TV Historian Required
Last January this post was placed on our original forum by SPower, but the conversation has stayed popular:)
Last January this post was placed on our original forum by SPower, but the conversation has stayed popular:)
I am putting together a paranormal invetigation team for TV and need a historian to work on the show, researching the locations we investigate and matching this information with the evidence gained on the investigation. This will be a paid position, although probably not enough for it to be a full-time role; all expenses will be covered. You must be able to commit to between 16 and 20 investigations a year. You will be on TV (assuming the pilot works ) and we have access to the best locations in the UK and abroad.
You need to be very thorough and methodical in your approach, and have the highest levels of professionalism (i.e. not telling anyone on the team about your findings!). You do not necessarily need to have an interest in the paranormal. You will not be undertaking the investigation vigil’s etc., but will be on-site during the investigation in the control room.
The show we are creating is different to anything else out there. Most Haunted is our benchmark – whatever they do, we don’t is a simple guide. Our approach is from a scientific basis and our investgation methods are implemented to achieve true results. We don’t send people into dark rooms by themselves and seem surprised when they are frightened. Neither do we set up control objects without a static camera on them. Nor do we become fascinated by every orb we see. What we do have is a very stong methodical approach, backed up by the best scientific analysis.
TV Historian
[quote=Admin]The show we are creating is different to anything else out there. Most Haunted is our benchmark – whatever they do, we don’t is a simple guide. Our approach is from a scientific basis and our investgation methods are implemented to achieve true results. We don’t send people into dark rooms by themselves and seem surprised when they are frightened. Neither do we set up control objects without a static camera on them. Nor do we become fascinated by every orb we see. What we do have is a very stong methodical approach, backed up by the best scientific analysis. [/quote]
Sounds really good Sean . Getting a format for good scientific paranormal TV isn’t easy and I am keen to know how you intend to investigate each location. How long do you intend to spend on each investigation. Speaking from experience there is probably very little you can come up with during a vigil over a single night. I feel that is why many programmes bring in psychics because they struggle making the science look interesting. How are you going to overcome this and make it entertaining and hopefully educational? On another note have you got your investigation team together yet?
Still looking SPower? Former
Still looking SPower? Former archaeologist here…
I don’t see why you need a
I don’t see why you need a historian at all. What has history to do with ghosts or hauntings? Ghosts didn’t even appear in period costume until the beginning of last century. Before that they appeared in contemporary costume! That tells you a lot about ghosts to start with.
If you’re serious about doing a scientific investigation of hauntings you should concentrating solely on explaining what independent witnesses have experienced.
I doubt you have access to
I doubt you have access to the best locations – as they don’t partake in this nonsense.
You can’t base exploration
You can’t base exploration of a haunting purely on eye witness accounts – of course they are vital to an investigation, but historical details can also provide additional information – the archaeology threat demonstrates this. It would be much better to have all the facts and possible facts to hand. There is an argument to be had over the validity of eyewitness accounts, false memory, optical illusion, etc.
As for ghosts appearing in historical costume… it only becomes historical if your looking back on something – to those of the time, the clothing would be classed as every day. But don’t forget that it is really only in the past couple of hundred years that clothing worn by the ordinary populaces has become distinctive. Prior to this poorer people wore very similar clothing throughout the different periods, only changing with major cultural influences, i.e. clothing throughout the Anglo Saxon period would have been very similar even thought we’re talking about a 300-400 year period. Weaving has changed very since Roman times up until the late Elizabethan era.
Without primary witness
Without primary witness accounts, there are no ghosts or hauntings! Hauntings are experiences reported by individuals.
The TV ghost hunting shows take their own ‘experiences’ INTO haunted locations ie. they hold seances, take along mediums, try to record EVP, look for orbs etc. There is no evidence that any of the stuff you see on these shows has any relevance to the reported haunting whatsoever (ie. the reports of prior witnesses). You could equally do the seances. mediumship etc ANYWHERE and get much the same results. There is also very little evidence that anything on these TV shows is paranormal at all. Historians, in this context, are just another part of a ‘show’, there to add local colour. The show could take place anywhere, haunted or not, whatever its history.
If you want to investigate hauntings you need to explain the specific reports of prior witnesses to haunting phenomena at a particular location.
If you want a ‘paranormal circus’, like the existing TV shows, why not just do it in a TV studio somewhere.
Regarding period costume: Is it true, then, that a 19th century peasant wore the same clothing as one from the 17th century and 12th century and 8th centuries? And were there no ghosts of people who weren’t peasants? For instance, what were the ghosts of Roman soldiers, that some people have reported, doing all that time until they started to appear in the twentieth century?
Whilst I agree that there’s
Whilst I agree that there’s problems with quite how far back reports of "historical" hauntings go, my understanding was that the turning point away from reports of fairies and contemporary hauntings was around the time when mass education began to emerge – significantly earlier than the twentieth centuy. This would certainly fit with the possible element of wishful thinking by the witness when they "see" Henry VIII or a Roman Soldier, as they without some form of education the witness would probably not have known what they looked like.
I don’t think you can say
I don’t think you can say that all TV programmes work along the lines of Most Haunted. Certainly one of the more interesting paranormal programmes was Arthur C Clarke’s World of Strange Powers – the occasional ghost story which wasn’t based around people sitting in the dark screaming. At the end of the day you’ve got to remember that television programmes are products; they’re made by people who want to sell them to networks and networks want them to make advertising space look good (or in the case of the BBC to pull in audience figures). Television programmes are not scientific research. They may concentrate on research which has been undertaken by academics, but at the end of the day they don’t exist to produce scientific research, they exist for entertainment.
As for costume, I argued that people wear similar clothes throughout periods until major cultural influences change this. This happened, as I said, up until around the Elizabethan period when trade started going global in a big enough way that meant that the poorer classes could afford a range of clothes. If you look at the evidence, clothing does change very little. Some of the work on Viking York demonstrates how weaving techniques in the north east of England changed relatively little between the end of the 11th century and the 18th when mechanisation started to creep in. But the real question is, how would someone without expert knowledge of period costume recognise the differences between 11th and 18th century dress? Whilst we may think we know the difference, this will largely be based on knowledge drawn from tv and films (which are infrequently inaccurate) or from the few surviving examples. But can anyone say that they have ever seen genuine examples of ‘working class’ clothing – I doubt it as surviving examples are usually from the wealthier classes who could afford better material and storage.
So I would argue that it is extremly easy for people to misidentify the period that a ghost is from purely based on its clothing because they have no proper base line to judge it against, and unless people are seeing ‘posh’ ghosts, clothing is pretty indistinguishable between earlier periods.
Agricola wrote:As for
[quote=Agricola]As for costume, I argued that people wear similar clothes throughout periods until major cultural influences change this. This happened, as I said, up until around the Elizabethan period when trade started going global in a big enough way that meant that the poorer classes could afford a range of clothes. If you look at the evidence, clothing does change very little. [/quote]
What I said was that before the start of the last century, people only saw ghosts in contemporary dress. They didn’t need any knowledge of previous periods. They simply knew that ghosts they see appear ‘normal’, dressed like themselves or other living people they’d seen. Then, gradually, people started to report ghosts in costumes from previous periods. I think that is rather odd.
One thing that DID happen at the end of the nineteenth and start of the tewntieth century was the rise in popularity of spiritualism. It might be a coincidence but I suspect not.
What about the value in
What about the value in knowing a locations history. Walled up doors, changed floor levels etc. This could add some context to accounts of ghosts walking through walls or kne high to the floor.
Ian Topham wrote:What
[quote=Ian Topham]What about the value in knowing a locations history. Walled up doors, changed floor levels etc. This could add some context to accounts of ghosts walking through walls or kne high to the floor.[/quote]
Can anyone think of any (serious) cases, apart from York Treasurer’s House, where ghosts have been seen walking at different levels to existing floors?
Mysteryshopper wrote:
Can
[quote=Mysteryshopper]Can anyone think of any (serious) cases, apart from York Treasurer’s House, where ghosts have been seen walking at different levels to existing floors?[/quote]
Of the top of my head……no
But, historical information about buildings is not restricted to renovations. Information on the use of various rooms could be interesting in relation to witness accounts, if only to discredit them.
Mysteryshopper wrote:Can
[quote=Mysteryshopper]Can anyone think of any (serious) cases, apart from York Treasurer’s House, where ghosts have been seen walking at different levels to existing floors?[/quote]
I suppose in theory that ghosts could be walking below us all the time on ancient floors now possibly 6 or 8 feet under the present floor level.
Red Don wrote:I suppose in
[quote=Red Don]I suppose in theory that ghosts could be walking below us all the time on ancient floors now possibly 6 or 8 feet under the present floor level.[/quote]
How, in theory, does this occur?
Much more concisely put than
Much more concisely put than me, Ian.
They did that – Scream Team
They did that – Scream Team on living tv. Don’t think they had psychics on tow, they went somewere and wheeled out one of the usual suspects. I thought it worked quite well, but apparently it wasn’t popular enough and they only made one series.
Some TV programmes have done
Some TV programmes have done wonders for certain topics. Time Team made archaeology entertaining and popular. By adding a time limit (3 days) they introduced an element od suspense but kept the show educational and entertaining, introducing the masses to the techniques used in an archaeological dig.
Garden Force(I think that is the right one) again helped made gardening interesting. Setting a time limit of a few days again, they would cover lots of aspects of creating a garden.
Could something like this work for a paranormal show, make the science interesting, look at the witness accounts and investigate the case without mediums or Victorian parlour high jinx.
I was once contacted by a producer who thought a cross between Time Team, Most Haunted and Scooby Doo would work. Young investigators, made up of at least two psychics, a skeptic and someone to keep the peace have to get to the route of the haunting in three days. Just them and their van (that was the scooby doo bit…the van…or maybe they intended taking a Great Dane along as well?) Maybe you were supposed to unmask the fake medium and be told "I’d have gotton away with it too, if it hadn’t been for those pesky kids".
Scream Team. I’m sure I got
Scream Team. I’m sure I got an e-mail asking if I wanted to audition for that. Never went and never saw the programme. The name just put me right off.
I think it was full of TV
I think it was full of TV wannabes and that Phil guy who went on to do Most Haunted. Blimey I’m full of useless crap!
My point is that most such
My point is that most such cases seem to be from a long time ago and weren’t properly investigated (by modern standards) at the time. Instead, they are essentially anecdotes repeated and exagerrated in books and newspapers. Even the Treasurer’s House sighting was witnessed by one person once!
Mysteryshopper wrote:
My
[quote=Mysteryshopper]My point is that most such cases seem to be from a long time ago and weren’t properly investigated (by modern standards) at the time. Instead, they are essentially anecdotes repeated and exagerrated in books and newspapers. Even the Treasurer’s House sighting was witnessed by one person once![/quote]
I quite agree and it’s highlighted so often to us when we try gathering information for the website. However, I believe knowing about them is important, as long as you are aware of the quality of the material and accept it is anecdotal and not gospel.
Mysteryshopper wrote:My
[quote=Mysteryshopper]My point is that most such cases seem to be from a long time ago and weren’t properly investigated (by modern standards) at the time. Instead, they are essentially anecdotes repeated and exagerrated in books and newspapers. Even the Treasurer’s House sighting was witnessed by one person once![/quote]
I’d argue that most modern cases are not ‘properly investigated’. Trouble is, no one has stood up and set the standard; no protocols, no base lines, etc. The very least that we have are a handful of researchers who borrow from psyhcology for witness testament analyses. Problem is that most researchers have a bias of some sort and this always comes out in the investigation or reports.
Agricola wrote:
I’d argue
[quote=Agricola]I’d argue that most modern cases are not ‘properly investigated’. Trouble is, no one has stood up and set the standard; no protocols, no base lines, etc. [/quote]
Some associations like ASSAP do have good training courses for their investigators and do keep a high standard, but on a whole I do agree with you Agricola.
Agricola wrote:Trouble is,
[quote=Agricola]Trouble is, no one has stood up and set the standard; no protocols, no base lines, etc.[/quote]
This is simply not true. There are a host of researchers doing excellent work on ghosts / hauntings within the remit of science. They have applied and developed their methods and these have proved sound and reliable (including baseline measures etc). The fact that many ‘most haunted’ wannabe’s don’t know about it has nothing to do with the good researchers (many of whom publish widely) and the fact the protocols exist, and more to do with those MH idiots simply not bothering to read anything of real use.
[quote=Agricola]Problem is that most researchers have a bias of some sort and this always comes out in the investigation or reports.[/quote]
Researchers whose work you should consult (in my opinion) are: French, Braithwaite, Wiseman, Persinger, Brugger, Houran, Lange, Nickell, etc. Don’t get me wrong – I am not saying I agree with everything these people are doing – but on the whole, the research is of a high standard, well controlled, produces interesting findings and generates new understandings and questions for further research.
I do agree however, that such efforts are not typical of the field – but i would always say don’t fall into the trap of thinking everyone is using mediums, ouija boards and orb-catchers……
Ophiel wrote:Agricola
[quote=Ophiel][quote=Agricola]Trouble is, no one has stood up and set the standard; no protocols, no base lines, etc.[/quote]
This is simply not true. There are a host of researchers doing excellent work on ghosts / hauntings within the remit of science. They have applied and developed their methods and these have proved sound and reliable (including baseline measures etc). The fact that many ‘most haunted’ wannabe’s don’t know about it has nothing to do with the good researchers (many of whom publish widely) and the fact the protocols exist, and more to do with those MH idiots simply not bothering to read anything of real use.
[quote=Agricola]Problem is that most researchers have a bias of some sort and this always comes out in the investigation or reports.[/quote]
Researchers whose work you should consult (in my opinion) are: French, Braithwaite, Wiseman, Persinger, Brugger, Houran, Lange, Nickell, etc. Don’t get me wrong – I am not saying I agree with everything these people are doing – but on the whole, the research is of a high standard, well controlled, produces interesting findings and generates new understandings and questions for further research.
I do agree however, that such efforts are not typical of the field – but i would always say don’t fall into the trap of thinking everyone is using mediums, ouija boards and orb-catchers……[/quote]
I’m not saying that there aren’t people doing good research – both amateur and professional, but I stick by my comments on baselines, etc. The problem is that most, if not all researchers don’t have one point to measure anything by. There is not a common standard for research – there are no accepted definitions, no procedures for treating a suspected case, no guidelines on how to treat a witness, nothing on ethics, etc. I’m thinking that in psychology there have general guidelines like having to debrief witnesses, definitions of diseases, etc and I just think this is something which should be campaigned for in this field – I know a handful of researchers do this, but there should be something for the wider research population. There aren’t even any peer reviewed journals!
Agricola wrote:I’m not
[quote=Agricola]I’m not saying that there aren’t people doing good research – both amateur and professional, but I stick by my comments on baselines, etc. The problem is that most, if not all researchers don’t have one point to measure anything by. There is not a common standard for research – there are no accepted definitions, no procedures for treating a suspected case, no guidelines on how to treat a witness, nothing on ethics, etc. I’m thinking that in psychology there have general guidelines like having to debrief witnesses, definitions of diseases, etc and I just think this is something which should be campaigned for in this field – I know a handful of researchers do this, but there should be something for the wider research population. There aren’t even any peer reviewed journals![/quote]
Peer reviewed journals, off the top of my head (I’m sure there are others): Journal of Parapsychology, European Journal of Parapsychology, SPR Journal, even ASSAP’s Anomaly is now peer reviewed!
Ethics & procedures: ASSAP, for one, has a Code of Conduct. They also run a training course giving full guidelines for investigating cases (where ethics and the scientific method play prominent roles) and how to treat witnesses.
Perhaps MysteriousBritain
Perhaps MysteriousBritain could pull together some technical notes or something – you guys seem to be experienced in this field? Although it would be a lot of work.
Agricola wrote:Perhaps
[quote=Agricola]Perhaps MysteriousBritain could pull together some technical notes or something – you guys seem to be experienced in this field? Although it would be a lot of work.[/quote]
Try the ASSAP website – some interesting stuff there.
Regarding standards of ghost
Regarding standards of ghost reports , you just need to use common sense.
You can start by excluding all stories that were never investigated by any paranormal investigator (eg. self reported, newspaper reports, much material from ghost books).
Then look at the investigated reports and see what methods they were using. If it is all ouija, mediums and orbs then you can safely ignore it.
Hopefully, you will be left with people who at least attempted a scientific investigation. Standards will vary, of course, but by looking at large numbers of cases and only looking at statistically significant trends (so ignoring one off cases and eccentric investigators), you should be able to correct for most of that.
Mysteryshopper
[quote=Mysteryshopper]Regarding standards of ghost reports , you just need to use common sense.
You can start by excluding all stories that were never investigated by any paranormal investigator (eg. self reported, newspaper reports, much material from ghost books).
Then look at the investigated reports and see what methods they were using. If it is all ouija, mediums and orbs then you can safely ignore it.[/quote]
Sorry but I don’t think you can ignore secondary reports. Any investigator worth their salt will do a review of the literature. If, for the sake of argument, Ian of this board said to me, Muncaster Castle ia haunted, and I went there, looked around and saw no ghosts, I would come away none the wiser. Whereas if I examined the literature, I would know that there is hightened activity in X room so could have a look at the causes of this.
Now I agree that it is unlikely that ouija boards, mediums or orbs are going to ever say anything useful, but if there is a high instance of orbs coming from one room, the literature would tell you this and you could rule it out scientifically and possibly even find the source of the ‘orbs’.
Agricola wrote:Sorry but I
[quote=Agricola]Sorry but I don’t think you can ignore secondary reports. Any investigator worth their salt will do a review of the literature. If, for the sake of argument, Ian of this board said to me, Muncaster Castle ia haunted, and I went there, looked around and saw no ghosts, I would come away none the wiser. Whereas if I examined the literature, I would know that there is hightened activity in X room so could have a look at the causes of this.
Now I agree that it is unlikely that ouija boards, mediums or orbs are going to ever say anything useful, but if there is a high instance of orbs coming from one room, the literature would tell you this and you could rule it out scientifically and possibly even find the source of the ‘orbs’.[/quote]
I think you misunderstand me. I’m talking about data reliable enough to draw useful scientific conclusions from. Obviously, a newspaper report can be used to find a case but you would still need to go and interview the witnesses yourself and then examine the site personally. From cases that I know of personally, newspaper reports are generally inaccurate, incomplete and sensationalised when it comes to the paranormal. All you can usefully deduce from them is that there might be something worth looking into and its general nature.
Also, cases where people use ouija and similar methods betray obvious assumptions, on the part of the investigators, about the supposed nature of hauntings. This puts a serious systematic bias into their results that is difficult to remove, even with statistical methods.
I agree common sense needs
I agree common sense needs to be used in judging the utility and truth of reports. That said, couldn’t newspaper reports and suchlike prove fertile ground for further investigation? Alone, they shouldn’t be taken as evidence but they can be good pointers to cases that need further (decent) investigation.
By this I mean archive and newspaper research, interviews, appeals and the like to see if there’s anything behind the report worth looking into.
Matt.H wrote:I agree
[quote=Matt.H]I agree common sense needs to be used in judging the utility and truth of reports. That said, couldn’t newspaper reports and suchlike prove fertile ground for further investigation?[/quote]
Yeh sure, I was talking about accumulating data from which to produce scientifically meaningful data. The problem is that most of the ghost reports that apparently support the popular ‘ghost = spirit’ idea come from just such sources and are used uncritically. Carefully investigated cases produce a noticeably different picture of hauntings.
It’s frustrating how you get
It’s frustrating how you get a real "wheat from the chaff" problem simply by the nature of how humans relate, articulate and record experiences.
It’s important to be as impartial and crticial as possible, but it can be tempting to take an unsuitably cynical approach when faced with reams of testimonies and reports
They do say everything has a
They do say everything has a source.
Here’s an example, the piece I did on Gef the Mongoose came from a book, so I went through all the sources and, as there are no witnesses known to be alive had to resort to the newspapers, but by looking at the book accounts and the newspapers, was able to build up a picture. With this sort of story, there’s little else you can do but read what’s available and draw conclusions. As society changes and grows, there is always room to reinterpret things.
Buggerit, i’ll do the TV
Buggerit, i’ll do the TV historian job. Whats the pay like ? Does it include a company mystery machine and a good dental plan and a deal at Bupa ? Can i come home at night ? Do i just have to make things up or do they have to be real ?
mixing beer with prescription painkillers is really the way forward it makes you think so clearly
I would point out that all
Perhaps it would be helpful to give an example of how history can contribute to research.
Over the past 2 1/2 years, I have been researching a Legend here in the U.S. called the "Beautiful Stranger" of the Hotel del Coronado, in Coronado, California on the west Coast. The Legend as classically told is wrong it turns out. We received this information mediumistically in conversations with the Beautiful Stranger herself. The medium has been doing this for over twenty years and is one of the few I have worked with capabled of extended conversations of this sort.
The point is that the information had to be developed with the assistance of over 20 historians and subject matter experts, working in over a dozen fields residing in 10 different States and in Canada. The Legend is wrong, and we now believe we have the story right. We were quite careful to score all the anecdotal statements made by the medium on specificity, correlation to our mutual backgrounds and relevance to discovered history. The complexity and depth of this historical investigation is difficult to communicate. But it does impress, especially when you consider that some of our best information was received in Feb 2006 during our first conversation with the Beautiful Stranger, who died in 1892.
I have personally used mediumship as an adjuct in investigations dating back as far as 1974. I and other professional historians have found that some intriguing insights may be gained into the past through careful and judicious use of talented invidivuals.
The problem from my perspective is that most mediums are not worth the time it takes to say their names. This seems to be true everywhere. So it is not surprising that most people believe all their work is unreliable. I certainly agree this can be true. But in 40 years of research I have been fortunate enough to work with some quite remarkable people and because of this, I have had some great successes.
So please consider this research is multidimensional and not easily cast in black and white.
Hi PhenomInvestigator,
I
Hi PhenomInvestigator,
I think the problem is that meduiumship and the ability to communicate with the dead is not a scientifically recognised and accepted ability. Therefore involving mediums, regardless of how good they in any form of research not specifically designed to investigate mediumship, doe in my eyes invalidate the work or make at best make it all anecdotal.
Now don’t get me wong, I really believe that there are mediums out there having genuine strange experiences, but are they actually talking to the dead? That we can’t prove yet and may never be able to.
I would point out that all
I would point out that all work in the ‘paranormal’ is unrecognized by the mainstream scientific community to varying degrees. While research parapsychology has explored topics such as General ESP (inclusive of telepathy and clairvoyance, e.g.) and psychokinesis, there is far greater variance on such topics as hauntings, apparitions, aports/deports and mediumship.
That said, there is now useful work that has been done in the U.S. (and I believe as well by now in the U.K., although I can’t think of the citations at the moment)
The work of Dr Gary Schwartz at the University of Arizona and more recently Dr. Julie Beschel at Windbridge Institute, are good examples of well-controlled laboratory research inquiries into mediumship.
We have the anecdotal problem in most forms of work involving humans. The ‘true telepathy’ experiment was devised by Dr. Betty McMann at Rhine Institute in the late 1930s precisely to address these concerns. Most of the time however we do have the issue which turns into "is it telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, retrocognition, after-death communications (ADC) or fraud?" We have to carefully examine the nature of the mediumship in context, the controls in place, the probability the medium could have received the information beforehand and so on to determine the potential credibility of the information. With historical mediumship as previously described, we are also looking for consistency with either existing or even better currently undeveloped historical facts.
I would ask what constitutes ‘scientific evidence’ if one considers this to be too anecdotal information? I would suggest that most so-called ‘evidence’ proposed by the ghost hunting community today is no more proof when subjected to the rigor of the scientific method. So I am unsure if the criticism of mediumship truly has merit at least on those grounds.
Lastly and perhaps most importantly, the mediumship in question is conversational in nature. Even research parapsychologists miss the importance of this point, which is why I stress it again here. I would presume that most readers in this forum have never witnessed this form of mediumship. It provides the unqiue opportunity to question, and more important, to trick the communicating individual. We find they are able to keep up with this interrogation without becoming confused. Those with a background in forensic psychology should immediately appreciate the implications to the research investigator.
PhenomInvestigator
[quote=PhenomInvestigator]Lastly and perhaps most importantly, the mediumship in question is conversational in nature. Even research parapsychologists miss the importance of this point, which is why I stress it again here. I would presume that most readers in this forum have never witnessed this form of mediumship. It provides the unqiue opportunity to question, and more important, to trick the communicating individual. We find they are able to keep up with this interrogation without becoming confused. Those with a background in forensic psychology should immediately appreciate the implications to the research investigator.[/quote]
What exactly is your method and how does it differ from other ways of doing medimship research, please?
PhenomInvestigator wrote:
I
[quote=PhenomInvestigator]I would ask what constitutes ‘scientific evidence’ if one considers this to be too anecdotal information? I would suggest that most so-called ‘evidence’ proposed by the ghost hunting community today is no more proof when subjected to the rigor of the scientific method. So I am unsure if the criticism of mediumship truly has merit at least on those grounds. [/quote]
I can’t argue with you there as I agree and I try to be equally critical. However, as I stated above, I do believe that some mediums have genuine experiences and it is a valid field of study. However, I am not convinced yet that they are having supernatural (for want of a better word) experiences or that they are contacting the dead. I do struggle to accept groups that totally accept mediumship at face value and then use that as a tool to prove or investigate hauntings.
Your right that I have no experience in conversational mediumship and would love to here more.
Thanks for your comments.
Thanks for your comments. Historical mediumship depends on a proxy sitter as opposed to an absent or actual sitter which is typical in classical mediumship. The medium is forced to develop information in the absence of feedback. This technique has been adopted in lab research in the past decade. I was doing this in the late 1970s (and was by no means the only person doing so).
Conversational mediumship must account for a dialog. It is not a one-way communication as is more common in classic mediumship. At the same time we are careful not to lead, direct or cue the medium. We record everything on video and audio so the conversations can be analyzed post hoc for indications of subtle cuing that might not have been obvious at the time, to study the participants’ body language for clues as to sources of behaviors, and for purposes of statement transcriptions. Of these only the last, transcriptions, are common with more conventional mediumship research.
Conventional mediumship research uses sitter rating methods to establish accuracy. We have no sitters per se so this is not possible with historical mediumship. Instead we rate each statement on a 10 point specifity scale originally developed for research into reincarnation cases at the University of Virgina. We further check the proxy sitter and medium backgrounds for correllated events consistent with statements made by the medium. Lastly, of course, we check for consistency with known or developed historical facts. The more statements that are highly specific, consistent with history and uncorrellated with the proxy sitter and medium experiences, the more we are tempted to believe we have useful information.
A further word about the viability of mediums, and I believe we are in acord on this point: it is the case that we have not proven communication with the deceased to the exclusion of other potential information sources. We believe we can rule out fraud based on our controls which I have not outlined here intentionally and our analytical methods. Pragmatically we must accept that the information could be the result of precognition, postcognition, telepathy, clairvoyance or after-death communications or a combination of these. For our purposes we truly don’t care from the historical perspective. What we truly care about from the historical perspective, is our ability to seek out unknown information and validate it thus potentially although not certainly assisting a possible discarnate and definitely furthering our understanding of true history.
PhenomInvestigator wrote:
A
[quote=PhenomInvestigator]
A further word about the viability of mediums, and I believe we are in acord on this point: it is the case that we have not proven communication with the deceased to the exclusion of other potential information sources. We believe we can rule out fraud based on our controls which I have not outlined here intentionally and our analytical methods. Pragmatically we must accept that the information could be the result of precognition, postcognition, telepathy, clairvoyance or after-death communications or a combination of these. For our purposes we truly don’t care from the historical perspective. What we truly care about from the historical perspective, is our ability to seek out unknown information and validate it thus potentially although not certainly assisting a possible discarnate and definitely furthering our understanding of true history.
[/quote]
Has any of this research been published in any peer reviewed journal?
Are the proxy sitters aware
Are the proxy sitters aware of the information that they are trying to obtain from the mediums?
Proxy sitters are unaware of
Proxy sitters are unaware of topics in most all modern controlled laboratory mediumship experiments.
Conversation Mediumship results published
I am working on a Journal article at this time that will probably appear this year. The data has been satisfactorily substantiated to a level of historical accuracy only recently.
PhenomInvestigator wrote:
I
[quote=PhenomInvestigator]
I am working on a Journal article at this time that will probably appear this year. The data has been satisfactorily substantiated to a level of historical accuracy only recently.[/quote]
That’s great. Can you let us know when it is published and where? I’d really like to read it.