Is physical mediumship fraudulent?

He is danish as I am. Apparently he also wrote a book about this topic I may try to aquire one day (sadly not something you can aquire from Amazon - only available at the royal library)

Anyway - try to look at this photo


The chandelier in the roof has two shadows which indicates the flash was fired twice on this subject while the chair only has one shadow (no shadow in the roof)
[Image: turck2.2.jpg]

I only see a single shadow of anything. Actually it is hard to evaluate the shadow of the chandelier since the whole of the object itself isn't in the frame.

On the other hand, the motion blur of the chair is interesting. The nearer three legs have generous blur. while the furthest has no significant blur. That implies the chair was rotating about an axis passing through that leg, which remained fixed. Of course, that could mean nothing, the chair may have been spinning and moving sideways simultaneously, so the two motions cancelled out.

I only see a single shadow of anything. Actually it is hard to evaluate the shadow of the chandelier since the whole of the object itself isn't in the frame.

On the other hand, the motion blur of the chair is interesting. The nearer three legs have generous blur. while the furthest has no significant blur. That implies the chair was rotating about an axis passing through that leg, which remained fixed. Of course, that could mean nothing, the chair may have been spinning and moving sideways simultaneously, so the two motions cancelled out.

The chandelier has a shadow in the ceiling and another one on the wall.

The chandelier has a shadow in the ceiling and another one on the wall.

Thanks.

I already edited my post and withdrew that comment.

He is danish as I am. Apparently he also wrote a book about this topic I may try to aquire one day (sadly not something you can aquire from Amazon - only available at the royal library)

Anyway - try to look at this photo


The chandelier in the roof has two shadows which indicates the flash was fired twice on this subject while the chair only has one shadow (no shadow in the roof)
[Image: turck2.2.jpg]

Thanks for providing the larger photo sample.

Do you know what the lighting conditions of that room were beyond the flash? Because I have a very hard time believing that this is a double exposure. There's no evidence of a matte line, the chair is at full opacity yet it passes over detail (door frame, people, wallpaper), the motion blur melds seamlessly into what's behind it, and while there is no shadow on the ceiling, the shadow on the wall does fall exactly where you'd expect it to if there were a chair suspended in the air. This image is rather seamlessly assembled too, but every part of it was taken under much more controlled conditions.

Not that photography is the way to prove anything in an event like this. A skilled faker could've misdirected his party members and kicked or thrown the chair in the air; if Turck was just the photographer on the scene, not in on anything, and if he were focused on his camera, it would've been easier to get something by him.

(FWIW, I found this about Turck; not an academic source by any means, but it was the best I could find in English.)

You arbitrarily made a statement devoid of evidence in the reincarnation thread, avoided responding to my response, and asked that it (for whatever reason) be moved to Skeptic v. Proponents, which it then was. How do you respond to all that? Been eagerly awaiting your reply. Don't call others out for the same transgressions you're committing

You asked in the reincarnation thread what is the skeptic opinion of reincarnation. I replied to you what the skeptic viewpoint was - it does not exist and all alleged cases can be explained by fraud or psychological factors. I was not discussing evidence of specific cases studies in that thread, If I was I would have typed out a huge reply and you would know about it by now. My interest was merely telling you what the skeptical viewpoint is.

Remember it is you who asked for the skeptical view. I typed in the skeptical view but I received a warning from the moderator and comments from yourself accusing me of bias. Weird considering I was only replying to your question. I decided to confine myself to this part of the forum so I do not receive further allegations of breaking forum rules. Sorry but I have no interest in further discussing that topic with you. I was treated unfairly in that thread. I will stick to what I am discussing here.

I have never read Jim Tucker's books on reincarnation. It is quite difficult to demonstrate anything in relation to reincarnation. You sound like a convinced believer in that subject so no matter what I type it would be wrong to you. Waste of time debating the subject. I have read hundreds of books, papers and newspaper clippings on mediumship (both proponent and skeptical) and I can easily point out where proponents like Jim are wrong. At the end of the day, I would rather debate something I am more educated about.

Back to this thread, there were multiple investigations with reliable results that demonstrated Helen Duncan was a fraudulent medium. I am waiting for Jim's response.

Thanks for providing the larger photo sample.

Do you know what the lighting conditions of that room were beyond the flash? Because I have a very hard time believing that this is a double exposure. There's no evidence of a matte line, the chair is at full opacity yet it passes over detail (door frame, people, wallpaper), the motion blur melds seamlessly into what's behind it, and while there is no shadow on the ceiling, the shadow on the wall does fall exactly where you'd expect it to if there were a chair suspended in the air. This image is rather seamlessly assembled too, but every part of it was taken under much more controlled conditions.

Not that photography is the way to prove anything in an event like this. A skilled faker could've misdirected his party members and kicked or thrown the chair in the air; if Turck was just the photographer on the scene, not in on anything, and if he were focused on his camera, it would've been easier to get something by him.

(FWIW, I found this about Turck; not an academic source by any means, but it was the best I could find in English.)

No I have no information about the lighting conditions. I looked at the link you found. There's an excerpt about the image I posted where he writes that 'the chair is rotating around it's own axis'

You asked in the reincarnation thread what is the skeptic opinion of reincarnation. I replied to you what the skeptic viewpoint was - it does not exist and all alleged cases can be explained by fraud or psychological factors. I was not discussing evidence of specific cases studies in that thread, If I was I would have typed out a huge reply and you would know about it by now. My interest was merely telling you what the skeptical viewpoint is.

Remember it is you who asked for the skeptical view. I typed in the skeptical view but I received a warning from the moderator and comments from yourself accusing me of bias. Weird considering I was only replying to your question. I decided to confine myself to this part of the forum so I do not receive further allegations of breaking forum rules. Sorry but I have no interest in further discussing that topic with you. I was treated unfairly in that thread. I will stick to what I am discussing here.

I have never read Jim Tucker's books on reincarnation. It is quite difficult to demonstrate anything in relation to reincarnation. You sound like a convinced believer in that subject so no matter what I type it would be wrong to you. Waste of time debating the subject. I have read hundreds of books, papers and newspaper clippings on mediumship (both proponent and skeptical) and I can easily point out where proponents like Jim are wrong. At the end of the day, I would rather debate something I am more educated about.

Before I say anything, I will say that I don't want to distract from the focus of this thread obviously, so if you have any response to this post PM me or respond in one of the two Reincarnation threads. 

Anyhow, in the post you referenced, I said, 

"I would love to hear from some of the skeptics about their opinions on this stuff"

What I meant by that (and I thought this was obviously clear) was that I was hoping for people to comment on the actual case that I posted. I certainly didn't need you to tell me the default skeptical position on reincarnation, which is the same it is for all the other paranormal phenomena we discuss here: they don't exist because they can't. It's an a priori conclusion that I, and I'm virtually certain any other person on this forum, could have correctly stated. I was not looking for that, so no I did not ask for it.

Additionally, none of my comments accused you of bias. If a mod PM'd you they did it because they felt that you had crossed a line or something, which is above my paygrade and I had nothing to do with. But with regards to my personal response to you, you called something "scientific skeptic view", which it was not, so I explained my disagreement with that choice of words.

In fact, I didn't use the word "bias" in my post once, and having reread it multiple times, I don't even think that's a reasonable inference from what I wrote. So actually it's "weird" that that's what you gleaned from it, and again you didn't reply to my question. In no way were you treated unfairly in that thread... I finished that post by asking you to reply with your opinions specific to the posted case, and as far as my reply goes, I don't think I was impolite or discourteous, especially considering that you just plainly stated a dismissing conclusion with no discussion or anything else about the thread's topic.

Anyhow, with regards to your last paragraph, you say you've never read the literature or research, then go on to say that it's difficult to demonstrate anything with regards to reincarnation. I guess that depends on what you mean by demonstrate, but it might actually help if you're familiar with the studies before making broad and blind statements about their ideas. You then went on to say "You sound like a convinced believer in that subject so no matter what I type it would be wrong to you," without having engaged me at all on any of the issues or specifics. Who is the one who is convinced here? It's super easy to just ignore and dismiss evidence *just like that*, isn't it? I'm not a convinced believer in anything. I'm an actual skeptical person, true to the actual meaning of skeptical. If you had chosen to have a discussion about the research with me you likely would discover quickly that your accusation there is an unreasonable and unwarranted one, but how would you know that? If it's a waste of time, it's because you've come to a conclusion without doing any research or reading whatsoever, which is always a pity and of course fallacious; certainly not because I'm some unmoving convinced believer. I'm someone who was skeptical of the claims, studied the research in detail and via multiple forms of media, and it impressed me. Again, the details of that are for another thread, but I find it ironic that you would say it would be a waste of time debating it, when I am confident that nothing I or anyone could say to you would move you from your position because you've come to that conclusion for little other reason than that you think it's not possible. In spite of that, I would enjoy discussing the cases with you or anyone else. 

Naturally, I can respect not wanting to debate something you're uninformed of, but then dropping into the thread to make one sweeping dismissal of all claims with no details or support seems pretty ridiculous, no? Additionally, I don't think you need to be familiar with the research to read an individual case and discuss it. All that entails is discussing whether or not it's difficult to explain via "ordinary" means. No pre-reading required. Hoping to hear from you soon.

No I have no information about the lighting conditions. I looked at the link you found. There's an excerpt about the image I posted where he writes that 'the chair is rotating around it's own axis'

That link also mentions low light conditions; I would hazard a guess that there was light coming from that chandelier. But a bright flash can also sometimes create a "shadow" around an object like that.

That link also mentions low light conditions; I would hazard a guess that there was light coming from that chandelier. But a bright flash can also sometimes create a "shadow" around an object like that.

A flash was used - you can see the flash light reflected in the window. There's no way such an intense light source in a weakly lighted room would create two shadows of the same objected. There's no ambient lighting as it was dark outside.There could have been lighting in the chandelier but it would obvious have been much weaker than the flash.

Here it is. The photo that most clearly reveals the photoshop technique of the 1940's:

Look at the 'levitating' person's left and right feet. The left foot is partly missing, right foot is semi-transparent.

[Image: levitation%20of%20medium%20by%20Sven%20Turck.jpg]