I came across Julie Beischel's work already years ago. You know I am highly (but openmindedly) skeptical of mediums and even more of any kind of channelling. However, what I like is that she has a highly scientific approach with double and triple blind studies to examine the abilities of Mediums to retrieve verifiable information about/from deceased persons. This is rather convincing in my view.
It all started when Julie Beischel (today's director of the Windbridge Institute) did research on mediums with Dr. Gary Schwartz who published a book called 'The Afterlife Experiments' in 2006. I've read it years ago and remember I was also very impressed. It was criticised by 'skeptics' a lot then and nowadays claiming it is all 'cold-reading' (e.g. stage magician / psychological tricks to get info from the client) but they obviously did not even read the book nor the studies themselves and how they were conducted. Moreover, today the protocol has even been improved and seems almost fail-safe. So hardcore skeptics should have a hard time.
For more info here are some links, an early study quoted from, and also books and videos:
Windbrige Mission Statement:
www.windbridge.org/research/
www.windbridge.org/mediums/
www.windbridge.org/education/major-findings/
http://www.windbridge.org/papers/BeischelEXPLORE2007vol3.pdf
Here is a recent interview on the Skeptiko Podcast:
The early work, the book and a TV-documentary on the "Afterlife Experiments":
Last not least here's the latest Skeptiko interview with one of the "Windbridge certified" mediums:
It all started when Julie Beischel (today's director of the Windbridge Institute) did research on mediums with Dr. Gary Schwartz who published a book called 'The Afterlife Experiments' in 2006. I've read it years ago and remember I was also very impressed. It was criticised by 'skeptics' a lot then and nowadays claiming it is all 'cold-reading' (e.g. stage magician / psychological tricks to get info from the client) but they obviously did not even read the book nor the studies themselves and how they were conducted. Moreover, today the protocol has even been improved and seems almost fail-safe. So hardcore skeptics should have a hard time.
For more info here are some links, an early study quoted from, and also books and videos:
Windbrige Mission Statement:
www.windbridge.org/The mission of The Windbridge Research Center is to ease suffering around dying, death, and what comes next by performing rigorous scientific research and sharing the results and other customized content with practitioners, clinicians, scientists, and the general public.
In July 2017, the nonprofit Windbridge Research Center took over the peer-reviewed research on the topics of life after death and after-death communication that had been conducted at the Windbridge Institute, LLC, since 2008. The Center has also added non-profit outreach and educational activities to this research.
www.windbridge.org/about-us/
www.windbridge.org/research/
www.windbridge.org/mediums/
www.windbridge.org/education/major-findings/
One study from 2007 already:Findings to date:
A mediumship reading appears to involve a complex dynamic between the sitter, the medium, and the invited deceased person. Each can potentially impact the success of a reading (2, 12).
Some mediums, under controlled laboratory conditions, can report accurate and specific information about deceased people (6, 13).
The experience of receiving communication from the deceased is different than retrieving psychic information about the living. Thus, these might be different tasks and mediums may be actually communicating with the dead (8, 10, 14).
Mediums may have unique psychological or personality characteristics when compared to non-mediums (5).
Electroencephalograms (EEGs) of mediums suggests that the experience of communicating with the deceased is different than remembering or imagining (9).
Thus, claims that mediums are fabricating information or recalling facts are not supported. In addition, because mediumship involves the mediums talking and using facial muscles, EEG, which is susceptible to muscle movement artifacts, may not be well-suited for studying this phenomenon. Experiments exploring the neuroscience of mediumship using different brain imaging techniques are currently in the planning stages.
Survey findings have demonstrated that mediums have a significantly higher incidence of autoimmune diseases and a significantly higher general disease burden than do non-mediums (7). Examining various components in the mediums’ blood as well as basic psychophysiological measures showed that no hematological or physiological changes were seen when comparing a reading condition to a control condition (7). A link between disease prevalence and childhood trauma in this population has been proposed (4, 7).
Preliminary research has demonstrated that receiving a mediumship reading may have a positive healing effect on those who are suffering from grief after the death of a loved one (3, 11). However, further research is needed to draw any strong conclusions.
Using a fully-blinded protocol similar to that employed to test mediumship accuracy during readings for deceased people, exploratory and on-going research has demonstrated that some mediums can report accurate and specific information about deceased companion animals as well (1).
www.windbridge.org/education/major-findings/
http://www.windbridge.org/papers/BeischelEXPLORE2007vol3.pdf
Conclusions: The results suggest that certain mediums can anomalously receive accurate information about deceased individuals. The study design effectively eliminates conventional mechanisms as well as telepathy as explanations for the information reception, but the results cannot distinguish among alternative paranormal hypotheses, such as survival of consciousness (the continued existence, separate from the body, of an individual’s consciousness or personality after physical death) and super-psi (or super-ESP; retrieval of information via a psychic channel or quantum field).
www.windbridge.org/papers/BeischelEXPLORE2007vol3.pdf
Here is a recent interview on the Skeptiko Podcast:
The early work, the book and a TV-documentary on the "Afterlife Experiments":
Last not least here's the latest Skeptiko interview with one of the "Windbridge certified" mediums: