Indridi Indridason's contact with Emil Jensen

Most of the points you raise have been addressed in prior posts. I agree that it's too strong to call the Copenhagen fire a perfect case. But a good normal explanation isn't there either.

The obituary point you raise was answered here. The telegraphy point was answered here - basically it seems there is a true sense in which telegraphy came to Iceland only in 1906. Remember the Icelandic Marconi station only got transmissions from Poldhu not anywhere in Denmark. Having done Danish and Icelandic newspaper database searches and read key items including the Horsens telegram my conclusion is that the lack of any Icelandic publication about the Copenhagen fire in 1905 anyway, together with the unlikelihood that the fire would've been considered world news worthy of transmission from Poldhu to Iceland, means it's improbable the story was sent by Marconi transmission to Iceland. That there were telegrams carrying the story within Denmark isn't a surprise.

The new point you raise that is important is that Kvaran 1906 seems not to mention the Copenhagen fire. We can infer that because Haraldsson doesn't cite it as a source of info on the incident. With the current facts I think the strongest argument a skeptic could make holds the case was made up later so there's no need to explain it as Marconi tranmission based fraud. On the other hand I don't think the lack of mention in the Kvaran 1906 source means anything. Haraldsson never cites Kvaran 1906 for any specific information on Jensen. The only sources he gives other than the minutes books telling us anything about Jensen of value for identification in his book or article are Nielson 1922 and Kvaran 1910. He wanted more info on Jensen but couldn't find it in the sources he had. It wasn't until he checked the 1905 seance minutes that he unexpectedly could find specific enough Jensen info to make an attempt at identification possible. He disappointingly never was able to find the minutes books covering the Copenhagen fire date. That's a very central point btw: it isn't that the Copenhagen fire case wasn't where it was supposed to be in the minutes, it was that Haraldsson couldn't find the minutes book covering the days November 24 and 25. But it looks like in 1906 Kvaran didn't find the Jensen communications interesting enough to write about even though we know from the 1905 seance minutes books that he had info at that time to put in his 1906 publication. In his book Haraldsson calls Kvaran 1906 an article so probably there wasn't enough space to cover that much. This all makes it look less likely that fraud happened. If they were all in on faking the Jensen thing as Max argues why wouldn't they fake verification of his identity using the obituary info they secretly got and used to trick everyone? That scenario doesn't make sense. I say the best explanation of the Copenhagen fire case is paranormal but it isn't a perfect case either.

Hi, thanks for the comment but I don't agree with your interpretation of the data.

This is what you say about the obituary argument:
 
„Since the obituaries did not include all the veridical information Indridi told, nor information about where in Copenhagen he lived, it is not possible that Indridi could have gained all of the information through these obituaries and consciously or subconsciously used it, nor is it possible that someone else could have told Indridi the information after having read the obituaries.“
 
This is what the obituary says:
 
„Our dearly beloved, faithful brother, Fabrikant Thomas Emil Jensen, was called away today by the Lord by a gentle and quiet death. Copenhagen, August 8, 1898. On behalf of my sister and myself (names of the brother and the sister) The funeral will take place from Trinity Church on Tuesday 9 August.”
 
And this is what the medium says, Haraldsson, page 216:
 
“It (my Christian name) is Emil. My name: Emil Jensen, yes! I have no children. Yes, (I was a bachelor). No, (I was not so young when I died). I have siblings, but not here in heaven.”
 
All what the medium said is easily extrapolated from the obituary information. No need for the paranormal explanation at all.

Regarding the Marconi station. Can you prove that the station didn't receive telegrams from Denmark? The Cornwall station surely got telegrams from Denmark that were intended for Iceland. I repeat, Iceland was part of the Danish Kingdom at the time. The fact that the fire wasn't mentioned in any local newspapers doesn't suggest that the telegram is non existent. Perhaps, local editors didn't put it in print as they considered it not interesting for the local population. My assumption is equally probable as yours. At the end, why in the hell the key witnesses from 1910. (Kvaran) and 1922. (Nielsson) blatantly lie when they say that in 1905. Iceland "had no telegraphic connection with the outside world" (Haraldsson, page 205), if they have a perfect case?
 
Also, you claim:
 
"But it looks like in 1906 Kvaran didn't find the Jensen communications interesting enough to write about even though we know from the 1905 seance minutes books that he had info at that time to put in his 1906 publication. In his book Haraldsson calls Kvaran 1906 an article so probably there wasn't enough space to cover that much. This all makes it look less likely that fraud happened. If they were all in on faking the Jensen thing as Max argues why wouldn't they fake verification of his identity using the obituary info they secretly got and used to trick everyone? That scenario doesn't make sense. I say the best explanation of the Copenhagen fire case is paranormal but it isn't a perfect case either."
 
I would say - too much suppositions. The fact is that the Copenhagen fire, a marvellous event by itself, an ultimate proof of paranormal, that was allegedly corroborated on Christmas 1905. didn't make it in the book Kvaran published in 1906. How can such an event be not interesting enough? And there was no need for them to "verify" the identity as they had already knew from the obituary that Jensen was a real person.

I will respond to MarcusF's points one by one.

>This is what you say about the obituary argument

That isn't what I said. It's what @Wanderer said, it's his post I put the link to. Before Wanderer posted here I was convinced by Max that the whole Indridi case was a fraud. Wanderer led me to believe Max is wrong and the Indridi case is paranormal.

>All what the medium said is easily extrapolated from the obituary information. No need for the paranormal explanation at all.

This isn't really correct because the obituaries for Thomas Emil Jensen that are known are all very short on detail. A typical obituary today will list all those important to the person who predeceased them, and all important people who survived them. Jensen's obituary says nothing about his parents. From the obituary you quote one would think he only had one brother and one sister. He actually had four sisters and two brothers and they all were alive when he died. Given the obituaries alone it would've been possible that Jensen was a widower, a bachelor, a divorcee, that he had dead children, no children, or that his children were too young to be involved in the obituary's composition. The only thing the obituary reasonably rules out is that he had a surviving wife because you'd think she'd be involved in writing the obituary. A fraudster reconstructing Jensen's life from his obituaries would have had the fake Jensen say he had a sister and a brother. That would have been inaccurate. Instead Jensen said he had "siblings" who were all alive, and that was accurate. Also Jensen died in 1898. The communication sittings happened 1905. It could have been that any of his other siblings died from 1898 to 1905 and you wouldn't know that from obituaries so it couldn't have been safely inferred in 1905 that all his siblings were alive from those sources. The closeness of Jensen's residence to the scene of the fire was not apparent from the obituaries either. Only Haraldsson figured that out it seems. That detail increases the sense of authenticity of Jensen as a spirit communicator.

>Can you prove that the station didn't receive telegrams from Denmark?

Can you prove they got telegrams by Marconi trans from Denmark about anything not considered world news? What I did do was check if an Icelandic paper ever published anything about the Copenhagen fire in 1905. My searches didn't turn anything up but I can't know for sure if I missed something. It wasn't in Isafold the next day even though they had a Marconi column.

>The Cornwall station surely got telegrams from Denmark that were intended for Iceland.

It's odd that you complain about my suppositions and then you say this with no evidence.

>Perhaps, local editors didn't put it in print as they considered it not interesting for the local population.

This looks to me like an attempt to handwave off a failed prediction of the Marconi fraud theory. It looked like it was a big deal that Max found the Isafold Nov 25 1905 Marconi column, like it was the end of the Indridi case, I thought that. Then Wanderer translated it and showed it said nothing about the Copenhagen fire. It can't be both ways. If there was the expectation there'd be evidence of a Marconi transmission published in Iceland about the Copen fire but there's no evidence of that, well that counts against the Marconi trans fraud hypothesis.

>Also, can you completely exclude the possibility of someone sending a telegram from Denmark to Iceland for Kvaran or some other member of his company?

This is more silly prove a negative stuff. In spontaneous cases basically never is it true that all normal explanations are totally ruled out. That's why experiments need to be done. Even then there are no perfect experiments. But when there is no evidence for the fraud scenario it is assuming what's being argued about to just say well definitely fraud anyway. I find it kind of absurd to argue that the obituaries were used for the fraud when the fraudsters didn't provide more specific info from the obituaries. Why didn't the fraudsters specifically give Jensen's brother and sister's names from the fake Jensen as they were in the obituary? Even Jensen's full name Thomas Emil Jensen wasn't provided in the seances only Emil Jensen despite the full name being in the obituary. The Jensen communication looks like how a lot of psi and after death communications do, a weird mix of accurate specific info and more vague info. Not what would be expected of a fraudster who had specific info available. Also why did Jensen say nothing of himself the first time he showed up other than that he was a manufacturer and only in later sittings give more info? The idea would be that the fraudsters had the obituary from the start to know he was a manufacturer. This difficulty in getting info out of communicators is normal for real mediumship but not what would be expected of fraud. 

>At the end, why in the hell the key witnesses from 1910. (Kvaran) and 1922. (Nielsson) blatantly lie when they say that in 1905. Iceland "had no telegraphic connection with the outside world" (Haraldsson, page 205), if they have a perfect case?

You just ignore the post of Wanderer I directed you to that counters this idea very well.

>I would say - too much suppositions. The fact is that the Copenhagen fire, a marvellous event by itself, an ultimate proof of paranormal, that was allegedly corroborated on Christmas 1905. didn't make it in the book Kvaran published in 1906. How can such an event be not interesting enough? And there was no need for them to "verify" the identity as they had already knew from the obituary that Jensen was a real person.

Like I said according to Haraldsson it's an article not a book, so what could be covered would be limited. What suppositions? The key point isn't a supposition at all but a fact. Kvaran 1906 doesn't seem to give any of the communications from Jensen based on how Haraldsson cites it. I don't know if it even gives the name Jensen. For whatever reason Kvaran in that article didn't wade into the Jensen topic. That makes it no surprise that the Copenhagen fire case isn't mentioned there. Was he mainly or just interested in the physical phenomena in that article? I don't know because I don't have the article.

Also you don't understand the point being made about the verification. The argument you and others make is that the Experimental Society were fraudsters trying to hoodwink people with paranormal marvels that were all fake. But according to Haraldsson there is no evidence that they ever tried to prove to their supposed victims that the Jensen who communicated was a verifiable person. They never went and pretended to discover the obituaries or other docs about Jensen they had all along and go to their victims and say "look it was all real!" Even in talks and other things years later Experimental Society members made discussing Jensen they don't bring up anything about how he was proven real. Why bother to pull a fraud specifically based on real info about someone who died only to make nothing of that info? They could much more easily have made someone up out of thin air. This fraud scenario doesn't make sense.

The skeptic who proposed that criticism was basing it on his own experience working at newspapers, probably in the mid-late 20th or early 21st century in a country that isn't Denmark. That things may have been different in early 20th century Denmark seems like an obvious possibility.

The whole Sidste Nyt column seems to entirely refute the skeptic's argument anyway. Why? Obviously this issue was published Nov 25. And yet there are entries in the Sidste Nyt column dated Nov 24 and others dated Nov 25. Therefore stories concerning events that occurred on Nov 25 were able to be printed in a newspaper issue published Nov 25. So the newspaper deadlines argument definitely is a failure.

These are very good arguments. I agree with them.

With the current facts I think the strongest argument a skeptic could make holds the case was made up later so there's no need to explain it as Marconi tranmission based fraud.

Yes, but even if that were the case, it would still not explain why they did not attempt to verify the veridical information about Jensen, or at least tell people that they had verified all of the veridical information about Jensen. It would also not explain why they choose to say that it was the Jensen communicator that experienced the fire, despite not knowing that he lived two doors away from the fire. And if they would somehow have been aware that he lived two doors away from the fire, then why not mention it to anyone?

I think that Rviewer88 has given good responses to the criticisms. Here are some additional responses.

The fact is that the Copenhagen fire, a marvellous event by itself, an ultimate proof of paranormal, that was allegedly corroborated on Christmas 1905. didn't make it in the book Kvaran published in 1906. How can such an event be not interesting enough?

Why do you assume that the people involved considered it "an ultimate proof of paranormal"? There was many times that ostensible communicators reported veridical information that was tested. Haraldsson writes that there was an "detailed list of 41 memories ostensibly from Sigmundur Gudmundsson" and that "there are many examples of this kind of testing of memories". See page 140-141 in "Further Facets of Indridi Indridason’s Mediumship": https://www.homepage-baukasten-dateien.d...l%20EH.pdf Perhaps the people involved did not consider this case so extraordinary, since it was just yet another instance of veridical information. Haraldsson calls it a "perfect case", but we don't whether the people involved considered it a "perfect case", or considered it extraordinary at all.

Also, can you completely exclude the possibility of someone sending a telegram from Denmark to Iceland for Kvaran or some other member of his company?

If it is correct as Haraldsson wrote, then the Cornwall station only transmitted major world news. In that case they didn't get telegrams from persons in Denmark to Iceland.

Regarding the Marconi station. Can you prove that the station didn't receive telegrams from Denmark? The Cornwall station surely got telegrams from Denmark that were intended for Iceland.

If it is correct as Haraldsson wrote, then the Cornwall station only transmitted major world news. In that case they didn't get telegrams from persons in Denmark to Iceland.

Haraldsson admitted to me he knew about this. So why did he deliberately leave this information out of his 'Perfect Case' paper... just to make the case stronger than it was, as far as I can see, because including this information would have weakened his claim.

That is interesting. I thought the reason why Haraldsson didn't mention it could have been because he wasn't aware of it, and in that case it would have been strange that he would have overlooked such an important fact about the case. What other facts could he then have overlooked? However, if he was aware of the fact, then it means that we can be certain that he didn't overlook it. Regarding your claim that he was trying to make the case stronger than it was: It doesn't need to be the case. Maybe he just didn't think that this detail was important enough to include in the paper.

By the way, an mirror of Haraldsson's old website, where most of his papers are available for download, including those about Indridi, can be found here: https://www.sterbebegleitung-jenseitskon...ERESTS.htm

That is interesting. I thought the reason why Haraldsson didn't mention it could have been because he wasn't aware of it, and in that case it would have been strange that he would have overlooked such an important fact about the case. What other facts could he then have overlooked? However, if he was aware of the fact, then it means that we can be certain that he didn't overlook it. Regarding your claim that he was trying to make the case stronger than it was: It doesn't need to be the case. Maybe he just didn't think that this detail was important enough to include in the paper.

Presumably it comes down to the fact that you highlighted earlier, which is that, strictly speaking, there was no telegraphy in Iceland in 1905, so Kvaran and Nielsson were telling the truth and Haraldsson could legitimately say the same thing. Haraldsson seems to have believed the Marconi station to be irrelevant, based on the brief note he has in his book on Indridi discussing it. I've seen nothing to suggest that he was wrong or unreasonable in that conclusion so far. It isn't great that he didn't mention it in his article, but he does at least discuss it in his book. If he'd been deliberately concealing it, I don't know why he would've told Max he knew about the Marconi station.

At any rate we know that Haraldsson certainly didn't include something else that definitely is significant, but it seems only because he didn't look in the right places. He dismissed the possibility of an obituary for Jensen providing information about his life through mundane means as follows: "Kaare Claudewitz of Copenhagen suggested that Indridason might have read an obituary of Emil Jensen in a Danish newspaper. We jointly checked this possibility. No obituary of Emil Jensen was found in Politiken or Berlingske Tidende." We know now that checking just two newspapers wasn't adequate, because there were Jensen obituaries, although they were really more like simple death notices, published in other Danish newspapers. Somewhat strangely, Haraldsson doesn't seem to mention the obituary possibility anywhere in his book on Indridi, but obviously that came after his paper so he'd already mentioned it in his publication record.

I'd say we can't treat Haraldsson's research as totally reliable because of these things, but of course, is anyone's research entirely reliable? Mistakes and oversights happen all the time. What I haven't seen is strong evidence that he was hiding Indridi information in a way that could be called fraudulent.

I just realised that the obituary translation that MarcusF posted is incorrect. I did just take a look at the obituary again and saw that it means something different.

Here is the full obituary in danish: https://imgbox.com/DPYPkvdG

It does not say "On behalf of my sister and myself (names of the brother and the sister)". It does say "On behalf of (søstres) and ourselves. (Name of brother #1). Parish priest. (Name of brother #2). Fabricant." However, I am from Sweden and although I can understand danish since danish and swedish are similiar languages, I'm still not good at danish. So I'm uncertain if the word "søstres" in the sentence "paa søstres og egne vagar" refers to one sister or several sisters, or if it can refer to either one or several sisters. Perhaps @sbu can explain this?
This obviously doesn't make any real difference, because just as @RViewer88 wrote, all the facts that Indridi mentioned cannot be extrapolated from this information. However, it is still good to get all the details correct.

I just realised that the obituary translation that MarcusF posted is incorrect. I did just take a look at the obituary again and saw that it means something different.

Here is the full obituary in danish: https://imgbox.com/DPYPkvdG

It does not say "On behalf of my sister and myself (names of the brother and the sister)". It does say "On behalf of (søstres) and ourselves. (Name of brother #1). Parish priest. (Name of brother #2). Fabricant." However, I am from Sweden and although I can understand danish since danish and swedish are similiar languages, I'm still not good at danish. So I'm uncertain if the word "søstres" in the sentence "paa søstres og egne vagar" refers to one sister or several sisters, or if it can refer to either one or several sisters. Perhaps @sbu can explain this?
This obviously doesn't make any real difference, because just as @RViewer88 wrote, all the facts that Indridi mentioned cannot be extrapolated from this information. However, it is still good to get all the details correct.

“søstres” means sisters in the plural sense at least in modern danish. If there was one sister it would be spelled “søsters”. I have however noticed that the danish written language has evolved considerably over the last 100 years so we can’t be fully sure. The information will be available from church records which are public.

@RViewer88 do you know Kaare Claudewitz? Do you know if he is well?