Surveyed afterwards, a fifth of the volunteers believed they had witnessed the paranormal. Over eight seances involving 152 people, volunteers sat around a table in the dark holding hands while luminous painted bells, balls and maracas moved before their eyes. With colleague Andy Nyman, co-creator of Derren Brown's television illusions, Wiseman used contemporary descriptions of Victorian seances to recreate an encounter with spirits in a disused prison. Wiseman's work has also shown that we are all extremely susceptible to the power of suggestion. TV illusionist Derren Brown has often used his act to denounce paranormal practices. People tend to remember the correct details in a seance but overlook statements or events that provide no evidence of paranormal powers. Professor Richard Wiseman, a psychologist and magician, says my response to this lucky guess is typical. But the name was right and, even though it was a common name among that person's generation, it was a briefly chilling moment. Their relation to me was utterly wrong, as were details of their health. She was also skilled at the Barnum effect – the use of statements that tend to be true for everyone.Īmong dozens of guesses and misses, there was just one hit – the correct name of a dead relative. And then someone who was more of an uncle figure. The 40-year-old became an older person who felt young at heart. If she hit a dud – the suggestion that she was in the presence of a 40-year-old uncle of mine – she quickly widened it out. Like all mediums, she was skilled at cold reading – the use of probable guesses and picking up of cues to steer her in the right direction. Last week I spent 40 minutes with a telephone spiritualist who passed on messages from four dead people. The tricks and techniques used by mediums have been exposed many times by people such as James Randi, Derren Brown and Jon Dennis, creator of the Bad Pyschics website. Today spiritualism thrives in more than 350 churches in Britain. Even the admission of the Fox sisters in 1888 that they had faked it all failed to crush the movement. Spiritualism attracted some of the great thinkers of the day – including biologist Alfred Russel Wallace and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who spent his latter years promoting spiritualism in between knocking out Sherlock Holmes stories. Within months a new religion had emerged – spiritualism – a mixture of liberal, nonconformist values and fireside chats with dead people. Word spread and soon the girls were demonstrating their skills to 400 locals in the town hall. That night, the Fox sisters chatted to a ghost haunting their New York State home, using a code of one tap for yes, two gaps for no. To the astonishment of their parents they got a reply. On 31 March 1848, the girls announced they were going to contact the spirit world. Salvation came from two American sisters, 11-year-old Kate and 14-year-old Margaret Fox. In an era of unprecedented scientific discovery, some churchgoers began to seek evidence for their beliefs. Interest peaked in the 19th century, a time when religion and rationality were clashing like never before. As far back as Leviticus, the Old Testament God actively forbade people to seek out mediums. Humanity has been attempting to commune with the dead since ancient times.
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