Physical Mediums

Physical mediumship is the communication between the medium and the spirit entity which takes place by rapping on the wall, or the moving of objects which serves to communicate with the medium.

In séance circles, for a medium to be able to communicate with spirits he/she must concentrate hard to pass on a message, the spirit in return communicates by moving things or making noises around the room.

In séance sittings, mediums open a channel between the spirit and the sitters or proxy sitters (where the sitters wanting to speak are not present), they then ask the spirit questions, which the spirit answers by making its presence felt and answering in a code, for example; 

If the medium asks if he/she is all right, the spirit; taps, moves or raps once for a “yes” or twice for a “no”. In using this system, the medium can  then decipher answers to questions.

Mediumship made a revival in the late 1840’s by what became known as the spiritualist movement. It started with a poltergeist spirit in Hydesville, New York making friends with two young girls. These girls learnt to communicate by asking closed questions and before long, their neighbours started joining in to communications with the spirits, and once the findings were published, visitors from the whole of America came to witness it for themselves.

The poltergeist itself wasn’t anything unheard of before, there have been numerous ghost stories throughout history and they were normally thought of as being demonic in nature, but what made this poltergeist special is that it would follow tourists that came to see it and try to communicate with them too. Séances sprang up everywhere and with time, groups learnt to communicate better.

Before long mediums could ask spirits to tip tables, spell short messages and perform levitation. Some spirits could even materialize into a ghost replica of how the spirit looked when still alive. Mediumship eventually turned from being a curiosity to being the basis of the spiritualist religion, its influence was exported to Europe and it has been fighting to gain scientific recognition ever since.

Scientists founded the Society for Psychical Research to investigate mediumship. In their ongoing 100 year old investigation, scientists found many frauds over the years which harmed the credibility of this phenomenon but modern scientists agree that there is sufficient proof to say that most séances are genuine.

They still investigate and argue whether séance mediumship is due to spirits from the deceased being present, or due to a super form of ESP.

Since communication with spirits evolved, two other types of mediumship gained popularity; mental and trance. Mental mediums receive messages by sounds or pictures into the medium’s mind while with trance mediums (the most advanced form) the communicating spirit actually take part control of the medium’s body.