Mental and physical mediumship

Abstract

The author discusses mental and physical mediumship and his own early experiences in the seance room. Several incidents with mental mediums led the author to believe that verifiable information received most likely proceeds from telepathic contact between the medium and the sitter. The author then focuses on the “G. Circle,” a private home circle with which he sat in the mid-1950s. Earlier investigations made with the same circle by psychical research and skeptic Eric J. Dingwall are also described. In the discussion of his own sittings, the author focuses especially on the table-tilting phenomena he witnessed. He notes that he, like Dingwall before him, was ultimately disinvited form the group for conducting an experiment to determine whether the table was being raised fraudulently — something he did not suspect but nevertheless wished to rule out. Although the experiment seemed to indicate that the table-tilting may well have been paranormal, the author remains neutral on the question of whether the medium and the sitters or the purported spirit controls produced the phenomena experienced.