Indridi Indridason's contact with Emil Jensen

was it tuberculosis, or typhoid fever?

It seems he had both but died of tuberculosis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indri%C3%B...%C3%B0ason

Lol...

Haroldsson claim of a perfect case in his paper "A perfect case? Emil Jensen in the Mediumship of Indridi Indridason, the Fire in Copenhagen..."  hangs on Telegraphy not being available in Iceland at the time, and Elendur claims in his paper it was not available until 1918.

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Your post is exclusively about the affair of the Copenhagen fire. You picked the wrong target. My remark which you were responding to was: "Sure enough, this dismissal of Indridi's mediumistic phenomena is based just on suspicious speculation with no specific evidence", which was referring to Indridi's many powerful manifestations of physical mediumship and other phenomena such as xenoglossy, most of which were not associated with the Copenhagen fire business. So far, on the topic of the physical and other powerful mediumship phenomena exhibited over a long period by Indridi, I have seen from you only speculation with no evidence.

Your post is exclusively about the affair of the Copenhagen fire. You picked the wrong target. My remark which you were responding to was: "Sure enough, this dismissal of Indridi's mediumistic phenomena is based just on suspicious speculation with no specific evidence", which was referring to Indridi's many powerful manifestations of physical mediumship and other phenomena such as xenoglossy, most of which were not associated with the Copenhagen fire business. So far, on the topic of the physical and other powerful mediumship phenomena exhibited over a long period by Indridi, I have seen from you only speculation with no evidence.

We have proven him a fraud so the rest can't be difficult to dismiss.  For example, it's easy to learn a few words in different languages.  I can speak English fluently, Swedish clumsily and I can string together some weedy sentences in both German and French.  I know a few words of Italian too.  I could probably persuade gullible people that I am speaking supernaturally and he generally worked in the dark so what observers claim to have observed could easily be mistaken.

We have proven him a fraud so the rest can't be difficult to dismiss.  For example, it's easy to learn a few words in different languages.  I can speak English fluently, Swedish clumsily and I can string together some weedy sentences in both German and French.  I know a few words of Italian too.  I could probably persuade gullible people that I am speaking supernaturally and he generally worked in the dark so what observers claim to have observed could easily be mistaken.

As I expected, promissory speculation, no evidence. You need to find plausible theories to debunk the many successful powerful multiple credible witness mediumistic sessions produced by Indridi. As they say, the devil is in the details. 

As I have mentioned, there is the precedent of a long history of prominent mediums of the past with a record of very well investigated powerful physical and other mediumistic phenomena who have been also proven to sometimes fake their effects.  Eusapia Palladino is a good example. Despite on many occasions demonstrating to scientist investigators under controlled conditions genuine extraordinary mediumistic phenomena, the medium was caught occasionally faking effects when encountering a period of partial or complete loss of mediumistic powers.

Concerning Palladino, from a well-researched essay by Michael Tymn (at http://whitecrowbooks.com/michaeltymn/en...or_fiction ):

"As reported in the November 1909 Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, a series of 40 sittings with Eusapia Palladino were conducted by Dr. Julian Ochorowicz, a psychologist, in Warsaw, Poland, during 1893-1894.  In all, 23 experimenters participated.  In the end, 10, including Ochorowicz, were convinced of the supernormal character of the phenomena, while seven were uncertain but accepted that they could not have been due to ordinary mechanical agency. Thus, 17 of the 23 did not believe what they had witnessed was trickery.  Two were inclined, with certain reservations, to deny the supernormal character of the manifestations, and three concluded it had to be fraud of some kind, even though they couldn’t prove it.  One refused to express any opinion. And so it was with nearly every study of Palladino – some convinced she was a genuine medium, some convinced she was a fraud, and some not knowing what to believe.

Michael Schmicker, the author of Best Evidence and co-author of The Gift, has studied the many books and research reports on Eusapia (most researchers referred to her by her first name) and has concluded that she was a genuine medium who probably, when her powers failed her, as they often did, resorted to some trickery so as not to disappoint people in attendance."

We have proven him a fraud so the rest can't be difficult to dismiss.  For example, it's easy to learn a few words in different languages.  I can speak English fluently, Swedish clumsily and I can string together some weedy sentences in both German and French.  I know a few words of Italian too.  I could probably persuade gullible people that I am speaking supernaturally and he generally worked in the dark so what observers claim to have observed could easily be mistaken.

Hold on. You have not responded to Raimo's post #15 (at https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-i...2#pid53412) documenting information on the case in Michael Tymn's blog.

You want me to debunk everything from some show that took place over 100 years ago, lol. But all you have are 2nd and 3rd hand stories from the same show, and such shows had been common in Europe and the USA, all using similar phenomena.

I spent ages, doing research on Haraldsson's paper on the Copenhagen fire, I spent weeks trawling through foreign newspaper archives, translating everything, in the hope I would find that Marconi wire item on the fire in a newspaper... and I did. Haraldsson initially admitted he had made a mistake in his paper, which he would correct in his book, in fact he tried to flatter me... by calling me a "born researcher" and inviting me to Edinburgh, then tried to suggest that it made no difference anyway. But as I revealed more and more of my research, he constructed weak explanations of why it was of no significance, in the end his tone became acidic, and he stopped responding.

The Icelandic population was poorly educated, and way behind the curve on technological advances in the world, whereas Bjorn Jonsson, a member of the Althingi, and owner of the newspaper isafold was not. To illustrate his interest in new technology, in 1899, the first electric lights in Iceland were turned on in the house of Eyjólfur Thorkelsson in Austurstræti 6, and in the same year he illuminated the Ísafold offices in the building next door, Austurstræti 8.

The group of fraudsters that controlled the Experimental Society, and who also controlled Indridason, built a small hall for his acts... I mean, they controlled the fabric of the building. Similar technology to speaking tubes, wax cylinder gramophone, and electric magic lanterns etc., were probably used for the shows. To many poorly educated Icelanders, they had never been exposed to such technology, and it probably sounded and looked inexplicable, as it had done elsewhere previously.

Very good job figuring this all out. I never looked carefully into this case, but when I read about it years ago I thought it seemed REALLY impressive. If someone had asked me yesterday before I read this to give spontaneous cases that prove ESP is real, I would've named the Copenhagen fire case....well if I remembered it after being asked I would've. Your debunking pretty much annihilates the entire Indridi mediumship because IIRC basically all the testimony we've got that matters was reported through these people who lied about the lack of any telegraph communication that could bring in info about Denmark to beef up the Copenhagen fire case. How can we trust them on anything else then? And if they were actively lying about Indridi's mediumship it's not really a reach to conclude that they may have assisted in hoaxing outside observers.

I did run into some signs a year or so ago that Haraldsson really screwed up his research into another case, Sai Baba. I found a bunch of Indian and other critics of his work who brought up tons of stuff not mentioned in Haraldsson's book on Baba, and who are convinced Baba was a total fraud. It's funny because some of those critics reported that they emailed Haraldsson about the omissions in his book and described the same pattern you did, that Haraldsson was responsive at first but then just dismissed and ignored them. But since I really don't know anything about the context in which the Sai Baba stuff happened it was hard for me to evaluate the claims and counterclaims satisfactorily. Still after all this I'm gonna have to treat anything from Haraldsson with a giant dollop of skepticism.

I'm guessing I'm not the only person here who thinks paranormal phenomena are real and is kind of deflated by the info that Max gave us. The consolation here I guess is that there were always a few things limiting the evidential quality of Indridi's mediumship and giving grounds for suspicion:

1. He basically only performed in the dark.
2. Not many people investigated him, and I think only one intellectually serious skeptic is known to have sat with him. Most of the people who sat with him were insiders/friends it seems like.
3. His mediumship only occurred over a few years, so given that alone opportunities to investigate him were more limited than various other physical mediums.

I'm guessing I'm not the only person here who thinks paranormal phenomena are real and is kind of deflated by the info that Max gave us. The consolation here I guess is that there were always a few things limiting the evidential quality of Indridi's mediumship and giving grounds for suspicion:

1. He basically only performed in the dark.
2. Not many people investigated him, and I think only one intellectually serious skeptic is known to have sat with him. Most of the people who sat with him were insiders/friends it seems like.
3. His mediumship only occurred over a few years, so given that alone opportunities to investigate him were more limited than various other physical mediums.

Ok! one down. How many more to go? Anyone know Braude's or mishlove's opinion of this guy or more credible cases? Regarding "perfmomed in the dark" I recall leslie Kean presnting a reasonable explanation. Anyway sorry for my Laziness in looking this stuff up or if some of my queries have already been addressed

[Ninshub]

Not that I'm supposed to be a paranormal history know-it-all to begin with, but I'd never even heard of this case before this thread.

Ok! one down. How many more to go? Anyone know Braude's or mishlove's opinion of this guy or more credible cases? Regarding "perfmomed in the dark" I recall leslie Kean presnting a reasonable explanation. Anyway sorry for my Laziness in looking this stuff up or if some of my queries have already been addressed

Can't recall for sure but I thought Braude cited the Copenhagen fire case somewhere, maybe in Immortal Remains, as good evidence of psi. Braude's a very smart guy. I don't find him too reliable on case details however. He's a typical philosopher, good with abstract matters, not so great, and actually too flippant, about precisely nailing down all the details of psychical research cases, which is really really important because if you don't do that, stuff like what's happened in this thread to the Indridi mediumship has a habit of happening. I'm pretty much sure that if it hadn't been for Michael Nahm, Braude would've decided the Felix Circle physical mediumship was largely authentic. I don't know if he's commented on the physical aspects of the Indridi mediumship specifically.

so who should we be contrasting Indridi with? I think the most evidential physical medium of all time is D.D. Home because of how often his seances were in light including daylight. Also phenomena happened around him indoors and outdoors. Plus he gave such a massive number of seances over the course of his life and attracted a shitload of hostile skepticism during his life. A LOT of people really wanted to expose the guy and worked hard to do it but no satisfactory and well-evidenced explanation ever was produced. The key thing is that a bunch of highly intelligent people who were aggressively skeptical about his abilities sat with him but never solved the mystery. It's wrong to say as Braude loves to that he pretty much definitely was never caught in fraud. But I know of only one definite Home case where the observation of fraud was seemingly unambiguous and we have first-hand testimony to support the accusation. BUUUUT this is the big thing: the guy who said he caught Home in fraud also said he was as certain that Home had an anomalous power of remote influencing as he was that Home resorted to fraud when the power left him. He said the power controlled Home and not the other way around, so Home couldn't make it happen when it didn't want to happen. This guy btw absolutely hated Home and was hellbent on exposing him as nothing but a fraud. He would actually grab Home in the middle of seances he sat in on. Unsurprisingly this led to a lot of mutual hostility. Despite all that stuff in the end he was certain Home had an anomalous power. The details of what I'm talking about are in a paper by Zofia Weaver in JSPR, "Daniel Dunglas Home Revisited - Evidence Old and New."