Sizing up mediums
illustration by Alex Martin
The Fulcrum investigates psychic phenomena
MANY BELIEVE IN an afterlife. Still more believe in souls. But how many believe in psychic phenomena?
Individuals called “mediums” claim to communicate with souls living in a spirit world. Whether you believe in these claims or not, there’s no doubting the popularity in the possibilities of the supernatural.
Today, these supernatural abilities serve as the backdrop to many popular TV shows, like Ghost Whisperer and Medium, which have both garnered consistently high ratings since they debuted in 2005. The fact that Medium is based on an otherwise regular woman’s life only adds to the intrigue: “Could I experience psychic phenomena, too?” the audience wonders. These might include ghost sightings, foresight, telepathy, or mediumship—abilities that have fascinated humanity for thousands of years.
But how plausible are these events? And can the truth behind supernatural happenings even be measured?
Supernatural places, beings, and abilities
First, one has to understand the concepts behind psychic phenomena. The supernatural encompasses these psychic experiences and, by definition, lies outside of the universe and the laws of nature. Mediumship is a part of this group of phenomena, as mediums are said to channel information from a supernatural realm.
Jennifer Clark, a local intuitive life coach and medium, teaches workshops on life improvement based on spiritual energies and intuition. She explained the significance of the “otherworldly place.”
“Mediumship is the ability to access other dimensions, other frequencies of intelligent life,” she said. “Some people call it heaven, the other side.”
Because mediums use abilities that tap into a supernatural realm, these psychic abilities are supernatural themselves and not part of the common five senses.
Matthew Stapley and Tristan Brine, also mediums from the Ottawa area, operate the Light Andalandus metaphysical school. Stapley described how a medium taps into his or her abilities.
“The way that mediumship works is that the energy or the presence of the [spirit] is processed into our vibration, and when that happens, that’s when you feel the way they passed,” he said. “You feel how they died, what they were like, their personality traits—you almost become the individual at some times … They overshadow you.”
One type of psychic ability is “clairsentience,” or “clear-feeling.”
“[I] get various feelings of [the deceased] as well,” explained Brine. “Sometimes it would go so far for me as [to] feel pain in [my] body that is usually related to their death. For a heart attack, for example, I can feel the pain near my heart and down my arm.”
Brian Calhoun is a local medium and self-described spiritual teacher. He explained what happens when he undergoes “trance mediumship,” where the spirit uses his body to speak and move.
“[The clients] literally see somebody else in front of me … this spirit taking shape and form. And it may be a loved one of theirs, it may be an angel. They just know somebody else is here now,” he said.
Going mainstream
Even though mediums believe they possess extraordinary abilities, they also emphasize that spiritualism is not something strange that the general public should fear.
“In the past, all this work was seen as witchcraft, and it really isn’t. It’s really [seen] that way because people don’t understand it,” said Calhoun.
One reason the public may be cynical about spiritualism is that some of the labels given to spiritualist ideas have negative connotations.
“Most of the time we don’t even like calling it ‘psychic,’ [thanks to] the taboo that goes with that. We prefer the term ‘spiritual’ anyway,” said Brine.
Brine explained that intuition underlies these psychic abilities, something that all of us use frequently, whether we realize it or not.
“It’s that knowing that you have about one another,” said Brine. “When you can just look at each other and know what the other is thinking. That in itself is psychic ability as well. A lot of people have psychic experiences and paranormal experiences and things like that but they discredit them.”
But if everyone has intuition, what’s different about the abilities mediums possess? Stapley explained that one difference is how receptive we are to external stimuli.
“The only difference between someone with a high psychic aptitude and [someone else] is that the person with the high psychic aptitude has allowed themselves to be more sensitive to the environment.”
Clark elaborated, insisting that even those with increased psychic abilities are regular people.
“I don’t want to be seen as religious or crazy or voodoo or anything negative, because I really believe this is human-being stuff,” she said.
Alternative explanations
Many, however, remain skeptical.
Jonathan Abrams is president of Ottawa Skeptics, an organization that, according to its website (ottawaskeptics.org), aims to “promote the use of the scientific method, critical thinking, and rational thought in our community.” Abrams expanded upon the definition of a skeptic.
“A skeptic is someone that withholds endorsement or belief in a claim until sufficient evidence is presented [and] realizes that people’s perception and memory can be mistaken and that only science can settle controversial debates about reality,” he said via email.
Abrams cited a psychological technique known as “cold reading,” which may make people think the psychic is giving out accurate information about them.
“Psychics will throw out very generic descriptions, but the ‘sitter’ [the person getting the reading] will fill in the gaps in their mind,” he said. “What they’ll more likely do is start off by asking about a sick family member. The sitter responds that their cousin has cancer. The psychic can then guess that it’s around the torso, which [is where] most cancers are. The sitter will then say that it’s in the lung. Then … the sitter will then tell their friends, ‘A psychic knew that my cousin had a tumor in his lung!’”
Calhoun described why some readings might seem vague, explaining that interpretation has a lot to do with it.
“A spirit has to use references that I am [able] to recognize. I can’t say what lupus feels like, or cancer … I’ll get information and say, ‘I guess this is what cancer would feel like,’” he explained.
But Abrams also argued that people have a tendency to remember things they perceive as accurate and forget things that don’t fit in.
“If the psychic is throwing out some misses, they’ll just quickly move on to another area. The sitter will then forget about the miss,” he said.
People may think that the information given to them is unique, when in fact, the opposite is true.
“A psychic might say something like, ‘You’ve thought about writing a book,’” he said. “Most people have considered writing a book, yet assume others haven’t.”
According to Stapley, a major reason for inaccuracies like these lies in the fundamental relationship between the client and the psychic.
“There has to be a certain chemistry between the person who’s reading and the person that’s being read,” he said. “Like any relationship, if the chemistry is not there, it’s not going to work.”
Natural science versus supernatural science
Some say that parapsychological research, like the VERITAS project, has vindicated the paranormal.
Headed by University of Arizona psychologist Gary Schwartz, the project tests the hypothesis that consciousness survives death. Schwartz has also backed the psychic claims of Allison Dubois, the real-life inspiration for TV’s Medium, after testing her ability to perceive information about various individuals.
Skeptics, however, criticize parapsychological research methodology. For example, some cite Schwartz’s questionable decisions to make only some of the readings blind and to provide Dubois with details about the individual prior to testing.
“The field of parapsychology has been a failure,” said Abrams. “All of their studies are either poorly designed [or] conducted, or have results that are no better than chance … The evidence offered, anecdotes and performances, can be easily replicated by mentalists who admit to not using any supernatural abilities.”
Both skeptics and believers admit that fraudulent claims of psychic ability are a problem in the industry, although skeptics don’t acknowledge anything other than fraud. Stapley offered a few tips for anyone interested in learning more about the field.
“If you’re going to research [the topic], do it in a very grounded way. Don’t go out there looking for all these amazing phenomena to happen during a psychic reading. It’s just not going to, really, unless something out of the ordinary occurs,” he said.
Still, Abrams and the Ottawa Skeptics aren’t convinced that “amazing phenomena” ever do occur.
“We are skeptical of their claims because if the claims were true, it would overturn nearly everything we know about how reality works,” he said. “And we think that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
Yet for the mediums, reality is more than just black and white facts; even the definition of science has supernatural elements.
“Science is the process of uncovering the work of divinity or understanding the work of divinity,” argued Stapley. “There’s nothing that science can prove that hasn’t already been known for millions of years by something greater than us.”
Added Clark, “Real science [wants] to move beyond what is known … Modern science sticks to what is already known.”
Differences between the two camps revolve around the role of supernatural explanations. Philosopher Karl Popper remarked that a necessary characteristic of scientific theories is not that they be provable, but that they be subject to falsification, or the ability to be shown wrong. This is necessary for the theories to be tested. Supernatural ideas, on the other hand, are not testable because, by their very nature, they are not bound by any rules, especially the laws of nature. The spirit world and spirits might exist, but if Popper is right about the role of falsification, these supernatural ideas lie outside the purview of mainstream science.
But the real difference between believing in psychic phenomena and being skeptical might simply be a matter of perspective, according to Clark.
“Try it for yourself … This is a perspective. This is not the absolute truth. You can change it, you can recreate it. You have choice, you have freedom.”
