Mediums?

Thread originally posted on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum on 02 Jan 2003, and now archived in the Forum Library.

Trish	02 Jan 2003
Do any of you watch those shows featuring mediums that communicate with the spirits of the dead? John Edward and James Van Praagh are the two really big ones right now, from what I can gather. I was wondering -- do any of you think these mediums are credible? Is one more credible than the other? Or do you believe that a connection to the "Spirit World" is something much more personal and sacred than what can be done on a TV show?

MystiqueMoonlight	02 Jan 2003
Hocus Pocus the television camera is trying to focus.... That's All Folks!

Karenwhe	02 Jan 2003
Who know, Who cares, the are entertaining that is the focus of TV anyway. If it entertains it is good. I watch TV for entertainment and always remember the one thing my mother says about the media (she was a journalist): " You can believe only the date and the name of newspaper - anything else ..... is a waste of time"

Minderwiz	03 Jan 2003
I think the previous comment has more than a grain of truth - these shows are primarily entertainment driven rather than serious attempts at psychic communication. I have been part of the audience of one UK show and my wife has actually appeared on another. That being said I have little doubt that the mediums are genuine. I know Derek Acorah personally and I am absolutely convinced that he is genuine, if not always 100% correct. I have experience of a number of less famous mediums, many of them are unnervingly accurate but some I found unconvincing. One of the problems of such shows is that they are very woolly when it comes to the issue of proof. The only way that a person is likely to be convinced that a medium is genuine is if the 'message' is something that only he or she could possibly know - anything that is a matter of public record could in principle be discovered and used, though the research implications are enormous. Even such proof might not be acceptable to sceptics. Having had one or two fairly low level psychic experiences myself I do believe that there is something we can experience beyond the physical. Exactly what it is is clearly a matter of some debate. Certainly the show that I was in the audience for could not possibly have come up with anything that was likely to be taken as proof. Issues raised were either of public record or such that they were almost certainly impossible to validate.

The Mediums? thread was originally posted on 02 Jan 2003 in the Spirituality board, and is now archived in the Forum Library. Read the active threads in Spirituality, or read more archived threads.