Indridi Indridason's contact with Emil Jensen

@Max_B 

If you have sources and information for your claims about Indridi as a medium and the Emil Jensen case then I strongly advise you to contact the editors of the Psi Encyclopedia and present this information to them in order for them to include your sources in an updated version about their articles. Professor Haraldsson was the author of both articles about the Emil Jensen case and Indridi Indridasson for the Psi Encyclopedia and he has since passed away. 
To this day, the article about Indridi states that "Claims of fraud... were few and were unsubstantiated." but if the information that you're providing is true, then you should conctact the SPR in order for them to correct the articles in the Psi Encyclopedia.

I claim no knowledge about Sai Baba or Indridi Indridasson other than the few articles I've read, but I find it very alarming that people in this thread are just going to go around and throw out third-hand accusations to dismiss the entire bulk of work of the late Erlendur Haraldsson as a parapsychologist without realizing that those criticisms don't necessarily taint his investigations of other phenomena, like, for example, cases of the reincarnation type.

[Ninshub]

Well said Sam.

@Sam I'm assuming that's directed at me. I don't think that's a fair representation of my position. We shouldn't just dismiss everything Haraldsson did now and leave it at that. But I believe his work in general should be treated with more caution and efforts should be made to check if his other reported cases hold up to scrutiny. It looks like there are some troubling commonalities between his work on the Indridi case and the Sai Baba case. He seems to have overlooked important things that detract from the cases. Then when these deficiencies were pointed out to him by others he just brushed them off and eventually stopped communicating with them. It looks like he never addressed the fact that Björn Jónsson's own newspaper published on November 25th a Marconi transmission about the Copenhagen fire. That could be reasonably interpreted as actively misleading if that info was brought to his attention and it seems Max did show him that. Obviously that reflects badly on Haraldsson. It's common sense to be more skeptical about the other investigations someone's done if some big problems have been found in a portion of his work and fit a worrying pattern.

Regarding the Sai Baba video of supposed materialization being revealed as a magic trick, didn't Wiseman also agree the video didn't show anything conclusive?

It's a bit confusing to me because there was a big debate about Sai Baba in India and his refusal to be tested under controlled conditions by physicist H. Narasimhaiah. There were varied other controversies.

I'm not sure why Haraldsson was so adamant about Sai Baba genuinely manifesting materializations, but to me it would depend on if he simply stood by his own personal investigation or whether he felt his investigation trumped all other questions about Sai Baba.

Most people in this thread seems to assume that the criticisms made against Haraldsson in this thread are correct. I don't agree. I think all the criticisms can be responded in an adeqate way. I think the Copenhagen fire case holds up and that there are no reason to consider Indridi a fraud. I will reply to all the criticisms in the following posts.

Yeah, I do, I found the same short news report in an archive of the Danish Newspaper Berlingske Tidende, containing exactly the same key facts Indridi had provided at the sitting (according to Haraldsson's paper). As for Emil Jensen, there was no Emil Jensen at that sitting, there was just Jensen...

That is correct, but the information about Jensen, including that his name was Emil, was mentioned on a later sitting. I looked up the thread on Skeptiko that was mentioned in this thread to see if there was any more criticisms there, and in that thread you writes that "the spirit didn't reveal anything else about himself, other than his surname at this sitting (which was conveniently the most common surname available on the mainland), more information about the spirit was only revealed after sufficient days had elapsed for a round trip to the mainland for research to have taken place... how convenient". If they would have gone through all the trouble of traveling to the mainland and looking up the information, then one would expect that some kind of verification attempt would have taken place, so that people at the time would have become aware that the information was veridical. And yet, according to Erlendurs paper no one involved tried to verify that the information about Jensen was correct. It was only over 100 years later that Haraldsson verified the information. Why would they go through all that hard work without trying to verify the information? Also, the person's full name was Thomas Emil Jensen. If someone looked up the information about him, then why would they not have included the full name "Thomas Emil Jensen" instead of only the "Emil Jensen" part? That would make the case more impressive, since it would have more veridical information.

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.

Are you refering to the danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende? I found the article about the fire here: http://hdl.handle.net/109.3.1/uuid:913d0...b22311f490
It does not say that it was a Marconi wire item, and I see no reason to think that it was.
Or are you refering to the Isafold issue from November 25? It does not mention anything about any fire. Here is an english translation through Google Translate:
https://imgbox.com/Fn08ea0V

 

The fire didn’t happen on the night of the séance, but most probably the night before

The Copenhagen fire happened earlier, a night before the séance took place. It probably started late in the night of Thursday, November 23, when the fireman got alarm. The fire was extinguished early in the morning of Friday, November 24, around 2 am. And fireman left the scene around 4 am just to come again because the fire started again. The Danish newspapers reported about the fire on November 25. That would be only possible if the fire happened on the night of 23/24.11.1905., one night before the séance took place, because of the newspaper printing deadlines. For example, on November 25 the Horsens Social Demokrat newspaper writes about the fire with all the important details in the telegram column dated on 24.11.1905. Horsens is 172 kilometres away from Copenhagen. So, if the fire happened the same night when the séance took place that means that the Horsens newspapers issue for November 25 should had been printed the same day, and only after the editor got telegram form Copenhagen – probably later in that day! And that is not possible because of the printing deadlines. As a former journalist I know that the printing deadline is around midnight. So, if you want to have your newspaper on the streets early in the morning you must close it by midnight. In the 19. century that deadline would have to be even earlier because all the letters had to be adjusted manually because of the printing technology. The same telegram feed about the fire was published in other newspapers published in cities of Aarhus and Fredericia, which are not close to Copenhagen.

The fire did happen on the night of the seance. Haraldsson found that the danish newspaper Politiken claimed that the fire happened on the night between November 24 and November 25:
"On the day following the séance, Saturday the 25th of November, two major Danish newspapers reported a fire in Copenhagen. Politiken writes: Factory Fire in St. Kongensgade. Copenhagen’s Lamp and Chandelier Factory in Flames. Last night at about 12 o’clock the janitor of number 63 Store Kongensgade [Kongensgade Street] discovered that there was a fire in “Copenhagen’s Lamp and Chandelier Factory,” which is located on the ground and first floor of a side house in the backyard." https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/artic...hagen-fire The newspaper report is included in full in Haraldsson's paper: https://www.homepage-baukasten-dateien.d...ndridi.pdf

There was actual Emil Jensen and there was his obituary published in the Danish newspapers Dannebrog on August 4, 1898 that contained precise information that was spoken by “Jensen”

Someone could have searched old newspapers between the first and second sitting (10 days difference) and give more info on “Jensen” that is a common Danish surname. Obituary contains all the needed info that medium “channelled”.

The obituary is indeed in that newspaper. I found it here. http://hdl.handle.net/109.3.1/uuid:7b499...0ce8180496 I have also checked if there were any other obituaries published in danish newspapers, and I found that the same obituary was published in Dannebrog on August 6 and in Den til Forsendelse med de Kongelige Brevposter privilegerede Berlingske Politiske og Avertissementstidende on August 8. The only veridical information told by Indridi that is mentioned is that his name was Emil Jensen, that he was a manufacturer, and that he has siblings that was alive in 1898 when the obituaries was written. They do not mention that he does not have deceased siblings, nor any of the other veridical information included in Indridis statements. I also found some shorter obituaries published in other danish newspapers and they contains even less of the veridical information, since they do not mention if he had siblings. The obituaries does not mention which adress he lived on, only that he was from Kjebenhavn, in other words Copenhagen. They do mention in which church Jensen was going to be have is funeral, Trinitatis Kirke. Perhaps that information could have been used to know that he lived very close to the place where the fire happened? That seems farfetched, and it most certainly does not show that he lived so close to the fire that he was only two doors away from it. He lived at Fredericiagade 16, and one can easily see on a map of Copenhagen that there are other churches that are closer to that adress, for example Frederiks Kirke and Sankt Pauls Kirke. Those two churches existed in 1898, according to their english wikipedia pages. So there is no reason to associate Trinitatis Kirke with that street adress. Trinitatis Kirke is according to Google Maps also a relatively long distance away from Fredriciagade 16, where Jensen lived, 1.10 km or 3600 feet as the crow flies, 1.50 km or 5000 feet if one follows the streets. One cannot use the fact that he lived within that distance of the church to become aware of the fact that he did live so close to the fire that he was only two doors away from it. 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.

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.

Haraldsson writes: "In 1905 there was much discussion in Iceland about whether the country should have a telephone cable connecting it with other countries, or wireless radio communication. The Marconi Company set up a station in Reykjavik in the summer of 1905 in the hope that the government would favor a wireless station. It chose the telephone cable. The station in Reykjavik was only able to receive radio messages from the powerful Poldhu station in Cornwall that transmitted news and messages to America. The Reykjavík receiving station distributed only major world news from the Cornwall station and gave it without cost to all newspapers in Reykjavik until it was closed in 1906.
The fire in Copenhagen was far from being world news. It caused no loss of life and only damage to one building." http://whitecrowbooks.com/michaeltymn/en...araldsson/
The icelandic newspaper page from 1905 that you linked to seem to agree that the station could only receive messages from the Poldhu station in Cornwall, since it is mentioning Poldhu and Cornwall.
This page from Technical Museum of East Iceland claims that 1906, when the submarine telegraph cable was laid from Scotland through the Faroe Islands to Iceland, was when telegraphy first came to Iceland. The station that sent messages from before that does not seem to count as "real" telegraph communication by those that wrote the article, which fits well with Haraldsson's claim that the Poldhu station only carried world news. If it would have carried all information like ordinary telegraph communication, then that would have counted as when telegraphy came to Iceland. https://artsandculture.google.com/story/...83LQ?hl=en
Wikipedia also seems to agree, and says that "In 1906, a submarine telegraph cable was laid by the Great Northern Telegraph Co. from Scotland through the Faroe Islands to Iceland, where it came ashore on the east coast at Seyðisfjörður. In conjunction a telegraph and telephone line, was laid from the landing point to the capital city Reykjavík." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%ADminn The icelandic wikipedia page about telegraphy also claims that it was in 1906 telegraphy came to Iceland. https://is.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rits%C3%ADmi 1906 seems to be when "real" "normal" telegraphy, in other worlds other telegraphy than world news from the Poldhu station, became available in Iceland. It is a bit strange that Haraldsson claims that it was in 1918 in his paper "The perfect case", but perhaps it was a spelling mistake? However, it does not matter for the case, because what is important for the case is that telegraphy of other things than world news from other stations than Poldhu was not available in Iceland in 1905.
That the fire was not world news becomes obvious from the fact that the report of this event in the danish newspaper Berlingske Tidene, or "Den til Forsendelse med de Kongelige Brevposter privilegerede Berlingske Politiske og Avertissementstidende" as it was called in 1905, is only a short news item and is not presented as any big major thing, not even in a paper that was published in the city where the fire was taking place. Instead it is mentioned right next to a news item saying that an organisation called "Den konservative Klub" which translates to "The Conservative Club" is going to have a 23rd anniversary party, and a news item saying that a widow has sold two apartments. http://hdl.handle.net/109.3.1/uuid:913d0...b22311f490 It was most certainly not world news.
The case does not hang on there not existing telegraphy in Iceland at the time. It only hangs on the news about the fire not being transmitted through telegraphy to Iceland, which it wasn't.