Getting up on stage in tartan trews and a T-shirt, Gordon Smith seems more like a stand-up comic than Britain’s “most accurate” medium. He’s giving a seminar in London on mediumship and psychic skills to an eager audience of mostly women from all over the country. I’m almost certainly the only sceptic.
It’s a hands-on learning curve, which moves swiftly from feeling your neighbour’s aura by elevenses to picking up messages from the spirit world before tea. By lunchtime, I’m unnerved to have somehow given a spot-on psychic reading, complete with dates, to a middle-aged medium from Lancashire. But by teatime my scepticism is creeping back, possibly because none of Smith’s messages from the spirit world is for me. And they mostly seem a bit vague, although for the recipients they offer clear evidence that their loved ones are alive in spirit.
Despite a hefty ticket price of £75, this seminar sold out months ago. The popularity of such events is also an indication of a wider interest in psychic matters, evident in the bestseller lists (The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, Picador, £7.99), the daytime television schedules (Celebrity Most Haunted, on Living TV) and the internet: type “psychic” into Google for myriad offers of readings by phone or e-mail. There’s even a spoof psychic medium on BBC Three. Shirley Ghostman, played by the comedian Marc Wootton, has a canine spirit guide which helps “her” to contact dead celebs. The audience, who aren’t in on the joke, don’t know what to believe.
On a more serious note, the Spiritualist Association of Great Britain, which offers face-to-face readings and services, has seen a marked rise in attendance, particularly among twenty-somethings. Charles Coulson, the general secretary of the Spiritualists National Union, says: “I have noticed an increased interest in spiritualism, and more young people are coming to our churches. The idea that there is a spiritual realm which demands a broadening of outlook beyond orthodox religion is more accepted now than it was 50 years ago.” These days it’s not just the bereaved who visit mediums and psychics. People seek them out for many reasons, from what might be called mystic life-coaching to an insight on life’s big questions.
Sandra Menoni brought in a psychic for down-to-earth purposes when she set up an introduction agency in Dunblane, Perthshire, 12 years ago. A colleague had persuaded her; and the work-related psychic readings were so accurate that Menoni sees her twice a year. She says: “She keeps me focused on what I want to achieve. She tapes the sessions and when I listen later I realise how much has materialised.
“The most significant example was in 1996 when she said she saw me in court, but that the result would be in my favour and get settled by September 1997. A year later a client tried to take me to the small-claims court. It could have ruined the business. But the case was dropped and was sorted out exactly when she predicted.”
Such blind faith might have been fine in the Dark Ages but why, today, when science can explain so much, are sensible folk like Menoni turning to something that seems so flaky? Patricia Robertson, of Prism (Psychic Research Involving Selected Mediums), who tests the accuracy of mediums and gives extramural lectures on psychical research at Glasgow University, is not surprised. “Orthodox Western religion has gone and people are looking for something to believe in. They are really thinking about whether there is any evidence that when we physically die our spirit doesn’t. What bigger question is there? I defy anyone to say they haven’t ever thought about it,” she says.
Rachel, a psychotherapist in Smith’s audience who has been going to mediums for 20 years, agrees: “Proof that the spirit survives, which is what a good medium offers, has changed my view of life. If you’re not living just for today, you have a different perspective.”
The interest in psychic matters is inevitably linked to the current passion for alternatives. Smith says: “People start out going to yoga, or whatever, and have some kind of experience outside the five senses that they can’t explain. Then they ask, ‘do I have a spiritual being?’ ” Sue, a publicist in her forties with two teenage children, regards her medium as the cornerstone of an armoury of alternative therapists — a reflexologist, a hypnotherapist and a “wellness” trainer — who have helped her through a big career change and beyond. Sue had her first sitting within months of setting up her own publicist consultancy five years ago; she has a reading in person every year (costing £70 an hour), with regular telephone consultations in between (£50). She says: “I was sceptical, but within minutes of the first session that had vanished. My grandparents were in the room; I could smell lilies-of-the-valley, my grandmother’s favourite scent. The medium told me their names and information which she couldn’t have known any other way. Because she was so spot-on I felt that I could trust her predictions. I now use her as a prediction business mentor. My business is successful, and I know more about who I really am.”
This willingness to be more open about psychic possibilities extends to the scientific establishment. The paranormal is now the focus of academic research at some universities; it’s even possible to do a PhD in the subject. Archie Roy, Glasgow University’s Emeritus Professor of Astronomy, has published pioneering work on the accuracy of mediums such as Smith. The Koestler parapsychology unit at Edinburgh University researches “psi”, the unknown factor in psychic experiences such as telepathy and psychokinesis, while Dr Peter Fenwick, a neuropsychiatrist at the Institute of Psychiatry, in London, works on near-death experiences.
Fenwick is also chair of the Scientific and Medical Network, which held its annual Mystics and Scientists conference last weekend. Charla Devereux, of the network, says: “Research into the paranormal is becoming more accepted by the scientific establishment, particularly among younger academics. There will always be scepticism, but that’s no problem as long as minds aren’t closed. And on the other side there is still a lot of flakiness. So it can be difficult walking a central road to get the best from both sides.”
Patricia Robertson has conducted triple-blind experiments on mediums alongside Professor Roy. She says: “We are convinced that some mediums can impart to a sitter information about people who have died that they couldn’t possibly know in any normally accepted way. I’m not saying that it comes from the dead, but the most plausible explanation is that the information is coming from the deceased personalities.”
But she sounds a note of caution: “With psychics a lot of it is nonsense. Some mediums, such as Smith, are genuine. But most in this country are guilty of what psychologists call ‘cold reading’ (a set of techniques used by alleged professional mediums to get a subject to believe in their supernatural abilities) and wishful thinking; people tend to believe what they want to.
“Anyone going to a medium should get a personal recommendation. Even if not a direct fraud, many aren’t very good. As a rule of thumb, the more they charge, the more to be avoided.”
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Smoke and mirrors
Doris Stokes, the internationally renowned British medium who died in 1987, claimed to receive messages from John Lennon’s spirit. She was accused of rigging performances so that the audiences included key people whom she knew.
Madame Blavatsky, the 19th-century Russian medium and founder of the Theosophical Society, is famous thanks to the poet W. B. Yeats, who was a member of the society. The Society for Psychical Research called her “one of the most ingenious imposters in history”.
Helen Duncan, one of Britain’s most notorious mediums, was sentenced in 1944 under the Witchcraft Act of 1735 to nine months in prison. During one of her séances, in Portsmouth, a young sailor had apparently materialised and told his mother that he had been killed when his warship had been sunk, information that the War Ministry had withheld for security reasons. When his mother contacted the War Office, Duncan was arrested. She was tried for conspiracy but eventually was prosecuted for witchcraft. Supporters are still fighting to clear her name and her story is about to be turned into a film.
Making contact
The College of Psychic Studies (www.collegeofpsychicstudies.co.uk; 020-7589 3292) offers individual readings with mediums and courses. Its premises, in South Kensington, were bought with donations from people bereaved in the First World War who had been consoled by spiritualism.
