Mediums

I know someone who is a medium and she holds sessions teaching others how to connect with their psychic abilities. She is a very nice person and I like her. She knows I don’t like that sort of thing so she doesn’t ever talk about it to me and I don’t bring the subject up. I believe she is actually genuine and I know she is highly regarded. She certainly doesn’t need to make money as she is extremely wealthy anyway so that is not one of her motivations. I believe some people do have that sort of gift but I also think there are very many charlatans out there.

I am also a cynic and believe that 'good' mediums are able to read people very well. However last year my son was persuaded to join a group at a neighbour's home. He too is cynical. He called in at my house at a late hour afterwards in some shock at how accurate the medium was. I tried to be neutral and give logical explanations but some of what he said I knew but my son didn't which was inexplicable. I told him I would never go to a medium unless I was convinced circumstances seemed to direct it.

Just a month later I went into our local shop, only a few yards from my house with my grand children for ice cream, a rare treat. It must have been over a year since I had been in there. There was a small notice on the counter for a psychic event at the premises on a date that was very significant to me! Well I just had to sign up didn't I? I went on my own and knew no-one there. It seemed to me that most of what was said could have applied to me and I remained cynical but then one of the ladies started to speak to me describing things that were very specific relating to my mother and her sister. I was quite shocked but tried not to show it. Then the second lady did the same, describing my father standing in front of me and always being with me plus some other personal details that made sense. She told me that he was in great pain when he died and that I knew that. Weirdly on the morning he died I woke up with severe chest pains and received the news of his death from a severe heart attack only an hour or so later. Some of what was said I did not recognise but only when returning home and thinking about it I realised these comments were significant too. I have struggled to explain this logically and have come to the conclusion that maybe these people can somehow tune into the electrical signals in our brains. I am still not convinced they are communicating with spirits.

I wouldn't go to a medium because I do believe there's 'something in it' having had more than one experience myself.

There'll be some fraudsters without a doubt but there are some genuine mediums too.

I don't like the idea of mediums, but I frequently parked in a carpark behind a small spiritualist church. Once I arrived when the congregation was entering, and I have never seen so many sad looking people, mainly elderly, together.
If these services give them some comfort, so be it. I just hope they are not exploited.

Buttonjugs

In this day and age surely we all know that once someone is dead, they’re dead? When someone is in a coma, they cannot communicate because their brain isn’t working properly. When you die, your brain dies too so you literally cannot communicate. Medium’s prey on people who struggle to accept the death of a loved one. It’s disgusting and should be illegal.

There are many of us who believe in an afterlife. You're making rather arrogant assumptions there.

Fronkydonky

Nanatoone,
I too have seen Bernie Scott, when she appeared at a clairvoyance evening in my city. She absolutely blew me away with her accuracy about my husband’s health condition, a work colleague’s obsession with a hobby and she told me he had tantrums and threw his toys out of the pram when things didn’t go his way ( she was absolutely spot on). Everything she told me was so true. All the messages she gave that evening to the audience were accurate. I have also seen T J Higgs, Tony Stockwell& the late Colin Fry who were all phenomenal.

Bernie Scott is amazing - she was in a venue near me about a month ago. She gave a lot of comfort to people there and I was contacted by DH's father (I had never met him) about my MIL and the dilemma over whether she should be in a nursing home or not. (I had definitely not mentioned anything about her to friends during the evening.)

My (long gone) DM used to swear that she saw my father just once, some months after he died. It was shortly after an accident which wrote her car off, when she was obviously very distressed.

Obviously I can’t know whether she did or not, but I would never categorically state that she imagined it.

Right after my lovely MiL died, too young, only in her 60s, I felt a very strong sense of her presence in our house, where I like to think she’d always been happy, whereas things could be a mite fraught at home since FiL could be ‘difficult’.
I could almost ‘see’ her sitting on the sofa.

Of course I put it down entirely down to my imagination, and when my father died only 6 months later, incidentally of the same thing, I fully expected to ‘sense’ the same, either in our house, or at my mother’s, where he’d died.
But there was nothing. Zilch.

No, my mum believes she saw my grandad after he died.

I don't believe she did.

I don't think she's stupid, just grieving.

To me it’s not a question whether you believe in some people’s abilities or not, Alegrias.

IMO it’s a question of posters saying it’s invariably all rubbish spouted by charlatans, and thus implying that anyone who has had a positive experience has been duped, and is therefore pretty stupid.

The person I know best who has had an overwhelmingly positive and accurate experience (from someone unpaid who she just happened to be talking to casually before it happened) would almost certainly previously have classed herself as a total sceptic.

I've stayed off this thread as I have very strong views on this but I do feel its inappropriate to tell people what to believe. I'm probably closest to Hetty58 in my outlook. But believe what you like, if it gives you comfort.

So equally, somebody telling me that I'm rude and ignorant for not believing in something that only exists in the realms of anecdote, is pretty annoying, really.

Unbelieveable. Good word.

I’ve had experiences myself and also had unbelievable readings from psychic mediums. Yes there are frauds as there are in every walk of life but the condescending dismissal from those who think they know it all is, frankly, plain rudeness and illustrates their ignorance.

Lovely nannysprout!?

I have had some experiences that are difficult to explain. Growing up my gran (who lived with us) several times announced very firmly that a named person had died. This was always said in the morning and that she believed they had 'visited' her in the night to say goodbye. She was always right. I also remember as a teenager my mum rushing home from work upset and saying my brother was in danger. She was so sure that she phoned his number in Australia - not something you did lightly in the 1960s - to find his wife had just been told his car had come off a bridge (he survived).

Found this felt it appropriate ?

In my experience Mediums are like everything else in life
Good Bad or Indifferent
It’s up to us to use our own discernment when consulting one
I’ve had some amazing consultations & some real duds.
But overall I think most of them mean well & have a desire to help others through difficult times in life

Oh dear I seem to have got the prophet Elijah and Samuel confused ! I’m awarding myself one out of ten for Bible study. A timely reminder I should be reading it more often.

As one lady has pointed out, the Bible teaches/records (according to your personal beliefs) that genuine mediums do exist. King Saul contacted the prophet Elijah through a medium, and St Paul related casting a spirit of mediumship out of a slave girl.
I think there are some seemingly very strange events that can occur that may be explained by a better understanding of science in the future.

Nanatoone,
I too have seen Bernie Scott, when she appeared at a clairvoyance evening in my city. She absolutely blew me away with her accuracy about my husband’s health condition, a work colleague’s obsession with a hobby and she told me he had tantrums and threw his toys out of the pram when things didn’t go his way ( she was absolutely spot on). Everything she told me was so true. All the messages she gave that evening to the audience were accurate. I have also seen T J Higgs, Tony Stockwell& the late Colin Fry who were all phenomenal.

Sadly true Germanshepherdsmum. I've met quite a few spiritualists in my time and I don't remember any of them being intolerant of other faiths. To believe in anything is enough for them and as far as I know no one has ever started a war or instigated violence from the spiritualist community.

I'm pleased you think it's interesting Caleo ?. I think you're right about some of the stuff from spirit is a bit banal but if you go to a spiritualist church for a service they will always say its the mediums wish to provide evidence of the existence after death. So I suppose sometimes some of that evidence is going to be a bit mundane. It made me laugh about being watched in the bathroom! I've felt like that at times too when I'm doing something personal. I just try and put it out of my mind and if anyone is a little shocked on the other side then they shouldn't be watching! ?

So right Nannysprout. How many conflicts have been caused and lives lost and shattered by religious intolerance.

This is a very interesting conversation.

I neither believe not disbelieve in life after death. I'd like to believe in life after death, except how spirits mainly talk about banal stuff that does not interest me a lot. Also it worries me they might be in the bathroom where I prefer to be alone.

Thank you Germanshepherdsmum ?. Its always amazed and dismayed me the way some people react to mediumship and spiritualism. I've known a good many Christian and other faiths people in my time and I've never been disrespectful of their beliefs. I've always found it very hurtful the way some people have no respect for the spiritualists. There are good and and not so good people in all faiths but we should try not to tar everyone in that faith with the same brush.

Another vote here for your husband’s good work Nannysprout. Some posts on this thread are disgraceful.

Thank you Scones. Yes I was pleased to read some of the thoughtful and less dismissive comments on here. It's a pity we don't have a thumbs up or thumbs down for each comment but maybe that would cause more upset to people so perhaps it's just as well we don't. I'm glad you had a good experience with the medium you went to see. They only try to give evidence of after life really they're not really fortune tellers but they do sometimes come up with some amazing insights. If it makes you think that maybe this isn't all there is it may help some people to navigate their lives forward in a more hopeful and positive way. Not everyone is going to believe but that's ok just wish some folks weren't so dismissive to those who do.