Among Mediums: A Scientist's Quest for Answers by Julie Beischel

Abstract

We have certification procedures for all sorts of professions--from physicians and pilots, to electricians and teachers. Why not one for mediums who claim they can talk to the dead? Dr. Julie Beischel, co-founder of the Windbridge Institute for Applied Research in Human Potential, needed to assemble, from a field filled with fraud, a team of genuinely talented mediums to experiment with. So she created exactly that-a rigorous, eight-step screening, training, and certification process, then ran volunteers through it. Each candidate performed readings under various blinded conditions; if their accuracy score achieved a certain level, they qualified for part two of the multi-month program, learning about the history of modern mediumship research as well as regulations governing scientific research on human subjects. It cost the Institute $7,000 to $10,000 to test each hopeful, and one in four washed out. But some 20 survived (18 of them female) to become Windbridge Certified Research Mediums, or WCRMs. (Applications are now closed. "We're in the business of performing cutting edge research, not certifying mediums," Beischel says. The 20 they now have are enough to answer their current research questions.) What Dr. Beischel is doing with her newly minted WCRMs, and what they've scientifically nailed down to date, is recounted with impish humor in her short, self-published, 76-page e-book.