The psychical research literature has many examples of séance room materialization phenomena. This article consists of a reprint of, and commentary about, Eric J. Dingwall’s paper “The Plasma Theory”, published in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research in 1921. Dingwall discussed some of the previously published ideas on the topic, and emphasized those related to mediums Eva C. and Kathleen Goligher. The purpose of the current article is not to provide evidence for the phenomena, but to present (...) relevant contextual information relevant to the article, additional bibliography, and theoretical concepts, some of which are forgotten today. (shrink)

Among the many phenomena reported from physical mediumship, apport phenomena – i. e. the inexplicable appearance of solid objects – rank among the most curious occurrences. In the present paper, we describe a selection of seeming apport phenomena that were observed around a German medium, Herbert Baumann (1911-1998), who seemed particularly able to produce apports,. Baumann was a close friend of the first author, who thus had the opportunity to receive more than one hundred examples of what he considers to (...) be genuine apports, both during séances and in everyday private life. We then introduce the quantum theory of theoretical physicist Burkhard Heim (1925-2001) as an example of a physical theory that apparently can account for the occurrence of so-called psi-phenomena including apports. (shrink)

In October 2015 I supervised a series of séances in Hanau, Germany with Felix Circle physical medium Kai Mügge. The purpose was to try to obtain better documentation of Kai’s table levitations than my team was able to achieve in Austria in 2013 (Braude, 2014). Although that goal was not met over the course of four séances, we nevertheless witnessed some interesting phenomena that are difficult to explain away normally given the control conditions imposed at the time. These include object (...) movements beyond the reach of the sitters, a very strange “exploding” sound from the séance table, and some extended levitations in which the table seemed to sway or swim in mid-air. But what may be most interesting about this series of séances is the way the phenomena reflect the complex, and tortured, underlying psychodynamics of the occasion. Indeed, what readers need to know about the FEG phenomena has as much to do with personalities involved as with the phenomena themselves. As a result, this report focuses as much on the background to the investigation as on the investigation itself. (shrink)

In 2021, the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies (hereafter, BICS) sponsored an essay competition (hereafter, the Contest) designed to solicit the best evidence for the hypothesis that human consciousness survives bodily death, and more specifically, evidence that would prove this hypothesis beyond a reasonable doubt. The summer 2022 issue of the Journal of Scientific Exploration featured a special subsection on the BICS contest and its winning essays. Robert Bigelow and Colm Kelleher outlined the motivation, design, and judging criteria for the (...) competition. Keith Augustine provided an extensive critical commentary on the contest design and eight of its prominent winning essays. Stephen Braude and several coauthors responded to Augustine’s criticisms, and Augustine provided a reply to Braude and his collaborators. Finally, the subsection concluded with a collaborative paper in which Etienne LeBel, Adam Rock, and Augustine proposed a more rigorous experimental design for testing the survival hypothesis. Augustine presented important criticisms of the Contest and several of its prominent winning essays. Moreover, many of his criticisms apply to survival literature in general and so are instructive for the wider survival debate. And Braude, one of the most important contributors to the survival debate since C.D. Broad and C.J. Ducasse, was at the helm of the reply to Augustine. Although the response to Augustine raised important concerns about skeptical assessments of the evidence for survival, it was hamstrung with several defects. 1. Preliminaries 2. Problematic Aspects of the Reply to Augustine 3. What is the Question? Honing in on the Actual Disagreement 4. Inference to Best Explanation 5. Confirmation Approaches to Evidential Support -- 5.1 Evidential Justification -- 5.2 When Does an Observation Favor One Hypothesis Over Another Hypothesis? The Law of Likelihood -- 5.3 When Should We Up Our Confidence in a Hypothesis? Incremental Confirmation -- 5.4 How Can We Determine the Net Plausibility of a Hypothesis? Bayes’ Theorem and Posterior Probabilities -- 5.5 Which of Two Hypotheses is More Probable than the Other? Principle of Contrastive Posterior Probabilities -- 5.6 When Does Evidence Justify Believing a Hypothesis? Principle of Absolute Confirmation -- 5.7 Survivalist Confusions about Bayesian Analyses -- 5.8 The Washing Out of Priors -- 5.9 The Subjectivism Objection -- 5.10 Summing Up Insights from Confirmation Theory -- 6. Back to Braude 7. Varieties of Skepticism 8. Neurophysiological Evidence and the Survival Hypothesis 9. The Data from Mediumship 10. The Alleged Improbability of Fraud and Other Counterexplanations 11. Mediumship and the Logic of Confirmation 12. The Significance of Failed Tests 13. Survivalist Rescues and Contrastive Confirmation 14. Evidential Support without Predictions -- 15. The Testability Problem -- Concluding Remarks. (shrink)

– Technological advances of the last decades offer possibilities to study phenomena of physical mediumship using new approaches of investigation. Such an approach is represented by Eckhard Kruse’s analyses of supposed “spirit voices” recorded in dark séance rooms during sittings with an alleged physical medium, Warren Caylor. Kruse concluded that the results of his investigations provide evidence, if not proof, demonstrating that these voices are indeed produced by materialized “spirits”. He publicized this interpretation of his work via various dissemination channels. (...) As I will show in this article, however, Kruse’s approach of studying these “spirit voices” is loaded with severe conceptual and methodological deficiencies that ultimately render his claims untenable. (shrink)

Madame d’Esperance was a physical medium, well-known for her materialized forms which bereaved sitters often recognized as their dead relatives. A critical evaluation is made of her acclaimed biographical account, Shadow Land, with a particular focus on her activities, first in Newcastle, England and then in Gothenburg, Sweden. In this process we had access to recently discovered archives and rare publications. A presentation is made of some of the fraudulent methods used by physical mediums and the possible psychological processes behind (...) the remarkable experiences of the sitters attending séances. (shrink)