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My Experience As A Psychic Medium

Not sure it is what you're after but I've had a couple of experiences thatcould be thought of as inadvertent mediumship.

First one I've posted about on FTMB, when a very young child my great grandfather passed away and at the post funeral get together he spoke to me and asked me to relay a message. It didn't go down well which is why I remember it so vividly.

Second time it was a ouija board. Now everyone knows they are just ideomotor effect and BS right? Well how about this - I'll try and keep it short.
Late teens this time. At a party board comes out and a few of us have a go. Seems to work and a load of messages get spelled out, all a bit vague. Gradually people drop out and it's down to me and this other guy and we are both cracking up because we "know" it's the other one moving the planchette. Until he takes his hand off and to my amazement I continue to move the pointer round on my own!
Now I know it must be me but I'm making no intentional effort to do it, and I'm speaking to others while it's happening so it doesn't have my full attention while I'm doing it so typical ideomotor effect of course - now to the wierd bit. A message is spelled out but this isn't vague. This has a sender, recipient, a proper message (a warning about someone - by name) and a curious misspelling of a simple name. The message just keeps repeating. Now the recipient is in the room and he is spooked by it badly but is willing to share. His Grandfather had passed away not long before, and a week before he died had sent him a letter. That letter closed with the warning and the name and was misspelt the same way (that's the bit that really got him freaked) He said it was the last sentence of the letter pretty much word for word. So how did that get into my subconscious? Really how?

We all scoff at mediums, ouija, psi etc because of the high level of fraud and well intentioned fuzzy woo woos but I'm not going to throw out baby with the bath water. I've seen just enough to to convince me there is something that sometimes pops up, messes for a minute then disappears. Perhaps its all the same thing and we just label our interpretations with different names.
What a great story, thank you for sharing. It's stuff like this that does suggest there is a genuine phenomenon at work. I guess the question is what is it.
 
I'm not going to throw out baby with the bath water.

This exactly. That is the danger in my view when looking at any form of esoterica. Experiences are dismissed (not necessarily on this forum) due to lack of "evidence", but by their very nature, psychic readings, sightings of something extraordinary, or whatever are often personal or fleeting and wholly lacking in corroboration. Doesn't mean that some are very true indeed.
 
Thanks for this, always find it s fascinating subject. Being from Scotland, there was always an auntie who had, 'the gift'!

So... question I often posed, 'Which horse is going to win the 2:40 race at Ascot tomorrow'?

'Oh, it disnae work like that...'.

Why not?
I'm another one in the 'vague telepathy' camp. I believe that we can, in moments of higher emotional states, pick up on images from the minds of others. Nothing useful, nothing that the person in front of us doesn't know (albeit maybe unconsciously). Nobody knows in advance what will win the 2.40 at Ascot, so the 'spirits' can't tell you.

Get a few stable lads in front of you in a state of nervous excitement, and you might be able to hazard an idea as to which horses were running better than others though.

I've 'known' things about other people without them telling me. No attempts at 'visualising' anything, or meditating or anything. Just meeting someone and coming out with something that has them exclaiming 'how could you possibly know that?'

Low level telepathic field, I reckon.
 
Maybe it was your friend's subconscious (as opposed to the dead) which was in control of your hand movements (or of the planchette beneath your hand...maybe you had least to do with it). That's no less "impossible" or unacceptable to the dominant worldview, but at least it offers some reason why those exact words and spelling were repeated.
For sure, I'm not wedded to the idea of spirits doing it and it wasn't new information as it had been in a letter to him.
 
Better question..why would or should it work like that? My most frequently reported phenomenon on here is apparent precognition in dreams. I became so accustomed to it and considered it such an established fact that i rarely bother to note my dreams any more...
There's a comparative thread, if you haven't come across it previously:

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/mundane-dream-prediction.63302/

Dreams that still perplex...

Don't believe I've ever told anyone about this before.

When I was around 5-6 years old, I was unwell and absent from primarily school, so mum took me to the doctors. On the way, we passed by the school and it was playtime. The playground was bordered by a small garden with flowers.

That night, I dreamt that one of the boys in my class had 'lassoed' some of the flowers and pulled them out the ground via said rope.

Next day, I was back at school and there was a meeting held with all pupils, to try and identity who had pulled out flowers from the garden.

Being such a good little boy at the time, I proclaimed who was responsible and that I had witnessed same.

Culprit duly identified and chastised, that was end of the matter...

...until my class teacher realised, 'Hang on a minute, you weren't even at school yesterday'...

It was a horrendous moment... do I explain how I dreamt of it happening and face the aftermath of same, or, do I say nothing else and just accept my story is never going to be convincing and accept infinitely worse consequences of being branded as a contemptible little liar...

I chose the latter and it wasn't pleasant at all...
 
There's a comparative thread, if you haven't come across it previously:

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/mundane-dream-prediction.63302/

Dreams that still perplex...

Don't believe I've ever told anyone about this before.

When I was around 5-6 years old, I was unwell and absent from primarily school, so mum took me to the doctors. On the way, we passed by the school and it was playtime. The playground was bordered by a small garden with flowers.

That night, I dreamt that one of the boys in my class had 'lassoed' some of the flowers and pulled them out the ground via said rope.

Next day, I was back at school and there was a meeting held with all pupils, to try and identity who had pulled out flowers from the garden.

Being such a good little boy at the time, I proclaimed who was responsible and that I had witnessed same.

Culprit duly identified and chastised, that was end of the matter...

...until my class teacher realised, 'Hang on a minute, you weren't even at school yesterday'...

It was a horrendous moment... do I explain how I dreamt of it happening and face the aftermath of same, or, do I say nothing else and just accept my story is never going to be convincing and accept infinitely worse consequences of being branded as a contemptible little liar...

I chose the latter and it wasn't pleasant at all...
Could it be that perhaps you witnessed the act as you passed the school but didn't consciously register it?
 
Could it be that perhaps you witnessed the act as you passed the school but didn't consciously register it?
Oh yass... I was hoping someone might raise this possibility.

Seems the most obvious explanation... so long ago now, however, I'm of the profound recollection that wasn't the case. If I had noticed this at all at the time, would have been a quite dramatic occurrence and not something I would forget.

It simply didn't exist as a thought, until after that dream.

Just recalled - memories of this are strong, because it was bloody well traumatic - especially as a 5-6 year old.

When my tell-tale was happening, imperatively, I had entirely forgotten it originated from a dream - I gave my, heartfelt, evidence honestly,

...and as events unfolded, realised I was in something not disimmilar to a, 'wee spot of bother, here'...

'Up Shit Creek, without a paddle'...

A subconscious occurrence...? Just seems like a helluva long shot.
 
Oh yass... I was hoping someone might raise this possibility.

Seems the most obvious explanation... so long ago now, however, I'm of the profound recollection that wasn't the case. If I had noticed this at all at the time, would have been a quite dramatic occurrence and not something I would forget.

It simply didn't exist as a thought, until after that dream.

Just recalled - memories of this are strong, because it was bloody well traumatic - especially as a 5-6 year old.

When my tell-tale was happening, imperatively, I had entirely forgotten it originated from a dream - I gave my, heartfelt, evidence honestly,

...and as events unfolded, realised I was in something not disimmilar to a, 'wee spot of bother, here'...

'Up Shit Creek, without a paddle'...

A subconscious occurrence...? Just seems like a helluva long shot.

But why couldn't you just have said that you were walking past the school with your mother? That would have explained how you could have seen the incident, and it wasn't even a lie! And you might have seen something that gave you the dream - the boys playing with a bit of rope, maybe, or ganging up and pointing at the flowers and giggling? Enough for you to set up the right scenario in a dream.
 
I'm another one in the 'vague telepathy' camp. I believe that we can, in moments of higher emotional states, pick up on images from the minds of others. Nothing useful, nothing that the person in front of us doesn't know (albeit maybe unconsciously). Nobody knows in advance what will win the 2.40 at Ascot, so the 'spirits' can't tell you.

Get a few stable lads in front of you in a state of nervous excitement, and you might be able to hazard an idea as to which horses were running better than others though.

I've 'known' things about other people without them telling me. No attempts at 'visualising' anything, or meditating or anything. Just meeting someone and coming out with something that has them exclaiming 'how could you possibly know that?'

Low level telepathic field, I reckon.

My husband swears that during the depression, when things in the South Wales Valleys were grim, his grandparents next door neighbor Aggie was known to be psychic, and had a Native American spirit guide... who gave racing tips. According to his late Grandmother (sadly I never got to meet her, I have SO many questions!), there were many weeks that the meat on the table was a result of Aggie’s guide... I have no idea how many of his tips were duff, but knowing how poor things were back then he must have had a pretty good success rate for them to spare precious pennies for a bet.

That’s all I know, but my late mother in law mentioned it on a few occasions, so it’s true insofar as the family considered it a fact.
 
My husband swears that during the depression, when things in the South Wales Valleys were grim, his grandparents next door neighbor Aggie was known to be psychic, and had a Native American spirit guide... who gave racing tips. According to his late Grandmother (sadly I never got to meet her, I have SO many questions!), there were many weeks that the meat on the table was a result of Aggie’s guide... I have no idea how many of his tips were duff, but knowing how poor things were back then he must have had a pretty good success rate for them to spare precious pennies for a bet.

That’s all I know, but my late mother in law mentioned it on a few occasions, so it’s true insofar as the family considered it a fact.

Fortune-telling was illegal back in t'day. My own paternal Gran was into all the woo and would have a lady in to read the tealeaves for her mates. An unexpected knock on the front door would have them all crowding out of the kitchen into the yard and out of the gate!
 
Hello Robsocks, interesting thread you've started here. I've not tried to do it myself but am very curious and have read a lot of the books written by various mediums and watched TV without coming to any firm conclusion one way or the other. Lets face it it's so easy to fake things for a programme that those type of shows are of little help in any research.

Last year I had the opportunity to go to a meeting (a fund raiser in the village hall) . Apparently this young man had a good reputation for his accuracy. Well what can I say? I arrived wearing a neutral hat but left with a sceptics hat pulled down very firmly .... well at least as regards this particular psychic although I am prepared to acknowledge that he was having a 'bad day' and was having to wing it!

For a start he arrived about half an hour, late the venue was informal we sat round tables not in rows, so people had plenty of time to gossip about who they were hoping would come through (mmm not saying he DID have a plant in the audience but ...) My intuition told me the excuse for his tardiness was not genuine but there again my intuition isn't always right so I didn't hold that against him.

However what I did come away with was how willing people were to believe. In spite of his actually saying at the start that if he'd identified the message was for you he wanted only 'yes' or 'no' answers few people were able to stick to it and were feeding him with info. At first he gently chided them but I couldn't help but notice that the ones who actually stuck to the rules he very quickly moved on from .... ha!ha!

But here's the thing the people that got the messages were thrilled to bits and went away with happy smiles and reassured so where's the harm? It's not as if he was giving instructions or telling people that their dead relatives wanted them to sell the house and give the profits to him or something, just passing on love.

An acquaintence goes to meetings and regularly gets messages from her deceased husband via the various mediums and it's really keeping her going. So when she's telling me the stories I just smile even though some of them are so waffly they are certainly not convincing me ... but does my opinion matter in this instance? You see I have heard some personal stories (I'm open minded and not in the habit of ridicule) which have given me, and the teller pause for thought so I rule out nothing!

Sollywos
 
I believe that it works but have no current clue how it operates. This has allegedly been confirmed by U.S. military research. They admitted that it was an effect but had no military value because they could not discover how it operates and therefore could not utilise it.

A great example for me was playing charades while at school. I knew his answer and told him after he had indicated that it was five words. I immediately said 'The Hound Of The Baskervilles'. Some may say that it must have been on TV recently but I was 100% certain what it was.

Of course it had no value apart from astonishing people around me and only happened twice more. All in my childhood years.
 
Some random back and forth ramblings:

The allusion to US military (and other) remote viewing experiments is a useful one. If you accept RV works then its worth wondering what distinguishes a "medium" holding a photo or ring of your deceased loved one and "seeing" information about them from a soldier holding a sealed image of a geographical location and "seeing" information about a facility in that location. Stripped down they're surely the same feat...but no one suggests it was the ghost of the facility feeding information to the soldier. Why then should it be the ghost of the dead loved one providing images for the mind's eye of the medium?

But then one can add another aside...in cases of purported RV it is sometimes the case that the information apparently gained was specifically not in the mind of any of the people participating...ie it was only confirmed after the viewing session. Which surely undermines telepathy too....

********
Telepathy - as i said on the thread about psychokinesis, its kind of odd and interesting to reach for telepathy as a less contentious or less hard to accept explanation than spirits. Because the scientific worldview that rules out the latter is no more accepting of the former. It's just as heretical to accept psychic interaction as real as it is to accept the survival of consciousness. And more than that while telepathy wouldn't prove that we survive death, it fatally undermines the biggest philosophical objection to survival...the assumption that our minds are limited to the inside of our skull. If telepathy and the rest are real the least you can say is that the mind is more than just the brain. And if mind and brain are not synonymous then its hard to protest that the one must die with the other.

*********
But still its a problem. My late brother made an agreement with me when his cancer was diagnosed that he would try to come trhough with an agreed phrase. Nothing so far and im not sure where or how im meant to look..do i go from medium to medium or just wait for them to come to me?. But either way ive often thought they'd have to do more than just say the agreed phrase. It would be damned impressive if they said it...but i know i would always wonder if the information came from my own mind rather than that of the deceased. It would have to be more...it would have to be caged in distinctive conversation from the otehr side with confirmable references that cannot have been in my mind.
 
It would have to be more...it would have to be caged in distinctive conversation from the otehr side with confirmable references that cannot have been in my mind.

Had a bit of this. The answer is that it's not the words but the symbols that you'll get. You just have to be ready to accept the message from different senses. Also, if/when the message comes, can you believe your own senses?

This is all very personal and I don't often talk about it but here's an example.

A close relation died suddenly. Everyone was traumatised. A few months later, in deep winter, another relation was sitting with her friends when a butterfly flew into the room, fluttered round a bit and went on its way. They followed it through the house until it seemed to vanish and they couldn't see it any more.

The two relations had been close and had promised to send each other a butterfly after the death of whoever went first. Relation 2 is convinced that the butterfly was Late Relation 1.

Was it? Who knows? She was comforted though. It felt quite natural. To her it was him, being uncharacteristically whimsical - they had some HARSH banter! - but keeping his promise.
 
Has anyone else tried their hand at mediumship or psychic readings? And I'm interested in your opinions on this subject? I am certainly less skeptical!

I had some very similar experiences back in the early 00s. It was a Spiritualist Church thing, so there was no chakra-opening or related stuff, but my outcomes were much the same -- odd details I just blurted out from nowhere that would make the person I was reading for burst into tears and exclaim how amazingly specific it all was, that sort of thing.

I remember the sensation as being quite passive, like leaning back into a comfy armchair and letting someone mutter into my hindbrain. Psychic experiments -- including some at the same group -- felt more like straining out to connect. A curious distinction.

The person who ran the group did me a personal reading some time later (free, as per Spiritualist Church guidelines), and gave me a detail from my dead mother's life that I had no idea about, but that her sister remembered from their childhood -- some stuff about a particular teaching being very mean to her in a sewing class.

It's an interesting area. Just a shame it attracts so many more predators than practitioners.
 
I just bought a book called "Gypsy Magic" by Patrinella Cooper, after treating myself to some old tarot cards and scrying ball off eBay. I already read the runes (just for myself) but something sparked-up an old interest in fortune-telling gypsy-style - though I can't actually remember what that something was.

If anything of interest happens, I will report back!
 
But why couldn't you just have said that you were walking past the school with your mother? That would have explained how you could have seen the incident, and it wasn't even a lie! And you might have seen something that gave you the dream - the boys playing with a bit of rope, maybe, or ganging up and pointing at the flowers and giggling? Enough for you to set up the right scenario in a dream.
Simply because I had no recollection of actually witnessing this happening - it all stemmed from the dream. Plus, I was a good little boy and honestly hadn't seen anything!

Did I 'subconsciously' see it happening - never really noticing at the time and that evoked my dream?

Not comfortable with this idea and it will forever remain perplexing.

Certainly ended up with some grief because of it!
 
Did I 'subconsciously' see it happening - never really noticing at the time and that evoked my dream?
I always remember a scene in a court room drama (can't remember if it was fiction or a reenactment) where the barrister suggests to the woman in the witness box "Might you have unconsciously wanted to.. (whatever)" and she replies with the crushing question "How can i answer that? If something was unconscious how would i know about it?"
 
On re-reading this thread, I realize I might have something more pertinent to contribute than my usual silliness. (Why re-read? I can't deal with more news today . . . :()

About 10 years ago I was writing a research paper for a class, and while "in the zone" started having a sudden, very vivid kind of waking dream. If you are a visual thinker you would know what it's like to picture something with your eyes open; you can kind of simultaneously see both physical and imagined images. I have absolutely no way to verify if anything about it coincided with facts, but offer it as an account of a subjective experience that was perhaps mediumistic in character. It centered on a man I'd met who had been very interested in me at a time in my life when I wouldn't get involved because I couldn't commit. I was aware of everything in my physical environment. I had been awake, I was still awake, but couldn't make the "vision" stop playing out until it was finished. In it, he was in a parking garage and a woman was yelling at him, "you don't love me!" It was Valentine's Day. We live in different time zones, and it was early evening where he was, but morning where I was.

The same man figured in a number of odd dreams I had for awhile. Nothing erotic strangely, but very vivid and with a heightened psychological feeling to them.

A less dramatic example would be the time when I was a teenager and doodled a picture that looked like my brother when I was aware of thinking of him. The next day, a letter from him arrived.

Easy to dismiss as simply missing people.
 
On re-reading this thread, I realize I might have something more pertinent to contribute than my usual silliness. (Why re-read? I can't deal with more news today . . . :()

About 10 years ago I was writing a research paper for a class, and while "in the zone" started having a sudden, very vivid kind of waking dream. If you are a visual thinker you would know what it's like to picture something with your eyes open; you can kind of simultaneously see both physical and imagined images. I have absolutely no way to verify if anything about it coincided with facts, but offer it as an account of a subjective experience that was perhaps mediumistic in character. It centered on a man I'd met who had been very interested in me at a time in my life when I wouldn't get involved because I couldn't commit. I was aware of everything in my physical environment. I had been awake, I was still awake, but couldn't make the "vision" stop playing out until it was finished. In it, he was in a parking garage and a woman was yelling at him, "you don't love me!" It was Valentine's Day. We live in different time zones, and it was early evening where he was, but morning where I was.

The same man figured in a number of odd dreams I had for awhile. Nothing erotic strangely, but very vivid and with a heightened psychological feeling to them.

A less dramatic example would be the time when I was a teenager and doodled a picture that looked like my brother when I was aware of thinking of him. The next day, a letter from him arrived.

Easy to dismiss as simply missing people.
Interesting! I can zip in and out of these sort "waking dreams", especially when doing something boring like washing-up or visiting my mom (sorry, but true).

Yours however seemed forced upon you? Whereas mine are induced.

I've been known to re-watch film scenes or imagine scenes from the books I write, or even play out whole stories, yet still be doing things in waking life. I only recently discovered not everyone does this.
 
I've been known to re-watch film scenes or imagine scenes from the books I write, or even play out whole stories, yet still be doing things in waking life. I only recently discovered not everyone does this.

Hey - I do that too! Well, I don't write books, but that sort of imagining, anyway. Never thought anything of it, just me daydreaming. Didn't realise it was a rare thing until I read your post - doesn't everyone go off in a reverie once in a while?
 
I just bought a book called "Gypsy Magic" by Patrinella Cooper, after treating myself to some old tarot cards and scrying ball off eBay. I already read the runes (just for myself) but something sparked-up an old interest in fortune-telling gypsy-style - though I can't actually remember what that something was.

If anything of interest happens, I will report back!
I've had one quick attempt with my crystal ball, just a squint after handling it for a while. An image did form, but not in any way I can easily describe. Best I can say is that it was like when I picture something in my head BUT I was definitely seeing it with my eyes, and it wasn't a literal image. It was an image that represented something.

As the image formed I was aware of my mind being deliberately sceptical- I was just making pictures out of blurry shapes. But then the final part of the image appeared and even my sceptical mind had to admit that I was seeing something that made sense.

It might make more sense to you if I told you what the image was, but I feel like I shouldn't? Me and my ball are only just getting to know each other and I feel the need for discretion.

(sorry, I can be very woo)

The book I mentioned above by the way. It's a quick and easy read, but written by a gypsy, my arse. Ghost written I reckon, and far too New Agey for my tastes. But still.
 
Hey - I do that too! Well, I don't write books, but that sort of imagining, anyway. Never thought anything of it, just me daydreaming. Didn't realise it was a rare thing until I read your post - doesn't everyone go off in a reverie once in a while?
Me three! I can be having a conversation with someone while a whole other thing plays out in my head. Doesn’t everyone do this??
 
Hey - I do that too! Well, I don't write books, but that sort of imagining, anyway. Never thought anything of it, just me daydreaming. Didn't realise it was a rare thing until I read your post - doesn't everyone go off in a reverie once in a while?
I don't know if it's rare exactly, but it's not something everyone does. My daughter for instance is virtually unable to "see" with her mind, she has little to no ability to visualise, and never fantasises in a way I guess most of us do. Discovering that is what made me read up on how others people's minds operate.

Day dreaming doesn't seem uncommon, but usually people switch off almost completely from the world around them when they do that. The type of "vision" we're talking about here runs simultaneously with the real world, like having a TV on in the background.
 
Me three! I can be having a conversation with someone while a whole other thing plays out in my head. Doesn’t everyone do this??
Apparently not!

Take my husband for instance - he goes off into his own head a lot, but you can tell. He's lost to me, his facial expressions betray his thoughts, he's no idea what's going on around him etc .. He actually finds having a conversation quite difficult, it turns out. His mind will present him with a choice of replies, and he has to choose the one he thinks is appropriate, so he has to work quite hard when talking to someone, and really concentrate. I don't.

Seriously, I've read a lot about this stuff, it's fascinating and really under-researched.
 
...
About 10 years ago I was writing a research paper for a class, and while "in the zone" started having a sudden, very vivid kind of waking dream. If you are a visual thinker you would know what it's like to picture something with your eyes open; you can kind of simultaneously see both physical and imagined images. ...

In recent years I've been surprised to learn that many people simply cannot produce such mental imagery. We have a thread on the condition of lacking much, and even any, such visualization ability (aphantasia).

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/aphantasia.63421/
 
Just a thought, remember that craze with the, 'Magic Eye' illusions?

Only some of us could discern the, 'Hidden Picture', whilst others never could.

Is there a metaphor therein, regarding a visible perception which only some can ever experience?
 
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