Do you believe there's another realm and medium's can tap into it?

[Julia2016]

I do. I believe the energy of the dead never dies, it is with us but in another realm. Sometimes it comes through to our realm. AIBU?

I am a bit sceptical about medium's though. Interested to hear other people's view on this.

Doris Stokes had thousands of people fooled till she was exposed as a total fraud. Made a lot of money.

No. They are just preying on people who are desperate to hear from lost loved ones.

@Estampie "There should be a sticky at the top of these threads saying YOU CAN'T PROVE A NEGATIVE, YOU CAN'T PROVE A NEGATIVE, YOU CAN'T PROVE A NEGATIVE over and over."

Indeed. And another one that says "If you assert something that goes against everything we know of physics then it is up to YOU to provide evidence"

It's funny, isn't it, the spirits never come through saying 'hello, my name is Terry Bishop and I can see my daughter Angela Taylor there in row 2, please can you tell her, her Mick's been playing away with the woman from the co-op, I followed him last Thursday, you know what with me being a spirit and everything' it's always 'has anyone ever been in a ford mondeo, or eaten a bit of fruit cake, someone here with a name with a vowel in it wants me to tell someone about an ill defined object that was lost sometime between now and 1976'

The medium said to me that they could see a man in my life called Steve 😂. Can you think of a more generic name?! I'd wager most people know a Steve but I don't...well a random guy in my office was called Steve but he didn't play a big role in my life!

I would actually consider paying to see a satirical one-woman show about a medium whose opening monologue began

'Has anyone ever been in a ford mondeo, or eaten a bit of fruit cake, someone here with a name with a vowel in it wants me to tell someone about an ill defined object that was lost sometime between now and 1976

😀😀

'She knew things she COULDN'T HAVE KNOWN! About my first date with Derek in a Ford Mondeo, or was it a Mazda hatchback? Anyway, his mother made a lovely fruit cake...'

If anyone is actually interested, Hilary Mantel has a wonderful, dark novel, Beyond Black, about a medium who does a grim outer London circuit of function rooms and psychic 'fayres', and which features a brilliantly cruel postmortem appearance from Princess Diana.

Now, you were supposed to nod along, decide that office Steve must have a bigger role in your destiny than you'd realised if the spirit of Auntie Mavis said so, gone into work the next day, stared open-mouthed at Steve, who concluded you fancied him, and had a torrid affair that ended both your marriages. Hence making Auntie Mavis's prediction come true...

I do believe some people have excellent intuition and can pick up on someone's 'energy' (for want of a better word) but I don't believe the dead are able to talk to us.
There are also strange occurrences that we don't understand. Almost all cultures believe that you see your relatives who have passed on before you die. Many people have been witness to this when their loved ones were dying.

Personally I believe that given practice and determination a lot of people could become a half decent pianist or racing driver, in spite of no natural talent.

Maybe the development that mediums get in these circles is a honing of imagination and reading people and it appears as a 'talent'.
And yet people get specific information sometimes, look at the lady that discovered Richard the third's grave.

I don't know and also don't want to know either way.

I would love to hear the story - I've run out of my own home once!

There was a point about 20 years ago when Colin Fry and Derek whatshisname were really big and had shows on at tea time, my parents were really into it and we'd watch it as a family most nights, i gradually came to the horrifying realisation that if this stuff was real it meant my dead relatives were hanging around watching my every move, which at the time was my teenage years and included a frankly astonishing amount of wanking 😂

What CurlewKate said ^^

Plus - from observation - it's always likely the subject has provided the info themselves, and while they'll forget what they said in all the "excitement" the host certainly doesn't and feeds it back as if it came from them

@cooljerk

"If ghosts are real, as I believe that they are, then that does open up a lot of questions about what happens after death. I also don't think science fully understands consciousness"

Some of the tentative new scientific theories can offer an explanation for ghosts that doesn't require life after death. IF there are multiple realities, then it is possible that "ghosts" are in one of the parallel universes and occasionally step into ours. You may appear as a "ghost" in another universe whilst living in this one. The possibilities are endless and fascinating.

I think that was ended - at least in his name - in 2015 RadStag?

Which would be understandaable since it had been going 50 years, and if nobody who could prove their "powers" had turned up in half a century there probably wasn't much point

My understanding is that other people are NOT "wholly incapable" of developing psychic and mediumship skills, and it's, definitely not the norm for people to claim that that's the case. The entire philosophy of Spiritualism is that anyone can develop the ability to connect to the spirit realms if they put in the work and effort. It's much more akin to your 'piano' example: the philosophy of Spiritualism posits that some people have a more natural/inherent/greater talent, but that anyone can learn the ability themselves if they try. They may not become as talented or skilled as those with the greater talent, but the thinking is that they'll at least be able to do it on a rudimentary level.

Spirit communication is not something that's broadly presented as only something that a select few are able to do. If any individual claims this is the case then I'd say they are just wanting to make themselves feel special.

Someone mentioned Phillipa Langley, who "found" the body of Richard 111. No she didn't. She campaigned for and fund raised for a dig in a place that had already been identified by historians and archaeologists as a potential site. She may well say she had a "feeling". But it was a feeling fuelled by other people's solid work in this realm.

What's that mean - 'another realm'? And what do you mean by 'energy'? Do you think that personality is immortal? In other words, you believe that Richard III and my nan and Elvis are all identifiably themselves, and continue to have a self-aware existence?

If you have an idea how that works, it would really help to tell us. And if you don't, why do you believe it?

I'd also add that I don't think it's entirely fair or accurate to state that science, in its entirety, is either in opposition to the possibility of a spirit world/afterlife or that there's no form of scientific evidence at all.

The Windbridge Institute undertakes testing of mediums under controlled laboratory conditions - this PDF from the founder of the institute describes the results.

WRC_wellactually.pdf

Uncle Harold: “There’s no good evidence for mediumistic or psychic abilities.”

Me: “Well, actually, like I said earlier, I have performed accuracy testing with mediums that provided statistically significant evidence that they were able to report accurate and specific information about deceased people under controlled laboratory conditions. And regarding psychic abilities in general, there have been dozens of peer-reviewed journal articles published demonstrating the existence of psi (telepathy, clairvoyance or remote viewing, precognition, presentiment, and mind-matter interactions) and providing evidence supportive of the survival of consciousness after death. Back in 1996, universi ty statistician Jessica Utts examined two decades of studies including government sponsored research and concluded that psychic functioning had been well established. In 2018, psychologist Etzel Cardeña reviewed recent/updated meta-analyses and also found cumulative support for the reality of psi.”

@SorcererGaheris the Windbridge Institure does specifically exist to investigate "mediumship". You can't help wonder what the husband and wife team who run it would do if they proved conclusively that mediums are entirely fraudulent? 🤔

@MargoLivebetter Well, to be fraudulent means that someone is deliberately/intentionally deceiving/lying. Quite a few mediums really believe in what they do, are convinced that they can connect to spirits. These specific mediums are sincere people acting in good faith and I would post that they outnumber those acting fraudulently.

So even if no potential evidence of genuine mediumship was found, that wouldn't point to every single medium being fraudulent.

I don't disagree, but if you set up an organisation specifically about mediumship, then you could possibly be subject to confirmation bias!

I did not mean to contend that skills can not be "learned", that point was more a query as to why, prior to any formal training, Doris down the road was apparently born with not only the ability, but also the means to "connect with the spirit realm", despite being physiologically not all that different to anyone else.

My interest extends only to how these alleged connections are made, the mechanics of it, which apparatus is used, and a degree of curiosity as to why Doris has this ability inherently, according to Doris anyway, but other people do not.

Almost anyone can bang out a tune on a piano, because a piano is a physical object and most humans have some capacity to learn at least the rudiments of a skill, but I'm not sure how on earth you could "teach" someone to "connect to the spirit realm". Using what? A USB cable?

By 'another realm' I take that to mean other dimensions, so yes, I believe there are other dimensions.

Do I believe that mediums have some sort of special access so they can commune with the dead? They might think they can, and they might be able to hoodwink other people into believing it as well, but can they actually do it? No. Of course they can't.

No she did have a massive feeling about his precise burial spot as soon as she walked into the car park. Read her book, it's well documented and she even placed an image of King Richard on the tarmac that later revealed his body - this is pictured in the book before digger had even struck tarmac. She also lobbied for the archaeologists to further excavate this spot.

It's on the channel 4 documentary too, so you can see it as it happened. You don't have to have faith in that as it's all been captured.

If that's not finding him I don't know what is.

Maybe she could get cracking with Lord Lucan, Shergar, and Jimmy Hoffa next.