Buzzer

.................and the ones who dont charge and have a reputation for being a good Spiritualist??????

OllyK

You know of spiritualists that don't charge? Great give me their details, they would be good test candidates as it wouldn't cost me anything to see them, assuming they are not miles away.

Sorry to have to say this but the "good reputation" is based purely on people's perception of the event and not by actual scientific evidence that they are genuine. The ones that you think have a good reputation, only have a good reputation with the people who have seen them and are happy with what they have been told (or to fellow belivers), to the rest of the world they do not have a good reputation at all.

Buzzer

Olly

My Secretary in work did go to see a Spiritualist a year or two ago whom she met at a Spiritualist Church (it was her first visit, she didnt know anyone and went on her own)

She sat with a lady and listened to whatever was going on. After a while this lady turned to my Secretary and said "i am being contacted by someone called *******, is your name *******" My Secretary said she was that person (first name only).

The spiritualist then took a scrap of paper out of her bag and wrote her name, address and telephone number on it and asked if my Secretary would/could go and see her as she had some information for her.

My Secretary poo pooed it and left it at that. Now at this point can i state that my Secretary at no point gave her name or any name for that matter, she went in and sat next to this woman not knowing who she was and indeed she knew no one at the Church (note the Spiritualist did not come and sit next to her).

..................anyway, my Secretary after a long discussion with us in the office decided to ring this woman up and see what she had to say. The Spiritualist invited her to her home for a "reading" all free of charge as she didn't believe in making gains from her "gift" She also said "you can bring a friend or a few friends or no one at all. Its up to you, whatever's comfortable"

So along she went. The Spiritualist then proceeded to tell her all sorts of names, events etc etc that had gone on and a few things about what would transpire in the future. My Secretary became very nervous at all this information and indeed when she left, she was physically sick and vowed that she would not go to a Spiritualist again as there seemed to be something "not right" about it all.

Since then she is a firm believer but also believes that we shouldnt dabble in things that aren't fully explainable, however she did make contact with her last year by chance and the Spiritualist said she didn't mean to cause her any problems but ******* was desperate to contact her.

She did tell me what was said but i've since forgotten all the detail but if you like i'll ask her and try and post up some detail of the conversation?

..........................Olly can you explain any of the above?


Cheers

Pete

OllyK

Think that about sums it up really. It is not right, it is a con, unless this really is the "one".

I can go through what you have told me and I can put forward plausible real world explanations for what occured, I have done so with others earlier in the thread. People have also previously offered snipits and so on. Again all I can do is make a guess (I am not psychic you see), as without ALL the information that is all it ever can be. However....

Don't mean to be funny, but what do you think the odds of sitting next to a spiritualist are in a Spiritualist Church? About the same as sitting next to a Catholic in a Catholic church or sitting next to a Muslim in a Mosque (sp?).

Doesn't mean that she wasn't known to people there, or even to the person she sat next to. Just that she didn't know / remember anybody there.

Note again how usualy the information is partial, first names only. Certainly the name of the person doing the contact could be almost anything, if you think hard enough most of us can probably think of somebody we once knew that has dies and covers most first names, certainly the common ones. Again I don't know what the names was so it is hard to pass comment.

As for her own name, as I said she may have been known, all sorts of possibilities for chance encounters that you don't really remember. She may have served your secretary in a shop when she paid by credit card or some other similar event, who knows, but there are countless rational explanations.

Just to digress slightly, I wonder why your secretary suddenly decided to go to a Spiritualist Church when she had never been before and wasn't being taken by somebody? Not the sort of thing you would tend to do on a whim unless you are looking for answers of somekind - this may be an indication of her state of mind, not suggested she was mad or anything, just perhaps slightly depressed, grieving over something or had just "lost her way" and was looking for a light. This would suggest to me that that she was open to suggestion anyway, if you are looking for answers and somebody offers you AN answer, you may well be tempted to accept it without thinking about it too hard.

No offence but unless you were there you cannot state anything, merely pass on the information given to you as your secretary recalled them. I have already discussed the inhernet failures in the human memory and once we get 2 levels deep we really are in to FOAF or Chinese Whispers. Again not a personal attack, just the situation we find ourselves in here.

As for sitting next to a Spiritualist, think we have covered that. Again you don't have to specifically "say" your name (and again it may have been said earlier and over heard or a few days before in a shop etc etc), there can be other clues, jewellry with initials or even the actual name, she could have been rumaging in her handbag and the other woman saw something with her name on, a letter or some form of ID, and so the list of rational possibilities go on....

Wow, so there is one, certaily an amateur then rather than a professional, by definition.

Not much I can pass comment on there, even more vague than the stuff that the spiritualists come out with . On a more serious note however, as I have stated before, much of what is said is open to interpretation, bit like astrology, it is so damn vague just about anybody could relate to it and again without transcripts etc I cannot prove that cold reading was used or that things were revealed unconciously earlier in the reading, but on the other hand you have not provided me with anything to make me consider otherwise.

You have forgotten most of it, and I can assure you she will have forgotten all but the parts she considers to be important, and that is that this woman seemed to be able to tell her things that she shouldn't know rather than how she got to that point.

Again - everybody is entitled to their beliefs, take from my ramblings what you wish, but there is nothing remarkable in your story, nothing I haven't heard times many before and I have still yet to hear anything in this thread that cannot be explained rationally. I know people have come back and countered "Ahh but it didn't happen like that" and all I can say it, true, but with the limited information that I have how can I be expected to know every neuance of the reading. Due to personal conent of the readings, those who do have tapes / transcripts are not in a position to put them up for scrutiny and so the debate goes on!

Again just a question for those with written transcripts do they include sounds that you make such as "mmmm", "uhuh" "gasp" etc etc or just actual words? Is there any indication of facial expression or body language (less likely that the mmm's I know, but possible). It is amazing how much you can deduce from such things - watch some of Derran Brown's TV show to see a master at work in this field. He does not claim to have super natural powers, just that he is bloody good at reading people's expressions, tone of voice and body language.

TelBoy

Olly, have you ever devoted as much time and effort to one subject as you have to this over the past week??!

Tsk, next you'll be telling us you've been lying in bed running over your replies in your head...

OllyK

TelBoy - err nope, probably not! I am just a nice guy and hate to see fellow scoobynetters getting conned

Lying in bed? What's a bed then? As mentioned before - yup I am a bit of an insomniac. Don't tend to think through the answers to posts so much, those are the "easy" questions, tend to spend my time thinking about the bigger questions!

penny_lane

I dunno if anyone has asked this as i have onyl read about the first few pages and a glance at the last...

....but if there is such thing has spritualism...then that would mean there is a supernatural natural force out there of which we go to when we die. Does that mean that there would be some kind of "God" as well?? Unless it is just pot luck getting intouch with the person you want and no kind of order up there.

OllyK

Hmmm the words "of", "worms" and "can" spring to mind!

I don't think the 2 need to be mutually inclusive. This is one of the benefits of "blind faith" you do not need any evidence to belive and just because something conflicts with your belief doesn't mean that you have to consider it wrong.

Most of the religions in the world have a suprising amount of common ground if you do some reading. For an excellent comparison of the common claims have a look at this. They also have a hudge number of contradictions within their scriptures. In one place they are saying you should do no wrong and should not kill or seek revenge and yet in other places they say "an eye for an eye" and "kill those who would wrong the children of Israel". Jacob's insight in to this is far deeper than mine, and it is apparent that this is something that has given him cause for concern for many years.

Again let me stress, everybody is entitled to thier views. Personally I choose to base mine on experience and evidence rather than blind faith.

Kind of - pot luck in some cases the spiritalist will "guess" somebody's name you will associate with, but not entirely as how often do you hear that a person goes to a spiritualist and they are able to contact lots of people but none that want to speak to you? Wouldn't be good for business would it?

weapon69

I disagree with EVERYTHING you say ollyk.

Oh just to add, i have contributed to this thread by answering people's questions personally, as i believe them to be GENIUNELY interested.

OllyK

Let me twist this one around for you, I have said the following many times throughout this thread "it is possible that there may be real spirtualists out there", so if you disagree with EVERYTHING that I say, that would mean that:
"You do not believe that it is possible that there may be real spiritualists out there"

Glad that we have finally got through to you. Perhaps if you took the time to actually read, absorb and think things through you wouldn't have walked in to that one. Wonder how many similar things you "walked in to" in your reading without even realising it, we have just shown how easy it is for you to forget what happened even just a couple of posts ago.

Rather than posting single sentence replies that are in general of a derogitary nature, why don't you either keep quiet or enter the debate like an adult rather than some spoilt brat who throws their toys out of the pram when they can't provide a single shred of evidence to support their point of view.

Insults are not going to add any weight to your case, quite the opposite, it suggests to me that you are the one running scared as you can't even bring yourself to discuss the matter for fear that your entire belief system really is sitting on a pile of cards and is ready to come crashing down around you. You have backed yourself in to usch a corner you are like a scared animal. You have nowhere to go and so you thrash out at what is threatening you. At least I am prepared to admit that I could be or even am wrong on the production of hard, scientifically obtained evidence. What would it take you to change your mind. I suspect if your spiritualist put their hand up, told you it was all a big con and how they did it, you would still refuse to belive - Life of Brian syndrome!

It seems that I have hit so many raw nerves that you are now making insinuations about by nature. That's fine, if you want to turn things in to a slanging match I can do that all day as well, just start yourself a new thread and invite me in.

OllyK

Nope you have provided information to specific people, that has been away from this thread. None of those e-mails discussion, transcripts have been displayed here and contribute about as much as the pigeon sitting outside my window.

Oh and I am interested, quite genuinely, I just happen to sit on the other side of the fence. You may not like it, but it is just as valid a position.

TelBoy

3/1 you think about this thread tonight now...

weapon69

ROFLMAO

I'm quite prepared for a scientist to offer a proven explanation for every single paranormal, spiritual encounter anyone has ever had and believe it.

I haven't followed this thread as closely as you as i have had other things to do. I don't answer to you and as a member of scoobynet i can post on whatever thread i like. So if you don't like me posting on here, thats your prob.

OllyK

That is unlikely, as in most cases, all there is to go on is the experience of the person concerned and I have already explained how unreliable the memory is. What can be done in those cases, however, is make suggestions that, based on the laws of physics and the real world, it is unlikely to have been a supernatural occurrence and in light of that, here are a number of rational real world explanations for what could have caused the phenomenon.

There have been numerous cases where what was thought to be supernatural has been shown to have a rational explanation, one of the more recent is Spontaneous Human combustion. The rational explanation for Spiritualists has been around for donkey's years. The tricks are the same, nothing much new is happening in this field, they just get a bit slicker at it and have new tools like the internet to help them. And yet you still belive them. 100's have been shown to be frauds and yet not 1 has proved their abilities, when does the tide turn for you?

Now I am not quite as demanding as you, you want proof that every single supernatural occurence was not so. You wouldn't even settle for 1 example of each kind of supernatural occurence shown to be false?

For me, it's very simple. Under controlled, double blind scientific conditions, prove that 1, yes just 1 supernatural phenomenon really is supernatural. It can be anything you like, spiritualisim, divining, x-ray vision etc etc, pick any you like just prove conclusively that it is real. Seeing how many spiritualists, hoemopaths etc there are out there that ought to be an absolute doddle.

To save a whole load of typing my testing conditions are the same as can be found here on the challenge page.

No you don't. I have just suggested that if you have nothing worth while to contribute then don't bother contributing, it saves on wear and tear on your keyboard and other people's bandwidth. Think that is fair enough.

Thankfully with the emergence of SN3 there is now a fight club where you can take your insults and mud slinging, and of course Muppets is still there. Interestingly though a thread owner will be able to edit threads to remove un-constructive posts, and Plus members will be able to ignore users so that their posts are not displayed to them, now I wonder what sort of behaviour led to the decision to include that?

SiPie

Has anybody ever considered that HYPNOSIS may play a significant part in all these occurences

Sorry I haven't read all the thread so apologies if this has been covered but if I wanted (and was ruthless and cruel enough to do so) I know exactly how I'd do it....

ie. Hypnotise the person initially (perfect environment to do it in)... get into their sub-conscious (now... as for not knowing her gran was called Hetty, I bet her sub-conscious remebered some mention of it, but it's just her rational mind has forgotten ) ask them loads of questions about their earliest childhood memories or whatever you fancy, let them tell you all about it... then spurt back all the stuff to the victim that they've just told you

Easy IMHO

Funny how they always take people away on their own to do this.

OllyK

SiPie

While this may have been done on occasion, I think you have pointed out the flaw in this as a large scale method for yourself, i.e. you have to get them on their own.

Many readings are observed by others, this in my opinion doesn't make them any the more authentic, "suckering" 2 or 3 people really isn't much harder than just one - just watch any close up magician with 4 or 5 people round them to see this in action.

To be honest I reckon it is coz we are all conencted to the Matrix and the mediums just hack the system!!

SiPie

Would be preferable but NOT essential

All you need to do is have their attention... so it ain't impossible

Hmmmmmm .. the truth is out there

OllyK

I agree NOT essential, but hypnosis is not a quick "look in to my eyes" and Zap they are under. The person has to want / be prepared to be hypnotised first. There is then quite a bit of pre-amble getting them relaxed before things begin proper. This would all be obvious to an observer, which unless they were in on it would be an issue.

There is quite a lot of myth about hypnosis, look up some of Paul McKenna's (sp) stuff and he explains at some length how they go through a selection process for the people that will appear on his show. How he starts with so many, does relaxation excercises with them, weeds out the ones who are resisting and is left with the ones who are relaxed and prepared to go along with it.

Mind you I suppose there are those out there who not only have super natural Spiritualism powers they also have mind control powers (mind you would they need spiritualist powers as well) and can just make somebody think they have had a spot on reading

SiPie

Ollyk

After 2 years of hypnotherapy I agree with most of what you are saying...but I think you'd be amazed at what CAN be done and I wouldn't be fooled by the Paul McKenna/Robert Halpern stage stuff which is different in many ways to the real thing.

Believe you me, you can hypnotise people VERY easily indeed

For example, how relaxed do you think an audience at a hypnotist's show are at the beginning when they are asked to hold their hands tightly together.... I would reckon that most of the audience are actually in a mild anxiety state about what's about to happen and more important is how they view (or what they believe about) the person who is doing the hypnotherapy....

People can even be hypnotised through BOREDOM and their surroundings being conducive to the whole thing and not necessarily relaxation Hence the dull monotone tones often used...

I'm not suggesting it's ever used....just thought it would throw a little interesting slant into the debate

Cheers
Si

OllyK

Never a bad thing