Leslie Kean's new Netflix documentary

In the spiritual literature (oh dear, I've read so much of it that I can't remember where I've come across the information) there are stories of "Earthbound" souls who prey on those humans who regularly pass out because of alcohol or drug abuse. The "ghosts" move in to the unconscious body for a while and avail themselves of the earthly pleasures they so miss from their previous incarnation.

That does seem to be the case. Carl Wickland’s “thirty years among the dead” has quite a bit of research on it - perhaps that’s what you had in mind?

In the spiritual literature (oh dear, I've read so much of it that I can't remember where I've come across the information) there are stories of "Earthbound" souls who prey on those humans who regularly pass out because of alcohol or drug abuse. The "ghosts" move in to the unconscious body for a while and avail themselves of the earthly pleasures they so miss from their previous incarnation.

George Ritchie reported this in his book, detailing his near death experience, in "Return from tomorrow". A bit of that, maybe.

I’ve watched the first episode and I think it was very well made. It’s probably impossible in a tv programme like this to go into the detail required to convince the most ardent sceptic because the body of research and evidence is so large. 

What I would say is that accepting at face value the testimony of those in the film who’ve experienced NDEs first hand and the researchers who’ve studied them, it seems clear to me that the people concerned have certainly experienced a powerful and genuine phenomenon that has transformed their view of the world. Trying to explain this, and the veridical  content of some of the experiences in purely material terms does seem lame to me.

Added: just properly finished it and heard the forewarning about her son. That’s terribly sad but certainly seems evidential imho.

I’m keen to watch the episode about mediumship...

I have some relatives who found this series and started watching it, inviting me to watch with them, I saw the first episode on NDE's and the second episode on Mediumship, and from what I saw the mediumship episode was absolute crap. It did more to disprove mediumship and show it to be a bunch of wishful thinking and self delusion than anything else. Granted that's partly because all the mediums shown other than perhaps Stuart Alexander were spiritual/religious types and there's very good reason why respect for those beliefs is sharply declining or changing to more neutral versions. It's my contention that anyone attempting to use psi for practical purposes in general would be able to get better results if they all became atheistic existentialists/nihilists so they didn't have this emotionally charged and largely logically or evidentially incoherent framework of spirituality limiting them arbitrarily. For mediums it all but guarantees their imagination leaks into their readings and taints them with nonsense. Certainly that's what happened with teh one medium I went to one time, their religious beliefs legitimately made them confused that my unincarnated friends didn't have wings when they came through. Because apparently in her mind I guess them being unincarnated made them angels, and angels have wings, so why don't they have wings? And this has been teh same case with another medium that I've talked to but not gotten a reading from.

They said that the first episode was largely the same as the second and we all agreed that it made us uncomfortable to watch, the fact that it focused so much on seances really didn't help. And this is after they both said the other episodes they've watched so far were really good, and these aren't exactly open minded people. One person said that they were going to "choose to believe" that mediumship isn't real after watching the episode and sounded like they had no interest looking up any other information on it, so yeah the episode completely failed in what it was trying to do.

Hm. I watched the second and part of the third so far. I’d agree with mediochre that the standard of mental mediumship was similar to what I’ve seen in a few spiritualist churches: lots of questions from the medium, very little if any evidential content. I’d say it was cold-reading in some instances but I get the impressions the “mediums” think what they’re doing is passing on genuine messages from the departed. It seems to me that it’s what people have come to expect. Reading about some of the famous mediums of the past would quickly show a person what constitutes good mediumship. I didn’t see anything remotely approaching it in the Netflix programme.

I’ll reserve judgement on the physical mediumship but what I’ve seen so far is waffle, plus it appears to be done in complete darkness. This isn’t uncommon these days but it’s begging for accusations of fraud imho. Other than for the independent direct voice, I’d say physical mediumship in complete darkness isn’t a good source of survival evidence.

I haven’t reached Stuart Alexander’s bit yet but having attended a weekend hosted by him, he did strike me as a genuine person. In the seance I was seated too far away to even see the purported phenomena properly let alone determine what I really was happening. The attendees were lovely people but it did feel like a gathering of believers to me who’d suspended their powers of objective judgement.

I haven’t reached Stuart Alexander’s bit yet but having attended a weekend hosted by him, he did strike me as a genuine person. In the seance I was seated too far away to even see the purported phenomena properly let alone determine what I really was happening. The attendees were lovely people but it did feel like a gathering of believers to me who’d suspended their powers of objective judgement.

I've heard that Leslie Kean herself researched and tested him extensively, which I think may have been covered in his book. So far I haven't seen anyone criticise him individually.

The challenge of mediumship is that it never looks good unless you are there.

Consider the photographer Shannon Taggart who was convinced by witnessing physical mediumship. Her testimony doesn't seem fraudulent IMO at least...I even believe her photos of ectoplasm are likely genuine but there's no way in today's age of technology that the photographs can seem real to the outside observer->



I remember seeing similar photographs of a hyena whisperer in Africa who could call and tame the wild dogs. Honestly that felt more believable but even then part of me couldn't help but wonder if there was some trick.

I've heard that Leslie Kean herself researched and tested him extensively, which I think may have been covered in his book. So far I haven't seen anyone criticise him individually.

I don’t think I’d criticise him as an individual. I found him charming and down to earth. I liked him. I can’t comment on the evidential content of his seance, because I couldn’t see anything from where I was. I could hear purported spirit communication but there didn’t appear to be be any evidential content as far as I could tell. I do know someone who has known him for a long while and have no reason to think he isn’t genuine.

The challenge of mediumship is that it never looks good unless you are there.

Consider the photographer Shannon Taggart who was convinced by witnessing physical mediumship. Her testimony doesn't seem fraudulent IMO at least...I even believe her photos of ectoplasm are likely genuine but there's no way in today's age of technology that the photographs can seem real to the outside observer->



I remember seeing similar photographs of a hyena whisperer in Africa who could call and tame the wild dogs. Honestly that felt more believable but even then part of me couldn't help but wonder if there was some trick.

I agree. Seeing is believing. Of course you won’t see much in a completely dark room.

The challenge of mediumship is that it never looks good unless you are there.

Consider the photographer Shannon Taggart who was convinced by witnessing physical mediumship. Her testimony doesn't seem fraudulent IMO at least...I even believe her photos of ectoplasm are likely genuine but there's no way in today's age of technology that the photographs can seem real to the outside observer->



I remember seeing similar photographs of a hyena whisperer in Africa who could call and tame the wild dogs. Honestly that felt more believable but even then part of me couldn't help but wonder if there was some trick.

Ironically the episode actually did a decent job with the ectoplasm thing, but since its all hinged on the idea that mediums were genuinely contacting spirits I think that made my relatives really not like it since they did such a bad job with that. Plus, for them, I think the idea of ectoplasm or any physical phenomena on that level is way beyond their boggle threshold. For me though it makes me jealous because I'm very sure that ectoplasm is exactly what I know of as the substance of magic. But simultaneously its exciting, because if they can do it, then so can I.