Pseudoscience Dictionary: Seances

Pseudoscience: Consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that are claimed to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method (unproven, not testable, or opposed to the consensus of traditional science).

Séances

Definition: A séance is a gathering in which participants attempt to communicate with the spirits of deceased individuals, typically through a person known as a medium. Common practices include table tipping, spirit writing, Ouija boards, unexplained knocking sounds, and messages supposedly transmitted by spirits. Séances became particularly popular during the 19th-century Spiritualist movement, when practitioners claimed to provide evidence of life after death. Some proponents maintain that mediums possess supernatural abilities that allow them to obtain information from deceased individuals, predict events, or demonstrate the continued existence of consciousness after death. However, these claims have not been established through reliable, independently replicated scientific evidence.

Reasoning: Scientific research has not established that séances enable communication with deceased individuals or that mediums possess supernatural abilities. A controlled study published in Explore examined alleged spirit communications produced through automatic writing. Researchers tested eight mediums using blinded procedures involving 94 participants and 18 mediumistic writing sessions. When participants evaluated purported messages from deceased individuals against control messages, the researchers found no significant difference in accuracy, concluding that the mediums did not demonstrate paranormal information retrieval under the tested conditions.

Although a separate 2021 meta-analysis of 18 experiments reported above-chance results in some mediumship studies, these findings do not demonstrate that the information originated from deceased persons, and the proposed supernatural explanation remains unverified. Further, a 2019 study published in Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences examined Ouija board sessions using eye-tracking technology. Researchers found that meaningful responses could emerge through participants’ combined expectations and interactions, without requiring supernatural intervention. These findings are consistent with the ideomotor effect, in which unconscious muscle movements can produce seemingly involuntary actions.

Historically, séance phenomena have also involved documented deception. According to the Smithsonian Institution, the Fox sisters, whose alleged spirit communications helped popularize modern Spiritualism beginning in 1848, later publicly demonstrated how supposedly supernatural knocking sounds could be produced through ordinary physical movements. Although one sister subsequently retracted her confession, the episode illustrates how seemingly mysterious séance phenomena can be manufactured. Similarly, the National Archives Foundation documents the history of Spiritualism and its vulnerability to fraudulent mediumship. While participants may experience genuine emotional comfort or powerful subjective experiences during séances, these experiences do not establish that communication with the dead has occurred.

More Information

• Testing Alleged Mediumistic Writing: An Experimental Controlled Study – Explore
• Predictive Minds in Ouija Board Sessions – Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences
• Anomalous Information Reception by Mediums: A Meta-Analysis of the Scientific Evidence – Explore
• The Fox Sisters and the Rap on Spiritualism – Smithsonian Magazine
• That’s the Spirit! A History of Spiritualism – National Archives Foundation

Conclusion: Séances are spiritual practices whose claims of communicating with the dead lack reliable scientific validation. Controlled experiments have failed to establish that mediums can consistently obtain information from deceased individuals, while psychological research demonstrates how apparently supernatural experiences can arise through unconscious movements, expectations, and social interactions. Historical investigations have also exposed fraudulent séance performances. Although séances may provide emotional comfort or serve religious and cultural purposes, claims that they enable verifiable communication with spirits remain scientifically unsupported. Presenting these supernatural claims as established scientific facts constitutes pseudoscience.