Mediums are considered to be the conduits for those spirits that have “shuffled on from this mortal coil” and Hamlet, who had a lengthy conversation with his deceased father, might have been one. I talked with Dr. Julie Beischel of the Windbridge Research Center about her experiences with Mediums. She is a Parapsychologist who has written several books on the subject. ” Among Mediums: A Scientist’s Quest for Answers” has a concise description of her quintuple blind study confirming that “certain Mediums can make accurate statements about dead people that they couldn’t reasonably know”. Dr. Beischel discusses the experiences of thirteen of the certified Mediums she has worked with in her book “From the Mouths of Mediums”asking how they experience information from the “other side”. Basically, each Medium experiences this phenomenon differently.
Types of Mediums
The rare physical Medium can manifest objects, make noises, or alter their environment while being a conduit for the spirit realm. This manifestation technique was commonly used by fake Mediums during the spiritualist craze of the early twentieth century. When they, or one of their shills, would ask a question of the spirit world, the Medium would use different techniques, also employed by Magicians, to make bells ring, make a knocking noise, or any of a number of sound effects occur. They could make the table in front of them rise or tip, or make objects fly across the room. There are photographs of Mediums with a gauzy material around their faces that they would claim was a spirit emanating from within them.
Auditory Mediums are able to hear messages either directly from the discarnate (deceased person) or their spirit guide. Some Mediums are completely taken over by the discarnate becoming their puppet and voice having no recollection of the event when they emerge from their spirit trance.
Discarnate Communication
Mediums say that the strength of the message they obtain from the other side is based on how much energy the discarnate can muster to break through into our plane of reality. Of the biographies of Mediums I’ve read, they claim that discarnates exist in another dimension with different energy signatures that make it very difficult for them to communicate with our dimension. They also claim that it’s easier for a discarnate to communicate through electronic objects such as televisions and radios because those little electrons are easier to manipulate than our brains are. They may also use animals, especially insects because they are easier to control from across the veil. The discarnate will try any form of communication they can with Mediums but it is like trying to understand a person who speaks a different language: there is a lot of pointing at things or using objects to represent meaning. Also, discarnates can overwhelm a Medium with a blast of information like five minutes of a movie compacted into one second.
What Mediums Do
Dr. Beischel developed the study described in “Among Mediums” to certify those who participated as legitimately able to discern information from the deceased. These certified Mediums have then worked with the Forever Family Foundation to provide assistance to the bereaved by bringing words of hope from the other side. Because Mediums can differentiate discarnate-derived information from telepathically derived information, they will work with ghosthunters to determine what may be causing the haunting: a discarnate or other psychic phenomena (e.g. Poltergeist). Many parapsychologists utilize Mediums to further examine something called “survivability” or the hypothesis that consciousness survives the death of the corporeal body.
Science Quandry
Of course, skeptical opinions of Mediumship abound. There really is no other way to study whether a Medium is getting information from beyond the grave other than to parse out meaning from their interpretations. Then, there is the question of whether the information is gained from a discarnate or obtained from some other means. This is similar to a jury convicting someone of a crime based solely on witness testimony and no other evidence. Neuroscientists and psychologists alike would say that human perception is simply too fallible to use as evidence in any scientific way, especially if that perception cannot be shared and agreed upon by another witness. Once again, the physical evidence required for scientific proof make confirming this psychic ability currently beyond reach.