Mediumship
Wikipedia contributors · 2024 · Wikipedia
Summary
Overview of mediumship practices, the history of investigations, and the standard sceptical analyses (cold reading, hot reading).
Why it matters here
Useful for both the phenomenon's claims and the well-developed sceptical literature.
Linked claims
Around half of bereaved adults report sense-of-presence experiences. Common, meaningful, hard to verify.
Stage mentalists reproduce 'mediumship' on demand. Cold and hot reading are well-documented techniques.
Reports stretch back centuries and across every culture. Most well-investigated cases reduce to pareidolia, infrasound, expectation, or fraud; the broader 'soul of the dead' reading is essentially unverifiable.
Most claimed mediumship is reproducible by cold reading. Some controlled lab studies (Beischel and others) report small but anomalous effects.
Related evidence hubs
Evidence around dying, near-death experience, and what (if anything) continues.
Whether anything of mind continues.
Reports of contact with the deceased.
Cryptomnesia, anoxia models, cold reading. Counter-anchors.
Telepathy, precognition, remote viewing, PK.