201 mediums who do cold readings fish suggest possibilities make educated guesses and give options Randi has a standing offer of 1 million US dollars for anyone who can demonstrate psychic ability under controlled conditions Most prominent psychics and mediums have not taken up his offer 202 The key role in mediumship of this sort is played by effect of subjective confirmation see Barnum effect people are predisposed to consider reliable that information which though is casual coincidence or a guess however it seems to them personally important and significant and answers their personal belief 203 The article about this phenomenon in Encyclopaedia Britannica places emphasis that one by one spiritual mediums were convicted of fraud sometimes using the tricks borrowed from scenic magicians to convince their paranormal abilities In the article it is also noted that the opening of the wide ranging fraud happening on spiritualistic sessions caused serious damage to reputation of the movement of a Spiritualism and in the USA pushed it on the public periphery 204 In March 2017 medium Thomas John was targeted in a sting operation and caught doing a hot reading The sting was planned and implemented by skeptical activist Susan Gerbic and mentalist Mark Edward The unmarried couple attended John s show using aliases and were read as a married couple Susanna and Mark Wilson by John During the entire reading John failed to determine the actual identities of Gerbic and Edward or that they were being deceptive during his reading All personal information he gave them matched what was on their falsified Facebook accounts rather than being about their actual lives and John pretended he was getting this information from Gerbic and Edward s supposedly dead but actually nonexistent relatives 205 As Jack Hitt reported in The New York Times Over the course of the reading John comfortably laid down the specifics of Susanna Wilson s life he named Andy and amazingly knew him to be her twin He knew that she and her brother grew up in Michigan and that his girlfriend was Maria He knew about Susanna s father in law and how he died 206 These details were from the falsified Facebook accounts for the pair which were prepared by a group of skeptics in advance of the reading and Gerbic and Edward were not aware of the specific information in these accounts 207 This blinding was done in order to avoid John later being able to claim he obtained the false information by reading Gerbic and Edward s minds 205 In her report Gerbic also revealed that during an after show private event John disclosed in a group setting that at least one of the people in the audience which he did a reading about was actually his own student 205 The same week that the Thomas John sting revelation was made in The New York Times John s claimed mediumship abilities portrayed in the Lifetime reality TV show called Seatbelt Psychic were challenged by Gerbic in an article published by Skeptical Inquirer In the show John is a ride share driver who surprises unsuspecting passengers when he delivers messages from their deceased relatives Gerbic investigated and revealed that John s passengers are actually actors several of which are documented in IMDb Gerbic concluded that the riders were likely hired to ride with John but were probably not acting when talking with him She concluded that the details about their lives mentioned by John were easily found on social media sources and likely fed to John making the readings actually hot readings One rider Wendy Westmoreland played a character on Stalked by a Doctor a TV show also produced by Lifetime 208 See also EditAnn O Delia Diss Debar One of the most extraordinary fake mediums the world has ever known Houdini Automatic writing Blessing Charlatan Chinese spirit possession amp Tangki Chinese mediumship Confidence trick Con artist Curse Dowsing Faith healing Flim Flam Psychics ESP Unicorns and other Delusions Fuji planchette writing Houdini s debunking of psychics and mediums Itako Japanese blind medium Len đồng Vietnamese mediumship List of channelers Mediumship List of con artists List of confidence tricks List of topics characterized as pseudoscience Seance Mudang Korean mediumship Nechung Oracle Tibetan mediumship Bob Nygaard Psychic fraud investigator Oracle places like Delphi amp Dodona Psychic Psychic Blues Confessions of a Conflicted Medium Quackery Rose Mackenberg Historic psychic medium investigator Shamanism Spirit possession Spiritism Spiritism Spiritualism The Book on Mediums Table turning Theatrical seanceReferences Edit Gilmore Mernie October 31 2005 A spiritual connection The Express London Brandreth Gyles November 3 2002 Is Anybody There The Sunday Telegraph London Why do a quarter of people across the world believe humans have psychic abilities 2019 02 27 Archived from the original on 2022 05 12 Retrieved 2020 09 23 Believing the impossible No evidence for existence of psychic ability found Retrieved 2020 09 23 O Keeffe Ciaran May 2005 Testing Alleged Mediumship Methods and Results British Journal of Psychology 96 2 165 179 doi 10 1348 000712605X36361 ISSN 0007 1269 PMID 15969829 a b c Ruth Brandon 1983 The Spiritualists The Passion for the Occult in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Alfred E Knopf ISBN 978 0 394 52740 6 Milbourne Christopher 1979 Search for the Soul T Y Crowell ISBN 978 0 690 01760 1 Terence Hines 2003 Pseudoscience and the Paranormal Prometheus Books ISBN 978 1 57392 979 0 Imagine Spirit 2019 Differences between Mental Physical Trance Mediumship Imagine Spirit Universal Psychic Arts Training online Accessed at https imaginespirit com differences between mental physical and trance mediums Thirty Years of Psychical Research by Charles Richet p 38 The Macmillan Company 1923 Glossary of Key Words Frequently Used in Parapsychology Archived 2010 12 24 at the Wayback Machine Parapsychological Association website Materialization A phenomenon of physical mediumship in which living entities or inanimate objects are caused to take form sometimes from ectoplasm Retrieved January 24 2006 Medium Definition Dictionary com Retrieved 23 March 2007 Pulliam June Michele Fonseca 26 September 2016 Ghosts in Popular Culture and Legend ABC CLIO ISBN 9781440834912 Retrieved 5 December 2022 Spiritism is not a religion but a science as the famous French astronomer Camille Flammarion said in Allan Kardec s Eulogy on April 2 1869 in Death and Its Mystery After Death Manifestations and Apparitions of the Dead The Soul After Death Translated by Latrobe Carroll London Adelphi Terrace 1923 archive version at Allan Kardec eulogy Brandon Ruth 1983 Scientists and the Supernormal New Scientist 16 June pp 783 86 Hines Terence 2003 Pseudoscience and the Paranormal Prometheus Books p 52 ISBN 1 57392 979 4 Anna Hurwic Pierre Curie translated by Lilananda Dasa and Joseph Cudnik Paris Flammarion 1995 pp 65 66 68 247 48 W T Stead and Spiritualism attackingthedevil co uk Jones Kelvin I 1989 Conan Doyle and the Spirits The Spiritualist Career of Arthur Conan Doyle Aquarian Press Sutcliffe Steven J 2002 Children of the New Age p 35 The SNU a b The Autobiography of a Fortune Teller by C Doreen Phillips Vantage Press 1958 Richard Castillo 1995 Culture Trance and the Mind Brain Anthropology of Consciousness Volume 6 Issue 1 pp 17 34 March 1995 Braude Anne Radical Spirits Spiritualism and Women s Rights in Nineteenth Century America Bloomington Indiana University Press 2001 Deborah Blum 2006 Ghost Hunters William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death The Penguin Press Amy Tanner 1994 originally published 1910 Studies in Spiritism With an introduction by G Stanley Hall Prometheus Press p 18 God s World A Treatise on Spiritualism Founded on Transcripts of Shorthand Notes Taken Down Over a Period of Five Years in the Seance Room of the William T Stead Memorial Center a Religious Body Incorporated Under the Statutes of the State of Illinois Mrs Cecil M Cook Medium and Pastor Compiled and Written by Lloyd Kenyon Jones Chicago Ill The William T Stead Memorial Center 1919 Ectoplasm def Merriam Webster dictionary Retrieved 18 January 2007 Somerlott Robert Here Mr Splitfoot Viking 1971 Connor Steven 1999 9 The Machine in the Ghost Spiritualism Technology and the Direct Voice In Buse Peter Stott Andrew eds Ghosts deconstruction psychoanalysis history Palgrave Macmillan p 203 25 ISBN 978 0 312 21739 6 Wood Matthew 2007 Possession Power and the New Age Ambiguities of Authority in Neoliberal Societies Ashgate Publishing Limited ISBN 978 0 7546 3339 6 a b LeCron Leslie Bordeaux Jean 1970 Hypnotism Today Wilshire Book Co p 278 ISBN 0 87980 081 X When in a trance the medium seems to come under the control of another personality purportedly the spirit of a departed soul and a genuine medium undoubtedly believes the control to be a spirit entity In the trance the medium often enters a cataleptic state marked by extreme rigidity The control then takes over the voice may change completely and the supposed spirit answers the questions of the sitter telling of things on the other plane and gives messages from those who have passed over Hayward Rhodri 2017 Part III Beyond medicine Psychiatry and religion In Eghigian Greg ed The Routledge History of Madness and Mental Health Routledge Histories 1st ed London and New York Routledge pp 137 152 doi 10 4324 9781315202211 ch7 inactive 31 December 2022 ISBN 9781315202211 LCCN 2016050178 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint DOI inactive as of December 2022 link Gillavry D M 2014 Aleister Crowley the Guardian Angel and Aiwass The Nature of Spiritual Beings in the Philosophies of the Great Beast 666 PDF Sacra Brno Masaryk University 11 2 33 42 ISSN 1214 5351 S2CID 58907340 Archived PDF from the original on 27 June 2016 Retrieved 10 January 2022 Tully Caroline 2010 Walk Like an Egyptian Egypt as Authority in Aleister Crowley s Reception of The Book of the Law PDF The Pomegranate The International Journal of Pagan Studies London Equinox Publishing 12 1 20 47 doi 10 1558 pome v12i1 20 hdl 11343 252812 ISSN 1528 0268 S2CID 159745083 Archived PDF from the original on 10 January 2022 Retrieved 10 January 2022 Brown Michael F 1999 The Channeling Zone American Spirituality in an Anxious Age Harvard University Press ISBN 0 674 10883 3 Klimo Jon 1998 Channeling Investigations on Receiving Information from Paranormal Sources North Atlantic Books p 100 ISBN 978 1 55643 248 4 Chalmers Robert 8 July 2007 Interview The couple who claim they can make you rich beyond your wildest dreams The Independent Archived from the original on 3 April 2008 Glossary of Key Words Frequently Used in Parapsychology Archived 2010 11 20 at the Wayback Machine Parapsychological Association website Retrieved January 29 2007 Ilya Vinitsky 2009 Ghostly Paradoxes Modern Spiritualism and Russian Culture in the Age of Realism University of Toronto Press p 25 ISBN 978 0 8020 9935 8 Harvey J Irwin Caroline Watt 2007 An Introduction to Parapsychology McFarland pp 138 44 ISBN 978 0 7864 3059 8 Theodore Schick Lewis Vaughn 2013 How to Think About Weird Things Critical Thinking for a New Age McGraw Hill Higher Education ISBN 978 0 07 752631 3 David Marks 2000 The Psychology of the Psychic Prometheus Books ISBN 978 1 57392 798 7 Nicola Holt Christine Simmonds Moore David Luke Christopher French 2012 Anomalistic Psychology Palgrave Insights in Psychology Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 978 0 230 30150 4 Millais Culpin 1920 Spiritualism and the New Psychology an Explanation of Spiritualist Phenomena and Beliefs in Terms of Modern Knowledge Kennelly Press ISBN 978 1 4460 5651 6 Joseph Rinn 1950 Sixty Years of Psychical Research New York Truth Seeker pp 200 05 Wolffram H 2012 Trick Manipulation and Farce Albert Moll s Critique of Occultism Medical History 56 2 277 295 doi 10 1017 mdh 2011 37 PMC 3381525 PMID 23002297 Leonard Zusne Warren H Jones 1989 Anomalistic Psychology A Study of Magical Thinking Psychology Press p 221 ISBN 978 0 8058 0508 6 The spirits controls and guides of a medium are the products of the medium s own psychological dynamics On the one hand they personify the medium s hidden impulses and wish life On the other they are also shaped by the expectations of the medium s sitters the medium s experience the cultural background and the spirit of the times Ian Rowland 1998 The full facts book of cold reading London England Ian Roland ISBN 978 0 9558476 0 8 Brad Clark 2002 Spiritualism pp 220 26 In Michael Shermer The Skeptic Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience ABC CLIO ISBN 978 1 57607 653 8 Jonathan Smith 2009 Pseudoscience and Extraordinary Claims of the Paranormal A Critical Thinker s Toolkit Wiley Blackwell pp 141 241 ISBN 978 1 4051 8122 8 Richard Wiseman 2011 Paranormality Why We See What Isn t There Macmillan p 38 ISBN 978 0 230 75298 6 Wiseman Richard Greening Emma Smith Matthew 2003 Belief in the paranormal and suggestion in the seance room PDF British Journal of Psychology 94 3 285 297 CiteSeerX 10 1 1 528 2693 doi 10 1348 000712603767876235 ISSN 2044 8295 PMID 14511544 Horton Adrian February 25 2019 John Oliver on psychics A vast underworld of unscrupulous vultures The Guardian Archived from the original on February 25 2019 Retrieved February 25 2019 Psychics Last Week Tonight with John Oliver HBO Youtube LastWeekTonight Retrieved 25 February 2019 a b Polidoro Massimo 2003 Secrets of the Psychics Investigating Paranormal Claims Prometheus Books ISBN 978 1 59102 086 8 James Houran 2004 From Shaman to Scientist Essays on Humanity s Search for Spirits Scarecrow Press p 177 ISBN 978 0 8108 5054 5 Also see Michael Shermer 2002 The Skeptic Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience ABC CLIO pp 220 26 ISBN 978 1 57607 653 8 Paul Kurtz 1985 A Skeptic s Handbook of Parapsychology Prometheus Books ISBN 978 0 87975 300 9 Spence Lewis 2003 An Encyclopaedia of Occultism Dover p 172 Alan Gauld 1968 The Founders of Psychical Research Routledge amp K Paul Janet Oppenheim 1988 The Other World Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England 1850 1914 Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 34767 9 The Problem of Fraud by Paul Kurtz Chung Ling Soo 1898 Spirit Slate Writing and Kindred Phenomena Munn amp Company Henry Evans 1897 Hours With the Ghosts Or Nineteenth Century Witchcraft Kessinger Publishing Julien Proskauer 1932 Spook crooks Exposing the secrets of the prophet eers who conduct our wickedest industry New York A L Burt Joseph Dunninger 1935 Inside the Medium s Cabinet New York D Kemp and Company Harry Houdini 1924 A Magician Among the Spirits Cambridge University Press Joseph Rinn 1950 Sixty Years Of Psychical Research Houdini And I Among The Spiritualists Truth Seeker Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University of Pennsylvania The Seybert Commission 1887 1 April 2004 Spiritualism religion History Britannica Online Encyclopedia Joseph McCabe 1920 Spiritualism A Popular History from 1847 Dodd Mead and Company pp 110 12 A Mr Merrifield was present at one of the sittings Home s usual phenomena were messages the moving of objects presumably at a distance and the playing of an accordion which he held with one hand under the shadow of the table But from an early date in America he had been accustomed occasionally to materialise hands as it was afterwards called The sitters would in the darkness faintly see a ghostly hand and arm or they might feel the touch of an icy limb Mr Merrifield and the other sitters saw a spirit hand stretch across the faintly lit space of the window But Mr Merrifield says that Home sat or crouched low in a low chair and that the spirit hand was a false limb on the end of Home s arm At other times he says he saw that Home was using his foot Donald Serrell Thomas 1989 Robert Browning A Life Within Life Weidenfeld and Nicolson pp 157 58 ISBN 978 0 297 79639 8 Harry Houdini 2011 reprint edition Originally published in 1924 A Magician Among the Spirits Cambridge University Press p 42 ISBN 978 1 108 02748 9 John Casey 2009 After Lives A Guide to Heaven Hell and Purgatory Oxford p 373 ISBN 978 0 19 997503 7 The poet attended one of Home s seances where a face was materialized which Home s spirit guide announced was that of Browning s dead son Browning seized the supposed materialized head and it turned out to be the bare foot of Home The deception was not helped by the fact that Browning never had lost a son in infancy Joseph McCabe 1920 Is Spiritualism based on Fraud The Evidence Given by Sir A C Doyle and Others Drastically Examined London Watts amp Co pp 48 50 Also see the review of The Enigma of Daniel Home Medium or Fraud by Trevor H Hall in F B Smith 1986 Victorian Studies Volume 29 No 4 pp 613 14 Joe Nickell 2001 Real Life X Files Investigating the Paranormal The University Press of Kentucky pp 267 68 ISBN 978 0 8131 2210 6 Sherrie Lynne Lyons 2010 Species Serpents Spirits and Skulls Science at the Margins in the Victorian Age State University of New York Press p 100 ISBN 978 1 4384 2798 0 Alex Owen 2004 The Darkened Room Women Power and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England University Of Chicago Press pp 70 71 ISBN 978 0 226 64205 5 Massimo Polidoro 2000 Anna Eva Fay The Mentalist Who Baffled Sir William Crookes Skeptical Inquirer 24 36 38 Georgess McHargue 1972 Facts Frauds and Phantasms A Survey of the Spiritualist Movement Doubleday p 113 ISBN 978 0 385 05305 1 Janet Oppenheim 1985 The Other World Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England 1850 1914 Cambridge University Press p 19 ISBN 978 0 521 26505 8 Paul Kurtz 1985 A Skeptic s Handbook of Parapsychology Prometheus Books p 29 ISBN 978 0 87975 300 9 Florence Cook was caught cheating not only before her seances with Crookes but also afterward Furthermore she learned her trade from the mediums Frank Herne and Charles Williams who were notorious for their cheating Also see M Lamar Keene 1997 The Psychic Mafia Prometheus Books p 64 ISBN 978 1 57392 161 9 The most famous of materialization mediums Florence Cook though she managed to convince a scientist Sir William Crookes that she was genuine was repeatedly exposed in fraud Florence had been trained in the arts of the seance by Frank Herne a well known physical medium whose materializations were grabbed on more than one occasion and found to be the medium himself Joseph McCabe 1920 Spiritualism A Popular History from 1847 Dodd Mead and Company pp 160 61 Chung Ling Soo 1898 Spirit Slate Writing and Kindred Phenomena Munn amp Company pp 105 06 Lewis Spence 1991 Encyclopedia of Occultism amp Parapsychology Gale Research Company p 1106 Adin Ballou 2001 The Rise of Victorian Spiritualism Routledge p 16 Joseph McCabe 1920 Is Spiritualism based on Fraud The Evidence Given by Sir A C Doyle and Others Drastically Examined London Watts amp Co p 115 Roy Stemman 1976 The Supernatural Danbury Press p 62 Joseph McCabe 1920 Spiritualism A Popular History From 1847 T F Unwin Ltd p 167 Trevor H Hall 1963 The Spiritualists The Story of Florence Cook and William Crookes Helix Press p 10 Trevor H Hall 1980 The Strange Case of Edmund Gurney Duckworth p 47 Washington Irving Bishop 1880 Second Sight Explained A Complete Exposition of Clairvoyance or Second Sight Edinburgh John Menzies Preliminary report of the Commission appointed by the University of Pennsylvania to investigate modern spiritualism in accordance with the request of the late Henry Seybert 1887 Paul Boyer The Oxford Companion to United States History Oxford University Press p 738 ISBN 978 0 19 508209 8 Rodger Anderson 2006 Psychics Sensitives and Somnambules McFarland amp Company p 90 ISBN 978 0 7864 2770 3 Will Goldston 1942 Tricks Of The Masters G Routledge amp Sons Ltd p 4 a b c d e Harris Melvin 2003 Investigating the unexplained psychic detectives the Amityville horror mongers Jack the Ripper and other mysteries of the paranormal Prometheus Books ISBN 978 1 59102 108 7 Samri Baldwin 1895 The Secrets of Mahatma Land Explained Brooklyn N Y Press of T J Dyson amp Son Harry Houdini 2011 A Magician Among the Spirits Cambridge University Press p 66 ISBN 978 1 108 02748 9 Joe Nickell 2001 Real Life X Files Investigating the Paranormal The University Press of Kentucky pp 260 61 Also see Joe Nickell 2005 Camera Clues A Handbook for Photographic Investigation The University Press of Kentucky p 151 Hereward Carrington 1907 The Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism Herbert B Turner amp Co pp 206 23 Donald West 1954 Psychical Research Today Chapter Seance Room Phenomena Duckworth p 49 Gordon Stein 1996 The Encyclopedia of the Paranormal Prometheus Books p 520 ISBN 978 1 57392 021 6 Chung Ling Soo 1898 Spirit Slate Writing and Kindred Phenomena Munn amp Company pp 101 04 Ivor Lloyd Tuckett 1911 The Evidence for the Supernatural A Critical Study Made with Uncommon Sense Kegan Paul Trench Trubner amp Company pp 52 53 Julian Franklyn 1935 A Survey of the Occult Kessinger Publishing p 248 Joseph Jastrow 1911 Studies in Spiritism by Amy E Tanner The American Journal of Psychology Vol 22 No 1 pp 122 24 Martin Gardner Are Universes Thicker Than Blackberries How Mrs Piper Bamboozled William James W W Norton amp Company pp 252 62 Ivor Lloyd Tuckett 1911 The Evidence for the Supernatural A Critical Study Made with Uncommon Sense K Paul Trench Trubner pp 321 95 Corinna Treitel 2004 A Science for the Soul Occultism and the Genesis of the German Modern The Johns Hopkins University Press p 165 ISBN 978 0 8018 7812 1 Harry Price 1939 Fifty Years of Psychical Research Kessinger Publishing ISBN 978 0 7661 4242 8 Richard Wiseman 1997 Deception amp Self Deception Investigating Psychics Prometheus Books p 23 Richard Wiseman 1997 Deception amp Self Deception Investigating Psychics Prometheus Books p 12 William Hodson Brock 2008 William Crookes 1832 1919 and the Commercialization of Science Ashgate p 474 ISBN 978 0 7546 6322 5 Hereward Carrington 1907 The Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism Herbert B Turner amp Co Rodger Anderson 2006 Psychics Sensitives And Somnambules McFarland amp Company p 26 ISBN 978 0 7864 2770 3 The New Paranatural Paradigm Claims of Communicating with the Dead by Paul Kurtz Milbourne Christopher 1971 ESP Seers amp Psychics Crowell pp 188 204 ISBN 978 0 690 26815 7 Everard Feilding William Marriott 1910 Report on Further Series of Sittings with Eusapia Palladino at Naples Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research Volume 15 pp 20 32 J Gordon Melton 2007 The Encyclopedia of Religious Phenomena Visible Ink Press p 12 ISBN 978 1 57859 209 8 Eric Dingwall 1927 How to Go to a Medium K Paul Trench Trubner pp 31 32 Theodore Annemann 1983 Practical Mental Magic Dover Publications pp 7 11 Pearson s Magazine June 1910 C Arthur Pearson Ltd p 615 Joseph McCabe 1920 Is Spiritualism Based On Fraud The Evidence Given By Sir A C Doyle and Others Drastically Examined London Watts amp Co pp 33 34 Edward Clodd 1917 The Question A Brief History and Examination of Modern Spiritualism Chapter Mrs Leonard and Others pp 215 41 Charles Arthur Mercier 1917 Spiritualism and Sir Oliver Lodge London Mental Culture Enterprise Joseph Jastrow 1918 The Psychology of Conviction Houghton Mifflin Company pp 101 27 Fakebusters II Scientific Detection of Fakery in Art and Philately Harry Price Fifty Years of Psychical Research chapter XI The Mechanics of Spiritualism F amp W Media International Ltd 2012 Harry Price 1939 Chapter The Mechanics of Spiritualism in Fifty Years of Psychical Research Kessinger Publishing ISBN 978 0 7661 4242 8 G K Nelson 2013 Spiritualism and Society Routledge p 159 ISBN 978 0 415 71462 4 Clement Cheroux 2005 The Perfect Medium Photography and the Occult Yale University Press p 268 ISBN 978 0 300 11136 1 D Scott Rogo 1978 Mind and Motion The Riddle of Psychokinesis Taplinger Publishing pp 245 46 ISBN 978 0 8008 2455 6 Massimo Polidoro 2001 Final Seance The Strange Friendship Between Houdini and Conan Doyle Prometheus Books pp 71 73 ISBN 978 1 57392 896 0 Julian Franklyn 2003 A Survey of the Occult pp 238 39 Kessinger Publishing ISBN 978 0 7661 3007 4 Joseph McCabe 1920 Spiritualism A Popular History from 1847 Dodd Mead and Company p 192 Photos of Ghosts The Burden of Believing the Unbelievable by Massimo Polidoro Edmund Edward Fournier d Albe 1922 The Goligher Circle J M Watkins p 37 Universitetskomiteen Mediet Einer Nielsen kontrolundersokelser av universitetskomiteen i Kristiania Kristiania 1922 Rapport fra den av Norsk Selskab for Psykisk Forskning nedsatte Kontrolkomite Norsk Tidsskrift for Psykisk Forskning 1 1921 22 Lewis Spence 2003 Encyclopedia of Occultism amp Parapsychology Kessinger publishing p 399 ISBN 978 0 7661 2815 6 Eric Dingwall Harry Price 1922 Revelations of a Spirit Medium Kegan Paul Trench Trubner amp Co Georgess McHargue 1972 Facts Frauds and Phantasms A Survey of the Spiritualist Movement Doubleday p 158 ISBN 978 0 385 05305 1 Carlos Maria de Heredia 1923 Spirit Hands ectoplasm and Rubber Gloves Popular Mechanics pp 14 15 Paul Tabori 1961 The Art of Folly Prentice Hall International Inc pp 178 79 Fraudulent Mediums Lyceum Library Julian Franklyn 2003 Dictionary of the Occult Kessinger Publishing p 228 Harry Price 1936 Confessions of a Ghost Hunter Putnam p 232 Warren Jay Vinton The Famous Schneider Mediumship A Critical Study of Alleged Supernormal Events No 4 April 1927 in C K Ogden Psyche An Annual General and Linguistic Psychology 1920 1952 Routledge Thoemmes Press 1995 Further Tests of the Medium Rudi Schneider Nature 134 3399 965 966 1934 12 01 Bibcode 1934Natur 134S 965 doi 10 1038 134965c0 ISSN 1476 4687 John Booth 1986 Psychic Paradoxes Prometheus Books p 8 ISBN 978 0 87975 358 0 Bob Couttie 1988 Forbidden Knowledge The Paranormal Paradox Lutterworth Press pp 104 05 Brian Righi 2008 Ghosts Apparitions and Poltergeists An Exploration of the Supernatural through History Llewellyn Publications Llewellyn Publications p 52 ISBN 978 0 7387 1363 2 One medium of the 1920s Mina Crandon became famous for producing ectoplasm during her sittings At the height of the seance she was even able to produce a tiny ectoplasmic hand from her navel which waved about in the darkness Her career ended when Harvard biologists were able to examine the tiny hand and found it to be nothing more than a carved piece of animal liver E Clephan Palmer 2003 The Riddle of Spiritualism Kessinger Publishing pp 35 39 ISBN 978 0 7661 7931 8 Lewis Spence 1991 Encyclopedia of Occultism amp Parapsychology Gale Research Company p 1522 Massimo Polidoro 2001 Final Seance The Strange Friendship Between Houdini and Conan Doyle Prometheus Books p 103 ISBN 978 1 57392 896 0 Lewis Spence 2003 Encyclopedia of Occultism amp Parapsychology Kessinger Publishing p 880 Harry Price 1931 Regurgitation and the Duncan Mediumship Bulletin I of the National Laboratory of Psychical Research 120pp with 44 illustrations Marina Warner 2008 Phantasmagoria Spirit Visions Metaphors and Media into the Twenty first Century Oxford University Press p 299 Jason Karl 2007 An Illustrated History of the Haunted World New Holland Publishers p 79 Jokinen Tom 2012 10 25 Touching the Dead Spooky Winnipeg Archived from the original on 2013 12 03 Retrieved 2013 09 08 Joseph Jastrow 1935 Patience Worth An Alter Ego in Wish and Wisdom Episodes in the Vagaries of Belief D Appleton Century Company pp 78 92 Lyon Sprague de Camp 1966 Spirits Stars and Spells New York Canaveral p 247 Robert Goldenson 1973 Mysteries of the Mind The Drama of Human Behavior Doubleday pp 44 53 Milbourne Christopher 1970 ESP Seers and Psychics New York Crowell pp 128 29 Patience Worth by Robert Todd Carroll Julian Franklyn 2003 A Survey of the Occult pp 263 395 Kessinger Publishing ISBN 978 0 7661 3007 4 M Lamar Keene 1997 The Psychic Mafia Prometheus Books p 123 ISBN 978 1 57392 161 9 Nandor Fodor 1960 The Haunted Mind A Psychoanalyst Looks at the Supernatural Helix Press p 100 22 Joe Nickell 2005 Camera Clues A Handbook for Photographic Investigation The University Press of Kentucky pp 177 78 ISBN 978 0 8131 9124 9 John Booth 1986 Psychic Paradoxes Prometheus Books pp 15 16 ISBN 978 0 87975 358 0 Joseph McCabe 1920 Is Spiritualism based on Fraud The Evidence Given by Sir A C Doyle and Others Drastically Examined London Watts amp CO p 126 Julien Proskauer 1946 The Dead Do Not Talk Harper amp Brothers p 94 a b c Sofie Lachapelle 2011 Investigating the Supernatural From Spiritism and Occultism to Psychical Research and Metapsychics in France 1853 1931 Johns Hopkins University Press pp 144 45 ISBN 978 1 4214 0013 6 Ronald Edwin 1955 Clock Without Hands Sidgwick Tony Cornell 2002 Investigating the Paranormal Helix Press New York pp 327 38 ISBN 978 0 912328 98 0 Georgess McHargue 1972 Facts Frauds and Phantasms A Survey of the Spiritualist Movement Doubleday p 250 ISBN 978 0 385 05305 1 Eric Robertson Dodds 2000 Missing Persons An Autobiography Oxford University Press pp 105 06 ISBN 978 0 19 812086 5 Allen Spraggett The Unexplained New York New American Library 1967 John Booth 1986 Psychic Paradoxes Prometheus Books p 148 ISBN 978 0 87975 358 0 M Lamar Keene 1997 The Psychic Mafia Prometheus Books p 122 ISBN 978 1 57392 161 9 A medium still riding high in England is Leslie Flint famed as an exponent of direct voice William Rauscher and Allen Spraggett who attended a sitting Flint held in 1970 in New York said that it was the most abysmal flop of any seance they had endured All the spirit voices sounded exactly like the medium and displayed an incredible ignorance of nearly everything pertaining to the sitters The mediumship was second rate ventriloquism Tim Madigan David Goicoechea Paul Kurtz Promethean Love Paul Kurtz and the Humanistic Perspective on Love Cambridge Scholars Press p 293 Ronald Pearsall Table rappers The Victorians and the Occult The History Press Ltd New Ed edition 2004 ISBN 0 7509 3684 3 Keene Lamar 1997 The Psychic Mafia Prometheus Books ISBN 1 57392 161 0 Republication of 1976 edition by St Martin s Press Ian Wilson 1989 The After Death Experience William Morrow and Company ISBN 978 0 688 08000 6 Tony Cornell 2002 Investigating the Paranormal Helix Press New York pp 347 52 ISBN 978 0 912328 98 0 Martin Gardner 1988 The New Age Notes of a Fringe Watcher Prometheus Books p 175 ISBN 978 0 87975 432 7 Bob Couttie 1988 Forbidden Knowledge The Paranormal Paradox Lutterworth Press p 24 ISBN 978 0 7188 2686 4 Joe Nickell 2005 Camera Clues A Handbook for Photographic Investigation The University Press of Kentucky p 178 ISBN 978 0 8131 9124 9 Grossman Wendy 1991 Dismissal is not disproof New Scientist Vol 130 Issue 1768 p 53 Richard Wiseman 1997 Chapter 3 The Feilding Report A Reconsideration In Deception and Self Deception Investigating Psychics Prometheus Press ISBN 1 57392 121 1 Massimo Polidoro 2003 Secrets of the Psychics Investigating Paranormal Claims Prometheus Books pp 65 95 ISBN 978 1 59102 086 8 Colin Fry an Evaluation Massimo Polidoro 2003 Secrets of the Psychics Investigating Paranormal Claims Prometheus Books pp 168 76 ISBN 978 1 59102 086 8 a b Dunning Brian 2009 11 10 Skeptoid 179 The Scole Experiment Skeptoid Retrieved 2011 10 30 The VERITAS Research Program of the Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health in the Department of Psychology at the University of Arizona Archived 2007 02 12 at the Wayback Machine newsnet5 com Archived 2009 08 21 at the Wayback Machine The Truth about Medium by Gary E Schwartz Ph D with William L Simon Hampton Books 2005 p 119 Book Review by Robert T Carroll Gary Schwartz s Subjective Evaluation of Mediums Veritas or Wishful Thinking by Robert Todd Carroll Hyman Ray Jan Feb 2003 How Not to Test Mediums Critiquing the Afterlife Experiments Skeptical Inquirer Retrieved 2012 05 21 Terence Hines 2003 Pseudoscience and the Paranormal Prometheus Books pp 56 64 ISBN 978 1 57392 979 0 O Keeffe Ciaran May 2005 Testing Alleged Mediumship Methods and Results British Journal of Psychology 96 2 165 179 doi 10 1348 000712605X36361 ISSN 0007 1269 PMID 15969829 Aykroyd Peter and Nart Angela 2009 A History of Ghosts the True Story of Seances Mediums Ghosts and Ghostbusters Rodale p 216 ISBN 978 1 60529 875 7 Geraldo at Large show October 6 2007 Jury Convicts Defendant in 25 Million Fraud Scheme Press release Southern District of Florida US Attorney s Office US Department of Justice 2013 09 26 Archived from the original on 2013 10 14 Retrieved 2013 10 10 Musgrave Jane 2013 09 27 Psychic convicted on all fraud counts The Palm Beach Post Vol 105 no 171 First ed p 1 Vasquez Michael 2011 08 16 Psychic scam a 40 million Fort Lauderdale family affair feds allege A Fort Lauderdale family spent the last 20 years raking in millions as fake psychics prosecutors allege in a newly unsealed indictment The Miami Herald via NewsBank subscription required J Gordon Melton 2007 The Encyclopedia of Religious Phenomena Visible Ink Press p 96 ISBN 978 1 57859 209 8 Investigative Files John Edward Hustling the Bereaved CSI Nov Dec 2001 Retrieved 2011 05 12 Shermer Michael August 2001 Deconstructing the Dead Crossing over to expose the tricks of popular spirit mediums Scientific American Retrieved 24 December 2011 James Randi s Swift Randi org April 21 2006 Retrieved 2012 01 03 Woliver Robbie July 16 2000 An Encounter With a Television Psychic The New York Times Retrieved 24 December 2011 Robert T Carroll Subjective validation The Skeptic s Dictionary Spiritualism religion www britannica com a b c Gerbic Susan February 21 2019 Operation Pizza Roll Thomas John Archived from the original on February 24 2019 Retrieved February 23 2019 Hitt Jack February 26 2019 Inside the Secret Sting Operations to Expose Celebrity Psychics New York Times Archived from the original on February 26 2019 Retrieved February 26 2019 Garza Frida 27 February 2019 Of Course Psychics Are Reading Your Facebook Page Jezebel com Jezebel Archived from the original on 28 February 2019 Retrieved 28 February 2019 Gerbic Susan February 21 2019 Buckle Up Seatbelt Psychic Center for Inquiry Archived from the original on February 24 2019 Retrieved February 23 2019 Further reading EditRuth Brandon 1983 The Spiritualists The Passion for the Occult in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Alfred E Knopf ISBN 978 0 394 52740 6 Edward Clodd 1917 The Question A Brief History and Examination of Modern Spiritualism Grant Richards London Stuart Cumberland 1919 Spiritualism The Inside Truth London Odhams Joseph Dunninger 1935 Inside the Medium s Cabinet New York D Kemp and Company Willis Dutcher 1922 On the Other Side of the Footlights An Expose of Routines Apparatus and Deceptions Resorted to by Mediums Clairvoyants Fortune Tellers and Crystal Gazers in Deluding the Public Berlin WI Heaney Magic Walter Mann 1919 The Follies and Frauds of Spiritualism Rationalist Association London Watts amp Co Joseph McCabe 1920 Scientific Men and Spiritualism A Skeptic s Analysis The Living Age June 12 pp 652 57 A skeptical look at SPR members who had supported Spiritualism concludes they were duped by fraudulent mediums Joseph McCabe 1920 Is Spiritualism Based On Fraud The Evidence Given By Sir A C Doyle and Others Drastically Examined London Watts amp Co Georgess McHargue 1972 Facts Frauds and Phantasms A Survey of the Spiritualist Movement Doubleday ISBN 978 0 385 05305 1 Alex Owen 2004 The Darkened Room Women Power and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England University Of Chicago Press ISBN 978 0 226 64205 5 Frank Podmore 1911 The Newer Spiritualism Henry Holt and Company Massimo Polidoro 2003 Secrets of the Psychics Investigating Paranormal Claims Prometheus Books ISBN 978 1 59102 086 8 Harry Price and Eric Dingwall 1975 Revelations of a Spirit Medium Arno Press Reprint of 1891 edition by Charles F Pidgeon This rare overlooked and forgotten book gives the insider s knowledge of 19th century deceptions Joseph Rinn 1950 Sixty Years Of Psychical Research Houdini And I Among The Spiritualists Truth Seeker Chung Ling Soo 1898 Spirit Slate Writing and Kindred Phenomena Munn amp Company Richard Wiseman 1997 Deception amp Self Deception Investigating Psychics Prometheus Books ISBN 978 1 57392 121 3External links Edit Media related to Mediumship at Wikimedia Commons The dictionary definition of Mediumship at Wiktionary Houdini v The Blond Witch of Lime Street A Historical Lesson in Skepticism Massimo Polidoro How to Have a Seance Tricks of the Fraudulent Mediums John Edward Hustling the Bereaved Joe Nickell Mediumship Skeptic s Dictionary The Medium Is Not the Messenger James Randi Tricks of Fake Mediums Harry Houdini Psychic Methods Exposed Cold Reading Tricks Psychics Last Week Tonight with John Oliver HBO Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Mediumship amp oldid 1130897297, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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