Can Mediums Really Talk To The Dead?

It is the being, the individual, who serves as a point of union to the spirits, that they may easily communicate with men — incarnated spirits.

• Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail, also known as “Allan Kardec”

Mediums have the sensitivity to perceive and interpret messages from spirits that have become disembodied or have died. They should be able to deliver messages to believers from their deceased family members that are not only convincing, but helpful for the believer to make needed changes to his life. Readings should convince the believer that they were spoken to by the relative through the medium; the medium should reference things that there is no way he would know through natural means. There should be no question whether the medium researched the believer beforehand to find something to mention in the reading. Speaking in vague generalities does not prove that there has been spiritual connection to the dead; cold readings, Barnum statements, and “playing the odds” deliver those kinds of results and they are not proof of mediumship (Read my previous post Can psychics read minds for more on this).

The question remains, though. Can science provide evidence for true mediumship?

In a 2013 study by the National Library of Medicine, six individuals serving as mediums reported accurate information about people that had died. I’ve included a link to the study for anyone interested in reading further. In a September 2021 issue of Science Direct, a meta-analysis was conducted demonstrating that mediums can receive information from deceased persons. I’ve also included a link to that article for those reading scientific information regarding mediumship. These studies do not prove that mediumship is a real phenomenon, but they strongly suggest that, at least in some cases, self-proclaimed mediums can give accurate information about deceased individuals they never met or read about.

Science assumes a mechanistic, materialistic universe. When people claim that spirits are doing things, science rightfully questions it and investigates it; if the claim is disproven by scientific methods, so be it. Spirituality has nothing to fear from scientific inquiry; scammers do.

Scammers like to present themselves as powerful, but they prey on believers and charge high amounts of money only to deliver information that the believer already knows. When all is said and done, the believer can rightly say that, on many occasions, they pay money for a reading and are none the wiser and poorer afterward.

Here are links to the two studies referenced in this blog post:

NIH Study  

Science Direct article