The Mystery Chronicles by Joe Nickell

Author:Joe Nickell [Nickell, Joe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780813126753
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2011-11-15T06:00:00+00:00

Mental Mediumship

The new breed of spiritualists—like Edward, James Van Praagh, Rosemary Altea, Sylvia Browne, and George Anderson—avoid the physical approach with its risks of exposure and possible criminal charges. They opt instead for the comparatively safe “mental mediumship,” which involves the purported use of psychic ability to obtain messages from the spirit realm.

This is not a new approach; mediums have long done “readings” for their credulous clients. In the early days they exhibited “the classic form of trance mediumship, as practiced by shamans and oracles,” giving spoken “’spirit messages’ that ranged all the way from personal (and sometimes strikingly accurate) trivia to hours-long public trance-lectures on subjects of the deepest philosophical and religious import” (McHargue 1972, 44-45).

Some mediums produced “automatic” or “trance” or “spirit” writing, which the entities supposedly dictated to the medium or produced by guiding his or her hand. Such writings could be in flowery language indeed, as in this excerpt from one spirit writing in my collection:

Oh my Brother—I am so glad to be able to come here with you and hold sweet communion for it has been a long time since I have controlled this medium but 1 remember how well used I had become to her magnetism[,] but we will soon get accustomed to her again and then renew the pleasant times we used to have. I want to assure you that we are all here with you this afternoon[—]Father[,] Mother[,] little Alice[—]and so glad to find it so well with you and we hope and feel dear Brother that you have seen the darkest part of life and that times are not with you now as they have been ....

and so on in this talkative fashion.

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