Mediumship is the practice of supposedly helping spirits of the dead or familiar spirits communicate with living people. People who do this are called mediums or spirit mediums. There are different types of mediumship, such as using séance tables, trance, or ouija boards. This practice is connected to spiritualism and spiritism. A similar practice in the New Age movement is called channeling.

Many people believe in psychic abilities, even though there is no scientific proof that they exist. Researchers have studied claims about mediumship for over 100 years and have not found any evidence to support them. In 2005, an experiment by the British Psychological Society showed that people who claimed to be mediums did not have any special abilities related to mediumship.

Mediumship became popular in the 1800s when ouija boards were used for fun. However, investigations at that time found that many people were cheating, using tricks similar to those used by magicians. This led to a loss of trust in the practice. Today, fraud is still common in the medium or psychic industry, with many cases of deception being discovered.

There are several types of mediumship. One well-known form involves a spirit supposedly taking control of a medium’s voice to deliver a message. Another form includes the medium hearing a message and sharing it with others. Other types may involve the appearance of a spirit, the sound of a voice, or objects being moved without physical contact.

Concept

In Spiritism and Spiritualism, a medium acts as a middle person between the living and the spirit world. Mediums claim they can hear and pass along messages from spirits, or allow a spirit to take control of their body to speak directly, or use automatic writing or drawing to communicate.

Spiritualists divide types of mediumship into two main groups: "mental" and "physical." During séances, mediums are said to enter trances, which can be light or deep, allowing spirits to control their minds. Channeling is considered a modern version of older mediumship practices. In this process, a person called a "channel" (or channeller) claims to receive messages from a "teaching-spirit," an "Ascended master," God, or an angelic being. These messages are said to come through the person's own conscious mind, or "Higher Self."

History

Attempts to communicate with the dead and other living human beings, called spirits, have been recorded since early human history, such as the Biblical story of the Witch of Endor.

Mediumship became very popular in the 19th-century United States and the United Kingdom after Spiritualism became a religious movement. Modern Spiritualism began with the practices and lectures of the Fox sisters in New York State in 1848. Mediums like Paschal Beverly Randolph and Emma Hardinge Britten were well-known lecturers and writers about Spiritualism in the mid-1800s. Allan Kardec created the term "Spiritism" around 1860. Kardec wrote that conversations with spirits, led by chosen mediums, formed the basis of his book The Spirits' Book and later his five-book collection called the Spiritist Codification.

Some scientists who studied Spiritualism during this time became believers. These included chemist Robert Hare, physicist William Crookes (1832–1919), and evolutionary biologist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913). Nobel laureate Pierre Curie showed serious scientific interest in the work of medium Eusapia Palladino. Other important supporters included journalist and pacifist William T. Stead (1849–1912) and physician and author Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930).

After the exposure of frauds, such as the use of stage magic tricks by physical mediums like the Davenport Brothers and the Bangs Sisters, mediumship lost public trust. However, the religion and its beliefs continue, even though physical mediumship and séances are no longer widely practiced. Instead, platform mediumship has become more common.

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, about 250,000 people practiced Spiritualism in the United Kingdom, with around 2,000 Spiritualist societies. Small groups focused on platform mediumship and "home circles" also thrived. Spiritualism is still practiced today, mainly through different Spiritualist churches in the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom. In the United Kingdom alone, over 340 Spiritualist churches and centers are open to the public, and free demonstrations of mediumship are regularly held.

Terminology

In 1958, American Spiritualist C. Dorreen Phillips described her experiences with a medium at Camp Chesterfield, Indiana: "In Rev. James Laughton's séances, there are many Indians. They are very noisy and appear to have great power. […] The little guides, or doorkeepers, are usually Indian boys and girls who act as messengers who help to locate the spirit friends who wish to speak with you."

A spirit who uses a medium to manipulate psychic "energy" or "energy systems."

In old-line Spiritualism, a portion of the services, generally toward the end, is given over to demonstrations of mediumship through purported contact with the spirits of the dead. A typical example of this way of describing a mediumistic church service is found in the 1958 autobiography of C. Dorreen Phillips. She writes of the worship services at the Spiritualist Camp Chesterfield in Chesterfield, Indiana: "Services are held each afternoon, consisting of hymns, a lecture on philosophy, and demonstrations of mediumship."

Today, "demonstration of mediumship" is part of the church service at all churches affiliated with the National Spiritualist Association of Churches (NSAC) and the Spiritualists' National Union (SNU). Demonstration links to NSAC's Declaration of Principle #9: "We affirm that the precepts of Prophecy and Healing are Divine attributes proven through Mediumship."

"Mental mediumship" is communication of spirits with a medium by telepathy. The medium mentally "hears" (clairaudience), "sees" (clairvoyance), and/or feels (clairsentience) messages from spirits. Directly or with the help of a spirit guide, the medium passes the information on to the message's recipient(s). When a medium is doing a "reading" for a particular person, that person is known as the "sitter."

In the 1860s and 1870s, trance mediums, also known as trance speakers, were very popular. This allowed female adherents, many who had strong interests in social justice, to speak in public in an era where doing so went against existing social norms. Many trance mediums delivered passionate speeches on abolitionism, temperance, and women's suffrage. Scholars have described Leonora Piper as one of the most famous trance mediums in the history of Spiritualism.

Trance speakers believed that entering a trance gave them access to the spirits and, through them, to knowledge inaccessible in the waking world. Sometimes an assistant would write down the medium's words, such as in the early 20th century collaboration between the trance medium Mrs. Cecil M. Cook of the William T. Stead Memorial Center in Chicago (a religious body incorporated under the statutes of the State of Illinois) and the journalist Lloyd Kenyon Jones. The latter was a non-medium Spiritualist who transcribed Cook's messages in shorthand. He edited them for publication in book and pamphlet form.

Castillo (1995) states,

Trance phenomena result from the behavior of intense focusing of attention, which is the key psychological mechanism of trance induction. Adaptive responses, including institutionalized forms of trance, are 'tuned' into neural networks in the brain.

Physical mediumship is defined as manipulation of energies and energy systems by spirits. This type of mediumship is said to involve perceptible manifestations, such as loud raps and noises, voices, materialized objects, apports, materialized spirit bodies, or body parts such as hands, legs, and feet. The medium is used as a source of power for such spirit manifestations. By some accounts, this was achieved by using the energy or ectoplasm released by a medium, see spirit photography. The last physical medium to be tested by a committee from Scientific American was Mina Crandon in 1924.

Most physical mediumship is presented in a darkened or dimly lit room. Most physical mediums make use of a traditional array of tools and appurtenances, including spirit trumpets, spirit cabinets, and levitation tables.

Direct voice communication refers to the hypothesis that spirits speak independently of the medium, who facilitates the phenomenon rather than produces it. The role of the medium is to make the connection between the physical and spirit worlds. Trumpets are often utilized to amplify the signal, and directed voice mediums are sometimes known as "trumpet mediums." This form of mediumship also permits the medium to participate in the discourse during séances, since the medium's voice is not required by the spirit to communicate. Leslie Flint was one of the best known exponents of this form of mediumship.

Psychic senses

Mental mediums use their senses in ways that may differ from how they are used in other areas that study the paranormal. A medium is believed to have special abilities, but not all people with these abilities work as mediums. For example, the term "clairvoyance" can mean seeing spirits or receiving visions from the spirit world. However, the Parapsychological Association defines "clairvoyance" as information that comes directly from something outside the person's body.

Explanations

Spiritualists believe that events created by mediums (both mental and physical mediumship) are caused by spirits from the other world. Psychical researchers Thomson Jay Hudson in The Law of Psychic Phenomena (1892) and Théodore Flournoy in Spiritism and Psychology (1911) wrote that all types of mediumship can be explained by the medium’s own suggestions and telepathy, and that there is no proof for the spirit hypothesis. Later, the idea that telepathy explains mediumship was combined into the "super-ESP" hypothesis, which some parapsychologists support today.

In their book How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age, authors Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaughn noted that the spiritualist and ESP explanations for mediumship "have not made new predictions, assume unknown forces or entities, and conflict with scientific evidence."

Scientists who study anomalistic psychology believe that mediumship is often the result of fraud and psychological factors. Research in psychology over more than 100 years shows that, when there is no fraud, mediumship and Spiritualist practices can be explained by hypnotism, magical thinking, and suggestion. Trance mediumship, which Spiritualists say is caused by spirits speaking through the medium, can be explained by dissociative identity disorder.

Illusionists, such as Joseph Rinn, have created fake séances where participants claimed to see real supernatural events. Albert Moll studied the psychology of people who attend séances. According to (Wolffram, 2012), Moll argued that the dark, hypnotic atmosphere of a séance room and the influence of the experimenters’ social and scientific reputation could explain why rational people claim to see supernatural events. Psychologists Leonard Zusne and Warren Jones wrote in Anomalistic Psychology: A Study of Magical Thinking (1989) that "spirit controls are the result of the medium’s own psychological processes."

A dishonest medium may learn about participants by secretly listening to their conversations or searching phone directories, the internet, and newspapers before a séance. A method called cold reading can also be used to gather information from a participant’s clothing, posture, jewelry, or behavior.

Psychologist Richard Wiseman wrote:

Cold reading explains why psychics have failed in scientific tests of their abilities. When psychics are separated from their clients, they cannot gather information from how clients dress or behave. When all participants receive the same readings, they cannot tell which reading applies to them, making it harder to identify their own. As a result, the high success rate psychics usually have disappears, and the truth becomes clear—their success depends on psychology, not paranormal powers.

In experiments with fake séances, (Wiseman et al., 2003) paranormal believers and disbelievers were told by an actor that a table was levitating, even though it stayed still. After the séance, about one-third of participants incorrectly said the table had moved. More believers than disbelievers reported the table had moved. In another experiment, believers also said a handbell had moved when it was still and claimed the fake séance showed real paranormal events. These results support the idea that believers are more easily influenced by suggestions that match their belief in paranormal events.

In a 2019 television segment on Last Week Tonight, John Oliver criticized the media for promoting mediums, as this exposure makes viewers believe such powers are real and allows unscrupulous people to take advantage of grieving families. Oliver said, "…when psychic abilities are presented as real, it encourages a large group of dishonest people who are happy to profit by offering a connection to the afterlife and other services."

Fraud

From the beginning to today, some people who claimed to communicate with spirits used tricks and lies. Séances often happen in the dark, which makes it easier for people to hide their tricks. Scientists have studied physical mediumship, where people pretend to move objects or show spirits, and found that these acts were usually fake. Ectoplasm, a substance claimed to come from spirits, was actually made from cheesecloth, butter, muslin, and cloth. Some mediums used cut-out faces from magazines or newspapers, attached to cloth or props, and used plastic dolls during séances to make people think spirits were present. In his book An Encyclopaedia of Occultism (1960), Lewis Spence wrote:

Fraud plays a major role in spiritualist practices, especially in physical phenomena. Many mediums have been caught lying, which has caused some people to stop studying spiritualism.

In Britain, the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) studied mediumship. Their investigations exposed fake mediums, leading some Spiritualist members to resign. Paul Kurtz wrote:

Fraud is a big issue in the paranormal field. Many people in spiritualism, like the Fox sisters and Eusapia Palladino, claimed to have special powers but were actually tricksters who fooled scientists and the public.

Magicians have long uncovered fraud in spiritualism. Early debunkers included Chung Ling Soo, Henry Evans, and Julien Proskauer. Later, magicians like Joseph Dunninger, Harry Houdini, and Joseph Rinn also exposed fraud. Rose Mackenberg, a private investigator who worked with Houdini in the 1920s, was a key figure in exposing psychic fraud in the mid-20th century.

Many 19th-century mediums were found to be lying. While some claimed their experiences were real, the Encyclopædia Britannica article on spiritualism noted that Spiritualist mediums were often discovered to be frauds, using tricks from stage magicians to pretend they had psychic powers. This fraud damaged spiritualism’s reputation and pushed it to the edges of society in the United States.

At a séance in 1855 at the home of John Snaith Rymer in Ealing, a guest named Frederick Merrifield saw that the "spirit-hand" was a fake limb attached to the arm of the medium Daniel Dunglas Home. Merrifield also saw Home use his foot during the séance.

The poet Robert Browning and his wife attended a séance in Ealing in 1855. During the séance, a spirit face appeared, which Home claimed was Browning’s son who had died as a baby. Browning grabbed the face and found it was Home’s bare foot. Browning’s son later wrote in a letter to The Times that Home was caught in a fraud. Researchers Joseph McCabe and Trevor H. Hall later showed that Home’s "levitation" trick was simply him walking across a hidden ledge.

Psychologist Stanley LeFevre Krebs exposed the Bangs Sisters as frauds by using a hidden mirror to catch them writing a reply to a letter under the table. The British medium Rosina Mary Showers was also caught in fraud. In 1874, during a séance with Edward William Cox, a guest saw Showers inside a cabinet and pulled off her headdress, revealing it was her.

In 1875, the medium Anna Eva Fay tricked the scientist William Crookes into believing she had psychic powers. Later, Fay admitted to lying and explained her tricks. Frank Herne, a British medium who partnered with Charles Williams, was exposed in multiple séances. In 1875, he was caught pretending to be a spirit in Liverpool, wearing stiffened muslin wrapped around his head and legs. Florence Cook, trained by Herne, was also exposed as a fraud.

The medium Henry Slade was caught lying many times. In 1876, during a séance in London, Ray Lankester and Bryan Donkin took a slate before a "spirit" message was written and found the writing already there. Slade also claimed spirits played an accordion with one hand under the table. The magician Chung Ling Soo showed how Slade performed the trick.

The British medium Francis Ward Monck was investigated and found to be a fraud. In 1876, during a séance, a guest demanded Monck be searched. Monck ran away, locked himself in a room, and escaped through a window. Stuffed gloves, cheesecloth, and other tools were found in his room. Monck was later sentenced to three months in prison for fraud.

In 1876, William Eglinton was exposed as a fraud when a researcher named Thomas Colley grabbed a "spirit" materialization and cut off part of its cloak. The piece matched cloth in Eglinton’s suitcase. Colley also pulled off the materialization’s beard, which matched another in Eglinton’s bag. In 1880, a spirit named "Yohlande" appeared, but a guest grabbed it and found it was the medium Mme. d'Esperance.

In 1878, the British medium Charles Williams and his partner A. Rita were caught using tricks in Amsterdam. A materialized spirit was seized and found to be Rita, with a bottle of phosphorus oil, muslin, and a fake beard found with them.

In 1880, the American stage mentalist Washington Irving Bishop wrote a book explaining how mediums used secret codes for fake clairvoyant readings. The Seybert Commission, a group of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, exposed frauds like Pierre L. O. A. Keeler and Henry Slade between 1884 and 1887. In 1888, the Fox sisters admitted to lying, revealing they had made the "spirit" rappings by cracking their toes.

In 1882, C. E. Wood was exposed during a séance in Peterborough. She was caught pretending to be an Indian spirit named "Pocha" and was found wrapped in muslin. Wood died two years later while touring Australia.

In 1891, the medium Cecil Husk was caught pretending to be a spirit during a public séance by covering his face with phosphor material. The magician Will Goldston also exposed Husk’s fraud. During a séance, Goldston saw a pale face materialization and uncovered the trick.