A Footnote To The Footnote

[poliphilo]

My friendpickwick  points out that Helen Duncan was investigated by the psychic researcher Harry Price, who proved her to be a particularly squalid fraud. Unbelievably the Robinson programme managed to convey the impression that Price had given Duncan a clean bill of health.

Duncan's ectoplasm was regurgitated cheesecloth. It's extraordinary that her effects should ever have fooled anybody (just consider the photographs in Price's article) but they did.

I once attended a seance in the Duncan tradition. The medium sat in a cabinet, under a red light and spoke in the voices of a succession of dead people- none of whom had anything interesting to say. Ailz says her grandfather came through, addressing her by a name only he ever used. There was no cheesecloth, but people said the medium's face changed as the different spirits took control.  I couldn't see it myself.

We gave the medium a lift home afterwards. She was an odd personality-  nervy, vulnerable and confiding- who believed- apparently quite sincerely- that she was some sort of a space alien. Knowing we were pagans, she told us a story about how she'd once had pagan friends to visit and they'd done a ritual in an upstairs room while she stayed in the living room- and she'd looked up from her armchair to see a huge man with horns and goat's feet peering round the door at her- whom she left it to us to identify as the Great God Pan.  

The seance we attended was for free- for her "friends"- but I think she usually charged. Apparently she had a big following in Finland.

Comments

interesting

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

do you think she was the genuine article or perhaps mistook hallucinations for spirits and was actually dealing with mental health problems?

I read some of the sceptics' sites and they seem to do a great job debunking people - but I find it unlikely that every single medium who goes into the art in a big way is maintaining some massive lie that is known but not spoken of.

I think the brain has aptitudes that it can be hard to explain to other people. I've mentioned before on my blog that I have absolute pitch. Which results in a circular discussion: "But how do you know it's an A?" "Er, because it sounds like one." I can't imagine what it's like not to have that knowledge (not that I'm always right, but generally close) and have songs not index linked to their keys when I retrieve them from my brain.

The medium Gordon Smith says his experience is like "downloading" a pile of messages. Sometimes he confuses his own thoughts with spirit activity and admits this too, though he says he can tell the difference better now.

Re: interesting

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

There was a programme I was watching last night about "child mediums". These kids- they were all in their late teens so not really children- saw things and heard things that bewildered and frightened them- and which they couldn't discuss for fear of alienating their peers and family. One girl kept seeing the ghost of her murdered uncle- which really upset her Christian fundamentalist father, the dead man's brother. If they were faking their gifts it was hard to see what they were getting out of it- except, I suppose, attention.

I like what Gordon Smith has to say. Psychics don't know it all. They pick up information from all sorts of sources- and much of it is muddled and unclear. I believe the woman we saw in action was sincere and had real psychic gifts. I also think she was mentally fragile.

I believe professional psychics are showmen and- because the spirits can't always be relied on to come through or make sense- sometimes fall back on cold reading and other tricks of the trade. But I find it hard to believe that a person would embark on such a career without first possessing some sort of psychic spark.

Re: interesting

[shullie.livejournal.com]

I've been a 'medium' all my life, it's a normal to me as breathing....i have always seen ppl who other's don't...i get feelings, sounds, smells and conversations.

sometimes things do get muddled.... that usually when I am trying to hard...but I can only pass on what I am told... if it makes sense ,, then that;s good... if not then - well i can't and won't change it...sometimes it clicks with ppl later.

when i was a chritian I saw ppl then, at times I got 'messages' and i passed them on, and realised that some thought i was possessed.. have very intersting debates with a few funides I 'knew'

at prayer meetings I saw angels... and lights...which seemed to be ok as far as other Xns where concerned, and , i went to a meeting where someone talked in tounges and another stood up to translate.. but what he said I knew as as not what the guy speaking in tounges had said,,,lol...

wasn;t my church - so didn't want to rock the boat...

i don't fit with the spiritulaist church as I won't accept Godde as father only.. and not with partiachally based and ruled orders

opppsss have to go as watching around the world in 80's faiths...

Re: interesting

[shullie.livejournal.com]

sorry for the bay typos etc., I was on my laptop and without my proper specs on...lol

Re: interesting

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Fascinating.

There are so many questions I'd like to ask you- I don't know where to start.

And I don't want to burden you either.

But I've always wondered what it must be like to be a medium- to see and hear things that other people can't. It seems like it would be an enormous privilege, but I suppose it could be oppressive too. Do you have techniques for screening the information? Do you have guides?

There, I wasn't going to ask questions, but I can't help myself....

[mamadar.livejournal.com]

I read Price's account and pondered those photographs. It's hard to believe now that anyone could be taken in by such displays, but it might be part of what Stephen King in one of his nonfiction books calls "the state of the art". I'm watching Babylon 5 on DVD for the third or fourth time, and I've noticed that the CGI, fifteen years old, is starting to wear thin for me; I dare not look at it too closely. But the CGI monsters with flaming eyes and tentacles are more convincing to me than the black velour and green bubble-wrap monsters of Old Skool Who. Standards of believability change as the art of special effects does, and perhaps in the right atmosphere, regurgitated cheesecloth does indeed look convincingly spectral.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's a very good point.

I've got to a stage where I can immediately spot the use of CGI- except in instances where it's very subtly used- because the textures are never quite right, they're always a little to slick and plasticky- and as soon as you've rumbled that something is fake it might just as well be a rubber monster in front of a painted backdrop. Either something is totally convincing or it's not convincing at all.