spirit mediums
Dead speak through
Spirit mediums are people who claim to communicate with the dead, serving as intermediaries between the living and the spirit world.
The practice gained popularity in 19th-century spiritualism, when mediums conducted séances to channel departed souls.
Today the term covers psychics, channelers, and others who profess contact with the deceased: The spirit medium claimed to have a message from her late husband.
- channelingDirecting flow or energy
- séanceSpirit communication ritual
- talking boardLettered spirit-contact device
- table tippingSéance levitation phenomenon
- dark roomPhotography processing space
Victorian parlor · ghosts · divination · trance · psychometry · animism · shamanism · necromancy · ancestor worship · ectoplasm · poltergeists · crystal ball · automatic writing · cold reading · ancestor spirits · clairvoyance · sacred rituals · occultism
- paranormalghosts, paranormal, haunting, poltergeist, apparition
- religionChristianity, Islam, beliefs, Judaism, Hinduism
- African traditionsinitiation ceremonies, naming ceremony, ancestral worship, rites of passage, tribal chiefs
- Chinese folk religionfolk religion, folk beliefs, ancestral worship, Chinese temples, joss sticks
- Chinese Religionancestor veneration, Confucianism, Daoism, Taoism, Buddhism
- folk religionancestral worship, ancestor veneration, nature deities, ritual sacrifices, libations
spirit mediumsskeptics
Those who doubt claims
debunkers · materialists · rationalists · paranormal investigators · Harry Houdini
spirit mediumsphysicians
Medical doctors collectively
medical doctors · midwives · obstetricians · life coaches · therapists
spirit mediumsempiricists
Philosophers favoring sensory knowledge
scientists · scientific method · Carl Sagan · naturalists · reductionists