Mediumship is typically described as the practice of certain people – the mediums – to purportedly mediate communication between spirits of the dead or other transcendent entities, and living human beings.
A specific
subtype of mediumship is physical mediumship. Here, large-scale physical
anomalies
such as inexplicable object movements or the sudden appearance of
objects in a closed space are supposed to be mediated by the medium and
its associated entities. Often, these phenomena take place in darkness
or in dim red light in a specifically equipped séance room. Whilst it is certain that strange
things do happen around some mediums, the explanation regarding the origins of
these phenomena is often not easy to find. For example, many mediums of the past turned
out to be frauds. Personally, I followed the development of a well-known physical
medium for a number of years, and indeed, I found out that also this medium produced phenomena in a fraudulent manner (Nahm 2014a). Unfortunately, practical studies into physical mediumship are useless as long as mediums refuse to sit under appropriate control conditions. At present, there seems to be no physical medium that is willing to agree to such controls. |  During a séance (Photo: M. Nahm) |