Yeh, yeh. I hear you. Mediums are good guessers. Or they pick up on someone’s thoughts and repeat them back to the client. They’re all charlatans.

 

I’m not in the business of trying to change minds but I do wonder why there’s abject, even outraged rejection. Without a doubt, there are charlatans but "hold the front page", there are in all walks of life.

 

I haven’t done the maths but the mean curve of accuracy is probably the same as it is with financiers. 25% bloody amazing. 50% hit and miss. The rest are a waste of space or worse, a danger with your money. Same with mediums. Some are good, some are bad, but it doesn’t mean its all quackery.

 

Yes, it’s easy to make credible guesses. “I have a gentleman here, in an old-fashioned military uniform. Do you know anyone who fits that description?” An eager and unaware client beams, “Yes, my grandfather was in the war. Is it him? That must be him. Is he all right?” The fake medium continues, “Yes, he’s very well. He loves you very much.”

 

The newbie client starts giving the medium helpful tidbits, which the medium can play on. “Is he with my grandmother?” “Yes, he is. She’s waving to you. She says she loves you too.” As a newbie recalls a dead relative they can’t help themselves but spill the details, feeding information to the so-called medium. Not the other way round. “They had an orchard by a river. I loved sitting under the trees eating the apples.” Maybe not right that minute but at some point, the medium may drop in, “I can see them standing under apple trees in blossom.” Later still. “Was there water near their house? A lake? I think I’m being shown a lake. No, no, apologies, it’s a river.” A little bit of theatre and bingo. The client will tell all their friends about how amazing the medium was and the phoney’s phone won’t stop ringing with new bookings.

 

That’s why the client needs to be quiet, giving little more than, “I can take that” or “I need more to go on than that,” when asked. 

 

That's not all. Clients need to watch out for a medium asking questions. Too many questions guide a charlatan to make a reasonable guess. You know the party game when everyone has a Post-It on his or her forehead, with the name of a pop star, actor or animal on to it? You take it in turns to guess what’s stuck to your forehead, by asking the group just 5 questions. With enough savvy a fake-medium can pretty much to do something similar but, when you think about it, it’s even easier with mediumship. “Is your grandmother in spirit?” Yes. “Did she have grey hair?” Yes, yes. “She died of an illness?” Yes “Was it cancer?” I think so, yes. “Did she have quite a difficult upbringing?” I suppose so, yes, she grew up in the war years so she must have. Convincing, no?

 

Let’s face it, it’s easy to make accurate guesses based on a client's appearance, belongings or demeanour, in the same way we judge people every day. Take the fellow who arrives for a sitting, hanging up his waxed Barbour countryside jacket before you get started. “I’m being told you live in the countryside, do you enjoy the countryside?” “I don’t live in the countryside but I would like to one day and I spend as much time there as I can.” It's close enough to pique his belief in what you’re saying and now he’s very keen to hear whatever you tell him. 

 

The 40-ish woman whose tired face fights with sloughs of make-up. She refuses to turn off her mobile’s vibrate function, “Just in case someone needs me”. Her vast leather bag zzzzzz’s 3 minutes into the sitting and again at the 9-minute mark. “I’m being told you are stressed and need to take some time for yourself.” “Oh yes, that’s true. I’m exhausted but I have too much on at the office.” Pause. The medium continues, “They’re telling me they’re taking advantage of you at your work. Is that true?” The businesswoman may not have thought about that before, but now you mention it, “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”  Boom. Got her. She'll believe anything you say now.

 

And the lowest of low. A 50-something woman without a wedding ring. “I’m being told there is romance on the horizon.” “Really? Who?” Pause. Then an even more hopeful, “When?” This is particularly pernicious because the alleged medium is playing on the sitter’s vulnerability to hear what they so desperately want to hear.

 

I’ll put my hand up right now. I don’t think mediums should tell people what might happen in the future. The only role for a medium is to prove there is life after death. That doesn't mean that if you believe in life after death already you can't go to mediums for a check-in and spiritual comfort.

 

But what it does mean is it's a tad risky going to mediums to find out if you're going to get married, have three kids and before all that happens you're going to get off with Colin in accounts, whom you've got a major crush on, at the upcoming Christmas party.  

 

Sometimes a medium predicts an outcome that a few years later makes you think, “Whoah, I remember a medium saying that would happen.” But going to mediums to tell you about the future can be misleading and worryingly unhelpful.

 

I'm told our departed relatives can see further into the future than we are presently aware of. They have, if you like, more of a helicopter view of what we're up to and what's on our horizons. So apparently they can see opportunities and situations coming up, from jobs, to travel, to meeting someone, to getting a black cat.

 

The stick in the bicycle wheel is that we still have free will. So even if our departed loved ones can see a great opportunity coming up for us, we might not go along with it. Our relos tell the medium they can see a great job in Texas for us but we might not like the heat, so don't apply for the job so don't get offered the job and so don't take a job in Texas. Forevermore, whenever the subject of mediums comes we'll roar with laughter from the comfort of the English countryside and say, "Ha, ha this medium once told me I'd work in Texas, what a load of pony." 

 

Or more likely, a medium tells you something you want to hear and you latch on to it like a vacuum sucking on a cotton curtain. A medium says you're going to marry a tall, dark man and that evening you meet a 6', dark-haired man called Gary at Pumpkin Bar & Grill. You think he's the 'one'. You throw yourself at him. You embarrass yourself.

 

Actually, the tall dark-haired man was your mate Dave, who was standing next to you at the bar when this all happened. You just didn't think it was him because you've been "just good mates" with Dave for 20 years and never, good lord no, fancied him. Years later you do fall in love with Dave and the penny drops that hang on, that medium meant good old Dave all along. So it's not that the medium's information was wrong so much as how you've interpreted that information.

 

Having said that, what can be helpful is when 'thems' on the other side advise you to behave in a particular way or take a particular action, for example: be patient; or, you'll find the legal documents you're looking for at the back of your wardrobe; or, call that old friend who popped into your head the night before. 

 

As for picking up on what someone is thinking, it happens. Bonafide mediums train to know the difference between the ‘psychic level’ - when they can pick up on what someone is thinking and feeling - and the ‘medium level’ - when they receive information from the dead. The former tends to come in pictures and relatively slowly. That’s for me, at any rate. The latter comes more quickly, without visuals or sound. No guessing. No time to interpret or analyze. It just comes into me. And often I don’t remember a word I've said afterwards.

 

Sometimes mediums genuinely think they’re getting information from the dead but don’t realize they’ve picked up on the guest's thoughts and emotions. This can happen when the medium isn't operating at a high enough frequency. They’re basically poking around in the client’s lower energy field (hopefully explained in chapter 10), picking through a lucky dip of thoughts and feelings. The client had a tuna sandwich for lunch. The client had a headache for a week. The client was looking at a map of the world. The client is worrying. 

 

Perhaps the guest is a young widow. Only that morning she was looking at a photograph on her bedside table, of her late husband. In the photo, he was wearing a green T-shirt, holding his mountain bike in front of him, helmet swung over the handlebars, with swarthy dark hair. The medium may offer, “I see a man with dark hair, into mountain biking, wearing a green T-shirt.” The young widow sitting in front of the medium believes her dead husband has come through. In reality, the medium picked up that the widow was looking at a photo of the husband but that’s not information from dead people and shouldn’t be conveyed as such.

 

A medium might pick up on useful information at the psychic level but if they mention it to the client, they need to say it’s not from a dead person.

 

This all means that yes, there are charlatans who can make good guesses. And yes, there are genuine mediums who think they're getting information from the other side but have just picked up on what you're thinking. But that's not true of all mediums.

 

Real deal mediums give you information only you know about, if not at the time, certainly when you have a chance to delve into family records at a later date. “Your grandfather was shot in the leg twice.” “Your mother had three miscarriages before you.” “Your grandmother had Irish roots and lived in South America.” 

 

It’s happened to me that the medium knew more about my family than I did. Only the other day, I was told my uncle was older than my father. I said emphatically that he wasn’t, he was the younger one. Later, I realized I was wrong. My uncle was the older brother. The medium had done a superb job holding firm with what she was picking up. A fake wouldn’t and couldn’t have done that.