talkmagic.co.uk

Craig Browning wrote:You're confusing the issue here... John is a Medium or "Sensitive" and he does not claim to "see" ghosts or spirits.

In the interest of keeping this fair and down the middle - "John is an alleged medium."
Nothing has been proved yet.

And now that hair is split...

Many times on either of his Tv series he's explained that what he "feels" or senses is equated to things he can associate with in his own life experience e.g. the reason things can at times seem vague.

That's the trouble though.
John doesn't seem to know himself how he's getting these messages.
Sometimes he feels them: "I'm feeling an older presence here, like someone's grandma"
Sometimes he sees them: "I'm seeing a man in his late 50s"
Sometimes he hears them: "I'm hearing this name... Anna?"

So how is he getting this information?
Until he can make his mind up - or offer a personal explanation of his differing senses, I have to take his massive inconsistencies as points against him.

In that respect, I feel someone like Colin Fry comes across better. He just uses the standard "I'm getting...".

But then Skeptics love the vagueness of most psychic situations in that it lends to them an "explanation" as to why things aren't true or real... the information isn't pin-point accurate and carved in stone e.g. it must be fake.

The problem with the vagueness is that it often yields results no better than guessing would.
If I watch a John Edward show, it can take an awful long time before he gets a hit.
If I watched someone guessing then it would probably take a similar amount of time to get a hit.

Understand that I'm not saying that John Edward is or isn't a genuine Medium, merely pointing out that the "explanation" which you scathingly refer to is a fairly solid one.

I've yet to meet the individual who could, if given the opportunity to do so, view a 90 minute film that they'd never seen before or knew nothing of in less than a seconds' time... the full 90-minutes flashing before your eyes in less than one single second -- and then deliver perfect and accurate recall that has this pin-point sense of accuracy cynics seem to insist on when it comes to psychic revelations.

So - genuinely interested here and not using this against you - are you saying that Mediums see a large amount of information in a small time?
If that's the case - then why do they keep getting new information?
Are they getting one piece of information from one "film" and then more from another "film" which happens to make a complete story?

Yes, I'm quite familiar with how the "vague ploy" can lead to apparent hits but my mind isn't a rusted shut bear trap either... my observations from a literal lifetime in and around this stuff from either side of the proverbial fence, sustains for me the fact that there is much more to it all than science can presently explain. I stress that point in that I do believe in the cliche that the magick of our ancestors is the science of our present e.g. I believe a huge chunk of the psychic/paranormal issue has a validity to it but we've yet reached the technological levels that will allow us to better define such things vs. implying that it's all hokum and gullibility.

This all seems fair enough to me - except that we differ slightly in that I believe that some things will not be better defined and will remain hokum.
Homeopathy for one

[It is] in the middle of those extremes that we can catch a glimpse as to what is genuine and most likely -- an agreement of sorts, between the two schools of thought... call me a fanatic, but that's always been my position and oddly, it is an idea that's been taught for thousands of years within most of the world's great philosophies and most particularly the esoteric world -- BALANCE and understanding the "grey" areas is where one finds truth and wisdom, no matter the issue.

Couldn't agree more.
Until you meet in the middle and look at something from every possible angle - any point of view is fundamentally flawed.

I am a skeptic yes - but that doesn't mean I'm a closed off bitter and twisted cynic.
What it means is that if someone tells me I can point a gun to my head and pull the trigger with no harm - I will check the bloody gun is empty before I pull the trigger!

Blind belief is responsible for a lot of evils - but then again, so is cynicism.

A point that is being missed here is that several well-known posters on TM who appear to be extremely bright sensible individuals (Lady of Mystery for one) are stating that they are having "paranormal" experiences right now. My own incredible experience happened around 30 years ago (crikey!), but the fact that Lady of Mystery is seeing this little girl this week (sorry to keep using you as an example lomster) is to my mind evidence that something is going on that we don't understand. Time hasn't flowered up or confused the mind of Lady of Mystery, she is - I'm sure you'll agree - a sensible individual (apart from her obsession with sponge rabbits), so what is the explanation? Her eyes playing tricks on her? Was she dreaming? It certainly can't be something as silly as creaky floorboards. So is it real?

It only takes one "ghost story" to be authentic and the ramifications for both science and religion would be huge.

Lommy, have you tried catching this little girl on camera?

Mage Tyler wrote:Well, if we accept the definitions as presented by themagicwand that (A):

themagicwand wrote:Ghosts are like video recordings of something that happened a long time ago. They are the kind of thing that are reported by various observers over the years, and generally do exactly the same thing. So a classic white lady walking down a corridor would be a ghost. You cannot interact with it, it has no intelligence, it is just like a recording being played over and over again. Sometimes refered to as "residual energy".

By that definition, you must be suggesting that anyone who says they interacted with a "ghost" is telling "porkies"...

B0bbY_CaT wrote:
By that definition, you must be suggesting that anyone who says they interacted with a "ghost" is telling "porkies"...

No, but they would have actually been interacting with a spirit. Spirits don't normally have the energy for a full "manifestation", but it does happen.

In the "normal world" (ie a world where I'm not involved!) spirits and ghosts as labels are fairly interchangeable and mean pretty much the same thing. However once you start interacting with spiritualists and paranormal investigators and the like you have the difference drilled into you!

So if someone says "A ghost came up to me and said hello!" what they really mean is "A spirit came up to me and said hello!"

themagicwand wrote:A point that is being missed here is that several well-known posters on TM who appear to be extremely bright sensible individuals (Lady of Mystery for one) are stating that they are having "paranormal" experiences right now.

With all due respect Paul (and normally that phrase bugs the hell out of me but in this instance I actually mean it!), you yourself have stated that the best way to get a séance working is to tell people it will.

People will expect things to happen and then they do.

And not wishing to cause offence to anyone - I think that Lommy is probably quite suggestible.
So if it would happen to anyone - it would happen to a sugestible person.


And now I've probably offended two well respected members - I'll just go and disappear into the night now.

themagicwand wrote:

B0bbY_CaT wrote:
By that definition, you must be suggesting that anyone who says they interacted with a "ghost" is telling "porkies"...

No, but they would have actually been interacting with a spirit. Spirits don't normally have the energy for a full "manifestation", but it does happen.

In the "normal world" (ie a world where I'm not involved!) spirits and ghosts as labels are fairly interchangeable and mean pretty much the same thing. However once you start interacting with spiritualists and paranormal investigators and the like you have the difference drilled into you!

So if someone says "A ghost came up to me and said hello!" what they really mean is "A spirit came up to me and said hello!"

But they couldn't be wearing clothes then? that's what I referred to...

I've never heard of a ghost report in which the entity wasn't "dressed" in some way... many of the more famous one's have names like the Lady in Blue or Lady in White. There are those scenarios in which a man with a pegged leg can be seen and/or heard so some kind of transcendence happens with the material things. I won't attempt to explain how or why this happens, only that it is common... I know of no report in which the ghost is naked... then again, the majority of apparitions are cloudy or wispy.


As to the observation made of Echo (which I'm really finding "out of character" with him) that even Paul has pointed out that you must create belief in the Seance in order for it to happen... this is true with all aspects of mentalism, hypnosis and a myriad of other "demonstrations" associated not just to our craft but the "rituals" humanity has observed and sustained in some way for eons.

Table Tipping is a great example in that most of the earlier instructions tell you to tell your group to focus on the table and see it raising and moving... eventually the physics of the body will take over along side the psychological seed and voila! Tables bounce and move about and everyone gets to experience their ghostly visit... I've seen Kreskin do this with about a dozen or so tables each one loaded up with people holding the appropriate position and within a few short minutes he has tables moving all over the room... it's a very cool demonstration!

Hypnotist Anthony Jacquin stresses the point of claiming you power by being THE HYPNOTIST not "a hypnotist"... you have to have that confidence and attitude; something you'll find echoed in the words of Bob Cassidy and numerous others when it comes to the Mentalism world but you'll see it likewise supported in other aspects of theater -- the actor becoming his/her character nearly 24/7... I remember house sitting for a lady friend of mine years ago... he home was about two houses down from the home of actor Christopher Loydd who, at the time, was shooting the Adam's family... several times over the course of that particular month I'd see Mr. Loydd in full Uncle Fester drag opening the gates to drive in and checking the mail box... that's the level of his dedication to what he is claiming to be... BELIEF having to be a part of the performer's attitude when it comes to all aspects of theater but most especially when you are dealing with mystery entertainment.

As I've pointed out countless times it is the performers job to invoke belief and an investment of the self from his/her audience. If you don't do that you will loose! When it comes to the world of Seance theater, Ghost Hunts, Hypnosis, even Comedy, if you don't set that hook of commitment from your audience the "show" won't happen... not in the way you have it planned out and envisioned in your mind... it's impossible!

"Conditioning" your audience and their point of view is one of the most important tools used by the Psychic Entertainer; it's part of pre-show and it begins long before the show itself. One of the best examples of this can be seen in the shows offered by Canadian Scott McClellan... his spirit show is sold in the same exact manner as the old Spiritualists Revival shows, NO DISCLAIMERS outside the one that's been used by old timers for decades... the act of giving your patrons credit for having a bit of common sense and the fact that they are coming to see a "show" in a "theater" (I guess folks were smart enough to figure that sort of thing out a century ago vs. today's intellectual capacity).

Anywho... it's late and I just can't explain things as I wish I could right now... hope what I've said makes a bit of sense to y'all in how it applies to the topic.

All I can say is...when youve lost someone close and u have no religion, so youre always wondering...sometimes you need to believe there's something else.

Sophie.

We're skidding over quite a lot into the 'are mediums real?', etc. area here. Which - though a valid and important discussion - we all know won't get solved and will instead just implode the thread. So, keeping focussed on the 'Have you seen a ghost?' question, I think it's useful to address EckoZero's point - which followed from Paul's - about sensible people, Lommy in this case, having ghostie experiences.

The problem here is if someone says they've seen a ghost it's pretty much impossible to suggest that they perhaps haven't without, however much you don't wish to, their taking it as your implying they are stupid or gullible or mad or all three. Stating something you know - from your own senses - is true and being told that it isn't is going to annoy anyone (and, as a corollary, they also probably become even more insistent about it - defensively digging in their heels). But the fact is, incredibly bright, incredibly wise and - in many other respects - incredibly sane people can see things that aren't there. Take John Nash (the Nobel Prize winner who was the subject of the book/film 'A Beautiful Mind'). His hallucinations have been life long, but we're all aware that some people experience them for periods only. It's totally unremarkable, then, to accept that anyone could have a profoundly 'real' hallucination not chronically like Nash, nor for a short period or periods, but only once or twice in their entire life. The biochemistry involved being, as it happens, a rare, freak occurrence rather than an extended one.

The point I want to make is that, in a curious way, it's similar to what Mr Browning said about the (proven) woeful unreliability of eye-witness reports. To not accept as 'fact' a description because it's being given to you by an eye witness in no way means you have to believe that eye witness must be lying or nuts or suggestible or stupid. It merely acknowledges that they are human.

One theory that I quite like is based upon the multiple dimension theory where our own dimension has myriad over dimensions layered upon it. Sometimes the walls between these dimensions are a little "thin" and we get to glimpse what's on the other side. Roman legions, ladies in white, headless horsemen et al.

I kind of like that.

John Edwards, Colin Fry and Derek Akorah, in fact all the people ive seen on tv so far, i believe to be fakes...

and its not for the usually quoted reasons either...

what i want to know is:
how come never, not even once in any way shape or form has any of these mediums given an indepth description of what summerland is? why?

it would be the first thing i would want to know...i can only guess, but i reckon the first medium to do that and write a book about it gets to define it...

and is there a difference between limbo/whatever state the spirits are in, in comparison to heaven and hell? can it exist without any religious after life? if those spirits are happy and nice people on earth, then they've gotten on the escalator to heaven surely? if thats where they're talking from, what - is - it - like for God's sake!

Apart from it getting darker, why do these things only happen at night for the most part? i used to live in a big creaky old house, i spent ages in each room searching, listening, watching for anything odd. Yet, anyone who stayed over would swear they heard things. The same things i would hear during the day, but it would be simple stuff like wood expanding/contracting in the weather, guttering, windows etc...

yet just cos its dark, well...its gotta be the spirits...

we put the fear in ourselves...the swaying motion thing blakey said about, thats the ideomotor response built around suggestion..you can do it now...go on...

stand still, hands by your sides, and you will notice that sooner or later you'll feel these tiny little pushes, making you softly sway back and forth. imagine yourself as that pendulum swinging to and fro now in your mind...it'll get stronger and stronger the more you think a "yes" response question too...

i think if you accept ghosts and spirits as real, fair enough....i've not witnessed anything so far in my life to convince me otherwise, but again, that certainly doesnt therefore mean there arent any..happy to be wrong, i kinda want to be wrong as the concept and the implications of it being right is very severe...

abraxus wrote:happy to be wrong, i kinda want to be wrong as the concept and the implications of it being right is very severe...

Perhaps I'm thinking this only because Abby is making me (he made me think of something he wanted just the other week in a pub in Kensington, so I certainly wouldn't put it past him), but the above statement is one I think should be remembered when talking above sceptics, because I'd say the vast majority of them agree with it. No one, in fact - I'd suggest - would love real magic to exist more than magicians would: we'd *love* it to be the case. (Who has been history's biggest bane to 'mediums'? Houdini. Who was *desperate* for there to be an afterlife and for it all to be true? Houdini.)

It's well to remember this, I say, when accusing those who do not see anything supernatural of being 'closed off' or 'unreceptive' or, basically, wilfully blocking things out. Sceptics, generally, very much want there to be ghosts if they go to a haunted house - they are very 'open' to them; they 'desire' then, even; but they aren't by nature people who can believe things *purely because* they dearly want them to be true - or not believe things purely because they dearly want them not to be. The "Well, of course you can't feel the spirits here like everyone else: you're unreceptive to the very idea of them, you curmudgeon,' argument is simply misplaced.

Professor Richard Wiseman conducted a survey recently on magicians and the paranormal. Here are the results...

Magicians and the Paranormal: Survey Results

442 people responded to the survey. After removing incomplete data sets, this was reduced to 400 participants.

How long have you been interested in magic?
Less than a year .5%
Between 1 and 5 years 10.25%
Between 6 and 10 years 17.25%
Between 11 and 15 years 14.25%
16 years or more 57.75%

At what level do you perform magic at the moment?
Amateur - mainly for friends and family 34%
Semi-professional - sometimes paid to perform but not my sole or main income 45.75%
Professional - magic is my sole or main income 20.25%

Do you believe that telepathy exists (i.e., that some people are able to gain, by paranormal means, access to information being thought of by others)?
No 75%
Yes 15.75%
Uncertain 9.25%

Do you believe that precognition exists (i.e., that some people can, by paranormal means, know what is going to happen in the future)?
No 70.25%
Yes 20.75%
Uncertain 9%

Do you believe that psychokinesis exists (i.e., that some people can, by paranormal means, apply a noticeable force to an object or alter its physical characteristics)?
No 83.5%
Yes 9%
Uncertain 7.5%

Do you believe that you have had a paranormal experience?
No 73.75%
Yes 26.25%

Do you believe that you have had a paranormal experience whilst performing magic or mentalism? (only asked of those that had answered ‘yes’ to the previous question)
Yes 30.19%
No 69.81%

Professor Wiseman's interpretation of these results can be found here: http://skepchick.org/blog/?p=1319

I've never seen a ghost (well, that I know of). An uncle by marriage thought he saw the ghost of his dead son, who'd been crushed to death when a lorry reversed into the wall he was sitting on. That might well have been grief, of course - a trick of the mind.

I recall that, when I was small (about seven or eight), I saw a UFO. I was quite into weird phenomena, and the thing I saw didn't match any of the explanations in the books I had (weather balloons, ball lighting, frisbees...). Sadly, I cannot for the life of me now remember exactly what I did see!

My grandmother thought she saw a UFO, but I remember that it was actually something in one of my books (weather balloon, I think).

themagicwand wrote:Just to point out that there is a difference between "ghosts" and "spirits".

Ghosts are like video recordings of something that happened a long time ago. They are the kind of thing that are reported by various observers over the years, and generally do exactly the same thing. So a classic white lady walking down a corridor would be a ghost. You cannot interact with it, it has no intelligence, it is just like a recording being played over and over again. Sometimes refered to as "residual energy".

Spirits are the energy of deceased people who have passed over to heaven, summerlands, rainbow bridge etc. They return to earth to communicate with the living, and if you ask "Is there anybody there?" will reply (in theory) by knocking or something. These rarely manifest in classic ghost style but usually only make noises or touch people or produce spirit lights etc.

There. Hopefully that's muddied the water.

I'm willing to believe in the former. It fits with a number of stories, and phenomena like ghosts passing through walls (that didn't exist when they were around, or the Roman soldiers in York).

I am not saying that that is definitely what happens, or that they do exist, but it sounds at least halfway plausible, based on various accounts.

I'm afraid that the latter doesn't float my boat at all (including Craig's addition of the spirit with unfinished business). I might be wrong, but has anyone ever been able to explain how a spirit could communicate and interact without a brain? We all know the effect brain damage can have on communication, memory and perception, but spirits wouldn't have a brain at all!

AndyRegs wrote:But with all due respect to magicwand, what basis have those explanations of ghosts have. Does it not sound like something someone has just plucked from thin air in an attempt to explain an experience.

What, like dark matter was thought up as a way to explain the apparently missing mass in the universe?

I take your point. One of the reasons I'm not convinced by the 'ghost' theory (as themagicwand defined it), is that there's no explanation for how there can be a snapshot in time. Is it a temporal phenomenon? A psychic imprint? How would that work?