From Skeptic to Believer: News Anchor Gets a First Time Reading from a Medium

[Pollux]

I agree. Mediums sometimes have the annoying habit of presenting information as a question too. Why not just say "he's saying  XYZ" instead of turnIng it into a question for the sitter? It may be a genuine connection but can start to look like fishing for information.

I cant say exactly how every medium receives their information from the spirits they say they are in contact with, but I know that many say that it isn't a direct word-by-word-spoken contact. Its not like a talk with someone over a cup of coffee. Many gets images "imposed on" them, and some mediums learn to have a "decoding-system" of images that are references for words, feelings, situations, etc., and when they mentally ask the spirit if they mean this-or-that they can get either strong mental impressions that this was wrong, so they mentally ask; do you mean this instead, perhaps?, and then get feelings/impressions of agreement.

It's a bit like a sort of Synesthesia I guess, when you associate a smell with a colour and a image, and you "hear" a colour, and "feel" a taste, etc. Mediums that have this kind of connection learn by trial-and-error to have a "association-library" for these impressions. They get "guided" when they communicate by getting strong impressions of being right or wrong if this or that are the correct word/situation/feeling, the spirit they communicate with, want to convey.

The more they do this kind of communication they learn this "decipher-catalogue" and they dont have to do this back-and-forth with the spirit, to make sure they interpreted it correctly. But often there is flashes of pictures/impressions they get. Like if you are in a dark room and suddenly someone fires of a flash from a camera, and all you get are this "still-frame" from a split-second image, or that just one single word comes across clearly, that they then convey. Like in the video here above, when the medium gets the word "donkeydick" (out of all the word you can imagine this comes across), and that is because this spirit he was in contact with knew that this word would resonate with his friend, The same with "pickles". Also he mentioned the car-crash-situation and gets the impressions of a red car and a image of a tiger, the same when he saw an image of a basement where this spirit passed away, which was correct, that he had committed suicide in a basement in his house, I know that this sounds extremely dubious and speculative for skeptics, and it all sounds like all they do is"fishing", but if you as a medium do blind-sittings and get across correct information like this there is validation.
"Donkeydick" & "Pickles"....

Of course there are other mediums that claim they have direct word-for-word communications also, in some cases - but I dont think they have this "clear line" all the time. I cant say I'm an expert in this field, but this is the way I heard many mediums say they get their impressions.

[Ninshub]

Just to follow up on Pollux' post, in the video interview I posted with Mavis Pittilla (here), she mentions that in the last 15-17 years or so there seems to have developed a new form of mental mediumship (as opposed to clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience) that is called "claircognitive", but doesn't seem to be what the medium in this video is doing.

@Pollux that does seem to be the case however if you're a medium, asking questions of the sitter as opposed to simply conveying what you've received whether it makes sense to you or not, is risky imho. I'm not sure the medium needs the context of information, it's the sitter that determines the meaning. If the medium is any good of course.

Just to follow up on Pollux' post, in the video interview I posted with Mavis Pittilla (here), she mentions that in the last 15-17 years or so there seems to have developed a new form of mental mediumship (as opposed to clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience) that is called "claircognitive", but doesn't seem to be what the medium in this video is doing.

Who knows? The acid test is still the evidential content imho.

I agree. Mediums sometimes have the annoying habit of presenting information as a question too. Why not just say "he's saying  XYZ" instead of turnIng it into a question for the sitter? It may be a genuine connection but can start to look like fishing for information.

Hi, Obiwan

Good points and mediumship is not my thing but a close family member had a very good reading recently with an Irish medium, completely blind apart from a given first name.  The reading was so accurate she didn't believe that the medium had
actually got the information from paranormal capabilities   Oh dear how's that for scepticism.

Who knows? The acid test is still the evidential content imho.

Agreed. The good new is: there are LOTs of examples out there with solid evidential content. 

Basically, if I was not already convinced of the validity of mediumship, these videos wouldn't be enough to convince me.

Here's what I consider to be a better example out of many that are available-




The medium correctly states:
- the husband's name, 
- the fact that he died in the service, 
- that he died in Iraq, 
- that he was shot in the jaw/neck, 
- and that he damaged the wedding picture.

The medium stated these things without equivocation, and didn't fish for validation.

I consider this a reading with strong veridical support. Notice also that there was very little that was said that was incorrect. The only thing I can think of is that she missed the date by one day (15th vs 16th).

I'm one who has visited several psychics and mediums but have never really been convinced. Perhaps that has more to do with my need to rationalise than it has to do with their talents or lack of same. I have always hoped for the silver bullet: the one piece of information that could not be coincidence, hot or cold reading, guesswork or any other trickery (conscious of not). But, of course, there is almost always some doubt. 

Then there's the problem, as I perceive it, of the world of the psychics becoming intertwined with the the entertainment industry and the OP seems to me to be an example of that. I'm not saying the guy is a fake but I'm guessing that getting his face on TV was a big win for him.

That's not to say that I don't think there are some genuine psychics out there or that being on TV is necessarily a disqualifier. In the past I've been very impressed with Gordon Smith who appeared in a TV documentary (which was surprisingly neutral given that UK TV is often scathing about such subjects). The (BBC - I think) documentary is on YouTube in a 4 part playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL...BokWJo6PJV

I'm one who has visited several psychics and mediums but have never really been convinced. Perhaps that has more to do with my need to rationalise than it has to do with their talents or lack of same. I have always hoped for the silver bullet: the one piece of information that could not be coincidence, hot or cold reading, guesswork or any other trickery (conscious of not). But, of course, there is almost always some doubt. 

Then there's the problem, as I perceive it, of the world of the psychics becoming intertwined with the the entertainment industry and the OP seems to me to be an example of that. I'm not saying the guy is a fake but I'm guessing that getting his face on TV was a big win for him.

That's not to say that I don't think there are some genuine psychics out there or that being on TV is necessarily a disqualifier. In the past I've been very impressed with Gordon Smith who appeared in a TV documentary (which was surprisingly neutral given that UK TV is often scathing about such subjects). The (BBC - I think) documentary is on YouTube in a 4 part playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL...BokWJo6PJV

I don't know very much about mediums, though I've read a bit about the investigations of mediums like Leonora Piper in the early days of the SPR, which seem to have been pretty intensive, and to have produced quite strong evidence of anomalous happenings (though I think unequivocal proof of survival is extremely difficult in principle).

Obviously the investigation of mediums played a far more central role in psychical research then. Has that old research been surpassed by modern investigations or not? I'd be interested to know what better-informed people think.

I don't know very much about mediums, though I've read a bit about the investigations of mediums like Leonora Piper in the early days of the SPR, which seem to have been pretty intensive, and to have produced quite strong evidence of anomalous happenings (though I think unequivocal proof of survival is extremely difficult in principle).

Along the same lines, I know there's a fairly recent biography of Leonora Piper by Michael Tymn. Has anyone here read it, and if so would they recommend it? Or would anyone recommend anything else that's been written about her, including sceptical accounts?

I don't know very much about mediums, though I've read a bit about the investigations of mediums like Leonora Piper in the early days of the SPR, which seem to have been pretty intensive, and to have produced quite strong evidence of anomalous happenings (though I think unequivocal proof of survival is extremely difficult in principle).

Obviously the investigation of mediums played a far more central role in psychical research then. Has that old research been surpassed by modern investigations or not? I'd be interested to know what better-informed people think.

I agree that some pretty big names in science became involved in parapsychology around the turn of the 20th century. It seems to me that such big name scientists like William James and Oliver Lodge were not afraid to speculate about or investigate such phenomena whereas today they would probably fear for their reputation and careers. Even a little later, with the advent of Quantum Mechanics, you had top physicists like Schrödinger and Heisenberg able to talk openly about metaphysics although Pauli preferred to keep his work with Jung on synchronicity and mysticism more low-key (perhaps that was because Pauli had a reputation for being an arch-sceptic).

More recently, sceptics have tried to re-write history about the research carried out by the early pioneers like James, Lodge and Crookes, suggesting naïveté and gullibility. However, as Greg Taylor points out in that linked essay, 

In his article “How Mrs. Piper Bamboozled William James”, Martin Gardner ignores the original scientific work done, misrepresents the competency of the investigators, and misleads the reader both through incorrect statements and loaded language. This is hardly the type of writing we would expect from “one of the great intellects produced in this country in this century.”

However, some sceptics seem more open-minded than others as resident Scientific American blogger (and sceptic), John Horgan asks: "Brilliant Scientists Are Open-Minded about Paranormal Stuff, So Why Not You?". Here's another Scientific American sceptical blogger starting to have doubts when he asks: Ian Stevenson’s Case for the Afterlife: Are We ‘Skeptics’ Really Just Cynics?

“The mind is what the brain does,” I wrote in The Belief Instinct. “It’s more a verb than it is a noun. Why do we wonder where our mind goes when the body is dead? Shouldn’t it be obvious that the mind is dead too?” Perhaps it’s not so obvious at all. I’m not quite ready to say that I’ve changed my mind about the afterlife. But I can say that a fair assessment and a careful reading of Stevenson’s work has, rather miraculously, managed to pry it open. Well, a tad, anyway.

So, in my long-winded way, I'm trying to address your question about whether modern investigations have provided better evidence by saying that I don't really know but I think that the prevailing materialist climate discourages serious research and that few are prepared to put their heads above the parapet in the way James and the others were in their day.