VICTOR ZAMMIT RESPONDS TO SKEPTICS
CHALLENGE to the skeptics- you stated that you
‘could duplicate any psychic experiment’: duplicate
these materializations experiments and get $500,000. But
if you do NOT succeed, you have to hand over to the medium
David Thompson $500,000. Details to go on my website shortly.
Skeptics attack directly and indirectly, with negative
nuances and negative imputations, the genuine materializations
of David Thompson, a materialization medium with an international
reputation.
Indirectly the skeptics attacks my objectivity, implying
I lean too much in favor of the materializations which are
taking place and taking the world by storm.
The skeptics' fallacies:
1. “Victor Zammit, an Australian lawyer
who strongly defends the reality of the paranormal ..”
Victor: I do NOT strongly defend anything.
I empirically investigate any aspect of the paranormal and
report on it. I put a ‘mirror’ to the evidence.
In that way I am being objective. But reporting objectively
a phenomenon that was empirically validated does not mean
I am ‘strongly defending’ anything.
2. “Materializations séances are
an area that has always been rife with fraud.”
Victor: That is far too general a statement
especially considering the huge number of materialization
mediums who have been validated by scientists. Whilst some
people may agree that materializations séances are
an area of potential fraud, when a skeptic tries
to belittle all materializations, the onus
is on the skeptic to specifically identify which materialization
medium he is talking about – and tell us exactly when
and where fraud took place. Stating that materializations
have always been ‘rife with fraud’ is meaningless
and is part of a ‘seeding process’, of mind
control - programming the reader to expect fraud in the
materializations I am involved with. That statement is inadmissible
and is more in line with specious propaganda than a legitimate
admissible statement.
3. “The condition of absolute darkness
seems to encourage misbehavior on the part of the phony
mediums.”
Victor: The skeptic reveals his lack of
experience in the testing of the paranormal. First, who
are these ‘phony mediums’ the skeptic is talking
about? Here again is part of the skeptic’s seeding
process to impute fraud in all materializations. The skeptic
shows he knows nothing about the nature of ectoplasm, its
function and why it is critical that there be absolute darkness
for ectoplasm to work and for the safety of the medium.
Ectoplasm reduces the vibrations of the etherians to make
them as solid as we are on earth. Ectoplasm is also used
to create voice boxes so that etherians can speak to us.
Any professional investigator will thoroughly investigate
the premises, will get to know the sitters and will make
sure that security is absolutely one hundred per cent scrutinized
all the time, even in the dark. And of course we would all
like to be able to introduce light to the sittings- and
the medium’s control, William, has told us that in
the future, conditions will improve and light will be introduced.
4. “And the claims are extraordinary
…”
Victor: The claims are extraordinary for
those who had never properly investigated the paranormal,
especially materializations. For those empiricists who did
this research, the claims are not extraordinary at all.
The archives of the Society for Psychical Research and
the American Society for Psychical research contain numerous
accounts of materialization mediums who were investigated
for years by some of the top scientists and professors of
the day—people like Sir William Crookes, the greatest
chemist of the nineteenth century, Professor W.J. Crawford
and Dr Gustave Geley.
Some of the most famous materialization mediums of the
last two centuries include Daniel Dunglas Home, who was
investigated in a laboratory by Sir William Crookes, Franek
Kluski, the Warsaw medium who was notable for materializing
large numbers of animals and mediumship was verified by
Dr Gustave Geley, who participated in Kluski's seances at
the Paris Institut Metapsychique International and by Prof.
F. W. Pawlowski.
Other famous materialization mediums were Stainton Moses,
an Anglican clergyman, Rudi Schneider, Minnie Harrison,
Eusapia Palladino, Elizabeth S and May E Bangs (known as
the Bang Sisters) of Chicago, Illinois, Florence Cook, Margery
Crandon, Stella Cranshaw, better known as 'Stella C.', Elizabeth
Hope who worked under the pseudonym of Mme. d'Esperance,
Frank Decker, Hunter Selkirk, Rudi and Willy Schneider,
George Spriggs, Cecil Husk, The Eddy Brothers, William Eglinton,
Estelle Roberts, Millie Perriman and Alec Harris whose wife
documented his mediumship in They Walked Among Us..
Rita Goold, Jack Webber and Arnold
Clare.
Physical mediumship is only ‘extraordinary’
for high-profiled closed minded skeptical debunking intellectuals
who never investigate with proper empirical equanimity –
who attack, vilify, harass, use aggression and try to belittle
everything in the paranormal as ‘extraordinary.’
5. “I felt that the three voices heard
in the excerpts could easily have been produced by the same
man.”
Victor: As I stated on my website, we
need time to continue to research this stunning phenomenon
by empirically examining all voices. This is not dissimilar
to talking to a group of friends by telephone in some other
country. You may have a strong sense of who you’re
talking to, but to prove it – that would need empirical
testing. So far I put the voices of those who materialized
through AUDACITY – the voice analysis software on
the computer and the results indicate seven very different
voice patterns-- seven different graphs of the voices. That
is objective. Also subjectively, in younger years I was
a musician and I can detect voice vibrations and can discriminate
between levels of voice vibrations. Certainly to those of
us present in the room the voices are definitively identifiable
and very different and coming from different places as the
beings moved around the room. When William materialized,
both my wife and I heard his voice up close and immediately
in front of us and moving around us.
And we have to take into account that the voices are being
produced energetically- we are told that those who are coming
through have to remember what their voices sounded like
in life and project that memory through the ectoplasm which
is influenced by the medium’s physical and intellectual
makeup.
One also has to keep in mind that these are relatively
early days and greater things will be achieved in the future.
6. “The one voice that participants in
the séance might have recognized from life was that
of Montague Keen. Perhaps not coincidentally, the voice
of ‘Keen’ was rendered as a hoarse whisper.”
Victor: Voice correlation computers ought
to be able to pick up vibrations even from a whisper. As
I stated on my website, we need patience and time to empirically
test the voices. I never guaranteed that the voice was that
of Montague Keen – what I guaranteed was that materializations
WERE taking place and the voices procedurally need empirical
testing. But that does not mean that materialization of
some entity did not take place. What is critically vital
at the moment to me is that materializations of etherians
ARE TAKING PLACE. I made physical contact with three of
them, conversed with them and even shook hands with one
of them – with Arthur Conan Doyle whose right hand
was some three times the size of the medium’s.
7. “… both ‘William’
and ‘Doyle’ used the same catchphrase, “My
friends.” More than once. ‘William’ used
it repeatedly, ‘Doyle’ less so, but both did
use it. If the same man was impersonating both spirits,
we might anticipate some overlap in verbal mannerisms.”
Victor: One has to understand that phrase
correlations can be made between two totally independent
persons and may get high positive correlation - similar
phraseologies. If Arthur Conan Doyle has been a regular
visitor to William’s meetings for many years, it is
not unreasonable to hear some phrases which are similar.
That to me is not a valid objection on two counts: any impersonator
would not fall into the trap by using similar phraseology
for the two entities. Secondly, more relevant is to give
the content analysis of the two etherians to an expert to
see if OVERALL the expressly stated statements are similar.
But the analysis has to be holistic: put them through a
voice recognition machine or computer voice analysis to
see if they are the same voices. Again, instead of trying
to ridicule by implication the skeptic fails to give credit
where credit is definitively due – that materializations
– given the circumstances and the information, have
taken place.
8. “Whoosh sound of the entities materializing
and dematerializing … the sound struck me as not much
different from a person’s sudden loud exhalation of
breath.”
Victor: Here again, without conducting
empirical experiments on the whoosh sound the skeptic postulates
that it is man-made. ‘Audacity’ – the
software I used shows that the patterns of the whoosh sound
is quite distinctive and fundamentally different from human
voices. The skeptic keeps on hammering that the sound was
not genuine because he states directly and indirectly that
the materializations could not have taken place –
notwithstanding the occasional words to the effect, ‘oh
yes, … of course, I believe in the paranormal”
to try to confuse the reader.
9. Fakery took place … “someone
in the circle of sitters might have been working as the
medium’s accomplice.”
Victor: That could have only been uttered
by someone who knows absolutely nothing about what actually
occurred in the materialization experiments I attended.
Not only were all the sitters holding hands during materializations,
ALL sitters continued to converse with the materialized
spirits from the position they were in before the lights
went out. It would have been utterly impossible in the extreme
for any one of the sitters to move from the semicircle without
being detected. More impossible would have been to try to
speak in a different pitch, different tone, using different
pace for over an hour in the case of William’s address
last week. The materialized spirits’ voices were heard
from where they were – sometimes from a high position,
sometimes low, sometimes a middle position and from the
back position, sometimes the voices were very deep and other
voices were high pitched.
10. “And the sitters apparently did not take
the precaution of holding each other’s hands throughout
the séance … Night vision goggles are small
and fairly easy to conceal …” (Meaning it would
have been relatively easy to cheat).
Victor: True that the sitters do not hold
each other’s hand during the experimental séance.
But EVERY TIME a materialization takes place William or
Timothy directs us to hold hands. Then when a materialized
spirit dematerializes, the whoosh sound is heard and we
then can relax and let go of hands. During this time we
hear direct voice, voices without materialization taking
place. It must be remembered that throughout the experimental
materializations, sitters are constantly talking to each
other and with absolute certainty we all know each other’s
physical location all the time.
10. “If one sitter was missing, the two sitters
on the either side of the empty chair would end up holding
each other’s hands. They would not realize that there
was an unoccupied seat between them.”
Victor: This observation by the skeptic
is quite ridiculous because if one sitter in the middle
is missing, the sitters on each side of the empty chair
would immediately know about it. They would have to stretch
their hand over an empty chair! And that would be immediately
recognizable distance. Why does not the reader here try
it him/herself? Have three chairs next to each other. First
try to hold the hand of someone immediately next to you.
Then leave the middle chair empty and hold hands with someone
on the other side of the empty chair. There would not be
one person of average intelligence in this world who would
not immediately recognize that the middle chair has been
made vacant.
11. If you find this unlikely, let me point
out that it was common practice in the materialization séances
of a century ago for a fake medium to arrange matters so
that the sitters on either side of her were holding each
other’s hands. This was called ‘substitution’,
and there were fake mediums who had it down to a fine art.
Victor: The skeptic here is sowing
more suggestions hoping the reader by now has been programmed
to accept that fraud is taking place. Again, sadly no medium
of any reputation is mentioned – and it is cowardly
in the extreme this skeptic keeps talking in generalizations
hoping he will mislead the reader by not identifying which
mediums he is referring to. More serious is the ignorance
showed by this skeptic about the seating positions of the
experimental materializations I participated in. Our medium
was placed in a corner. He was NOT part of our own circle.
The sitters were in a semi circle facing the medium from
one wall to the other wall. It was a physical impossibility
for one of the sitters to leave the chair without the other
sitters knowing about it – utterly impossible!
12. “ … why not have each of he
sitters smear his or her hands with a different color of
chalk powder? One person’s hands will be purple, another’s
will be yellow, and so on. Then when the purple and the
yellow sitters hold hands, the distinctive colors of chalk
powder will be smeared together. Later in the light, it
will be easy to see who was holding hands with whom. If
a substitution was carried out, the chalk stains will tell
the tale.”
Victor: It would not be difficult
for an expert to color the hands immediately before the
lights are turned on to make them compatible with was expected.
Even if that was done, inevitably the skeptic would say,
aha, fraud has taken place in the coloring of the hands!!
Conclusion:
I welcome informed feedback – but in terms of evidence
and empirical methodology this skeptic is an amateur –
which accounts for his naive observations. The expressly
stated twelve points raised, the nuances and other negative
imputations stated show that Michael has never been involved
in materialization mediumship or in empirical investigation
of mediums. He is criticizing and attacking the validity
of the materialization experiments without knowing what
actually occurred at these critical materializations which
have the potential to shake the world out of its complacency
regarding communicating with materialized beings.
After investigating many mediums in the last sixteen years,
this is the very first time that I am convinced absolutely
that materializations and contact with those who crossed
over have taken place.
The materializations experience was absolutely stunning
and definitively unmistakably genuine. The results are beyond
the boggle threshold. Fraud, in absolute terms could NOT
have taken place. But note, I never guaranteed that the
materialized etherians are who they claim to be –
they may be. That will come later as I stated in my report.
Objective psychologists know that any information which
is fundamentally inconsistent with the skeptic’s negative
beliefs, will elicit huge biological and psychological negative
consequences on to the skeptics – that’s why
then they attack the source of their frustration, try to
denigrate the empiricists who scientifically show that psi
is real and try to over-rationalize their cherished negative
beliefs.
The greatest challenge by the skeptic was his ‘accomplice’
theory. But I showed how the 'accomplice' theory could NOT
have taken place and it was physically IMPOSSIBLE to have
taken place.
There is some high profiled closed-minded skeptic from
Florida who keeps shouting and boasting that he can duplicate
any psychic experiment. Now let’s put this closed
minded – and other media seeking high profiled debunkers
like him to the test. If he (and those like him) does not
take me on, he would go down in the history of the paranormal
of the world as the greatest coward of all time:
I will be making a challenge to anyone - including those
flamboyant closed minded skeptics on the East Coast US,
in the UK and others - in the world to try to duplicate
these world shattering controlled empirical materializations
experiments - to either put up or shut up.
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