Indridi Indridason's contact with Emil Jensen

@Wanderer I'm guessing Nielsen was a "mixed medium," fraudulent when his powers weren't working but able to produce genuine effects when they were. The feces incident definitely looks pretty bad, but it seems there's enough strong evidence there to believe he had real paranormal abilities.

>I think that the best way for a skeptic to argue would be to claim that the séance with the fire did not take place and that the case was made up later after they had gotten information about the fire in Copenhagen. Then all the veridical information about Emil Jensen would have to be explained with Indridi getting the information about Jensen from some unknown source and subconsciously remembering it, in other words cryptomnesia. Then the fact that the made up fire case involved the Jensen communciator while at the same time the Jensen communicator lived so close to the fire would have to be explained as an coincidence. I don't think that it's possible to rule this out with complete certainty, so for that reason I don't think the case is "perfect". However, I do think that a paranormal explanation is a much more likely explanation

I agree. Something that undercuts this possibility is that we have surviving testimony from three people, maybe more, about the Copenhagen fire case having happened in a paranormal fashion. They aren't completely consistent but agree on the essential facts, which is how all reliable testimony from different people on one event is basically. Memory error explanations are more likely when they pertain to just one person because the more people are involved the less likely it is that they all had memory errors leading to a consistent false memory shared by all.

@MarcusF 

>both Haraldur Nielsson and Einar Kvaran biographies say that they had been living in Copenhagen

Without knowing when they lived there this doesn't tell us anything. For example, Encyclopedia Britannica only mentions a connection between Kvaran and Copenhagen in his student days, well before the death of Jensen. Same with Wikipedia.

The same problem about timing applies to your argument referring to "socio-political" aspects maybe pertinent to the case. Encyclopedia(dot)com suggests that Nielsson became a spiritualist because of what he experienced with Indridi. Your argument requires he was a spiritualist first then brought Indridi in to perpetrate a fraud as part of some propaganda campaign, which if Encyclopedia(dot)com is right doesn't match the facts.

>I don’t think that Kvaran was so naïve that he wasn’t aware of the accusations before he invited Nielsen to “perform” in Iceland. So, perhaps he promoted spiritualism with the political agenda on his mind.

Thanks to Wanderer finding the EdgeScience piece, although it's also in Haraldsson's book, it seems we can say that Kvaran did know about the fraud accusations and took special precautions accordingly.

>In some of the Haraldsson papers it is clearly stated that Indridi performed only in the dark

The performance in the dark undermines the value of the paranormal evidence from the Indridi case a lot especially for the physical effects. There's no denying it. It doesn't prove fraud but it means we have to have serious doubt about the reliability of the observations. But that only goes so far because as Haraldsson points out various paranormal happenings did spontaneously occur around Indridi in light.

>one report written by a sceptic happened during seances conducted under the control of proponents

What evidence is there that all seances investigated by Hannesson were under the control of Indridi proponents? Hannesson imposed many conditions himself in a number of sittings with Indridi and brought Indridi to his own house to have a seance in an environment that Hannesson controlled. This is all described in Haraldsson's book on Indridi. It's unfortunate that Hannesson didn't exclude everyone from the seance in his house apart from himself and Indridi and maybe other skeptics. The evidence would be stronger if he'd done that. But to say the seances were all under proponent control doesn't seem accurate at all.

Something no one has mentioned yet but that creates a gigantic problem for the idea that Indridi proponents were helping him commit fraud is the fact that on one occasion the proponents documented Indridi likely committing fraud. This happened on 6 December 1907 during an experiment with him involving photography, where he draped a sheet over a broomstick. There is some evidence he was in a trance at the time and unaware of what he was doing. Again this is in Haraldsson's book. Whether the fraud was unconscious or not, I've got no idea why a gang of fraudsters would document and discuss fraud by the person they were helping to commit fraud. That doesn't make sense.

@sbu 

>do you know Kaare Claudewitz? Do you know if he is well?

I wish I did but no, I was just quoting Haraldsson's statement of Claudewitz's objection.

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.

Thanks for figuring that out. The original Marcus translation seemed to make sense because one of Jensen's sisters had the name Julie, so the idea that one brother, Ferdinand, and one sister, Julie, were involved seemed to make sense because the names are given as "Ferd. Jensen" and "Jul. Jensen." But now it looks far more likely that it was Jensen's brothers Ferdinand and Julius who wrote the obituary, saying they were also acting on behalf of their sisters. This means my argument that a fraudster in possession of the obituary would've probably had the fake Jensen incorrectly say that he had a sister and a brother is wrong. For me the main problem with the idea that the obituary or maybe other documents about Jensen were used by fraudsters is how vague the information in the communication is, along with the fact that Haraldsson's book quotes Kvaran as saying as late as 1934 they never found out who Jensen was, when you'd think they'd make something of all their efforts to perpetrate the fraud based on info they collected about a real guy.

I think that the best way for a skeptic to argue would be to claim that the séance with the fire did not take place and that the case was made up later after they had gotten information about the fire in Copenhagen. Then all the veridical information about Emil Jensen would have to be explained with Indridi getting the information about Jensen from some unknown source and subconsciously remembering it, in other words cryptomnesia. Then the fact that the made up fire case involved the Jensen communciator while at the same time the Jensen communicator lived so close to the fire would have to be explained as an coincidence. I don't think that it's possible to rule this out with complete certainty, so for that reason I don't think the case is "perfect". However, I do think that a paranormal explanation is a much more likely explanation.

Something that undermines the cryptomnesia possibility is that Indridi didn't know Danish other than being able to speak a few words. Since he was in Iceland his whole life at that point, it seems unlikely he could've innocently encountered info about Jensen through any means other than Danish text, which he couldn't have read.

There is one very interesting fact I only just now appreciate the significance of. Kvaran in 1910 and possibly Nielsson in 1922 stated that Jensen manufactured clothes. But Haraldsson says he couldn't find any documents stating what Jensen manufactured. The obituary describes him only as a "manufacturer." I know you read several other obituaries though. Do any of them say that Jensen manufactured clothes? If not this could be the one piece of information about Jensen that the Experimental Society thought they had that has a very high probability of not having been available in 1905 from a normal source in Iceland.

I'm guessing Nielsen was a "mixed medium," fraudulent when his powers weren't working but able to produce genuine effects when they were. The feces incident definitely looks pretty bad, but it seems there's enough strong evidence there to believe he had real paranormal abilities.

The same problem about timing applies to your argument referring to "socio-political" aspects maybe pertinent to the case. Encyclopedia(dot)com suggests that Nielsson became a spiritualist because of what he experienced with Indridi. Your argument requires he was a spiritualist first then brought Indridi in to perpetrate a fraud as part of some propaganda campaign, which if Encyclopedia(dot)com is right doesn't match the facts.

Something no one has mentioned yet but that creates a gigantic problem for the idea that Indridi proponents were helping him commit fraud is the fact that on one occasion the proponents documented Indridi likely committing fraud. This happened on 6 December 1907 during an experiment with him involving photography, where he draped a sheet over a broomstick. There is some evidence he was in a trance at the time and unaware of what he was doing. Again this is in Haraldsson's book. Whether the fraud was unconscious or not, I've got no idea why a gang of fraudsters would document and discuss fraud by the person they were helping to commit fraud. That doesn't make sense.

Mixed medium argument is very convenient. When a medium is low on battery he cheats. But when he isn’t caught cheating, he is genuine. Sounds perfectly logical.
 
I don’t know when Nielsson became a spiritualist, but Kvaran sure was well before he met Indridi.
 
As for the photo shutting incident where a photographer caught Indridi cheating here is what happened after, I used Google translation:
 
“After discussing the matter with Einar H. Kvaran, it was decided to investigate this incident not further to avoid humiliating the medium. Indrida was told that the attempt had failed and he was asked to attend a meeting three or four members of the Experimental Society. Indridi asked to get to see the film but to "keep his mind at ease" he was told that she would have been damaged by accident. At the meeting on December 7, the day after the photo experiment, the door was locked from the inside as was customary so that no one could enter. The meeting lasted four and a half hours in the dark. Some brightness seems though have come from a fire burning in the hearth. Attendees who were all seated the meeting was Júlíus Ólafsson, Haraldur Níelsson and Einar H. Kvaran who held both of Indrida's hands or held around him with both hands all the time. Indridi was in a trance throughout the meeting. At the meeting, the management announced that they had discovered that the man who committed suicide would have played a prank on them and interfered with the photo experiment. They said Jon was at the meeting, building over "the force" and would be in a bad mood. Literally they said, "God knows how this one." A medium meeting takes place where Jón is now a semi-materialized ghost"
 
Page 88
 
So, the Board decided the photo incident was a result of a “naughty” ghost. Crisis communication at work. To me this sounds like a convenient explanation afer someone was caught with his hands in a jar. 
 
And we could go on like this forever…

Mixed medium argument is very convenient. When a medium is low on battery he cheats. But when he isn’t caught cheating, he is genuine. Sounds perfectly logical.
 
I don’t know when Nielsson became a spiritualist, but Kvaran sure was well before he met Indridi.
 
As for the photo shutting incident where a photographer caught Indridi cheating here is what happened after, I used Google translation:
 
“After discussing the matter with Einar H. Kvaran, it was decided to investigate this incident not further to avoid humiliating the medium. Indrida was told that the attempt had failed and he was asked to attend a meeting three or four members of the Experimental Society. Indridi asked to get to see the film but to "keep his mind at ease" he was told that she would have been damaged by accident. At the meeting on December 7, the day after the photo experiment, the door was locked from the inside as was customary so that no one could enter. The meeting lasted four and a half hours in the dark. Some brightness seems though have come from a fire burning in the hearth. Attendees who were all seated the meeting was Júlíus Ólafsson, Haraldur Níelsson and Einar H. Kvaran who held both of Indrida's hands or held around him with both hands all the time. Indridi was in a trance throughout the meeting. At the meeting, the management announced that they had discovered that the man who committed suicide would have played a prank on them and interfered with the photo experiment. They said Jon was at the meeting, building over "the force" and would be in a bad mood. Literally they said, "God knows how this one." A medium meeting takes place where Jón is now a semi-materialized ghost"
 
Page 88
 
So, the Board decided the photo incident was a result of a “naughty” ghost. Crisis communication at work. To me this sounds like a convenient explanation afer someone was caught with his hands in a jar. 
 
And we could go on like this forever…

The term “mixed mediumship” does sound like a cop-out but I think it depends on the context. Eusapia Paladino for example was apparently known to cheat when given the opportunity but investigators knew this and took measures to prevent it. There are many detailed records of sittings with her where the sitters were satisfied that the phenomena were genuine in controlled sittings. Does that mean we must accept it? No of course not but neither is there a good basis for confidently rejecting phenomena properly observed in controlled sittings by unbiased observers. I used to be of the school of thought “once caught in fraud, always fraudulent” but I no longer subscribe to that blunt instrument which excludes a lot of interesting and potentially valid research. 

I find it very difficult to reach a firm conclusion on phenomena observed by people I do not know, no matter how long ago it was. On the other hand I am reluctant to categorically reject evidence from people actually experiencing phenomena, even if the medium has been caught in actual fraud previously - depending on the context. 

Whilst the discussion of investigations and phenomena is interesting (and all most of us have), there is nothing like personal experience to establish confidence that phenomena are sometimes genuine.

Wikipedia isn’t an authoritative source for information on parapsychology. Although it often looks well-sourced, in my experience the context of the references is sometimes dishonestly presented and the evidence supporting phenomena almost universally ignored.

I do lean toward the "once a cheater...." rule, though I am remain on the fence about cheating in the Jensen case.

Wikipedia is so biased against any paranormal phenomena it is hard to take it too seriously, though OTOH there do seem to be some questions raised that make this a less than perfect case.

@MarcusF 

>Mixed medium argument is very convenient. When a medium is low on battery he cheats. But when he isn’t caught cheating, he is genuine. Sounds perfectly logical.

OK......? As a matter of fact there IS nothing illogical in the idea that an individual can produce results of a genuine and fraudulent kind. Which principle of logic says that's literally impossible or even unlikely? Maybe you're aware that there's substantial evidence of fraud in the work of no less a scientist than Gregor Mendel. Do we have to chuck out Mendelian genetics now? The broomstick incident with Indridi is like a lot of mediumistic fraud, ridiculous and crude. How is it that someone able to pull off the very sophisticated effects documented with Indridi via fraud would resort to something goofy like putting a bedsheet over a broomstick? Feilding and co. pointed to the same thing with Palladino. Her genuine effects were of a completely different order than her fraudulent ones, which were silly primitive and obviously fake. I don't know much about Nielsen but as Dingwall said it's not even clear what fraud was committed. Basically there's evidence he hid something up his ass. How this would account for the more remarkable stuff that happened with him in many cases I have no idea and skeptics don't seem to have one either. Far from a convenient story mixed mediumship is the only satisfying way to understand the observations of investigators in many cases. What is convenient and illogical is the skeptic 'one fraud and you're done' rule. All this does is get the skeptic off the hook for providing compelling arguments for how the alleged fraud happened in the important cases, where the evidence for paranormality is strong and there is clearly no good fraud explanation. That is the one and only reason they love the 'rule' so much. Btw you make your argument sound more compelling with rhetorical BS. I mean just look at this: 'when he isn’t caught cheating'. You make it nice and clear that you prejudicially assume that all these things are fraudulent and so there's never any real evidence of paranormality but only failure to catch cheating. That looks like wholesale debunking to me which IIRC breaks the rules at PQ if you aren't posting in the Skeptic vs. Proponent section.

I also loled at the fact that you ignored the reason I brought up the Indridi fraud incident to harp on the fact Indridi was caught cheating, because I knew you'd do that. The fact the investigators caught and documented Indridi cheating completely contradicts the scenario you've been touting all this time that the Experimental Society was in on the fraud. Maybe you were misled by your faulty Google Translation into thinking the Experimental Society was in on the suicided ghost explanation, which isn't the first time errors from your translation have screwed things up in this thread. Why use a Google translation when Haraldsson's Indridi book was originally published in English? The book says that it was Indridi's spirit 'controls' not anyone in the Experimental Society (your translation misleadingly gives the word as 'management') who came up with the suicided ghost excuse. The Experimental Society recognized it was probably fraud and Nielsson wrote about it as fraud in a 1924 paper and maybe other places. He also wrote about it in notes for the minute books and considered both the fraud possibility and the suicided ghost possibility without reaching a conclusion on which explanation is right. As translated by Haraldsson in his book Nielsson wrote, 'Why did the medium do this foolish attempt to deceive when the photograph was taken? I say foolish because the fraud was bound to get known quickly as indeed it did. For almost five years we conducted experiments with him, and however closely we and other very skeptical people watched him, we never found any attempt to deceive us apart from this one incident. Was he at this moment overtaken by some madness, or suggestive influences, so that he was no more his own master? Or, had Jon [suicided ghost] got hold of him and was able to let him perform this fraud to throw suspicion on him and get us to have no faith in him?' It goes on like that for a while.

 >I don’t know when Nielsson became a spiritualist, but Kvaran sure was well before he met Indridi.

OK well that's a big problem for you because the best evidence you gave us on the 'sociopolitical' stuff is about Nielsson not Kvaran. Here's what you gave us:

>“But this political reflection was also based on a passionate interest in spiritualist theories and, in particular, in those focusing on the return of ancestors. It is obvious that in most Reformed countries, including Denmark, this movement was extremely popular at the end of the nineteenth century. Yet it takes on a special dimension in Iceland, because the process of national reconstruction is based not only on the need to establish a republican constitution, but also on a ’new religion’, one’s own that, while remaining Christian, would distinguish itself from colonial Christianity. This spiritualist movement made it possible to conjure up ancestors and rely on them to create this new religion. According to the words of Haraldur Nielsson, theologian and nephew of the bishop of Iceland, the aim was to ‘reconstruct a rationalist Lutheranism based on positive faith that the spiritualist way will strengthen and ennoble’ (Jónsson, 1968: 72-73). Therefore, at the turn of that century, the unofficial histories of religious spiritualism and political independence merged in the livingrooms of Reykjavík where politicians, essayists, poets and clergy met around mediums giving voice to ‘ancestors’. These experiences, still private, would then rapidly enjoy a popular success.”
 
>“But, at the same time, after a local government was recognized in 1904, the dynamic forces of spiritualism made their solemn declaration of national independence by presenting, on the ancient plains of the Parliament of Þingvellir, the very young but oh so popular medium Indriði Indriðason astride a fiery white stallion, mimicking as such the revived image of Óðin, the shaman-god, on his mythical mount Sleipnir.”

Notice how there's absolutely nothing about Kvaran but there's mention of Nielsson. But in response to my rebuttal about this you say 'I don’t know when Nielsson became a spiritualist, but Kvaran sure was well before he met Indridi'. Well clearly that doesn't help your argument one bit because the facts your argument is based on don't appear to say anything about Kvaran. The source I found suggests Nielsson became a spiritualist because of Indridi but you ignored that.

I've been thinking some more about Jensen's supposed after-death communications and the obituary for him, as the obituary thing seems to be the basis for the best evidence based argument skeptics can make for fraud. One thing is Jensen said he was "not so young" when he died. Weird as it sounds it doesn't look like his obituary gives any information on his age at the time of his death. All that is given is the date of his death. Neither his date of birth nor age is given. @Wanderer I know you said you read other obituaries for Jensen. Does any give his age or date of birth?

Another thing is that Jensen did not simply rattle off a statement of information about himself. Instead when the following was said:

>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.

he was responding to questions posed to him. Maybe a skeptic would argue that whoever asked the questions was in on the fraud, and unfortunately Haraldsson doesn't appear to have known who asked the questions. But the fact that it wasn't just a set of statements Jensen rattled off of his own accord reduces the likelihood that fraudsters just got together a list of statements derived from his obituary and had fake Jensen say it. It looks more like Jensen's ghost was responding to questions and given what the questions apparently were, it's no surprise some answers align with his obituary if it was really Jensen talking. I also find it unlikely that fraudsters working from the obituary wouldn't have had Jensen give his full name "Thomas Emil Jensen" but only Emil Jensen.

@MarcusF 

>Mixed medium argument is very convenient. When a medium is low on battery he cheats. But when he isn’t caught cheating, he is genuine. Sounds perfectly logical.

OK......? As a matter of fact there IS nothing illogical in the idea that an individual can produce results of a genuine and fraudulent kind. Which principle of logic says that's literally impossible or even unlikely? Maybe you're aware that there's substantial evidence of fraud in the work of no less a scientist than Gregor Mendel. Do we have to chuck out Mendelian genetics now? 

Mendel didn't claim that spirits of ancestors are behind his explanation of genetics... False analogy.

I also loled at the fact that you ignored the reason I brought up the Indridi fraud incident to harp on the fact Indridi was caught cheating, because I knew you'd do that. The fact the investigators caught and documented Indridi cheating completely contradicts the scenario you've been touting all this time that the Experimental Society was in on the fraud. 

There was a witness who wasn't part of the Circle, the photographer. It is better to admit and make a good excuse then to cover it up. This strategy leaves much better impression. If he was cheating once, there is a possibility that he was doing it more often and that some of the members of the Circle were part of it. The medium was under the full control of the Circle almost all of the time and was on salary.