Séance

A séance (pronounced: ) is, on its most basic level, an attempt to communicate with the dead. The séance, or sitting, is led by a person known as a medium who will usually go into a trance that theoretically allows the dead to communicate through him or her.

The word séance comes from the French word for 'seat', 'session', from Old French seoir, 'to sit.' In English, the word came to be used specifically for a meeting of people to receive spiritualistic messages (a sense first recorded in English in 1845). In French, it is much more general: one can say une séance de cinéma.

Séances were conducted in dark or semi-dark rooms with participants seated around a table - the darkness making it easier for the medium to deceive participants with tricks, usually helped in this by an assistant. Sometimes the table would lean and tilt, participants (sitters) might feel a cold breeze on their faces, items could materialize apparently out of thin air and musical instruments might play mysteriously. During the course of the séance, the medium would speak under the apparent control of a spirit, relaying messages from the dearly departed. Other methods of spirit communication included automatic writing, writing on sealed slates, writing with planchettes (similar to the Ouija board), impressing images onto photographic plates which had been kept in sealed enclosures, and painted images which gradually appeared upon previously blank canvas.

Belief in the ability to communicate with the dead is part of a religious movement called Spiritualism, which flourished from the 1840s until the 1920s and still exists today. Skeptics consider séances to be scams. M. Lamar Keene once practiced scam séances, but revealed the fraud in his book, The Psychic Mafia (Randi 1995:135).

Channeling

Séances are no longer a common practice and a more modern evolution is known as 'channelling', where the medium may claim not simply to communicate with the dead, but also other 'higher plane' entities, often relaying information designed to be inspirational. These channelling sessions are often recorded so that they can be sold in dvd or book form to followers of the channeler later and this media is popular among new age types.

Séances in media

* Ghost - Character Oda Mae Brown (played by Whoopi Goldberg) was a con artist conducting fake seances for money, but then discovers she really can talk to the dead.
* Haunted (1995 Movie) - The main character, Professor David Ash, exposes a medium at a séance to be a fraud, who then subsequently manages to channel the spirit of David's sister.
* Gravity's Rainbow (Book) - Nazis attend a séance in order to question deceased German-Jewish industrialist Walther Rathenau about coal-tar minerals.
* In 2004, Derren Brown, a magician who manipulates the human mind, hosted a live séance on Channel 4. However he later said that the entire show was faked, and he was using his techniques to convince his volunteers that they were in fact communicating with the dead.

References

*M. Lamar Keene (as told to Allen Spraggett), The Psychic Mafia, Prometheus Books, 1997, ISBN 1573921610 (Originally published in 1976 by St. Martin's Press and published by Dell (publisher) in 1977.)
* James Randi (1995), An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural. St. Martin's Press ISBN 0312151195 (Online Version)

External links

* A Séance Procedure - How to conduct a Séance.
* Afterlife Telegrams - Innovative service claiming to send messages to the dearly departed with the help of terminally ill volunteers.