Julie Beischel, Ph.D.

Julie Beischel, Ph.D., has been performing empirical research with mediums full-time for 15 years. She has examined the accuracy and specificity of the information mediums report; their psychology, physiology, and phenomenology; and the potential social applications of mediumship readings. She received her doctorate in Pharmacology and Toxicology with a minor in Microbiology and Immunology and uses her interdisciplinary training to apply the scientific method to controversial topics. She is currently Director of Research at the Windbridge Research Center, an Arizona non-profit corporation dedicated to alleviating suffering by performing rigorous scientific research and creating free educational materials on the topics of dying, death, and what comes next. She is the author of numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and academic anthology chapters as well as the books Among Mediums, Meaningful Messages, From the Mouths of Mediums, and Investigating Mediums.

Presentations

IRVA 2018 – Living-agent-psi is dead: Limitations of the language used to describe mediumistic phenomena

Mediums report experiencing regular communication from the deceased and this phenomenon has been a normal and useful aspect across cultures all over the world since antiquity. Modern mediumship research has included accuracy testing of the information reported by mediums under blinded laboratory conditions with statistically significant results. It has been posited that mediums are using clairvoyance, precognition, or telepathy with the living to acquire accurate information about the deceased. A recent study examined mediums’ experiences during mediumship readings for the deceased and during psychic readings for/about the living. Participant responses from 113 self-identified mediums and 14 Windbridge Certified Research Mediums were quantitatively analyzed using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) text analysis software and qualitatively analyzed using a content analysis methodology. Statistically significant (p<0.01) differences were seen for LIWC categories including social and perceptual processes and insight. Qualitative content analysis found that mediumistic experiences include a triangulation of the communication and that psychic experiences include the information flowing from various sources including from the deceased. Further analysis demonstrated that the level of development of the self-identified mediums was significantly less than that of the Windbridge mediums (z=4.931, p&alt;0.01) and indicates that blocking unwanted communication from the deceased is a learned skill. Together, these findings strongly call into question the continued use of terminology separating mediums’ experiences into categories that do and do not involve communication with the deceased. Going forward, it will be necessary for language to reflect empirical data and the experiences of modern mediums rather than philosophical conjecture.