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94-625: Fictionalised conversations between the deceased appeared in Dialogues of the Dead by George, First Baron Lyttelton , published in England in 1760. Among the notable spirits quoted in this volume are Peter the Great , Pericles , a "North-American Savage", William Penn , and Christina, Queen of Sweden . The popularity of séances grew dramatically with the founding of the religion of Spiritualism in

188-527: A "spirit-hand" was a false limb attached on the end of the medium Daniel Dunglas Home 's arm. Merrifield also claimed to have observed Home use his foot in the séance room. The poet Robert Browning and his wife Elizabeth attended a séance on 23, July 1855 in Ealing with the Rymers. During the séance a spirit face materialized which Home claimed was the son of Browning who had died in infancy. Browning seized

282-436: A 2019 television segment on Last Week Tonight featuring prominent purported mediums including Theresa Caputo , John Edward , Tyler Henry , and Sylvia Browne , John Oliver criticized the media for promoting mediums because this exposure convinces viewers that such powers are real, and so enable neighborhood mediums to prey on grieving families. Oliver said "...when psychic abilities are presented as authentic, it emboldens

376-504: A Ouija-user's mind unknowingly guides his hand upon the planchette, hence he will honestly believe he is not moving it, when, in fact, he is. This theory rests on the embedded premise that human beings actually have a "subconscious mind," a belief not held by all. The exposures of fraud by tool-using mediums have had two divergent results: skeptics have used historic exposures as a frame through which to view all spirit mediumship as inherently fraudulent, while believers have tended to eliminate

470-625: A belief in Spiritualism include the social reformer Robert Owen ; the journalist and pacifist William T. Stead ; William Lyon Mackenzie King , the Prime Minister of Canada for 22 years, who sought spiritual contact and political guidance from his deceased mother, his pet dogs, and the late US President Franklin D. Roosevelt ; the journalist and author Lloyd Kenyon Jones ; and the physician and author Arthur Conan Doyle . A number of artists, including abstractionists Hilma af Klint ,

564-464: A connecting ledge between two iron balconies. The psychologist and psychical researcher Stanley LeFevre Krebs had exposed the Bangs Sisters as frauds. During a séance he employed a hidden mirror and caught them tampering with a letter in an envelope and writing a reply in it under the table which they would pretend a spirit had written. The British materialization medium Rosina Mary Showers

658-423: A fascinating application of psychology and not the existence of paranormal abilities. In a series of experiments holding fake séances, (Wiseman et al . 2003) paranormal believers and disbelievers were suggested by an actor that a table was levitating when, in fact, it remained stationary. After the seance, approximately one third of the participants incorrectly reported that the table had moved. The results showed

752-477: A greater percentage of believers reporting that the table had moved. In another experiment the believers had also reported that a handbell had moved when it had remained stationary and expressed their belief that the fake séances contained genuine paranormal phenomena. The experiments strongly supported the notion that in the séance room, believers are more suggestible than disbelievers for suggestions that are consistent with their belief in paranormal phenomena. In

846-659: A long history of exposing the fraudulent methods of mediumship. Early debunkers included Chung Ling Soo , Henry Evans and Julien Proskauer . Later magicians to reveal fraud were Fulton Oursler , Joseph Dunninger , and Joseph Rinn . The researchers Trevor H. Hall and Gordon Stein have documented the trickery of the medium Daniel Dunglas Home . Tony Cornell exposed a number of fraudulent mediums including Rita Goold and Alec Harris . George Lyttelton, 1st Baron Lyttelton George Lyttelton, 1st Baron Lyttelton , PC (17 January 1709 – 22 August 1773), known between 1751 and 1756 as Sir George Lyttelton, 5th Baronet ,

940-503: 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

1034-426: A part of the religious services of Spiritualist, Spiritist , and Espiritismo churches today, where a greater emphasis is placed on spiritual values versus showmanship. The term séance is used in a few different ways, and can refer to any of four different activities, each with its own social norms and conventions, its own favoured tools, and its own range of expected outcomes. In the religion of Spiritualism, and

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1128-402: A partial or full trance or into an altered state of consciousness. These self-called "trance-mediums" often state that, when they emerge from the trance state, they have no recollection of the messages they conveyed; it is customary for such practitioners to work with an assistant who writes down or otherwise records their words. Spirit boards, also known as talking boards, or ouija boards (after

1222-494: A pension, was a frequent visitor to Hagley Hall . Joseph Warton he appointed his domestic chaplain and it was at his suggestion that David Mallet was made undersecretary to the Prince of Wales. Lyttelton's own poetic reputation was guaranteed continuity by his work being included in the collection of English poets prefaced by Johnson's Lives . Variously annotated and augmented, the collection appeared in succeeding editions into

1316-406: A seance so that all participants speak with various personalities in the spirit world. This held in a seating manner in a circle. Mediumship involves an act where the practitioner attempts to receive messages from spirits of the dead and from other spirits that the practitioner believes exist. Some self-ordained mediums are fully conscious and awake while functioning as contacts; others may slip into

1410-423: A speaker as "a great flow of words that were always uttered in a lulling monotony, and the little meaning they had to boast of was generally borrowed from the commonplace maxims and sentiments of moralists, philosophers, patriots, and poets, crudely imbibed, half digested, ill put together, and confusedly refunded". Lord Lyttelton was a friend and supporter of Alexander Pope in the 1730s and of Henry Fielding in

1504-642: A specific relationship to the medium or a historic relationship to the body of the church. An example of the latter is the spirit of Black Hawk , a Native American warrior of the Fox tribe who lived during the 19th century. Black Hawk was a spirit who was often contacted by the Spiritualist medium Leafy Anderson and he remains the central focus of special services in the African American Spiritual Churches that she founded. In

1598-495: A séance, because they themselves are not seated; however, this is still called "séance". One of the foremost early practitioners of this type of contact with the dead was Paschal Beverly Randolph , who worked with the spirits of the relatives of audience members, but was also famed for his ability to contact and deliver messages from ancient seers and philosophers, such as Plato . Leader-assisted séances are generally conducted by small groups of people, with participants seated around

1692-439: A table in a dark or semi-dark room. The leader is typically asserted to be a medium and he or she may go into a trance that theoretically allows the spirits to communicate through his or her body, conveying messages to the other participants. Other modes of communication may also be attempted, including psychography or automatic writing , numbered raps, levitation of the table or of spirit trumpets, apports , or even smell. It

1786-405: A table was levitating when, in fact, it remained stationary. After the seance, approximately one third of the participants incorrectly reported that the table had moved. The results showed a greater percentage of believers reporting that the table had moved. In another experiment the believers had also reported that a handbell had moved when it had remained stationary and expressed their belief that

1880-463: A trial Monck was convicted for his fraudulent mediumship and was sentenced to three months in prison. In 1876, William Eglinton was exposed as a fraud when the psychical researcher Thomas Colley seized a "spirit" materialization in his séance and cut off a portion of its cloak. It was discovered that the cut piece matched a cloth found in Eglinton's suitcase . Colley also pulled the beard off

1974-477: A vast underworld of unscrupulous vultures, more than happy to make money by offering an open line to the afterlife, as well as many other bullshit services." From its earliest beginnings to contemporary times, mediumship practices have had many instances of fraud and trickery. Séances take place in darkness so the poor lighting conditions can become an easy opportunity for fraud. Physical mediumship that has been investigated by scientists has been discovered to be

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2068-483: A very serious scientific interest in the work of medium Eusapia Palladino . Other prominent adherents included journalist and pacifist William T. Stead (1849–1912) and physician and author Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930). After the exposure of the fraudulent use of stage magic tricks by physical mediums such as the Davenport Brothers and the Bangs Sisters , mediumship fell into disrepute. However,

2162-433: A well-known brand name) are flat tablets, typically made of wood, Masonite , chipboard, or plastic. On the board are a number of symbols, pictures, letters, numbers and/or words. The board is accompanied by a planchette (French for "little board"), which can take the form of a pointer on three legs or magnifying glass on legs; homemade boards may employ a shot glass as a planchette. A most basic Ouija board would contain simply

2256-428: Is a reality include chemist William Crookes , evolutionary biologist Alfred Russel Wallace , inventor of radio Guglielmo Marconi , inventor of the telephone Alexander Graham Bell , experimental physicist Oliver Lodge , and inventor of television technology John Logie Baird , who said he had contacted the spirit of inventor Thomas Edison . Among the best-known exposers of fraudulent mediumship acts have been

2350-545: Is played by fraud in spiritualistic practices, both in the physical and psychical, or automatic, phenomena, but especially in the former. The frequency with which mediums have been convicted of fraud has, indeed, induced many people to abandon the study of psychical research, judging the whole bulk of the phenomena to be fraudulently produced. In Britain, the Society for Psychical Research has investigated mediumship phenomena. Critical SPR investigations into purported mediums and

2444-481: The Davenport Brothers as illusionists and the 1887 report of the Seybert Commission brought an end to the first historic phase of Spiritualism. Stage magicians like John Nevil Maskelyne and Harry Houdini made a side-line of exposing fraudulent mediums during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1976, M. Lamar Keene described deceptive techniques that he himself had used in séances; however, in

2538-545: The Latin American religion of Espiritismo , which somewhat resembles Spiritualism, séance sessions in which congregants attempt to communicate with spirits are called misas (literally "masses"). The spirits addressed in Espiritismo are often those of ancestors or Catholic saints . Mediums who give performances on stage of contacting spirits, with audience members seated before them, are not literally holding

2632-579: The Lettres Chinoises (1735) of Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d'Argens , both of which had been translated soon after into English. Another work with prior French counterparts was Lyttelton's Dialogues of the Dead (1760). Though these had Classical precedents, the more immediate models were François Fénelon 's Dialogues des morts anciens et modernes and Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle 's Nouveaux Dialogues des morts , which had also appeared in popular English translations as Dialogues of

2726-466: The Regina Five , and Paulina Peavy have given partial or complete credit for some of their work to spirits that they contacted during seances. Paulina said that "when she painted, she did not have control over her brush, that it moved on its own, and that it was Lacamo (the spirit) who was directing it." Scientists who have conducted a search for real séances and believed that contact with the dead

2820-565: The bluestocking leader Elizabeth Montagu to write (Dialogues 26–8). All of Lyttelton's writing was collected shortly after his death by his nephew, G. E. Ayscough. In 1791 an edition of his poems appeared in Germany accompanied by J. G. Weigel's prose translations. During his lifetime Lyttelton's Observations on the Conversion and Apostleship of St. Paul was translated into French in 1750 by Jean Deschamps (1707–67) and again in 1754 by

2914-469: The occult , a tradition has grown up of conducting séances outside of any religious context and without a leader. Sometimes only two or three people are involved, and, if they are young, they may be using the séance as a way to test their understanding of the boundaries between reality and the paranormal . It is in such small séances that the planchette and ouija board are most often utilized. Here spiritualists and practitioners (psychic and mediums) hold

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3008-404: The "materialization" and discovered it to be the bare foot of Home. To make the deception worse, Browning had never lost a son in infancy. Browning's son Robert in a letter to The Times , December 5, 1902, referred to the incident "Home was detected in a vulgar fraud." The researchers Joseph McCabe and Trevor H. Hall exposed the " levitation " of Home as nothing more than his moving across

3102-638: The "products of the medium's own psychological dynamics." A fraudulent medium may obtain information about their sitters by secretly eavesdropping on sitter's conversations or searching telephone directories, the internet and newspapers before the sittings. A technique called cold reading can also be used to obtain information from the sitter's behavior, clothing, posture, and jewellery. The psychologist Richard Wiseman has written: Cold reading also explains why psychics have consistently failed scientific tests of their powers. By isolating them from their clients, psychics are unable to pick up information from

3196-448: The "shades of Hagley" in the fifth stanza. Anna Seward , in answer to a correspondent who preferred Lyttelton's ode to the newly fashionable sonnet, ingeniously rearranged the lines of the poem into a series of sonnets, in which the "shades of Hagley" passage headed the second. And William Gladstone acknowledged that his Church Principles was "completed beneath the shades of Hagley" as late as 1840. Despite his long political career, it

3290-688: The 1730s, opposed the Prime Minister Robert Walpole . He served as secretary to Frederick, Prince of Wales from 1737, and then, after Walpole's fall, as a Commissioner of the Treasury in 1744. That year too he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society . Lyttelton was made a Privy Councillor in 1754 and in the following year became briefly Chancellor of the Exchequer , but performed poorly in that role. In 1756 he

3384-499: The 1750s; the latter dedicated his novel Tom Jones to Lyttelton. He had written his "Epistle to Mr. Pope, from a young gentleman at Rome" while still on the European tour, advising him to abandon satire for a patriotic theme more worthy of his greatness. Later on the poem was used to preface editions of Pope's work. Throughout his life, he acted as a friendly patron of poets. James Thomson , for whom Lyttelton eventually arranged

3478-585: The 1920s, was among the most prominent debunkers of psychic fraud during the mid-20th century. Many 19th century mediums were discovered to be engaged in fraud . While advocates of mediumship claim that their experiences are genuine, the Encyclopædia Britannica article on spiritualism notes in reference to a case in the 19th century that "...one by one, the Spiritualist mediums were discovered to be engaged in fraud, sometimes employing

3572-706: The 19th century, a number of Spiritualist mediums began to advocate the use of specialized tools for conducting séances, particularly in leader-assisted sessions conducted in darkened rooms. "Spirit trumpets" were horn-shaped speaking tubes that were said to magnify the whispered voices of spirits to audible range. "Spirit slates" consisted of two chalkboards bound together that, when opened, were said to reveal messages written by spirits. "Séance tables" were special light-weight tables which were said to rotate, float, or levitate when spirits were present. "Spirit cabinets" were portable closets into which mediums were placed, often bound with ropes, in order to prevent them from manipulating

3666-495: The Abbé Antoine Guénée (1717–1803); his Dialogues of the Dead was also translated into French in 1760 as Dialogues des morts by Élie de Joncourt (1697–1765) and Jean Deschamps. Lyttelton spent many years and a fortune developing Hagley Hall and its park , which contained many follies as well as memorials to the poets Milton, Pope, Thomson and the neighbouring landscaper William Shenstone . Also included among

3760-673: The Biblical account of the Witch of Endor . Mediumship became quite popular in the 19th-century United States and the United Kingdom after the rise of Spiritualism as a religious movement. Modern Spiritualism is said to date from practices and lectures of the Fox sisters in New York State in 1848. The trance mediums Paschal Beverly Randolph and Emma Hardinge Britten were among the most celebrated lecturers and authors on

3854-491: The Dead . The themes treated in Lyttelton's are political, literary and philosophical, although the characters sometimes stray from their expected role. Joseph Addison and Jonathan Swift 's conversation is of politics, while Charles XII of Sweden proposes to Alexander the Great an alliance against Alexander Pope for insulting them both in a satire. Included among these conversations were three that Lyttleton had encouraged

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3948-705: The United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. In the United Kingdom, over 340 Spiritualist churches and centres open their doors to the public and free demonstrations of mediumship are regularly performed. In 1958, American Spiritualist C. Dorreen Phillips wrote of 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

4042-402: The alphabet of whatever country the board is being used in, although it is not uncommon for whole words to be added. The board is used as follows: One or more of the participants in the séance place one or two fingers on the planchette which is in the middle of the board. The appointed medium asks questions of the spirit(s) with whom they are attempting to communicate. During the latter half of

4136-576: The arts of the séance" by Herne and was repeatedly exposed as a fraudulent medium. The medium Henry Slade was caught in fraud many times throughout his career. In a séance in 1876 in London Ray Lankester and Bryan Donkin snatched his slate before the "spirit" message was supposed to be written, and found the writing already there. Slade also played an accordion with one hand under the table and claimed spirits would play it. The magician Chung Ling Soo revealed how Slade had performed

4230-476: The board is undermined by the fact that several people have their hands on the planchette, which allows any of them to spell out anything they want without the others knowing. They say that this is a common trick, used on occasions such as teenage sleepover parties, to scare the people present. Another criticism of spirit board communication involves what is called the ideomotor effect which has been suggested as an automatism , or subconscious mechanism, by which

4324-409: 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

4418-484: The dead and living human beings. Practitioners are known as "mediums" or "spirit mediums". There are different types of mediumship or spirit channelling , including séance tables , trance , and ouija . The practice is associated with spiritualism and spiritism . A similar New Age practice is known as channeling . Belief in psychic ability is widespread despite the absence of empirical evidence for its existence. Scientific researchers have attempted to ascertain

4512-489: The exposure of fake mediums has led to a number of resignations by Spiritualist members. On the subject of fraud in mediumship Paul Kurtz wrote: No doubt a great importance in the paranormal field is the problem of fraud. The field of psychic research and spiritualism has been so notoriously full of charlatans, such as the Fox sisters and Eusapia Palladino –individuals who claim to have special power and gifts but who are actually conjurers who have hoodwinked scientists and

4606-439: The fake seances contained genuine paranormal phenomena. The experiments strongly supported the notion that in the seance room, believers are more suggestible than disbelievers for suggestions that are consistent with their belief in paranormal phenomena. Popular 19th-century trance medium lecturers include Cora Scott Hatch , Achsa W. Sprague , Emma Hardinge Britten (1823–1899), and Paschal Beverly Randolph (1825–1875). Among

4700-429: 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 utilised 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

4794-409: The latter was a 'druid's temple' of standing stones commemorating Ossian that Lyttelton had erected outside his grounds on nearby Clent Hill . The hall itself was designed by Sanderson Miller and is the last of the great Neo-Palladian houses to be built in England. Mediumship Mediumship is the practice of purportedly mediating communication between familiar spirits or spirits of

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4888-460: The materialization and it was revealed to be a fake, the same as another one found in the suitcase of Eglinton. In 1880 in a séance a spirit named "Yohlande" materialized, a sitter grabbed it and was revealed to be the medium Mme. d'Esperance herself. In September 1878 the British medium Charles Williams and his fellow-medium at the time, A. Rita, were detected in trickery at Amsterdam. During

4982-634: The medium and that there was no evidence for the spirit hypothesis. The idea of mediumship being explained by telepathy was later merged into the " super-ESP " hypothesis of mediumship which is currently advocated by some parapsychologists . In their book How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age , authors Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaughn have noted that the spiritualist and ESP hypothesis of mediumship "has yielded no novel predictions, assumes unknown entities or forces, and conflicts with available scientific evidence." Scientists who study anomalistic psychology consider mediumship to be

5076-420: 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. Senses used by mental mediums are sometimes defined differently from in other paranormal fields. A medium is said to have psychic abilities but not all psychics function as mediums. The term clairvoyance , for instance, may include seeing spirit and visions instilled by

5170-594: The mid-nineteenth century. Perhaps the best-known series of séances conducted at that time were those of Mary Todd Lincoln who, grieving the loss of her son, organized Spiritualist séances in the White House , which were attended by her husband, President Abraham Lincoln , and other prominent members of society. The 1887 Seybert Commission report marred the credibility of Spiritualism at the height of its popularity by publishing exposures of fraud and showmanship among secular séance leaders. Modern séances continue to be

5264-427: The modern form of the old mediumship, where the "channel" (or channeller) purportedly receives messages from "teaching-spirit", an " Ascended master ", from God , or from an angelic entity , but essentially through the filter of his own waking consciousness (or " Higher Self "). Attempts to communicate with the dead and other living human beings, aka spirits, have been documented back to early human history, such as

5358-400: The most commonly reported physical manifestations of channeling are an unusual vocal pattern or abnormal overt behaviors of the medium, it can be quite easily faked by anyone with theatrical talent. Critics of spirit board communication techniques—again including both skeptics and believers—state that the premise that a spirit will move the planchette and spell out messages using the symbols on

5452-566: 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

5546-434: The name of the religion. The psychical researcher Hereward Carrington exposed the tricks of fraudulent mediums such as those used in slate-writing, table-turning , trumpet mediumship, materializations, sealed-letter reading and spirit photography . The skeptic Joseph McCabe documented many mediums who had been caught in fraud and the tricks they used in his book Is Spiritualism Based on Fraud? (1920). Magicians have

5640-580: The notable people who conducted small leader-assisted séances during the 19th century were the Fox sisters , whose activities included table-rapping, and the Davenport Brothers , who were famous for the spirit cabinet work. Both the Foxes and the Davenports were eventually exposed as frauds. In the 20th century, notable trance mediums also include Edgar Cayce , Arthur Ford and David Marius Guardino . Notable people who have attended séances and professed

5734-489: The physical form. Generally Spiritualist "message services" or "demonstrations of the continuity of life" are open to the public. Sometimes the medium stands to receive messages and only the sitter is seated; in some churches, the message service is preceded by a "healing service" involving some form of faith healing . In addition to communicating with the spirits of people who have a personal relationship to congregants, some Spiritual Churches also deal with spirits who may have

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5828-463: The practice began to lose credibility. Fraud is still rife in the medium or psychic industry, with cases of deception and trickery being discovered to this day. Several different variants of mediumship have been described; arguably the best-known forms involve a spirit purportedly taking control of a medium's voice and using it to relay a message, or where the medium simply "hears" the message and passes it on. Other forms involve materializations of

5922-405: 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

6016-423: The public as well–that we have to be especially cautious about claims made on their behalf. Magicians have a long history of exposing the fraudulent methods of mediumship. Early debunkers included Chung Ling Soo , Henry Evans and Julien Proskauer . Later magicians to reveal fraud were Joseph Dunninger , Harry Houdini and Joseph Rinn . Rose Mackenberg , a private investigator who worked with Houdini during

6110-560: The religion and its beliefs continue in spite of this, with physical mediumship and seances falling out of practice and platform mediumship coming to the fore. In the late 1920s and early 1930s there were around one quarter of a million practising Spiritualists and some two thousand Spiritualist societies in the UK in addition to flourishing microcultures of platform mediumship and 'home circles'. Spiritualism continues to be practised, primarily through various denominational Spiritualist churches in

6204-750: The religion of Divine Metaphysics (a federally recognized religious branch out of Spiritualism in the United States), it is generally a part of services to communicate with living personalities in the spirit world. Usually, this is only called "séance" by outsiders; the preferred term for Spiritualists is "receiving messages". In these sessions, which generally take place in well-lit Spiritualist churches or outdoors at Spiritualist camps (such as Lily Dale in upstate New York or Camp Cassadaga in Florida ), an ordained minister or gifted contact medium will relate messages from spirit personalities to those here in

6298-472: The researchers Frank Podmore of the Society for Psychical Research , Harry Price of the National Laboratory of Psychical Research , the professional stage magicians John Nevil Maskelyne (who exposed the Davenport Brothers ) and Harry Houdini , who clearly stated that he did not oppose the religion of Spiritualism itself, but only the trickery by phony mediums that was being practiced in

6392-451: The result of deception and trickery. Ectoplasm, a supposed paranormal substance, was revealed to have been made from cheesecloth, butter, muslin, and cloth. Mediums would also stick cut-out faces from magazines and newspapers onto cloth or on other props and use plastic dolls in their séances to pretend to their audiences spirits were contacting them. Lewis Spence in his book An Encyclopaedia of Occultism (1960) wrote: A very large part

6486-486: The result of fraud and psychological factors. Research from psychology for over a hundred years suggests that where there is not fraud, mediumship and Spiritualist practices can be explained by hypnotism , magical thinking and suggestion . Trance mediumship, which according to Spiritualists is caused by discarnate spirits speaking through the medium, can be explained by dissociative identity disorder . Illusionists, such as Joseph Rinn have staged fake séances in which

6580-461: The same book, Keene also stated that he still had a firm belief in God, life after death, ESP, and other psychic phenomena. In his 2004 television special Seance , magician Derren Brown held a séance and afterwards described some of the tricks used by him (and 19th-century mediums) to create the illusion of paranormal events. Critics of channeling—including both skeptics and believers—state that since

6674-560: The sitters have claimed to have observed genuine supernatural phenomena. Albert Moll studied the psychology of séance sitters. According to (Wolffram, 2012) "[Moll] argued that the hypnotic atmosphere of the darkened séance room and the suggestive effect of the experimenters' social and scientific prestige could be used to explain why seemingly rational people vouchsafed occult phenomena." The psychologists Leonard Zusne and Warren Jones in their book Anomalistic Psychology: A Study of Magical Thinking (1989) wrote that spirits controls are

6768-458: 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

6862-656: The spirit or the presence of a voice, and telekinetic activity. In Spiritism and Spiritualism the medium has the role of an intermediary between the world of the living and the world of spirit. Mediums say that they can listen to and relay messages from spirits, or that they can allow a spirit to control their body and speak through it directly or by using automatic writing or drawing . Spiritualists classify types of mediumship into two main categories: "mental" and "physical": During seances, mediums are said to go into trances , varying from light to deep, that permit spirits to control their minds. Channeling can be seen as

6956-586: The spirit world. The Parapsychological Association defines "clairvoyance" as information derived directly from an external physical source. Spiritualists believe that phenomena produced by mediums (both mental and physical mediumship) are the result of external spirit agencies. The psychical researcher Thomson Jay Hudson in The Law of Psychic Phenomena (1892) and Théodore Flournoy in his book Spiritism and Psychology (1911) wrote that all kinds of mediumship could be explained by suggestion and telepathy from

7050-458: The start of the 19th century. The monody "To the Memory of a Lady lately Deceased", written on the death of his first wife, had an even longer lasting reputation. Though Thomas Gray found "parts of it too stiff and poetical", he especially praised the fourth stanza as "truly tender and elegiac". The poem was alluded to or parodied by others well into the 19th century, particularly the invocation of

7144-550: 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

7238-526: The subject in the mid-19th century. Allan Kardec coined the term Spiritism around 1860. Kardec wrote that conversations with spirits by selected mediums were the basis of his The Spirits' Book and later, his five-book collection, Spiritist Codification . Some scientists of the period who investigated Spiritualism also became converts. They included chemist Robert Hare , physicist William Crookes (1832–1919) and evolutionary biologist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913). Nobel laureate Pierre Curie took

7332-528: The techniques of stage magicians in their attempts to convince people of their clairvoyant powers." The article also notes that "the exposure of widespread fraud within the spiritualist movement severely damaged its reputation and pushed it to the fringes of society in the United States." At a séance in the house of the solicitor John Snaith Rymer in Ealing in July 1855, a sitter Frederick Merrifield observed that

7426-429: The trick. The British medium Francis Ward Monck was investigated by psychical researchers and discovered to be a fraud. On November 3, 1876, during the séance a sitter demanded that Monck be searched. Monck ran from the room, locked himself in another room and escaped out of a window. A pair of stuffed gloves was found in his room, as well as cheesecloth, reaching rods and other fraudulent devices in his luggage. After

7520-471: The tricks she had used. Frank Herne a British medium who formed a partnership with the medium Charles Williams was repeatedly exposed in fraudulent materialization séances. In 1875, he was caught pretending to be a spirit during a séance in Liverpool and was found "clothed in about two yards of stiffened muslin, wound round his head and hanging down as far as his thigh." Florence Cook had been "trained in

7614-471: The use of tools but continued to practice mediumship in full confidence of its spiritual value to them. Jews and Christians are taught that it is sinful to attempt to conjure or control spirits in accordance with Deuteronomy 18:9–12. Research in anomalistic psychology has revealed the role of suggestion in seances. In a series of fake seance experiments (Wiseman et al. . 2003) paranormal believers and disbelievers were suggested by an actor that

7708-635: The validity of claims of mediumship for more than one hundred years and have consistently failed to confirm them. As late as 2005, an experiment undertaken by the British Psychological Society reaffirmed that test subjects who self-identified as mediums demonstrated no mediumistic ability. Mediumship gained popularity during the nineteenth century when ouija boards were used as a source of entertainment. Investigations during this period revealed widespread fraud —with some practitioners employing techniques used by stage magicians —and

7802-420: The various aforementioned tools. Scientific skeptics and atheists generally consider both religious and secular séances to be scams , or at least a form of pious fraud , citing a lack of empirical evidence. The exposure of supposed mediums whose use of séance tools derived from the techniques of stage magic has been disturbing to many believers in spirit communication. In particular, the 1870s exposures of

7896-645: The visitor remarks that "Marriage here is esteemed a Religious Ceremony, and that I believe is one Reason among others why so little Regard is paid to it". Oliver Goldsmith was later to borrow the same approach for his Chinese philosopher in Letters from a Citizen of the World to his Friends in the East (1760). There were, nevertheless, French models for both in the Lettres Persanes of Montesquieu (1721) and

7990-408: The way those clients dress or behave. By presenting all of the volunteers involved in the test with all of the readings, they are prevented from attributing meaning to their own reading, and therefore can't identify it from readings made for others. As a result, the type of highly successful hit rate that psychics enjoy on a daily basis comes crashing down and the truth emerges – their success depends on

8084-781: 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 Principal #9. "We affirm that

8178-562: Was a British statesman . As an author himself, he was also a supporter of other writers and as a patron of the arts made an important contribution to the development of 18th-century landscape design . Lord Lyttelton was the eldest son of Sir Thomas Lyttelton, 4th Baronet , of Frankley, in the County of Worcester, by his wife Christian, daughter of Sir Richard Temple, 3rd Baronet . Educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford , he afterwards went on grand tour , visiting Europe with his tutor. It

8272-467: 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

8366-445: Was as a poet that Lyttelton was chiefly remembered in the 19th century. But he was author also of many works in prose, chiefly historical and theological. Two, however, are distinguished by their humour. Letters from a Persian in England, to his Friend at Ispahan (1735) ironically comments on the idiosyncrasies of the time from the naïve point of view of an outsider. On attending a wedding ceremony in "one of their Mosques", for example,

8460-571: Was caught in many fraudulent séances throughout her career. In 1874 during a séance with Edward William Cox a sitter looked into the cabinet and seized the spirit, the headdress fell off and was revealed to be Showers. In a series of experiments in London at the house of William Crookes in February 1875, the medium Anna Eva Fay managed to fool Crookes into believing she had genuine psychic powers. Fay later confessed to her fraud and revealed

8554-454: Was during this time that he started publishing his early works in both poetry and prose. Even after he was elected to Parliament in 1735, he continued to publish from time to time. In 1742 he married Lucy, daughter of Hugh Fortescue , and following her death in 1747 he later married Elizabeth, daughter of Field Marshal Sir Robert Rich, 4th Baronet , in 1749. He died in August 1773, aged 64, and

8648-532: Was raised to the peerage as Lord Lyttelton, Baron of Frankley in the County of Worcester, and continued to speak in the House of Lords until the year before he died. Lyttelton was later described as "an amiable, absent-minded man, of unimpeachable integrity and benevolent character, with strong religious convictions and respectable talents", but ultimately as "a poor practical politician". His political opponent Lord Hervey spitefully characterised his performance as

8742-587: Was succeeded as baron by his eldest son, Thomas . Though Samuel Johnson 's biographical notice of Lyttelton is characterised by a conspicuous show of dislike, it diverges at the end into a long description of his exemplary death and the plain inscription he asked to have added to his first wife's monument in St John the Baptist Church, Hagley . Lyttelton was Member of Parliament (MP) for Okehampton from 1735 to 1756 and, as one of Cobham's Cubs during

8836-518: Was thought spirits of the dead resided within the realm of dark and shadow, making the absence of light a necessity to invoke them. Skeptics were unwilling to accept this required condition. Saying,"You would not buy an automobile if it was only presented in the dark." This is the type of séance that is most often the subject of shock and scandal when it turns out that the leader is practicing some form of stage magic illusion or using mentalism tricks to defraud clients. Among those with an interest in

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