Writing Psi Proxy

Using proxy sitters to test mediums When testing mediums who claim to be in touch with the dead we should not allow them to get information directly from the living subject because they may use cold reading. If the medium really has the communicative power they claim there is no reason why the deceased person can't relay information through an intermediary. The early psychic investigators called this a 'proxy sitting', where a person knowing nothing about a certain person took that person's place to see a medium. The Reverend Charles Drayton Thomas, a psychic researcher, spent many years as a proxy sitter investigating the mediumship of Mrs. Gladys Osborne Leonard, and reporting to the Society for Psychical Research. He would go to a sitting knowing only the name of the deceased and the name of the person who desired communication. During 1936-37 Thomas went to four sittings on behalf of Emma Lewis, a person he did not know. The records of the Society for Psychical Research record that Mrs. Leonard gave him seventy pieces of information which Emma later felt confirmed beyond all doubt that it was her father, Frederick William Macaulay, who was communicating. Thomas had over 500 sittings with Mrs Leonard over a period of twenty years. The only possible objections in relation to proxy sittings is excessive luck or fraud. There is simply no other possible or probable explanation for the information coming through the medium about someone who has passed on and who had no connection whatsoever with any of the sitters who were with the medium at the time. Many psychic researchers have been impressed by the conspicuous absence of criticism of these particular proxy sittings. If proxy sittings can indeed produce effective results we should be able to set up a live televised proxy sitting, which would need little equipment and be inexpensive. We would need two members of the public; one as a `proxy', the other a `subject' who's deceased friends or relatives mediums would try to contact. A presenter would be sent into a shopping centre or street (though constantly in touch with the studio) then a member of the audience or leading sceptic in the studio would choose the two members of the public. The two people would be whisked to the studio but kept apart. In the studio both members of the public will be kept in separate rooms. The person selected to be the `proxy' would be given no information about the other person (subject) except their name. Then

he/she will be interviewed by an alleged genuine medium then by a sceptic trained in deliberate cold reading. Both `mediums' will try to ascertain information about a deceased person related to the other member of the public, the subject, who has not been seen or heard by either of the mediums nor the proxy, and who would then assess which interview most accurately depicted a deceased friend or relative of theirs. There is no way that a cold reader - no matter how skilled - can gain information from someone who simply doesn't have any to give.

Copyright © 2004 by Michael Davies