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Posted: 16-09-2003 00:53 Post subject:

What's the current consensus on the hoaxiness of the Fox sisters who founded modern spiritualism?

Is it generally assumed that the one who claimed that it was all a hoax was telling the truth, or is the majority view that she was just embittered in some fashion?

Posted: 26-09-2003 13:02 Post subject:

The current Hoaxiness consensus depends on which camp you are standing in.

The Fox sisters had been tested - and when they could find no evidence of trickery the investigations became more difficult - or perhaps more scientific. Anyway, a committee consisting entirley of women was set up so the girls could be stripped and searched. This results were that they appeared to be entirely genuine. Even when they were made to stand on pillows with their ankles tied together and their hands secured the rapping continued from the walls, ceilings and floor. I think this was in 1850.

By 1888, both sisters had suffered a hard life, lost husbands and were destitute and it is written that they "sank together into a life of drunken squalor"

They were paid $1500 dollars for the admission and demonstration of how their toe cracking bounced off the walls and sounded like raps. A gew days later the statement of trickery was retracted.

If you have ever seen a GOOD medium at work, whether they were a hoax or not seems irrelevant. The research they encouraged into the paranormal has been well worth while.

Posted: 06-10-2003 11:29 Post subject:

Here's something that may interest you -

the other week I went to see trance mediumship at a Spiritualist Church. Bizarre. I still can't make up my mind what I actually saw. Supposedly it's when the medium goes into a trance and spirits come in and borrow the medium's body. But was it this or play acting? Or letting in archetypes? Or was the medium schizophrenic and his other personalities come through when he's in a certain state. It was the strangest thing I have ever experienced.

Anyone else ever seen this done? Or can do it themselves? wince

Posted: 08-10-2003 11:29 Post subject:

Hey Dansette,

Trance channelling can be real. Recently I interviewed Gordon Smith (Medium & spiritualist from UK) and he pretty well summed up the current "trend" towards trance channelling.... this is his words... talking about his visits to development circles etc. Warning: It is uneditted

GORDON: "Some people sit (in trance) and again it is to get attention, “I have come from the Nth Realm to help you Earth People… and so on..” and it just doesn’t make sense. I say to them, "What is that nonsense you are sprouting?"

In a real trance where you have linked with a spirit guide or a higher being there has to be a bloody good content to what they are saying before I would allow that person to continue. If it is just all this nice ‘we bring you love and light’ - so what? Get out, you have made this connection and gone to this effort to say something trite like that? You don’t want that...

You are looking to have a connection with a being that has a purpose. There has to be something in the content of what they are saying or expressing that has to cause a feeling or a reaction in the people they are saying it to. Nine tenths of this stuff is just garbage. And I am the first one to admit it as a medium. I know that there is a lot of rubbish surrounding what we do. At the core of it there is real stuff. In trance people’s relatives can sometimes come through and speak to them which is a much closer connection, because they can ask questions and have a conversation. And it is not just “I have your son here…” You are giving them the space to come in and do their own thing. That is really trance mediumship."

And that is straight from the mediums mouth. I agree with Gordon that possibly 99% of the channelling you see is imagination or a clearing out of the psyche - but the other 1% is something special.

Posted: 11-10-2003 16:34 Post subject:

I would recommend the reading of Joe Fisher's The Siren Call of Hungry Ghosts. Basically, if you believe a medium is channelling a spirit, do you believe the spirit is what/who they purport to be?

Posted: 04-05-2005 19:44 Post subject:

A few days ago, a small bruise appeared on the inside of my elbow, like the ones I usually get after giving a blood sample. It had disappeared by today, but I had to go to the doc for treatment to a burn on my hand.

While I was there, the doc looked at my computer records, and realised I was overdue for a blood test, so took a sample there and then.

Did my body somehow anticipate this action, and create the bruise as a way of making it known? There is a possible explanation in that I had been thinking for some time of going to the doc's about the burn (which actually happened last week), and although I had consciously forgotten about the blood test, my sub-conscious would have known of it, and perhaps produced the bruise in a similar fashion to that of the stigmata which appear on some very religious folk.

Ho hum, I hear you cry, very interesting... Rolling Eyes

But what's it got to do with this thread?

Well, I don't get many Fortean occurences in my life (unless you count coincidences) but one other possible one is described in my post on the previous page - and that also concerned a blood sample!

(Which, if nothing else, is a coincidence! Very Happy

)

Posted: 30-01-2009 17:29 Post subject:

Posted: 02-03-2009 23:30 Post subject:

Man murdered make-up artist wife

A spiritualist minister from East Sussex has been jailed for life after being found guilty of murdering his make-up artist wife.

David Chenery-Wickens, 52, of Duddleswell, denied murdering Diane, 48, and dumping her body. She went missing in January 2008.

He told Lewes Crown Court she had planned to disappear to escape financial and work worries.

Chenery-Wickens was told he would serve a minimum of 18 years in jail.

Mrs Chenery-Wickens' decomposed body was found in an area of woodland, thick with brambles, off Worth Lane, Little Horsted, near Uckfield, last May.

The prosecution was unable to say how, where and exactly when Mrs Chenery-Wickens died because of the length of time her body was exposed to the elements, but it said evidence pointed to her being murdered on 22 January last year.

The court heard Chenery-Wickens killed his wife after she began to uncover his sexual and financial lies.

etc...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/sussex/7912212.stm

Posted: 03-03-2009 02:11 Post subject:

I'm sure I recognise her. Spooky feeling I worked with her years ago.

Posted: 09-08-2009 19:34 Post subject:

TV tonight:

Revelations: Talking to the Dead
Channel 4 from 7:00pm to 8:00pm

Richard Alwyn provides an intimate look at a Spiritualist church in east London, and the parish members who believe that death is the beginning of a new phase of life.

Posted: 06-11-2009 12:49 Post subject:

‘Ghost’ of dead man Carlos Assaf leads officers on wild goose chase
David Sanderson

When Carlos Assaf was found hanged in his flat police were satisfied that it was a suicide. Then Mr Assaf’s ghost got involved.

Psychics told detectives that they had been contacted from beyond the grave. Far from having killed himself, Mr Assaf, a baker from Lampeter, west Wales, informed the mediums that he had been strangled by gangsters who forced him to drink petrol and bleach.

In their visions the psychics, who were friends of the dead man’s family, saw a lion, a horse and the name Tony Fox.

Determined to follow all possible leads, officers visited more than a dozen pubs called Red Lion or Black Horse and tracked down a certain Tony Fox. They conducted a second post-mortem examination and searched an area of Manchester after the mediums said that it could yield clues.

But the “lion, horse and fox investigation” was a wild goose chase, an inquest into Mr Assaf’s death was told yesterday. There was no bleach in Mr Assaf’s digestive tract, Mr Fox was eliminated from the inquiry and no leads turned up in the pubs.

The inquest in Aberystwyth heard that Mr Assaf, 32, a father of one, had hanged himself from a weight training bench after a row with his girlfriend in March. He had developed “bouts of anger” after becoming addicted to amphetamines.

Recording a verdict of suicide, Peter Brunton, the Ceredigion coroner, said: “There was a great deal of communication between the mediums and the police. A great deal of effort was expended in following these leads up.”

Sergeant Mark Webb, of Dyfed-Powys Police, defended the investigation. “We received communications from friends and family of Mr Assaf involving spiritualist mediums,” he told the hearing. “We interviewed the mediums and, having carried out an investigation, we found the information far from conclusive. We wanted to be absolutely satisfied there was no third party involved.”

However, one of his colleagues, who asked not to be named, said: “We are in danger of becoming a laughing stock. We went haring across the country looking for a lion, a horse and someone called Fox based on info from cranks. Not surprisingly it turned out to be a wild goose chase, which cost at least £20,000.”

Mr Assaf’s mother, Shirley, said: “There is no doubt in my mind now that my son took his own life.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6905709.ece

Posted: 06-11-2009 13:30 Post subject:

Those w%$^&"s should be charged with wasting police timr.

Posted: 12-11-2009 11:27 Post subject:

Police worker fired for backing psychic investigations claims religious discrimination
A police trainer who was sacked for believing that officers should use psychics to solve crimes is going to court to prove he was the victim of religious discrimination.
By Matthew Moore
Published: 7:44AM GMT 12 Nov 2009

Alan Power, who has been a member of a Spiritualist church for 30 years, argues that his belief in the power of mediums should be placed on a par with more mainstream religious and philosophical convictions.

He has already secured a legal ruling that his principles are covered by laws designed to prevent religious discrimination in the workplace, and is now seeking to prove that they were the reason for his dismissal.

Mr Power's case follows a landmark ruling last month that environmental views should be considered equivalent to religious and philosophical beliefs, following a legal challenge by a green executive at a property firm.

At a tribunal in London today, Mr Power will claim that Greater Manchester Police broke the law by sacking him for believing that mediums should be consulted in criminal investigations.

In an initial judgement seen by The Independent, Judge Peter Russell said that the case had merit because his Spiritualist views "have sufficient cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance" to be covered by the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003.

The judge wrote: "I am satisfied that the claimant's beliefs that there is life after death and that the dead can be contacted through mediums are worthy of respect in a democratic society."

Mr Power's former employers are expected to argue that Judge Russell's ruling was not justified, and highlight that the trainer did not initially claim that his belief in the usefulness of psychics to police investigations amounted to a religious conviction.

A spokesman for Greater Manchester Police said: "GMP can confirm that a member of police staff was dismissed from his role as a trainer. The former staff member has appealed this dismissal. As the appeals process is underway it would be inappropriate to comment further."

Last week it was disclosed that police in Wales spent £20,000 following up murder case "leads" supplied by a group of psychics.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/6549313/Police-worker-fired-for-backing-psychic-investigations-claims-religious-discrimination.html

Posted: 12-11-2009 12:32 Post subject:

Can anyone cite examples of cases where psychics have successfully aided police via their 'powers'. I've certainly heard of plenty of instances where their help was solicited or requested, but I can't recall a case where they actually succeeded in supplying vital leads. I'm quite open to the fact that this may have happened...