Have you ever participated in a seance?...I have on a few occasions...even the word seance has a mystical sound to it and it also has a magical definition...a séance is a group of people, maybe 8 or 10...usually no more than that, who sit together with the idea to speak to the spirits who are no longer of this world…one of the members of the group will be a medium, that is someone with paranormal powers who can conduct the proceedings…in days of old, séances were conducted by private mediums, ones whose sole intent was to contact the deceased...once seances became popular though, professional ‘mediums’ often charged fees, sometimes high fees for their services… many of these séances were nothing more than hoaxes...sittings that later were proven to be fraudulent and these types of seances damaged the reputation of the seance and the mediums themselves...so here’s how it goes...a dark or semi-dark room is used to conduct the seance...darkness is believed to be most favorable for phenomena because light is said to often interfere with spirit manifestation…darkness also has a way of concealing the methods of tricksters...however, darkness has been proven to not be essential for the production of psychic phenomena, and many effects have been said to be produced in good lighting…seances became extremely popular after the First World War...the longing of families to contact those that had perished in the fighting was high and there was a great resurgence in the spiritualist movement...con artists were more than happy to step up and fill the needs of the public that was so desperate and willing to believe that they could truly contact their lost loved ones…the best of this charlatan ‘mediums’ were skillful and put on a great show, albeit fake, for people...there were demonstrations of spirit channeling, levitating tables floating up into the air, spooky tambourines that shook as they seemed to fly around the room on their own, supposed written messages from the dead and amazing spontaneous manifestations of ectoplasm...the performances were quite elaborate and ingenious and many people were fell for these effects and were fooled and believed that they had actually ‘spoken’ with the dead...Harry Houdini, became skeptical and set out to prove that these seances were just elaborate fakes...he later exposed many of these fakes and even demonstrated how the tricks were performed...he said that after he died, he would contact those on Earth if possible, and after his death his wife held many seances on Halloween in the attempt to reach him, but none were successful...if you want somewhere spooky to visit, visit his grave in Baltimore, Maryland sometime.
