Wow... good reading, quite funny too
Safe to say, you no believe in ghosts then!!!
Ok, although i am a 'dangerous idiot' and 'deluded' i like to think that there is going to be something after death apart from worms or flames!!
Anyway thank you for cheering me up with your post, i am off to get protective goggles on so i can use my spoon!!
x
Last edited by Tiggerbabe; 23rd-May-2008 at 07:14 AM. Reason: Whole of previous post quoted!
Saw this on the news this morning. Of course the spiritualists are up in arms about it.
BBC NEWS | UK | Row over spiritualist regulations
I'm really sorry to read some of the posts on this thread especially when it deals with such a sensitive matter. Of course, Barry's posts don't surprise me at all, and it is typically closed minded of him to dismiss the whole concept of what mediums do based on zero experience of being involved in a reading - I also find it distasteful of him to infer that people who do believe that a medium can offer some comfort 'may occasionally be stupid, weak, vulnerable and gullible.' or that mediums themselves 'depend for their income on fooling people' or that they are 'lying to vulnerable and distressed people, tricking them, or mistakenly telling them things which are completely untrue'. I am however, not going to get involved in a slanging match and will simply just tell you of my experience: the open-minded people amongst you can then make your own minds up.
First off I would say that there is without doubt in my mind that some people do deceive vulnerable people and try to pass themselves off as mediums, and do make money from them claiming that they can connect with people in the after life. But, from my experience I would say that these people are in the minority.
The majority of people who go to see mediums (again, only based on my own experience) do so via a personal recommendation. And the logic here would dictate that if they didn't do something that helped people, and didn’t offer some comfort, and didn’t give some form of reading that could give verifiable evidence of some connection, then surely people wouldn't pass on the recommendation...?
In any event, I do know two mediums personally and can say without doubt that these people do not do it for the money. They both have day jobs and both see people in their spare time and charge £30 for an hours reading – so they are hardly going to get rich off that are they! I can also say that these two people are two of the nicest people I know and genuinely care about what they do and are genuinely interested in the people who go to see them. As RubyRed says, quite often afterwards, they will sit and have a cup of tea or something and just chat – now that is hardly indicative of a penny pinching charlatan who has just deceived someone is it?
In my case I went with my Mother, and we purposely went to a medium that neither of us had either met or even heard of before – and the recommendation came from a friend of my Mother’s. For my Mother it was a great comfort. 4 years ago, my Father passed away, and although he was terminally ill, he went very suddenly and this left my Mother feeling completely lost. They had been married for 47 years and he was her soul mate; they were really enjoying their twilight years together and were still so much in love it was beautiful to see – and then he was gone…
I went to the reading to firstly, give her support but also to record everything that went on. Like many of you, despite my personal relationships with the mediums I’ve previously mentioned, I’ve always been sceptical of such things and so wanted to experience it first hand without the focus being on me – as, an independent observer if you like. Anyway, what I heard and what I experienced was extraordinary: Of course there were general things about family, jobs and holidays (which, by the way, were all true, even down to specific dates..) and then there were details that were unbelievably specific. For example: Mum had fallen off her bike the week before (no, no obvious visible indication that she had, such as cuts or bruises or limp..) and the medium had picked up on this and even explained the circumstances in detail. Mum’s cat had knocked over a blue Murano glass vase two weeks ago and this was also explained in detail including the description of a ‘Blue, tall, vase, like Murano glass…’ along with the instruction that ‘you should put the vase back where it belongs’ – Mum had moved it from the bedroom to the lounge the day before the cat had knocked it over. Mum had misplaced her reading glasses the day before going to see the medium and the medium picked up on this and also gave the instruction to look under the ‘wicker chair’ when she got home – and sure enough when she did, there they were…
At this point, there was no doubt in my mind that my Father (or his spirit, or whatever you would like to call it) was in the room with us and it was he that was relaying all this to the medium – she even gave a description of both his appearance and his character that was incredibly accurate. She then explained that he was showing her the sea and explaining that he was ‘home’ (my Father was born in a village by the sea in Croatia and it was his great love and his wish to go back there to live one day..) He then showed her his plants, flowers and vegetables and a long garden with a path running through the centre (my Father rented two allotments that backed onto our back garden and they were his pride and joy: sure enough he grew flowers, plants and vegetables there and the two allotments were bisected by a path running through the middle of them.) She then said that My Father was showing her some other people that had passed on that wanted to say hello: Joe (named by the medium) my parent’s next door neighbour who had died two years ago and Frankie (again, named by the medium) a close family friend who had died 8 years ago. She then gave the names of 3 other relatives: now, you need to remember that my family is Eastern European, so whereas you could argue that ‘Joe’ and Frankie’ were ‘guessable’ names Slaviča, Allenka and Dobrilla certainly aren’t AND she wrote the names down with the correct spellings…
Perhaps the most moving aspect of the reading was my Father recounting his funeral and the details relating to that: The colour of his coffin - which we had sprayed shiny black with silver handles – because my Father had never been able to afford a new car during his lifetime and had always wanted a shiny new black car with lots of chrome.., the hanky in his inside pocket - we buried my Father in his favourite suit (only suit actually..) and put his favourite hanky in the inside pocket (he was a Flintstone’s fan – so it was a Fred Flintstones hanky..) and finally, down to the flowers Mum threw on top of the coffin before the soil was laid over. Again, you would have guessed Roses or something, but no, the medium accurately named them as Lilly Of The Valley which was the flower my parents had at their wedding as it was my Mum’s favourite flower…
Now you can dismiss this if you like and you can try to explain the immense detail that the medium went into as just trickery if it makes you feel better or means you don’t have to confront issues YOU may have. BUT I was there, I wrote all of the detail down as the medium said them and I still have the transcript. I can also confirm that we had never met her before and that neither my Mum or myself were offering information.
There is no doubt in my mind that my Father was in that room with us. He told my Mum (via the medium) that he was with her every minute of every day and that if she felt a breeze on her cheek or neck (which she had commented on to me…) it was him kissing her. He told her that she was never alone and also told her to go on and live her life: to visit her grandchildren in the US and to go on holiday and to meet with her friends and to STOP mourning him: he was happy where he was and was looking forward to the day they would be together again. And the result? My Mother for the first time in 4 years is now sleeping through the night - she has also become more sociable, is wearing brighter colours and is far happier in herself.
Now, you try and tell me how she was ‘taken advantage of’, or how ‘stupid and weak’ she was to believe what that awful, ‘lying’, money grabbing medium was telling her…
That reading changed her life, and if I’m honest, it opened my mind to the possibility of what may exist beyond this mortal coil. As for you, you believe what you want, but at least I was there and experienced it, and am not making blanket judgments and statements based on ignorance..
I have had a personal experience, of someone who listened to and believed 'readings' from a medium who gave the person messages from the person's parents. Despite professional advice to the contrary, the medium's mumblings were listened to instead and that person is now £15,000 worse off (almost certainly more) - not to mention the medium's fees.
So now we know what personal anecdotes are worth in deciding whether mediums really do contact the dead - NOTHING.
The unchallengeable fact is that not one medium can demonstrate the truth of their claims, and yet if their claims were true it would be a trivial thing to accomplish.
Heresay (2nd hand 'evidence') could be viewed as being worth 'nothing', so you're right, in your example it is pretty worthless given your prejudice on this subject. Thanks for your input though.
As for the 'unchallengable facts'. It's a very simple thing to explain. I don't think there is any question IMO that a person's belief and positive affirmation of the possibility of a connection (you can also read: an open mind) to an alternate existence helps to establish that connection. In a tested environment, and particularly with individuals who have a negative expectation of the outcome, this may create a barrier.
You, almost certainly, will say that this is very convenient - but you cannot discount (you obviously will though..) the fact that it is possible given the wealth of evidence to suggest that some mediums do have an ability that cannot be explained with regard to our current understanding of the physical World. And by 'evidence' I mean first hand experience like mine: a reading in what I considered to be a fairly controlled environment with someone who was not the focus of the reading, who documented everything that was said and with a medium who was not known by either party.
I think it's best to keep an open mind on these things rather than to make blanket statements based on no direct experience and based on one's own prejudices... but that's just me.
If I were a charlatan medium I would keep files of clippings from the local newspaper and attend lots of funerals, chat around, listen and take notes. I would chat to clients to get clues to other clients and keep notes of those conversations too. Gossiping with people like local hair stylists or having relatives in such a business or in the funeral business would be good too. I could find out quite a lot from Internet searches, the voting register, old census details. A bit of cold reading skill with the odd concrete detail like the name of the pet budgie thrown in can work very well. The kids / grandkids names can be a strong clue to parents / grandparents / family names. I am sure those in the business have many other methods.
Blimey, these 'charlatan mediums' don't half work hard: all that research, documentation, networking and coniving. Got to be worth £30 of anyone's money for an hour...
Alternatively, it would be easier if you had a genuine gift and felt a vocation to share that with people who were seeking comfort: taking very little money, or in fact no money at all, and then even sitting down with them afterwards for a chat. Which appears to be true of the vast majority of mediums in this country who belong to spiritualist churches, who are honest, decent people and who neither advertise or promote what they do, and who instead simply respond to enquiries that have come through personal recomendations..
The lady I saw certainly wasn't money grabbing, she took a small donation from me, and I mean incomparison to what some people earn per hour it was very little considering the time I spent with her. She didn't advertise her service, I heard about her from a member of my family and I invited her to speak to me. Yes everyone's experience is different, and I know that my experience was completely different from Rocky's, but in my opinon,she was a decent lady, we didn't connect by way of the sitting, but we spent time afterwards, along with other family members talking, which was quite fruitful and comforting.
I am curious though as to how the change in the law will work, I thought that if someone practised in this area they had a 'gift' so how can that be policed? By the way this is a genuine question, I don't know how it would work.
Last edited by rubyred; 26th-May-2008 at 11:57 PM.
if you love the life you live then you'll get a lot more done
Almost as unlikely as someone spending years developing their talent, spending a lot of money learning how to teach it, then spending a lot to buy a franchise, and then giving out free entries. What was I thinking?
The random strangers get the standard cold reading techiques which work well enough to earn a living. It would be like my example business not extensively promoting it but relying mostly on personal recommendations.
30 pounds an hour?
Police in Hanover, Germany, say an 85-year-old woman paid a spiritualist 10,000 marks after the medium said her dead husband needed the money to pay off gambling debts he incurred in heaven. Apparently emboldened by his success, the mystic then told her he needed 100,000 marks for her husband to buy a plot of land in heaven. Police arrested the 23-year-old man after he accepted the money in a police sting.
Were you thinking? Dance is a proven market where the research has been done - you are talking about a market that only emerges as people die - and unless you're killing them yourself - thats hard to predict.
How many personal recommendations do you think you would get on cold reading techniques plus some research? Wouldn't be enough I'm sure, and you'd hardly be the worlds gifts to con artists at a few £30 an hour gigs every so often.The random strangers get the standard cold reading techiques which work well enough to earn a living. It would be like my example business not extensively promoting it but relying mostly on personal recommendations.
This news quote is about a con artist pretending to be a medium not a medium who is a con artist - surely theres a difference, and its that difference the new law addresses. What this "23 year old" did has always been illegal.Originally Posted by news
Please could someone explain the difference between a charlatan medium, and a non-charlatan medium?
You might be interested to hear about the million dollar prize for the first medium to demonstrate their powers without cheating:
James Randi Educational Foundation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Last edited by SteveK; 27th-May-2008 at 05:53 AM. Reason: spelling
There is a TV series on at present called, I believe, "Pushing up daisies." One of its premises is that if the dead could speak it would be much easier to solve murders.
I cannot see why anyone would exert themselves for a mere million if they had a line on where all of the loot / treasure is buried.
Parliament seems to have decided that the services of a medium are "for entertainment only".
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