If you’d like to root around for stuff on Monsters & Folklore, Modern Witch Beliefs, Politics & Religion and more, go to previous posts. It may surprise you how much our human capacity to believe in the supernatural remains as relevant today as it [...]]]> Welcome to Jourdemayne for commentary on the supernatural, folklore and skepticism.

If you’d like to root around for stuff on Monsters & Folklore, Modern Witch Beliefs, Politics & Religion and more, go to previous posts. It may surprise you how much our human capacity to believe in the supernatural remains as relevant today as it ever was.

The Skeptic Magazine: Winter 2011

The latest magazine is out now with great articles, interviews and all the regular favourites. You can buy it here. And remember, that if you subscribe now for the first time, there’s a 25% discount.

The latest issue is printed in colour throughout, and includes:

• ‘Losing Hitch’: Anthony Burns ruminates on Hitch’s persistent preoccupations, and wonders aloud about that supposed move from left to right. Our wonderful cover is by ‘Skeptic’ regular, Neil Davies.

• ‘Heresiarch’ blogger and journalist Nelson Jones muses upon Charles Dickens’ sceptical attitudes while visiting The British Library’s latest exhibition, A Hankering After Ghosts: Charles Dickens and the Supernatural

• In ‘Looking For America’, Little Atoms host Neil Denny shares his plans for 2012

• Kampala radio host James Onen describes why he works to spread freethought in Uganda in ‘The Rise of Skepticism in Uganda’

• Benjamin Radford discusses The Role of negative evidence in investigation in ‘Learning From What Didn’t Happen’

• All the information about the short-listers of the new Skeptic Magazine awards – the Ockhams – loads of cool links and people you may not have seen before.

• Plus, a pull-out centrefold, Crispian Jago’s amazing ‘Modern Science Map’

• And all our regular columns, cartoons and features

Have you ever woken up and experienced several of the following together:

• Correctly perceived your surroundings, that is to say, known you weren’t in a dream? • Felt that you couldn’t [...]]]>
Since this is Halloween week, let’s talk about one of the major natural contributors to the folkore of the macabre: sleep paralysis.

Have you ever woken up and experienced several of the following together:

• Correctly perceived your surroundings, that is to say, known you weren’t in a dream?
• Felt that you couldn’t move?
• Possibily felt that you were having difficulty breathing, or that something
was pressing down on your chest?
• Felt intense fear?
• Seen or heard other people/things, perhaps threatening, in the room which faded away when you recovered your ability to move?

This is sleep paralysis (SP). Estimates vary, but it seems that it may happen once to between 25 and 50% of us. When I do talks, I always ask for a show of hands, and I’d say it’s usually closer to the 40% mark than lower. The wide range of figures we have may be due to difficulties with terminology during questioning. (p 385)

In case you want to just go straight to the bit you’re interested in, here are some hyperlinks around the rest of this article:

• Folkloric creatures that have been inspired by SP
• Tips for avoiding SP
• Leave your comment or personal account of SP here

Here are a few descriptions of SP:

“Persons suffering from an attack suffer an incapability of motion, a torpid sensation in their sleep, a sense of suffocation and oppression, as if from one pressing them down, with inabability to cry out, or they utter inarticulate sounds. Some imagine often that they even hear the person who is going to press them down, that he offers lustful violence to them but flies when they attempt to grasp him with their fingers”

Paulus Aegineta, Physician in Roman Alexandra

“ … a difficult respiration a violent oppression on the breast, and a total privation of bodily motion … In this agony they sigh, moan, utter indistinct sounds, and remain in the jaws of death, til, by the utmost efforts of nature, or some external assistance, they escape out of that dreadful, torpid state. As soon as they shake of that vast oppression, and are able to move the body, they are affected with strong Palpitation, great Anxiety, Langour and Uneasiness”

J Bond
An Essay on the Incubus, or Nightmare 1753

“ … one passion is almost never absent – that of utter and incomprehensible dread … In every instance, there is a sense of oppression and helplessness … he [the victim – J] can hardly drag one limb after another … his blows are utterly ineffective”

R. Macnish
The Philosophy of Sleep 1834

And Guy de Maupassant also gives a perfect fictional description in Le Horla:

“I sleep – for a while – two or three hours – then a dream – no – a nightmare seizes me in its grip, I know full well that I am lying down and that I am asleep… I sense it and I know it… and I am also aware that somebody is coming up to me, looking at me, running his fingers over me, climbing on to my bed, kneeling on my chest, taking me by the throat and squeezing… squeezing… with all its might, trying to strangle me. I struggle, but I am tied down by that dreadful feeling of helplessness which paralyzes us in our dreams. I want to cry out – but I can’t. I want to move – I can’t do it. I try, making terrible, strenuous efforts, gasping for breath, to turn on my side, to throw off this creature who is crushing me and choking me – but I can’t! Then, suddenly, I wake up, panic-stricken, covered in sweat. I light a candle. I am alone.”

The International Classification of Sleep Disorders, Revised: Diagnostic and Coding Manual describes it this way: (p 39)

“Sleep paralysis is a transient, generalized inability to move or to speak during the transition between sleep and wakefulness. The patient usually regains muscular control within a short time (one to several minutes). Sleep paralysis is a frightening experience, particularly when initially experienced, and often is accompanied by a sensation of inability to breathe. Episodes often occur with hypnagogic hallucinations, and thus the frightful emotional experience is intensified.

The good news is that very few people will have several attacks in their lives, and only a very tiny minority will have chronic difficulty.

Basically, SP is when your REM (dreaming) cycle intrudes into wakefuness so that you experience sleep phenomena (dream hallucinations; muscular paralysis) simultaneously with waking phenomena (awareness of your own body; awareness of your surroundings). There may be a genetic predisposition, but it usually occurs when sleep cycles are disturbed: for example, in people who are doing shift work or taking afternoon naps. It is commonly suffered by narcoleptics, but you don’t have to be narcoleptic to have an attack, or even several.

And although the word ‘nightmare’ now just means ‘bad dream’, it’s clear from the records that it originally referred to sleep paralysis: p 54

“The word nightmare was originally used in its saxon derived meaning of “crusher” (mara) and continued to be used this way into the seventeenth century. Since then, it was extended to encompass bad dreams.”

Sleep paralysis has accounted for many historical accounts and folkloric
creatures. Here are a few examples:

Witches

Cottom Mather (The Salem Witches) reported that Richard Coman was ‘witch-ridden’ by Bridget Bishop p 221 Cotton Mather (from the Salem Witch trials) On Witchcraft: Being the Wonders of the Invisible World, he writes that Bridget Bishop had allegedly “ridden a man”. A Richard Coman testified that “eight years ago, as he lay awake in his bed, with a light burning in the room, he was annoyed with the apparition of this Bishop and of two more that were strangers to him, who came and oppressed him so, that he could neither stir himself, nor wake anyone else”

Ghosts

Traditional account of ghosts pulling the covers off sleepers are common: I’ve experienced it myself. Here’s an account via Montague Summers from his The Vampire in Europe

“A miller at D—had a healthy servant boy who soon after entering his services began to fail. He aquired a ravenous appetite but nevertheless grew daily more feeble and emaciated. Being interrogated, he at last confessed that a thing which he could not see, but which he could plainly feel, came to him every night about twelve o’ clock and settled upon his chest, drawing all the life out of him, so that he bacame paralised [sic] for the time being, and neither could move nor cry out. Thereupon the miller agreed to share the bed with the boy, and made him promise that he should give a certain sign when the vampire arrived. This was done, and when the signal was made the miller putting out his hands grasped an invisibale but very tangible substance that rested upon the boy’s chest. He described it as apparently eliptical in shape, and to the touch feeling like gelatine, properties which suggest an ectoplasmic formation. The thing writhed and fiercely struggled to escape, but he gripped it firmly and threw it on the fire. After that, the boy recovered and there was an end of these visits.”

Vampires

The vampiric ghost, the Shoemaker of Silesia, had committed suicide but still had the benefit of the proper religious rituals as his family had hidden the means of his demise. It is strongly implied that the ghosts did not rest because he had had those rituals to which, as a suicide, he was not entitled.

He attacked “… after sundown, and since no one was free of it, everyone looked around constantly for it. The ones most bothered were those who wanted to rest after heavy work; often it came to their bed, often it actually lay down in it and was like to smother the people.”¹

One of the classic folkoric vampires, Peter Plogojowitz had “Come to (his victims) in their sleep”. This account come to us from the Imperial Provisor of Gradisk District where Plogojowicz had lived, died, and then been exhumed, staked and cremated by his nervous neighbours.

Incubi and Succubi

There is sometimes another aspect to sleep paralysis, a sexual aspect which may be experienced as either pleasurable or as an assault.

There were undoubtedly many factors which led to the idea of sexual demons called incubi and succubi: the Roman Catholic Church’s extraordinarily strictured attitude to sex, and sexism in general, among them.

But there’s also an element of SP which is obvious as soon as you know about it. Here’s an account of a succubus attacking a man, via Reginald Scot from a man named Jason Pratensis: “There commeth unto me, almost every night, a certain woman, unknown unto me, and lieth so heavy upon my breast, that I cannot fetch my breath, neither have any power to cry, neither do my hands serve me to shove her away, nor my feet to go from her”

Interpretation of sleep paralysis as demonic attack is unfortunately still a modern phenomenon. A copy of City News (a publication by the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, an international Pentacostal organisation of Brazilian origin) from within the last couple of years carries this story on the problem page:

“This may sound bizarre and unbelievable, but since a long-term relationship break up I have been getting feelings of something having sex with me. I can fell myself being pushed down and this thing on top of me …”

To which the advice was:

“I certainly do believe you and trust me when I say that you are not the only one that is going through this problem. Surprisingly, it’s quite common but people are often embarrassed to seek help for it and often, if they do seek help, they do so in the wrong places. The good news is that we have helped thousands of people overcome this problem. As it is a spiritual problem and not a physical one, it must be fought using spiritual weapons. I would like to invite you to participate in our Friday services for spiritual cleansing. You will receive strong prayers against all negativity and to break any curse. A pastor will be able to give you advice on what else you will need to be totally free from these attacks.”

UFOs

Paralysis and sexual attack are often reported together. Indeed, aliens seem absurdly obsessed with our reproductive apparatus. Take this account from ‘Jerry’ quoted by John E. Mack (p 118)

“She woke up terrified and remembered pressure in the abdomen and genital area and that she could not move. ‘In my head I was screaming’ Jerry remembers, but does not know if any sound came out. ‘Somebody was doing something’, she recalled, but it was ‘something alien’. Although she recalls wondering to herself, ‘Is that how sex is done?’”

It was suggested in the past by the ancient Greek physician Galen that Nightnare/SP was caused by gastric disturbance which is why your Mum might have told you not to eat cheese before bedtime. The psycho-analytic tradition thought that it was due to repressed desires. We now know that it’s just a harmless, but very scary, sleep disturance.

In our culture, sleep paralysis passes mostly under the radar. Considering how many of us will experience it at some point, not many know about it. Apart from the sexual element, are there other factors which help to make sleep paralysis such a secret affliction? It’s been noted by many researchers that collecting information about sleep paralysis has been easiest in cultures that are accepting of it and therefore have a language for it. In his introduction, Hufford noted that in discussions with his wife: “… she has shared with me the odd feeling of working on a subject for which there is no really useful English vocabulary” … which is why he wrote his book about Newfoundlers – people of English and Irish extraction with a distinct culture, who already had the appropriate terminology and discourses in place. In our rational post-Enlightenment world, it may every bit as embarrassing for many people to admit they’ve even had an encounter with a supernatural entity, let alone had sex (consenting or otherwise) with it.

Avoiding Sleep Paralysis

If you want to avoid sleep paralysis or help someone you know, here are my top tips:

1 Read this article and the links. There you go. That’s all. Often, finding out that sleep paralysis is not a supernatural attack is enough to allay anxiety and stop it occurring again.

2 Don’t sleep on your back. Sew a cotton-reel into your pyjamas, nightdress or leather gimp suit.
Ernest Jones (p 27) wrote that: “It has always been a generally accepted opinion that Nightmare is more likely to attack a person who is sleeping on his back … the observation has been made to play an important part in several hypotheses concerning the malady”

And Hufford wrote: p 24: “Of those who specified their sleeping position … 90 percent said that they were supine” and he found loads of examples of folklore which warn against sleeping supine.

Cheyne also recommends against a supine position to avoid SP, writing that : “The supine position was reported to be the most common position during SP”

3 Try to sleep regular hours and not to get over-tired. Since sleep paralysis is associated with REM sleep colliding with wakefulness, it is more likely to occur when someone goes into deep sleep very quickly – when they are exhausted, in other words. The International Classification of Sleep Disorders manual we looked at earlier says that predisposing factors include “Irregular sleep habits, sleep deprivation, and other disturbances of the sleep-wake rhythm” plus “shift work or rapid time zone change (jet lag)”. Mental stress and tiredness also get a mention.

So don’t nap during the day while you’re going through a phase of SP either. Although the majority of Hufford’s reported attacks took take place at night, the number during daytime naps was disproportionately large considering the fraction of total sleep hours they represented.

5 Ask your sleeping partner to listen for laboured breathing. It’s often a sign, so they’ll be able to wake you up.

6 If you have an attack, try gently and calmly to move. Start by moving your eyeballs; they’re not paralysed during sleep. As soon as a person recovers their ability to move, the attack ends.

7 Practice feeling love and acceptance – practice when you’re awake a couple of times a day ‘til you get good. Then when the hideous hag/demon/alien/Cadbury’s Smash Alien (yes, I’ve been visited by a Cadbury’s Smash alien) advances on you, to your best to feel love and acceptance. Sounds weird: it works. They turn into bunnies, kittens … lovely things. The fear is self-begetting and counter-productive.

The good news is that with practice, sleep paralysis can be a transit to lucid dreams and out-of-body-experiences. Cheyne writes about these elements as as: “… a variety of spatial,temporal and orientational (STO) experiences of the body and include feelings of floating, flying,falling,out-of-body experiences,and autoscopic hallucinations.” In fact, I used to be able to tell whether I was going to have an OBE by the feelings of my limbs being pulled and distended a short while after I lay down to relax.

These things are so interconnected that I drew a diagram:

Sleep paralysis is a fascinating thing and, without complicating factors, probably harmless.

Leave a Comment, or Let Us Know What’s Happened to You

I’d love to get your comments and personal recollections. If you’d like to post something, or read what others have written, just go here. Ignore the ‘comments closed’ at the bottom of this page – it’s Worpress having a hissy fit.

Footnotes

1 The Shoemaker of Silesia was first published in Gràsse’s collection of Prussian folklore and there’s a copy online here

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Chris Berens is a Dutch painter. I first saw his work in Amsterdam, but he’s since done exhibitions in New York too. That’s good to know: he deserves all the recognition he gets.

Berens may seem to come a little out of left-field, but I can see [...]]]>

More for Halloween. Here’s a promo-type movie to introduce the work of Czech film-maker, Jan Švankmajer

Švankmajer’s surreal and macabre multi-media creations are an absolute delight. I dare you not to sit there slack-jawed with revulsion and fascination. He’s been a massive influence on more well-known western film-makers such as Terry Gilliam, the Brothers [...]]]>

More for Halloween. Here’s a promo-type movie to introduce the work of Czech film-maker, Jan Švankmajer

Švankmajer’s surreal and macabre multi-media creations are an absolute delight. I dare you not to sit there slack-jawed with revulsion and fascination. He’s been a massive influence on more well-known western film-makers such as Terry Gilliam, the Brothers Quay and Tim Burton (although I think Burton has injected a little light-heartedness that not recognisable from Švankmajer’s oeuvre).

Švankmajer comes from Prague and he spent most of his life under Communism there. Several of his films were even banned, at one point. I’ve worked in Prague for spells and it’s pleasant enough in the summer. But the city’s medieval, eerie darkness really emerges in the cold. It’s a tremendously atmospheric place, evoking every gothic sensation you ever wanted to experience. I can see how it would have formed the man and his art: that, and the Kafka-esque political environment of his early life.

If you’d like to root around for stuff on Monsters & Folklore, Modern Witch Beliefs, Politics & Religion and more, go to previous posts. It may surprise you how much our human capacity to believe in the supernatural remains as relevant today as it [...]]]> Welcome to Jourdemayne for commentary on the supernatural, folklore and skepticism.

If you’d like to root around for stuff on Monsters & Folklore, Modern Witch Beliefs, Politics & Religion and more, go to previous posts. It may surprise you how much our human capacity to believe in the supernatural remains as relevant today as it ever was.

How to Make Mediums Rare?

After the launch of Project Barnum this week, I’m asking: “Is the Project Barnum petition asking venues to cancel psychic shows a good thing?”

• Here, I’ve written a blogpost which starts with the Sally Morgan incident and ends with my vote: ‘no’, we shouldn’t
• If you already know the background and want to cut to the case for the ‘no’ vote, go here
• And following, is a piece by Michael Marshall on behalf of Project Barnum which says ‘yes’, we should.
• And at the end is a poll – please take part.

‘No’ to Trying Restrict Theatre Access to Professional Psychics

Last Tuesday (20th September), The Guardian carried an article by Chris French about Sally Morgan, self-proclaimed ‘Britain’s Best Loved Psychic’.

He starts by describing an event two weeks ago, an event which has generated a rapidly growing furore:

“On Monday 12 September, a caller named Sue phoned the Liveline show on RTÉ Radio 1, an Irish radio station. Sue said that she had attended Morgan’s show the previous night at the Grand Canal Theatre in Dublin and had been impressed by the accuracy of the readings she made in the first half of the show.

But then something odd happened. Sue was sitting in the back row on the fourth level of the theatre and there was a small room behind her (“like a projection room”) with a window open. Sue and her companions became aware of a man’s voice and “everything that the man was saying, the psychic was saying it 10 seconds later.”

Sue believes, not unreasonably, that the man was feeding information to Sally through an earpiece attached to her microphone.”

Here’s a link to the radio station.

Chris French is highly qualified to comment on such matters: he’s a Professor of Psychology and in charge of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths in London. His research has included looking for evidence that psychic powers exist (they more than likely don’t, in case you were wondering) and finding the personality traits associated with belief in such powers.

The article continued with the cautionary tale of faith-healer Peter Popoff who in 1986 was caught by James Randi receiving information through a discreet earpiece. Prior to this, Popoff had been making a great deal of money, and at €40 per theatre ticket, I’m guessing that Sally Morgan isn’t doing too badly either.

The article goes on to say that many ‘psychics’ hold their powers in good faith. That is my experience too.

It also lists a good many ways that a ‘psychic’ – true believer and con-man alike – can give a reading which will convince some they their perceptions are beyond normal.

One of the most effective ways of doing this is to start with what have come to be knows as ‘Barnum Statements’, after the showman who had “something for everyone”. These are generalised statements which can seem personal, but which can apply to many people in the room. As a novice psychic, you‘d be deeply unlucky to get a wall of blank stares from:

“I sense somebody who has been through a very challenging time but who has found unusual strength and is now looking forward to the future”

or,

“Has somebody here lost a pet dog within the last year?”

The first statement is true for everybody at some point in time – who hasn’t suffered? It’s also flattering in its conclusion: we cope, because we frankly have very little choice; plus we’re often better at coping than we think we’ll be.

The second statement is likely to be true because lots of people have dogs, and average dog life-spans are about a fifth that of human ones. If you’re an enthusiastic dog-owner, a certain portion of your life will regrettably be spent in the penumbra of a canine bereavement. I’ve been there.

Of course, having said this, I can tell the sorry tale of a debate at the Literary and Debating Society of The University of Ireland at Galway where I and three other guests discussed whether there was likely to be an afterlife.

The ‘yes’ team included a psychic who skipped the rhetoric and went straight for ‘reading’ the audience, to the disaster of being unable – in an auditorium in Ireland – to find anyone with someone called ‘Michael’ on the other side. Poor bastard – I mean, what are the odds?

I was speaking for the ‘probably not’ side and we won that night.

Barnum statements are one in a battery of classic cold-reading techniques and when you know about them, you can spot them a mile off.

Actually, knowing about all the techniques used by ‘psychics’, whether they are deliberately fraudulent or not, is a very useful and amusing pass-time. There are loads of resources on the ‘net, and I’ve just found out about a new one.

Project Barnum was born of the Sally Morgan furore and has a useful list of these techniques

This is commensurate with its very laudable aim of providing:

“… information pertaining to the use of psychological tricks by self-titled Mediums and Psychics while on stage, or in private readings. This is achieved through the distribution of free resources and sharing of educational materials”

Which I’m very much in favour of.

However, there another strand to the site: this strand is to lobby theatres to reconsider their booking such performers. There’s a petition which you can sign, and it reads as follows:

“After the media furore about Sally Morgan’s alleged cheating in her recent stage show we ask that theatres cancel any future or planned Psychic or Medium shows as these shows by their very nature are dubious due to the numerous methods and techniques that many so-called psychics often employ to dupe their audiences who can be vulnerable.

These techniques are explained in detail on the Project Barnum website at http://www.projectbarnum.co.uk – a resource for consumers to learn their rights should they feel that they have been unfairly treated by someone purporting to be psychic.

Hiring a psychic to perform calls the integrity of theatre venue into question, we ask that venues stop hiding behind ‘entertainment only’ disclaimers, and show that they do care about their customers.”

This petition is intended to be sent to:

“all theatres who are currently set to host such shows through 2011 – 2012”

I’m afraid that I can’t sign such a petition.

My reasons are essentially two-fold.

First, I object to any attempt to restrict information or services, even those which may cause me harm. I reserve the right to go to hell in my own way. There are legislative impediments to the free provisions of certain services – I’d have to get my appendix removed by an authorised expert, for example – but as a society we usually (and rightly) confine those restrictions to instances when very real, immediate and substantive harm would be done. To be honest, I probably sit toward the libertarian end of the regulation spectrum and I’ve written about that before.

I think we all realise that some vulnerable people invest hope in, and give money they can ill afford to, others who deliberately mislead them. But this is the most highly contrasted of all scenarios. There are those who go for entertainment; there are those who believe but don’t believe the medium was any good; there are mediums who truly believe they have a special power.

Plus, it hardly seems fair to seek to impede theatrical forums of access to the supernatural when churches, synagogues and mosques remain open for business.

We can’t appoint ourselves proper standard-setters of goods and services to the gullible. It’s highly counter-productive in the long term. The more a society is set up to save us from ourselves, the more we expect an unseen parent to be on the lookout for us. It’s infantalising and bad for the development of reasonable standards of common sense.

Secondly, I believe that this move could be highly counter-productive. It is, in effect, a proposal to suppress the distribution of a certain worldview. The whole phenomenon – trying to contacting the dead – remains an issue of people’s metaphysical model of the world. If that model is to be altered, it’s best done with education, not coercion.

I spent half of Sunday at a Conspiracy Theories conference hosted by CFI and the BHA. There was a significant attendance from conspiracy theorists, many of whom seemed to deeply resent that they were being ‘quantifed’ in terms of personality traits or demographic characteristics.

One of the personality traits examined was helplessness – lack of agency in one’s own life. Many people who consume psychic services are relatively helpless too – either generally, or temporarily, through grief. They are primed to see great agency outside themselves.

Do we really want to hand such people, fuelled by commercial psychics with no access to a theatres, their very own conspiracy theory on a plate?

One of the things I loved most about the 10:23 campaign was that it was amiable and packed with humour. It had an ace photogenic publicity stunt at its core. Sceptics overdosing on homeopathic pills attracted people further in, to discover the meat and potatoes of the substantial case against homeopathy.

I propose that if we really want to change people’s perceptions of mediums, it is best done in a similar way: with humour, by education and without coercive restrictions of any kind.

As Skeptics, we must always be able to offer something to the floating voters, other than disdain and censorship.

‘Yes’ – we must make theatres consider their responsibilities to their patrons while booking ‘psychics’
A statement from the Barnum Project

There is, we have to assume, a sizeable element within the self-professed ‘psychic’ community whose bread and butter is the exploitation of the vulnerable and the grieving. While the size of the margins and the extent of the exploitation is a matter of debate, that those unfortunate enough to be suffering the loss of someone they dearly loved are sold attractive falsehoods is undeniable.

Project Barnum has been set up to target psychics who operate at the extreme ends of those margins, and to provide resources and advice to those who feel they’ve been exploited. Unfortunately, all too often those who’ve been exploited most are the very people most likely to defend a medium selling them false comfort – the illusion of hope in times of grief can be strong enough to pull the wool over even the most open of eyes. Which is why Project Barnum is calling on theatre venues to reconsider, in the light of the recent coverage of Sally Morgan’s apparent hot reading in a Dublin stage show, hosting psychic events in the future – including cancelling events already on their calendars.

Ordinarily, a skeptical response would be to err on the side of freedom – rather than seek to ban, seek to educate those likely to be affected and thus remove the appetite from the market. Indeed, this was one of the first proposed goals of Project Barnum – to appeal to theatres to sign up to a ‘no hot-reading’ code of conduct, and to offer guarantees that hot readings would not take place. However, this quickly proved to be unworkable – the adherence to such a policy being so impossible to check as to render the idea worthless. In fact, such an approach would have been, at best, as effective as the policy requiring such shows to be preceeded by a ‘for entertainment purposes only’ statement – introduced with the aim of removing the appearance of legitimacy from psychic readings and to alert vulnerable members of the public to the fact that psychics are not a proven phenomena, but are in fact a stage show. And, indeed, to see a skilled ‘psychic’ in action is undeniably entertaining – those with a strong stomach for the macabre and an ability to set aside the morally black nature of the show can’t failed to be impressed by the artistry of a well-performed cold reading, let alone the canny trickery of a hot reading.

However, that so many people – believers in the phenomenon, in fact – were so taken aback by the suggestion that Sally Morgan’s messages may have been coming not from a contact in the afterlife but from a confederate in the stands is evidence of the failure inherent in seeking to rely on removing appetite from the market. Every mother in that Dublin crowd who’d lost a son or husband who was there to hear from his deceased wife can hardly have been said to be doing so for the sport of it – believers in psychic phenomena genuinely believe, and anyone whose experienced the pain of loss will doubtlessly understand the will to do so. This is why, time after time, psychics are able to ride scandals out and emerge profitable from the other side.

Take, for instance, Sally Morgan – even now, as her Dublin scandal is fresh in the press, her shows around the country are sold out. Venues of 2000 seats are full, at £30 or £40 a head – and compared to a ticket for a John Edwards show, even that price is cheap. At those figures, with £60,000 a night at stake, it’s little wonder that there’s insignificant appetite from theatres to ensure the acts they hire are legitimate – or even to ensure the acts aren’t using technological trickery to outright lie to vulnerable members of their audience.

This is why Project Barnum is calling on theatres to take a long look at their customer care policy before deciding whether psychic stage shows are worth persevering with. We hope more than a few theatres will realise that their reputation is harmed the moment they allow a potentially fraudulent medium to take money from their customers under the false auspices of communication with the dead.

As for the audience members who are utterly convinced that seeing a psychic is a genuine experience and that their money is well spent in such an endeavour – their £30 or £40 will buy far more time with a one-on-one psychic than they would get hoping to be picked from an audience of thousands for a moment’s illumination at the hands of a stage psychic.

And, to the medium who wishes to fill arenas at high ticket prices and even higher admiration – there’s a magician in Florida with $1million and a gateway to the approval of the entire scientific world, and he’ll be delighted to hear from you.Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.