Patrick travels one day into the future to talk to Australia’s Anne Rzechowicz and Renata Daniel about ghost tours, seances, table tipping, gadgets, and some of the hottest paranormal spots in Australia, including the Maitland Gaol and Q Station, Manly!
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I just finished Séance 101 by Elaine M. Kuzmeskus. This was one of the books I purchased for summer reading and to research some possible upcoming séance experiences.
I have to first be honest and tell you that it isn’t exactly what I thought it would be. It seems to be more of a history of physical mediumship, with an occasional emphasis on the séance. Some of the bigger topics Elaine hits on are table tipping, psychic photography, opening the third eye, trance mediumship, medical clairvoyance, psychic surgery (which I found fascinating and hadn’t really heard of), trumpet séances, precipitated painting, and materialization. She does this while discussing many important mediums along the way.
Also, I have to very respectfully and honestly tell you that the editing in this book is absolutely horrible. There are so many terms misspelled, or spelled multiple ways within a single chapter even. An example of this would be “chakra” being spelled “charka”, “chaka”, and in the index it’s even spelled “chakas”. It reminded me of the day my mother innocently referred to them as “chokers”. 🙂 But also, there are several sentence fragments, missing periods, incorrect book titles… things like that. It distracted me a lot. It is an out of print book, and my copy is in good shape but is actually a discarded copy from the St. Louis Public Library. Did they not like it?
If you can get past all of the editing flaws and are interested in learning about the history of physical mediumship, you may want to check out this book. Actually, the book was written in 2007. Just last month, Elaine came out with a brand new book (which is also on my “to be read” shelf) titled The Art of Mediumship: Psychic Investigation, Clairvoyance, and Channeling. I’m sure I’ll share more on that when I get to it.
So there you have it. It’s not the most comfortable read in the world, but I’m sure I’ll refer to it in the future.
From the inside cover of her most recent book.
Elaine Kuzmeskus, M.S. is a nationally recognized Spiritualist medium, who has been a presenter at Lily Dale Assembly in New York and the Learning Annex in New York City. During her thirty-five years as a medium, she has conducted many well-publicized séances, including the 1997 Official Houdini Séance and a séance for the play “Blythe Spirit”, at New Haven’s Long Wharf’s Theater. Recently, Elaine was featured on Better Connecticut and the PBS special, “Things That Go Bump in the Night”.
She is also the director of the New England School of Metaphysics, Suffield, Connecticut, and the author of several books on mediumship including “Connecticut Ghosts” and a book on physical mediumship, “Séance 101”.
I’ve read a lot on paranormal and spiritual topics, but for some reason most of the books I read avoid the topic of “table tipping”. Or, at least they don’t get into the subject very deeply. Along with discussing séances, mediums, etc., the book I’m reading now (which is not necessarily spectacular) discusses table tipping a bit. If you’ve followed my Scole Experiment posts recently, you’ll know that some of the major phenomena for them involved the table in the room. Apparently, in one sitting, the table levitated completely off the floor, turned on its side, and spun around like a fan. Can you imagine? It was recreated and dramatized in the introduction of the Scole documentary video I posted.
Can you spot the trickster in this photograph?
But table tipping has roots way before Scole. Beginning in the middle to late 1800s, table tipping was just one of the phenomena being experienced by the Fox sisters, most famous for spirit “rapping” and really introducing modern Spiritualism to the world. Along with some EVP (electronic voice phenomena), I tend to get a lot of rapping in my home. Table tipping sometimes happens in a séance, usually involves a medium, and requires all sitters to gently place hands (sometimes just finger tips) on the top of the table. Usually a smaller, lighter table, and made out of solid wood. The idea is that spirits use your energy to rock or tip the table, making it easy to communicate.
Of course, this form of spirit communication involves a lot of trust. All the sitters must be able to trust that their fellow sitters are not causing the rocking or tipping themselves. I think this is probably why the practice has a lot of skeptics.
I’ve never been involved in table tipping. Have you? Thoughts? Feelings?
Enjoy these videos (there are also many others online) and discuss.
