Spirits Not Available to Mediums

September 23, 2004

Mediums who claim to receive messages from beyond the grave find that the line goes dead in controlled experimental conditions, a study has showed.

Experts put five professional mediums to the test while ensuring they could not cheat or use psychological tricks.

They found that none were able to produce accurate readings when isolated from "sitters" in a separate room.

Professor Richard Wiseman, from the University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield, one of two psychologists who carried out the study, said: "We tested five professional mediums, all of whom make their living from this kind of thing, and none of them were accurate.

"I think these people are not frauds, but there's a whole lot of processes people take to mediumistic readings. You can give away information just by nodding or shaking your head.

"Mediums make interaction work, and people tend to react positively to very generalised statements like 'you have a lot of untapped creative potential'. But when you strip all that away you don't have anything."

Professor Wiseman and Dr Ciaran O'Keeffe, from Liverpool Hope University, engaged five volunteer sitters to be given readings by the mediums, who took turns contacting their deceased relatives.

Each medium was placed in a studio while the sitters sat out of sight and earshot in another room. Taking each sitter in turn, without knowing who they were, all five mediums attempted to give them readings.

Their comments were recorded, jumbled up, and then played back to the sitters in random order. The aim was to see whether the sitters could recognise the accuracy of their own readings without knowing which ones they were listening to.

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