Mediums

[Roman]

Does anyone have stories of mediums working?

My physics teacher, I scientific kind of guy, went to a medium (can't remember his name) and says he's the real deal. He talked with guy, or at least whoever went into him while he was in a trance. My physics teacher recorded everything and played it back to his parents who verified everything.
My teacher talked with dead grandparents and great uncles and the like.
The stuff they said, I can't figure how the medium would know.

My teacher did sign up before hand.

Oh, and th news media hooked him up to something that measured brainwaves when he was in a trance, and he was pretty much brain dead. However, he was still lucid and talking!

 

[Squeak22]

Do you have a link to the story? I would like to see the data.

 

[Silas]

Yeah, cos that's who I go to when I need my brain waves measuring: the news media!

Your physics teacher needs to brush up his skepticism. If we got access to the tape, or if you can post an EXACT transcript, that would be great.

Randi did a check on John Edward and counted 262 questions from the medium as opposed to 3 flat and unprompted statements, all of which were wrong.

 

[Roman]

Yeah, cos that's who I go to when I need my brain waves measuring: the news media!

Well see, most of us do not have the cash to pay for those things that scan brains, but skeptical TV ews organizations do. Smartass.

No, I can't post an exact transcript. In fact, you get no transcript. Sorry.

Randi did a check on John Edward and counted 262 questions from the medium as opposed to 3 flat and unprompted statements, all of which were wrong.

What does this mean? Who's Randi and Edwards and what do the numbers mean? That's very... ambiguous.

 

[Silas]

Sorry, sorry!

Randi is James Randi, a conjurer who works to expose fake mediums (which in his opinion is all of them). John Edward is an American TV medium.

Mediums don't connect with psychic forces, instead they are experts at cold reading. They'll say things like "I'm hearing the name John", and someone who's dead husband is called John will stick their hand up. As the medium continues to fish he or she takes careful note of the responses from the subject and will reinforce what they say when they see a positive result.

It always looks very impressive when you see the medium apparently extracting information, but careful analysis shows that nearly everything that the medium does or says is actually in response to the subject. They'll ask a question and get an answer, and then "confirm" it by claiming the spirit said the same thing. And this was what I meant by Randi having found 262 questions from the medium, as opposed to statements of fact (that he would be getting from the spirit world only) of which he only made three, all of them incorrect.

No, I can't post an exact transcript. In fact, you get no transcript. Sorry.

Well, posting an exact transcript would involve listening to the tape and creating the transcript, which would be hard work but worthwhile - you could make a project of it, or you could mention this little argument to your physics teacher. But then you say "In fact you get no transcript." which sounds like you are denying me the chance to verify your physics teacher's claims, simply because I'm the one who asked for it!

skeptical TV ews organizations do.

TV news organisations, particularly in America, are not noted for their skepticism when it comes to scientific matters. Most news people don't really know science so they don't always know when they're being bamboozled.

Smartass.

Hey! This is sciforums! We're all smartasses here!

 

[phlogistician]

Anyone who believes in mediums needs to check out some TV programs made a Brit called 'Derren Brown', who managed to convince various people of various things in his series 'Mind Control'. He managed to convince some alien abductees he had been abducted by telling them he'd been given the ability to read illnesses and physical disorders by his abductors (but actually using 'cold reading' techniques'). He managed to convince a bunch of christians he could perform on the spot conversion to christianity (he did manage this, but not through any divine power, but actually through informal hypnosis). He also convinced a 'spirit school' that he was a medium (again, using cold reading, and by leading his subjects through informal hynosis). He also convinced a parapsychological publication that he had a 'dream capture device', but in fact, used cold reading to determine what his subjects recent dreams had been. (and I suspect, informal hypnosis at the first meeting, when he explained how the 'device' functioned.)

Or, if that's too serious, check out the comedy series 'Shirley Ghostman', who is an OTT camp medium, and still seems to be able to fool some people, because they want to believe, even when faced with the preposterous.

 

[Silas]

phlog! I never knew you were a fellow Brit!

I keep missing that Shirley Ghostman thing, but the trailers I've seen look very funny - in a harmless sort of way. (I can't stand programmes which get their humour from ridiculing people.)

I'm not sure that the specific Derren Brown programme you're talking about was part of the Mind Control series, I think it had a different name. The "dream capture" was certainly the most impressive one in terms of appearing to be "magic". However, he generally does not use conventional cold reading techniques, but instead employs Neuro Linguistic Programming.

 

[ellion]

the derren brown series your talking about is called messiah. if you have a access to a filesharing network such as gnutella you will find it there. as well as some other DB programs, 'mind control', 'the devils picture book', there is quite a few.

 

[Roman]

Sorry for being so defensive. I'll give you what little I have.
The reading was alone, none of this "any John's around?" business. Ohh, get this, he told my professor a bunch of stuff that the professor had no idea was true! He only knew it was true when he took the tape to his parents and played it for them and they verified stuff. How do cold readings work when the subject doesn't know what was true or not?

My prof. did sign up before hand, so the medium could have dug around or sommat.

There's no way I would get to listen to that tape, so I can't actually give you evidence. I'll browbeat my prof for more stuff, though. See what falls out of him.

I'm hugely skeptical myself, but after listening to my prof., a reasonable, respectable, very intelligent, and scientific guy, who impresses me as someone who doesn;t get fooled into psychic stuff too easy. But he is a hardcore vegan and comes from Cali, so who knows.

 

[ellion]

if you really have an open mind and you want to witness mediums at work find a spiritualist church, call in, have patience with there hymns and prayers and see what they do. if you want to disprove the phenomena you will find proof for yourself if you want to believe you will find reasons to believe, instead have an open mind and seek the truth.

 

[Roman]

I went to an exorcism. In between smacking a growling, hysterical woman with a bible, the man fundraised for Jesus. It was disgusting. But then, they were Baptists.

 

[phlogistician]

phlog! I never knew you were a fellow Brit!

Yeah, always good odds I think... I assume at least 50% of the skeptics are Brits, as the 'faith' quotient seems far higher elsewhere!

I keep missing that Shirley Ghostman thing, but the trailers I've seen look very funny - in a harmless sort of way. (I can't stand programmes which get their humour from ridiculing people.)

It's kind of self deprecating, but he does scam people, and sometimes, it is cringeworthy, when people fall for utter rubbish. So he is ridiculing people to be fair, but then, it is a rich vein to tap into.

I'm not sure that the specific Derren Brown programme you're talking about was part of the Mind Control series, I think it had a different name. The "dream capture" was certainly the most impressive one in terms of appearing to be "magic". However, he generally does not use conventional cold reading techniques, but instead employs Neuro Linguistic Programming.

Yeah, as mentioned elsewhere on this thread too, it wasn't actually one of the 'Mind Control' series, but a one off. Yes, he does use some linguistic techniques to lead people. If you saw the Russian Roulette programme, he was leading people to choose which chamber the bullet was in. I don't know quite how he stressed the number, without making it obvious, but I picked out the right chamber watching the prog. He uses a very subtle intonation to lead people, and obviously vets a lot of people to make sure he uses suggestable people.

The dream capture scam was excellent, and I bet he led that publisher with some similar verbal clues, to have the dream he would later 'download'.

One obvious lead he used, when they were doing the psychic painting part of that episode, was 'let your mind sail free, but don't go overboard', and the woman painted a boat. DUH! I think Derren was starting to take the urine at this point!

All in all though, he's done some very good work, showing how easy it is to wow people. But still believers won't realise he, and others, are just playing on human nature, and nothing mystical is happening at all.

 

[Silas]

He uses a very subtle intonation to lead people, and obviously vets a lot of people to make sure he uses suggestable people.

Well, that's kind of obvious, since the great bulk of the programme was precisely that vetting process!

Somehow if a real telepath was able to read my thoughts, I think I'd find it less creepy than when DB "reads" someones thoughts and/or dreams because he put them there in the first place! (*shudder*)

One obvious lead he used, when they were doing the psychic painting part of that episode, was 'let your mind sail free, but don't go overboard', and the woman painted a boat. DUH! I think Derren was starting to take the urine at this point!

You're much better at this than I am, I never see these things. (Though I missed that part of the programme altogether.) But I'm not that suggestible myself because I had an idea of the bullet and got it totally wrong!

All in all though, he's done some very good work, showing how easy it is to wow people. But still believers won't realise he, and others, are just playing on human nature, and nothing mystical is happening at all.

It's always the same. Arthur Conan Doyle could not believe his friend and admirer Harry Houdini was using conventional illusion, despite the fact that Houdini told him so. He reckoned that he was "pretending" not to have real magical powers. To my utter disgust, by the way, Living TV's Dead Famous are purporting to investigate a place Houdini is haunting, and I have in front of me a freebie I picked off the tube called The Paranormal, on which the front page story is "Houdini Vows "I'll Come Back". I find this utter perversion of Houdini's heartfelt fight against fraudulent and charlatan mediums against the man himself utterly appalling. But the dead can't sue, so....