Talk:Séance

Seance photo not credible?

Is the photo at the beginning of the article from 'The Haunting In Connecticut, or is it just me? I think thats a photo of the chief mortician and some attendees, and not a real photo of a legitimate seance. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.150.162.65 (talk) 18:17, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Séances in the media

This section seems to be an unreferenced and unverified collection of random instances. Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Trivia sections, is there any reason to keep it? Cusop Dingle (talk) 18:21, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

OK, I have boldly removed it. Cusop Dingle (talk) 17:44, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

The Fox mother and three sisters were never exposed as frauds. Please revise "Both the Foxes and the Davenports were eventually exposed as frauds."

The Fox sisters were never exposed as frauds. Two of the three sisters made a confession 40 years after their first spirit contact in March 31, 1848. The confessions were later retracted. The confessions about raps were meaningless because spirit raps had been demonstrated by many other mediums and at least one of the sisters had spent 40 years demonstrating the following phenomena: raps (often of great power), spirit lights, direct writings, materialized hands, full form materialization, levitation of physical objects up to 25 lbs and the production of luminous substances about 4 inches square described as cold. The debunkers never attempted to try to debunk most of the different phases of mediumship. See the Fox sisters wikipedia for sources. ResearchToGrow (talk) 02:28, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

See WP:FRINGE and WP:Identifying reliable sources. Wikipedia is not a source for Wikipedia, and Wikipedia's stance is that of mainstream science, which you try to minimize as "debunkers." Ian.thomson (talk) 03:51, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for your prompt reply and links to policy. I have read both. The term "debunkers" is from the seance wikipedia article itself and is found in two headings. I agree that life after death, spirit communication, religion and history are not "mainstream science". Fringe_science's principles rely on verifiability and neutrality which states: "Neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all of the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic." NPOV states "neutral point of view does not mean exclusion of points of view".

The sources in the Fox sisters wikipedia article that I were referring to are "The History of Spiritualism" by Arthur Conan Doyle and Thirty Years of Psychical Research being a Treatise on Metaphysics by Professor Charles Richet. To me they are two of the best historical, reliable sources in this field.

In section "Notable séance mediums, attendees, and debunkers/Medium" there is no reference for the statement "Both the Foxes and the Davenports were eventually exposed as frauds." What I have read in Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources is "Contentious material about living persons (or, in some cases, recently deceased) that is unsourced or poorly sourced—whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable—should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion." Granted that the Fox family is not recently deceased but shouldn't this be removed as it is unsourced?

Please consider revising in paragraph Attendees "Prime Minister of Canada for 22 years, who sought spiritual contact and political guidance from his deceased mother, his pet dogs, and the late US President Franklin D. Roosevelt;" as the idea that dogs can talk and provide political guidance is also unsourced and ridiculous.

I applaud the policies that Wikipedia has put in place, but they aren't being followed in this article. Does "Wikipedia's stance is that of mainstream science" really supercede its own policies of fairness, NPOV and no reliable sources? — Preceding unsigned comment added by ResearchToGrow (talk • contribs) 15:21, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

WP:GEVAL and WP:UNDUE means that we do not need to present Spiritualism's claims with equal validity to mainstream science and history. Due weight for fringe topics is determined by whether and how much they are discussed in mainstream sources.

Doyle and Richet were Spiritualists and wrote advocating those beliefs, so their sources are not mainstream. If those are the best sources you have read, you are not approaching this from the perspective of mainstream science and history.

The material in the Mediums and Attendees sections merely summarize their parent article. I have copied the citations from there. Contentious material only applies to individuals who are living or were recently deceased (e.g. Leonard Cohen, but not Pope Innocent XI). The contentious material also needs to be poorly sourced -- reliably sourced information that followers have a problem with stays. Ian.thomson (talk) 01:51, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

Scientists that believed contact with the dead is possible

The source [28] does not show any evidence to its claims about the listed scientists.

If a better source is not found this sentence should be omitted as the claims could be false. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.218.156.118 (talk) 18:37, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

References