Scientists Investigate Spiritualist Mediums: Why Some People Report “Hearing the Dead”
Spiritualist mediums might be more prone to immersive mental activities and unusual auditory experiences early in life, according to new research.
This might explain why some people and not others eventually adopt spiritualist beliefs and engage in the practice of “hearing the dead,” the study led by Durham University found.
Mediums who “hear” spirits are said to be experiencing clairaudient communications, rather than clairvoyant (“seeing”) or clairsentient (“feeling” or “sensing”) communications.
The researchers conducted a survey of 65 clairaudient spiritualist mediums from the Spiritualists’ National Union and 143 members of the general population in the largest scientific study into the experiences of clairaudient mediums.
They found that these spiritualists have a proclivity for absorption — a trait linked to immersion in mental or imaginative activities or experience of altered states of consciousness.
Mediums are also are more likely to report experiences of unusual auditory phenomena, like hearing voices, often occurring early in life. ...
The findings are published in the journal Mental Health, Religion and Culture. The research is part of Hearing the Voice — an interdisciplinary study of voice-hearing based at Durham University and funded by the Wellcome Trust. ...
Through their study, the researchers gathered detailed descriptions of the way that mediums experience spirit “voices,” and compared levels of absorption, hallucination-proneness, aspects of identity, and belief in the paranormal.
They found that 44.6 percent of spiritualist participants reported hearing the voices of the deceased on a daily basis, with 33.8 percent reporting an experience of clairaudience within the last day.
A large majority (79 percent) said that experiences of auditory spiritual communication were part of their everyday lives, taking place both when they were alone and when they were working as a medium or attending a spiritualist church.
Although spirits were primarily heard inside the head (65.1 percent), 31.7 percent of spiritualist participants said they experienced spirit voices coming from both inside and outside the head. ...
Spiritualists reported first experiencing clairaudience at an average age of 21.7 years. However, 18 percent of spiritualists reported having clairaudient experiences ‘for as long as they could remember’ and 71 percent had not encountered Spiritualism as a religious movement prior to their first experiences.
The researchers say their findings suggest that it is not giving in to social pressure, learning to have specific expectations, or a level of belief in the paranormal that leads to experiences of spirit communication.
Instead, it seems that some people are uniquely predisposed to absorption and are more likely to report unusual auditory experiences occurring early in life. For many of these individuals, spiritualist beliefs are embraced because they align meaningfully with those unique personal experiences. ...
