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Mental Mediums

A medium is a person who can communicate with people who have died. There are many different kinds of mediums.

Mental mediumship is the most common form of mediumship in the modern western world. A mental medium is someone who is able to see, hear, smell or sense people in the spirit world as well as being psychic. Many of the best mental mediums are able to give public demonstrations of evidence of survival of their loved ones to large numbers of people as well giving private readings.

Spiritualist churches in England, the USA and other English speaking countries, have a long tradition of providing a platform for mental mediums to give messages during church services and providing training for mediums in development circles. In France, Brazil and other Spanish speaking countries (and elsewhere) the religion of Spiritism, based on the teachings of Allan Kardek, does the same.

Gordon Higginson (1918-1993) was one of the finest British mediums and teachers of mediumship of the last century. He was a fine mental medium as well as being able to do trance and physical mediumship and healing. He began developing his spiritual gifts at a very early age under the careful supervision of his mother, Fanny Higginson, who was also an excellent medium. He first publicly demonstrated his mediumship on his twelfth birthday and he continued to work the platform for another 63 years until the day before he passed to spirit. He was renowned for the accuracy of his platform mediumship and his evidence often included full names, addresses and telephone numbers. He was also the Principal of the Arthur Findlay College, a centre for training mediums in England, from 1979 to 1993.

Doris Stokes In the 1980's Doris was one of the best known British mediums who held huge public demonstrations of mental mediumship all over the world.

Gordon Smith is one of Scotland's finest mediums who is currently demonstrating in the UK. He has been extensively tested by Archie Roy and Trisha Robinson of the Scottish Society for Psychical Research. Like Gordon Higginson he is able to give very detailed messages. Gordon continues to work as a barber and do his mediumship demonstrations on a voluntary basis in Spiritualist churches.

Part 2- includes tests being done on Gordon and Gordon teaching mediumship.


James Van Praagh. One of the most influential mental mediums in the USA is James Van Praagh. He had a daytime talk show of his own entitled Beyond With James Van Praagh which aired in the U.S. from September 2002 - September 2003 and is still showing in syndication in Europe, Australia and South America. In April 2002, James began an ongoing relationship with the CBS network and produced an incredibly successful mini-series Living With The Dead, inspired by the first of his many best selling books Talking To Heaven. In October 2004 his second successful CBS project aired entitled The Dead Will Tell. Currently James is Co-Executive Producing his first CBS primetime series Ghost Whisperer starring Jennifer Love Hewitt. It is currently seen in over 200 markets worldwide.

John Edward is an American medium who has also been very influential through his television shows Crossing Over and Cross Country which are frequently shown on cable television in many countries.

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

John Edward and Char Margolis do a joint reading.

Lisa Williams is an English-trained medium now working in the USA. As well as being able to give an extraordinary amount of detail of the spirit communicating she seems to be able to capture their body language and mannerisms. She has brought knowledge of mediumsip to many people through her television programs.

Many mediums have passed strict scientific tests.

Professor Gary Schwartz and colleagues at the University of Arizona conducted a number of research studies with some of the top mediums in the United States including (in order of working with them) Laurie Campbell, John Edward, Suzanne Northrop, George Anderson. Anne Gehmen, George Dalzell, Allison Dubois, Catherine Yunt, Mary Ann Morgan, Janet Mayer, Christopher Robinson, Traci Bray, Sally Own, Mary Occhino, Debbie Martin, Doreen Molloy, Sally Morgan, Robert Hansen and Angelina Diana.

Dr Schwartz writes:

These mediums have been tested under experimental conditions that rule out the use of fraud and cold reading techniques commonly used by psychic entertainers and mental magicians.

Details of his experiments in the Veritas Program and the published research reports based on them are available on his website
https://lach.arizona.edu/veritas

The video below, made in 1999, shows Professor Schwartz conducting experiments with five of the mediums.

Part 3 (10 mins)

Part 4 (10 mins)

George Anderson is one of a number of mediums who developed his abilitites after a near-death experience. Like John Edward George is a Catholic.

PROFESOR ARCHIE ROY AND TRICIA ROBERTSON (pictured left and right) completed a five year study of mediums in a project called PRISM (Psychic research Involving Selected Mediums). This resulted in three peer reviewed papers in the Society for Psychical Research Journal.
The third paper showed that even in triple blind conditions a good medium can deliver relevant information to a sitter with odds against chance being a million to one.

These papers have never been seriously faulted.
1) Robertson, T. J. & Roy, A. E. (2001). A preliminary study of
the acceptance by non-recipients of medium’s statement
to recipients. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research,
65, 91–106.
2) Roy, A. E. & Robertson, T. J. (2001). A double-blind procedure
for assessing the relevance of a medium’s statements
to a recipient. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research,
65, 161–174.
3) Roy, A. E. & Robertson, T. J. (2004). Results of the application
of the Robertson-Roy protocol to a series of experiments
with mediums and participants. Journal of the Society
for Psychical Research, 68, 18–34.

At the beginning of the video below Tricia talks with research medium Gordon Smith, one for the mediums tested in the project.

THE WINDBRIDGE INSTITUTE IN THE USA has recently conducted many scientific tests on mental mediums and published peer reviewed academic papers showing that they are getting very accurate results by means which are currently unknown to mainstream science. They proved that the mediums were not cheating or guessing.
see https://www.windbridge.org/for-researchers/
You can read about the triple and quintuple blind experiments they have been carrying out in Julie Beishel's article "The Reincarmation of Mediuship Research."

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA RESEARCH
Bruce Greyson claims that research at his university has confirmed the research of the Windbridge Institute. He also talks about "drop-in communicators."

DEBRIEF OF THE ABOVE READING

Answering the skeptics on mental mediumship

Several magicians try to claim that mental mediumship is a trick. They claim that it is "cold reading". This means that the medium watches the client's body language and tells them vague statements that could apply to anyone. While this might be true of some people who are not real mediums, it is not true of the best mediums.

1. The English and Scottish Societies for Psychical Research and the American Society for Psychical Research have investigated mediums for over 150 years and found many of them to have access to information that they could not have gained by any normal means. Archie Roy and Tricia Robertson, researchers in Scotland, published three important papers between 2001 and 2004 which showed that the information being obtained by their research mediums did not come from guessing or any normal means.

2. In 1917 a father in the spirit world began to co-operate with his living son in a series of 348 psychic experiments to provide knowledge from the spirit world that was not in any earthly mind.
These were the famous "book tests".

3. Dr Gary Schwartz conducted a number of experiments where the medium could not even see the sitters who were only allowed to answer yes or no during the reading. Yet the mediums scored hit after hit. (see video above)

4. The Windbridge Institute has conducted a number of similar double blind experiments where mediums cannot see the sitter who was only allowed to answer yes or no. Yet the mediums get spectacular results. (See video below and Windbridge publications)

5. People can see for themselves gifted mediums on television come up with names relationship identification, specific details which could not possibly be gained from body language (see video of Lisa Williams below).


DR JULIE BEISCHEL OUTLINES THE SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENTS THAT PROVE MEDIUMSHIP IS NOT COLD READING

HOW CAN THIS BE COLD READING?
How could any normal person could get this amount of specific detail from the grieving fiance's body language?





Warning- many people who claim to be mediums are not genuine. Remember that the research mentioned above was done with only the most talented mental mediums. Unfortunately there are a lot of people who try to make money who are not very good or who are not real mediums at all. Sometimes they may be psychics who think they are getting information from a spirit person but are actually doing a psychic reading of the sitter's aura.

If you do want to have a sitting with a medium try to get a recommendation from someone you know or from an organization that tests mediums. Do some research on "cold reading techniques" so that you will not be tricked. Be pleasant and open but limit your answers to yes or no- don't give away information like names that could come through in the reading as evidence.


Bob Olson is a private detective who used to be a skeptic. He has spent 11 years investigating the best mental mediums.
Best Psychic Mediums

How to spot a fake medium with Bob Olson





How to get a good reading from a medium

If you want to have a good reading with a medium you should be completely open-minded- being skeptical makes it much harder for the medium. You need to relax for at least 15-20 minutes before the reading starts and send out your thoughts to your loved one. Daily meditation in the days beforehand can help. Medium Carole Lynne (interviewed below) has written a book How to Get a Good Reading from a Medium.

One mental medium and teacher of mediumship who we can personally recommend as absolutely genuine is Christine Morgan. Born and trained in England and now based in Sydney Australia she does telephone readings for people all over the world in any language. You can email her at indiki1962@gmail.com

  HOW CAN YOU LEARN TO BE A MEDIUM?

The Arthur Findlay College in England has a number of well regarded courses in mediumship. Read more..

A DVD course is being delivered by accredited teacher of mediumship Martin Twycross Read more...
Martin also offers the course online.

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