Deanna,

  The kind of evidence you point to is, I find, some of the strongest evidence for our continuing existence beyond death.  Once fraud and collusion are ruled out there are very few possible alternative explanations for how someone can gather specific, accurate information from or about a deceased person.  Your experience sounds like a very good example of pretty solid evidence that your grandad still exists.  This kind of evidence, that comes through our own direct experience appears to be the only kind that can convince us.  Other people may come up all sorts of possible alternatives to try to explain such evidence away, but when it's your own experience you can be the best judge of the truth.

At the last workshop I gave in Poland everyone did the exercise where they were to visit with a previously unknown (to them) deceased person.  The deceased person's name was randomly drawn from a basket full of slips of paper provided by other participants, about 120 people. 

After the exercise one participant came up to me exclaming, this is not possible!  I thought I was just making it all up, but all the detailed information I got from the dead person was verified!  Many of the information details she gathered were on a par with your grandad's peg-legged chicken.

Thanks for sharing your experience.

Bruce

I love this story, Deanna. A chicken with a wooden leg?

Tell me that anyone here in this world has heard it all yet. Always something new under the sun.

Love your proof...
blink

How Brilliant Deanna!!

I once had a good reading from a Medium who didn't charge me a penny and the things she told me were only known to me and my mother. That was the proof I needed after years of *hoping * there was an afterlife...I don't think there is an afterlife now,I KNOW there is!!

Blessings to you! xx

Deanna,

Thanks for sharing your spiritualist experience.  I hope it means what your understandable wishful thinking suggests.   But the use of words like "proof" (Deanna) and "solid evidence" (Bruce Moen) is sadly misguided because the ESP interpretation seems at least as plausible if not more so.  Why?  Over the years, I've occasionally reported one of the most devastating counter-examples descrediting channeled contacts with deceased loved ones and no one here has been honest enough to acknowledge its force.   So I will repeat it again.

Dr. Sam Soal visited a famous British medium, Blanche Cooper, in the hope of contacting his recently deceased brother.   During the sitting, Gordon Davis, an unexpected drop-in communicator, interrupted the seance.  Davis was a schoolmate of Soal's who had recently died--or so Soal had been told.   Davis lamented, "I'm only concerned about my wife and kiddie now."  He gave detailed verifications that he was genuine by describing the interior of his house, by recalling incidents in their school life together, and by using jargon that typified his speech (e.g. "old chap" and "confab" instead of "meeting").  

A while later, Soal discovered that Davis was in fact still alive and knew nothing about the channeled impostor.   If one asks why mediumship is not discredited in this way more often, one need only ask: How often are you wrongly told that a friend has died?  Apparently Soal's belief in Davis's death either enabled Cooper to reconstruct his personal via ESP or was seized by a spirit impostor as an opportunity for deception.  Such examples shift the burden of proof to those who claim that the best of channeling is evidence of postmortem survival.

Remember two additional facts.  (1) Many mediums also display ESP.  (2) Prior to the 19th century, channeling was generally attributed to a god or a demon rather than to a discarnate human.  Who is to say that modern mediumistic contacts with the dead are more than culturally conditioned wishful thinking?

Deanna, what your example does do is eliminate the claim that the most impressive channeled claims can be dismissed as either fraudulent or lucky guesses.   Instead, the 3 most likely options are ESP, spirit impersonators, or genuine contact--in that order of plausibility IMHO. That said, there are a few examples of mediumship that I suspect really are genuine contacts with the dead and I have previously posted one such case on this site.  But please, people, let's inject a little integrity into our assessment of the evidence.

Don    

Kathy,

Well said! I agree with you.   But many alleged cases of paranormal contact with the dead involve information that only the dead would know: e.g. Swedenborg's contact with the recently deceased Dutch ambassador about the location of a lost receipt for jewelry.  Only the dead ambassador could have known about the secret compartment in the upstairs bureau where the receipt was hidden.

Personally, my most convincing spiritual experiences are totally deficient in verifiable details.  So I don't usually share them in an effort to convince the skeptic.   Instead, I share less influential experiences with more evidential value.  Deanna's experience may well be a genuine contact.  I merely object to terms like "proof" or "solid case" and want true believers to at least acknowledge the contrary evidence.

Don  

Don's point is well taken, while the experience may be "pretty solid evidence that your grandad still exists" we probably can't call if "proof" in a scientific sense. 

It wasn't that many years ago that science dismissed ESP as either fraud or fantasy, only to reverse itself in recent years as scientists found satisfactory testing methods (for itself) that "scientifically" proved ESP's existence.  I find it amusing that science now claims communication with the deceased is just ESP.

Scientifically acceptable proof, by its nature, is always behind the curve in proving that something previously unknown to itself, like ESP or communication with deceased, exists. 

First, someone has to claim such a thing exists, and present some kind of evidence.  Curious, open-minded scientists must then formulate theories and testable hypothesis that could explain the phenomenon.  Then science must design suitable testing methods to eliminate all previously known alternative explanations, leaving only the possibility that ESP or communication with the deceased exists.  Then, these experimental results must be replicated by other scientists enough that they can be said to be proven, "scientifically."

None of this means that ESP or communication with the deceased don't exist before they are scientifically proven to exist.  ESP existed long before science found a way to prove its existence to itself.  It just means that curious, open-minded scientists must find ways to prove it to themselves.  And in the case of communication with the deceased, there is so much resistance against the idea (as there was against ESP) that scientists risk condemnation by their peers, and sometimes  their careers to undertake research in the area.

I'm certain that someday science will find a way to prove the existence of communication with the deceased to itself.  Meanwhile, I've seen too much evidence within my own experience and in the experience of others to harbor a single doubt.

The most convincing evidence comes when the information provided by the deceased person is know only to that deceased person, and then verified within physical reality.  Seeing just one of these kind of white crows would prove that not all crows are black, and I've seen many white crows.

So, Deanna, don't worry.  Someday science will catch up with what many of us already know to be true.

Bruce

the medium didnt just tell me about grandads chicken he also said about  lollipops ,well my grandad used to suck on a lollipop every day in his last years so that was more proof that it was my grandad ,when i was a little girl i found a pidgeon on the side of the road and i took him home to my dad he had a broken wing and my dad looked after him and got him better now  no medium could have known about this cause i was a child when this happened but lo and behold a medium came through to me a coulpe of months ago and said he had got my dad with him and to ask me about the pidgeon now how do u explain that away love deanna

one bad apple dont spoil a whole bunch you get good mediums and bad ones once i found £5.00 pounds on my driveway went to the spiritualist church and my dad came through via the medium what was on and said did i enjoy the £5.00 pound he left me on the driveway thats why i believe because of the evidence what comes through deanna

There are many ways to experience and receive ESP information.  One way is through direct contact with another person's energy.

The medium she spoke of about the chicken who said, "I have your granddad here..." was implying that she had actual contact with the energy of Deanna's granddad, in other words contact with his spirit. 

Don, it sounds like you are saying that unless someone can prove that the medium was in contact with the grandad's actual spirit, then it cannot simply be assumed that actual contact was made.  However, there really is no way to prove this kind of contact in the terms which you require as far as proof.  (Do you believe that a person's conscious awareness survives death?  If you yourself could experience sensing someone's energy would you then believe it yourself, or what kind of proof would you think you needed in order to believe?)

When mediums talk about feeling energy, they are describing that person's energy vibration, it is a "signature" for that person.   

I would have to think that not all mediums receive their information in the same way, so you cannot group all mediums into the same category as far as how they are receiving information.   However, "mere ESP" and "mere mind-reading abilities" are still very fascinating.  I mean, how is any kind of ESP by any means not intriguing?  What you referred to as mere mind-reading is still a process of one person's energy communicating with another's, whether consciously or unconsciously.  If you look at it as our minds being an energy field, and if I can hear or know your thoughts, then wouldn't you say that I am tapping into your energy field?  Whether or not I sense you as who you are along with that ESP info does not change the fact that our energys had contact.  Now, when it comes to talking about real contact between a deceased person and a living person, you have to take into consideration that the deceased person is making a conscious effort to make this energy contact as well.  In that way, they are able to be sensed and felt along with the ESP information they are trying to relate. 

I myself have had many experiences of feeling or sensing someone's energy around me.  Usually along with this feeling comes some ESP information that I could not have known through regular means of perception.  However, not all ESP experiences come about through feeling someone's energy, as it is not a requirement for ESP.  Like I said, there are many different ways to experience ESP.  Frankly, ESP is fascinating no matter how it is attained. 

About feeling someone's energy and having communication with them, that is something that you yourself would have to experience in order to know it and understand it.  I don't think it can be proven, and even if it could be proven to satisfy one person, it wouldn't satisfy all.  The bottom line is, you can only know what you know through your own direct experience.  Experience is knowledge.  Anything else is just belief. 

I myself wouldn't believe just anybody, but I have had enough of my own experiences to know that these experiences are possible. 

the spirit world is capable of a lot of things black napkins deanna

Quote:


Hi don ,

What you have to take into account is Hodgson's famous skeptical view of this subject.  The following extract is from Victor Zammit's website on Piper:
"Clearly, Hodgson's objections were not technically valid. Writers on psychic phenomena, even contemporary writers, have been too enthusiastic to write favorably about what Hodgson claimed about mediums. But these writers repeatedly,

• failed to show that he was not technically professionally qualified to investigate psychic phenomena,

• failed to show that he was not technically competent,

• failed to show that he was under a great deal of pressure from the leadership of the SPR to find against mediums.

• failed to show that, Hodgson's presumption of fraud was a deliberately uncontrolled extraneous negative and intervening variable,

• failed to show that the onus shifted onto Hodgson to technically rebut the evidence produced by Mrs Piper about the afterlife,

• failed to criticize Hodgson for not using science to reject the afterlife,

• failed to show that he was not sensitive to nor did he have the essential psychic knowledge to properly administer validity and reliability tests,

In his initial objections, Hodgson himself failed to show that:

• his claim about telepathy was a valid claim,

• Mrs Piper had the competence to read other people's minds,

• Mrs Piper, while unconscious at a seance, could read minds,

• Mrs Piper's telepathy extended to those who were hundreds of miles away from the seance while she was unconscious,

• the accurate information was not coming from intelligences from the afterlife,

• the information was being transmitted directly from a split mind,

There is no escaping the issue of who had the technical burden of proof. The onus clearly was on Hodgson to prove that his objections were valid. But he did not prove anything. He just said words to the effect, '... I can't prove anything at all ... I can't prove fraud, I can't prove cheating, I can't prove trickery against Mrs Piper but ... trust me ... do not believe anybody else except me ... just believe me because only I have the truth about these things but no one else has ..'

That kind of personal, intentionally prejudicial, unsubstantiated dogmatic claim was not the professional way to present rebuttals then, nor is it to-day."

Now is it just me, or is Hodgson a complete fool who is constantly contradicting his OWN claims????

i see your point black napkins tell you the truth you made me laugh  but spirit probaly thought because i was so heartbroken at the time because i,d just lost dad and i,ve never got any money  that the £5.00 would cheer me up a bit because when dad was alive he used to give me some money to help me out a bit it wasnt a lot because he didnt have a lot himself but he was that kind of dad he would give you his last penny deanna

Lol it is just me!!!

Thinking about it again has made me decide, if a medium like Piper can make a full-blown skeptic  do a total u-turn  on his own views of the subject area then theremust be something going on or Piper and Hodgson were more "intimate" (nudge nudge    ) then they let the public know.

I am looking forward to reading your posts and will be doing some deeper research on this area myself and will try to add some useful posts,

Good luck with the research Don

Vicky, here is Deanna's "Granddad" thread, to which Bruce responds, the thread that prompted my Mential Mediumship thread.  You are right: reposting the original thread makes my quotation of Bruce more meaningful.

Don

I believe that there are some genuine mediums who know that it is more than a matter of reading minds. When you communicate with spirits more than picking up on thoughts can be experienced. You can feel that you are interacting with a spirit. Spirits can do things such as move up to you and hug you in a non-physical way. They can share their feelings and humor with you.  You can tell that a conscious/thinking being is trying to communicate with you.

The kind of experiences I spoke of above don't go away because of how one person responded in a test situation.

We need to remember that spirits aren't in one part of the physical universe while we are in a completely different part. It is a matter of whether or not we can make an energetic connection. Therefore, our deceased loved ones can never be too far away from us.

Experience matters more than intellect based opinions.

Here's an example that goes beyond telepathy. A while ago I was meditating one night and I suddenly saw a pencil. The name of a man I knew who had just recently died was on the pencil. I'll call him Dan. Dan showed me where he lived in the spirit World. Then the scene changed. He wanted to let me know that he can experience more than one scene according to his desire.

Then he showed me where his cousin (also a deceased person) lives. We were on a mountain that overlooked a valley. Then he let me know that sometimes his cousin stays in the valley.

I asked for information I could verify. He told me Mount Rushmore and a state name (I don't remember which state) where Mount Rushmore isn't located. This puzzled me and I looked up this state and Mount Rushmore on the internet. It turns out there was a conference held in the non-Mount Rushmore state that served the purpose of trying to determine if the carving of another person should be added to Mount Rushmore. I didn't know about this beforehand. This is an example of verification by receiving information you don't know beforehand.

I also received the name of an admiral. I can't remember the name, but anyway, I did an internet search with this name and eventually found that Dan served on a Navy ship that was named after the admiral for which I was given a name. The crew that Dan served with posted an obituary that annonced his death. I knew that Dan was in the Navy but I didn't know what ship he served on.

I do not believe that the above example matches the telepathy theorem.

Recoverer, those two examples of yours are really good ones.

i didnt realise grandads chicken hoppalong would be so popular  i bet hes clucking like mad in heaven saying im a famous chicken love dianna alias deanna xxxxxxxx