Fraud mediums in spiritualism An argument with a Sceptic

obiwan here are more photos revealing fake ectoplasms of Eva C. Notice that it is again tissue paper, cut outs of peoples heads from magazines and newspapers or cloth.







lol!



Was there any reason for her to be naked during some of her seances? I noticed you ignored this question. Notice the cardboard prop.

Victor Zammit on his website and MU!! claims the ectoplasm materializations of Eva C were genine, so Victor and MU!! believes that a penis has a spirit now?

OK one more time as you have chosen, eventually, to respond to my points, I think it's only polite to reply.

forests wrote:
Obiwan the problem is, is that you are refusing to answer about the documented fraud of Eva C, Helen Duncan, Eusapia Palladino and other mediums I have exposed as fraud. Do you accept that they were frauds? You said yourself their materializations are bogus and not evidence for spiritualism, but elsewhere you are claiming physical mediumship is actually valid. Can you list some of your evidence? So far nothing, no photos.

I don't know whether the mediums you mention were (completely or in part) frauds or not. I have already agreed the pictures you posted are dreadful. If the photos and reports you refer to are correct, and their provenance is genuine, then there seems to be good evidence to suggest fraud in at least some of their phenomena. I don't think even spiritualists would suggest that there has not been widespread fraud within and without. I have no particular ties to any of those mediums and no specific interest in them. This does not of course, even if true, mean that all their demonstrations were fraudulent unless we assume a priori that all such phenomena are impossible.

When you say I claim elsewhere physical mediumship is 'valid' I assume you are implying that I have said it is a fact. I don't recall ever posting that anywhere. In fact I don't know whether it is or not. I may have entered into discussion in other places with the caveat 'assuming it occurs at all'. I think you're misrepresenting my position. This is very naughty.

forests wrote:Can you please paste in some "genuine" ectoplasm photographs then? Please show me ones that do not look like fraud.

I can but I'm not going to. The reason is that the example I cited, and there are many, is in a book (it probably exists somewhere online). I would need to scan it and upload. Frankly I can't be bothered because you tell me you have researched this subject and all the photos are fraudulent and since I know you're wrong, that means you either haven't looked at much material other than what you have cut and pasted from other sites, or you're willfully ignoring other evidence. I am not interested in changing your mind or educating you because I suspect your motives are not genuine.

IMHO photos may not be good evidence even if they appear perfect because they raise too many unanswered questions. Even a time-sequenced set of photos of a medium rely on the honesty of the photographer, the medium and the person producing the text - usually all unknown to the reader. Having said that, it would seem very foolish to me to produce ridiculous photographs fraudulently to convince others of the genuineness of the phenomena. People do stupid things sometimes though. One question that occurs to me though is: 'Did these people really think the photos you show make for good evidence?'.

forests wrote:The teachings of Silver Birch claimed that animals have a "group soul" i. e. not an individual spirit, and he talked about those entities merging on an astral plane or something, his beliefs were very Theosphical, and he invoked a "God" to explain why, it would probably explain it considering that maurice barbanell was well known for reading occult books, sorry but his beliefs were not scientific, the entity silver birch was an alternate personality from his subconscious.

Again you know best. What you said was that there was no explanation. The point I was making is that there is, and I gave that as an example, it's just that you don't like it. Your comment about the source of the teachings is pure conjecture.

forests wrote:Anyway this is all contradiction between what other spiritualists have written becuase some spiritualists have written animals do not survive death and others say animals do survive death. You do realise this is just more evidence against spiritualism? All reports of the spirit world by mediums contradict eachother. No mention of plants, insects or othe organisms though by spiritualists and only little mention of animals. The religion of spiritualism is anthropocentric. Does a fish enter the spirit world? Please answer, does it's spirit enter the spirit world through some kind of dimension from under the water?

For the last time: I have no interest in Spiritualism. The phenomena you are convinced are all fraud, if they exist, existed before Spiritualism appropriated them. Your points about fish have been covered in principle by the Silver Birch writings - but you don't like the view expressed. I have no interest in philosophical debate along the lines of 'how many angels can stand on the head of a pin'. My own interest is solely in whether or not we survive physical death and the evidence that seems to suggest we might. Perhaps someone else will indulge your apparent fixation with fish, cavemen and dinosaurs.

forests wrote:There are no reports of dinosaurs or neanderthal men or hominids by spiritualists, are you claiming these things do not exist in the spirit world? If there are dinsoaurs in the spirit world, then do their bodies take a different form? Because wouldn't some of those carnivorous dinosaurs be eating human spirits? Think your beliefs through.

I referred you to one source of information on this subject. You didn't like it. If you're really interested in forming a balanced view do some more reading. I am not going to list sources until you find one that suits you because we both know you have made up your mind on the matter. You say you have researched the matter fully and reached your own conclusion. Be happy. Do you now need to convert the world to your own view? Relax. No one really cares what you or I think.

forests wrote:Then list some of this evidence, by the way you are talking one would assume you have not researched this topic. The SPR is no friend to spiritualism, they caught most spiritualists in fraud, and only a minority of SPR members (most the early ones) believed in spiritualism.

You can assume whatever you like. You seem to be confusing the concept of survival evidence and spiritualism. There is no necessary connection. I am not going to list evidence, which is freely available to you and is also covered many times over in books and articles online. Go find them - incidentally if you haven't come across this material yourself I would be surprised given how much you claim to know. I have to say I am starting to doubt your altruistic intentions.

forests wrote:You are not a spiritualist, but you accept that mediumship and physical mediumship are genuine? That does not really make sense, I suppose some researchers have claimed mediumship is the result of ESP but it appears that does not fit your belief. So you reject the spirit hypothesis, then what do you belief? UFOs are behind it? Or do you believe something else?

Ah now we see it. Where did I say I accept mediumship of any kind as genuine? If one accepts that the phenomena may be possible, then it is reasonable to look at the evidence. I think there is a lot of evidence to support mediumship, but not enough for me to make it an incontrovertible fact. Any number of cases of fraud do not negate the cases where there seems to be good evidence to support it. There only needs to be one good example to demonstrate that it can occur, it isn't a contest. In short, I don't know whether it is possible or not but my suspicion is that it is can occur. The rest of your remarks do not warrant an intelligent response.

I will leave you to go back to what appears to be the selective cutting and pasting of extracts from websites that reflect your own view of the world. I won't be responding further to you but please feel free to have the last word.

You really are confusing,, You 1stly use the names of zammit and roll to try and add some sort of substance to your view, and then in the next breath you attack them.
you choose constantly stick to the duncan and and eva c photos... yet choose to ignore the mention of such people as Alec harris, and Leslie flint.
You choose to ignore the Mention of the FACT that the information given through duncans mediumship was that specific that it alerted national security,
You choose to ignore the massive amounts of evidence Given by such wonderful mediums such as John Sloan.
In one breathe you say you believe in life after death and the next attack Mediums, and Spiritualism.
So to you this isnt a Debate or Discussion,,, this is an argument fueled by the id part of your personailty
Of course you will disagree with me, But what else is the purpose of this?
hopefully soon your ego or super ego will kick in and provide a little much needed balance.

For the last time: I have no interest in Spiritualism

Perhaps go back a few pages, where you expressed your belief in physical mediumship and said it is not all the result of fraud, and throughtout this thread you have endorsed various mediums such as flint, and some other bloke who I pasted in was a fraud. If you are endorsing mediumship and saying it is actually genuine, then you are a spiritualist and that seems to be the case. End of story.

If you have no interest in spiritualism then why do you support mediumship and why are you on this forum? You have a high post count and looking through your posts reveals much of belief in spiritualistic activities. Sorry but I don't believe you are a free-thinker, you are buddies with this other devout spiritualist little crew on this forum and they clearly have a heavy influence of you.

You seem to be confusing the concept of survival evidence and spiritualism.

No, I am not confusing survival evidence with spiritualism. In one of my early posts I explained how spiritualism has been an embarressment for the possibility of survival and that they are not related.

And when you say survival evidence, most of it has been proven bogus mate. I know you are not responding anymore, but if you did you would tell me to look up NDE experiences. Firstly NDE experiences contradict spiritualism (those in the NDE do not report spirits, but humans in the flesh, almost like a dream world) secondly according to scientific papers there is nothing paranormal about the NDE, it can be explained by neuroscience. See this scientific paper:

There is nothing paranormal about near-death
experiences: how neuroscience can explain seeing
bright lights, meeting the dead, or being convinced
you are one of them.

Dean Mobbs and Caroline Watt

Abstract:

Approximately 3% of Americans declare to have had a
near-death experience. These experiences classically
involve the feeling that one’s soul has left the body,
approaches a bright light and goes to another reality,
where love and bliss are all encompassing. Contrary to
popular belief, research suggests that there is nothing
paranormal about these experiences. Instead, neardeath
experiences are the manifestation of normal brain
function gone awry, during a traumatic, and sometimes
harmless, event.

You may reject that paper, but this is what modern scientists have concluded. Of course there are other alternative explanations, but they are paranormal interpretations, and this would be a different subject to discuss. Back to the topic of spiritualism, most spiritualists reject the NDEs becuase they contradict reports of their spirit world.

Another user keeps mentioning Leslie Flint, well let's look at this:



Leslie Flint claimed that an etheric voice box is what the spirits spoke through, well anyone can see in that photo that his "ectoplasm" voice box was just a piece of cloth. Do you really think spirits were speaking through that?


The voices of the spirits via Flint's direct-voice mediumship sound like nothing of those who lived on earth. Amongst those who Flint claimed to have contacted were:

Arthur Conan Doyle
Marilyn Monroe
Winston Churchill
Mahatma Gandhi
Oscar Wilde
Harry Price
Frederic Chopin
Charles Dickens
Elizabeth Fry
Bessie Smith

According to an article I found on the internet (I can't post the link as I am a new user)

Every single one of the speakers on the audio files has an English accent. Even Bessie, the stereotypical cotton picker from Alabama. Her accent fluctuates from a lame attempt at an American south accent to British cockney to Scottish. Listen to her recording and see if you don't agree.

2) Chopin speaks perfect English. He was Polish, and ostensibly only visited England a few times.

3)The speakers all have the same basic speech pattern, with little to no deviation between them. They all talk about the same stuff, about how wonderful it is on "their side." They all use the same terminology, no matter what time period or part of the world. Also, the English of 18th Century England is very different from the English of the 20th century, which is something that obviously has slipped Elizabeth Fry's mind.

The Flint recording sessions of Gandhi also sound nothing like Gandhi, the accent, the intonation etc is totally different. Flint's direct-voice mediumship of the psychical researcher Harry Price also sounded very different than the voice of the real Price.

There is no reason to assume Leslie Flint was a genuine medium. The voices sound nothing like those on earth.

In one breathe you say you believe in life after death and the next attack Mediums, and Spiritualism.
So to you this isnt a Debate or Discussion,,, this is an argument fueled by the id part of your personailty

Utter nosense mate, as even another user pointed out survival is not related to mediumship. Mediumship is totally bogus fraud. On the previous page I asked about 10 questions and you have not been able to ask them. If this physical mediumship is true, then why have all reports died after 1960 and why cannot it not be performed in light conditions or out and about in everyday life, why has it got to be in a dark hidden room somewhere? Think it through mate, it is a bunch of fraud. And I would like to see you respond to my comments about Leslie Flint, how do you explain the fact that none of his voices sounded like the actual people? Have you compared the voices? If you did you would not believe in his mediumship.

you choose constantly stick to the duncan and and eva c photos

bravo321uk that is because you and the other spiritualist users ignore these photos, notice how you refuse to comment on them. What is your explanation to why those photos look like cloth and dolls? You have not explained.

Your spiritualism religion is filled with perversion. Most mediums have been female, and most seances were pornographic, at the end of the day this is what you are actually supporting.






No comment from you about the fake ectoplasm penis. After seeing such disgusting photographs I have no idea how you can continue to believe in physical mediumship.

obiwan says he has seen genuine photographs of ectoplasm, I then ask to see them and he claims he cannot be bothered to upload them!

Another photograph revealing a newspaper cut out of a persons head and tissue paper, and yes this is another Hamilton photograph which the admin claims were real spirits.



I could send you guys 200 fake ectoplasm photographs, but what is the point you have expressed you are not interested in truth. Instead no matter what you will just believe anyway. Sorry but that type of behaviour is dishonest and delusional and is the sort of thing we see in religious fundamentalism. You are not being open minded and it is irrational to keep claiming tissue paper and other fake "ectoplasms" are evidence for spiritualism when they have long been debunked as fraud.



Helen Duncan with cheesecloth and a newspaper cut out of a womens head.



Helen Duncan with big roll of cheesecloth

excuse me, But the questions you have been asking have been related to pictures of 80 or so years ago... I am 35 and wasnt there, why would I answer them?

And as for all reports dying after 1960 you are completely wrong,,, you even named "roll" and I do believe that he reported sittings in the 1980s..

And then there are plenty of modern day reports if you know where to look.

Now as for calling all us mediums Frauds.... exactly why are you here?

excuse me, But the questions you have been asking have been related to pictures of 80 or so years ago... I am 35 and wasnt there, why would I answer them?

You are not honest enough to admit that the photographs are fake becuase if you do, it will shatter your belief system, but deep down everyone knows they are fake, so I doesn't really matter

you even named "roll" and I do believe that he reported sittings in the 1980s..

Michael Roll and Victor Zammit are both devout spiritualists, but are actually useful pieces of evidence against spiritualism. Roll since the 70s has been asking for a physical medium to come forward and prove physical mediumship scientifically, but in the last 43 years no medium has come forward becuase technology has now advanced and video cameras and the infrared equipment so the fake mediums can't do their scams anymore and that is why there are no modern reports of physical mediumship.

There are plenty of reports of modern day physical mediumship.
Again why are you here?

excuse me, But the questions you have been asking have been related to pictures of 80 or so years ago

I have asked about bacteria, fish, insects, plants and other organisms. Why are there no reports of them via physical mediumship or modern mediums. The spiritualists on this thread have not been able to respond, apart from one suggestion to "silver birch" who did not mention any of the above, but only mentioned animals.

bravo321uk wrote:There are plenty of reports of modern day physical mediumship.
Again why are you here?

No there isn't. There isn't a single scientific investigation into physical mediumship going on anywhere in the last 40 years or so becuase it was debunked long ago, and even spiritualist newspapers don't mention physical mediumship anymore. Time to blow the whistle and just accept it is fraud mate, you don't want to go to the grave beliving in this nonsense do you?

Again why are you here?

just wanted to see how far believers in spiritualism will go, even when all the evidence points against their belief. been an interesting psychological study.

Well i wish not to argue with your lack of knowledge.... why are you here?

bravo321uk wrote:Well i wish not to argue with your lack of knowledge.... why are you here?

bravo321uk you are moving goal posts and ignoring evidence contrary to your belief. See my post above where I debunked your hereo Leslie Flint, are you honest enough to admit Flint's voices sounded nothing like the people on earth?

""how far believers in spiritualism will go, even when all the evidence points against their belief""
All Religious beliefs are in this category, indeed for virtually all of them absolutely no evidence is offered apart from some old books said to be written by some deity - again without anything tangible offered and which is regularly 'improved', 'authorised', 'updated' etc.
This discussion seems pinned to forests views on one aspect of Spiritualism, namely Physical Mediumship, an area wide open to fraud and which seems to often attract ego rather than higher aspects of thinking. However, there have been many sincere proponents of PM
Perhaps you might care to look at the Healing side of Spiritualism, the work of Harry Edwards in particular, whose mediumship had many documented 'physical' results?

Hi all,

Quite a few posts before my reply, so here goes.

The Mirabelli 'seance' was not in the dark, it was in broad daylight. There is no evidence of any infra red here. The spirit poet actually rose upwards prior to dematerialisation.

Tony Cornell did not investigate Scole. To the best of my knowlege ( please correct me if I am wrong ) he never attended any of the sittings at scole, Keen, Fontana and Ellison were the main investigators.

Mirabelli demonstrated materialisation in white light on a number of occasions to packed rooms. One incident involved a physician in attendance whos 'deceased' daughter materialised in daylight, again rising into the air before dematerialising in front of the onlookers.

forests is being somewhat selective in his examples, and it would help if he got his facts right!!. More to the point would he like to enlighten us on his PRACTICAL experience in witnessing seance room phenomena??. Easy to slag everything off when you get it all out of books.

LeroyC

Given we are arguing with a closed minded sceptic who is bombarding this thread with confused ideas and refuses to listen to anything other than his viewpoint I am going to lock this thread.
Forests if you start another thread like this or try to hijack any other threads on this forum in this flooding approach you will be removed from the forum.

The comments of the so many members who have been reasonable and tried to share ideas stand testament to the reasonable way we have tried to deal with your flood of posts which clearly show a lack of any open mindedness. I suggest you return to the Randi forums post-haste while I allow this thread to remain as an example of closed minded scepticism.

I am locking this thread to save people wasting more time responding with points you refuse to deal with. Your views are mind numbingly plain, we reject virtually all of them.

On top of that you show no knowledge of the Philosophy of Modern Spiritualism focusing on a handful of physical phenomena incidents.

I hope that you use this forum wisely to learn more and not attack again from your closed position.

Jim

Jim

No surprise we were wasting our time he is a supporter of Jon Donnis Bad Psychics here is Forests profile and posts

His Profile
http://moh2005.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=viewprofile&user=forests
His Posts

http://moh2005.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=userrecentposts&user=forests

Clearly he is taking his attack to wherever he can, I guess we need to be careful and watch for the leader of that sceptical group although I have met Jon Donnis before on another forum

For interest this is where Forests gained his Eva C material as I expected its n internet grab bag where specific people uses sections of fact to enhance the particular position they wish to peddle http://www.genders.org/g54/g54_delgado.html