Praagh, James van
James van Praagh (1960– ) is one of the best-known mediums in the United States today, James Van Praagh calls himself a “survival evidence medium” because he is able to detect evidence of people’s survival after death. Specifically, he brings messages from deceased loved ones to those who hire him to do so. He attributes his ability to communicate with the dead to clairsentience, whereby he feels the emotions and personality traits (such as talkativeness) of the deceased, and to clairvoyance, whereby he sees images of the deceased. He also apparently has clairaudience because he claims to hear voices of the deceased.
Van Praagh has always believed in an afterlife, having been raised in a deeply religious home. In fact, as a boy he once thought he saw God’s light after praying to him. When Van Praagh was twenty-four and working in the legal department of Paramount Studios in Los Angeles, he visited a medium at the urging of a friend, and afterward he decided to explore mediumship. Within a short time he was giving his own psychic readings for a fee. Since then, he has appeared on numerous television talk shows, has hosted his own shortlived television show (2002), and has written several best-selling books on his work, including Talking to Heaven (1997), Reaching to Heaven (1999), and Healing Grief (2001). He also sells meditation tapes, and his life story was the basis of a television miniseries.
Skeptics, however, note that Van Praagh did not discover his talents as a medium until after he received a university degree in communications, suggesting that during this period he learned techniques that could trick listeners into thinking he is in contact with their dead relatives when in fact he is not. To prove this view, one skeptics’ organization, the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), analyzed Van Praagh’s appearance on a television talk show (Larry King Live, February 26, 1999), during which he conducted psychic readings for people who telephoned the show.
According to CSICOP investigator Joe Nickell, Van Praagh used several standard techniques in order to manipulate members of his audience into believing he was privy to facts that only they would know, including asking numerous questions in order to gain information and use it to shape the reading and the caller’s perception of the reading, making logical guesses, giving multiple responses that increased the possibility of getting one thing right, shifting focus abruptly to cover up mistaken answers, and using general terms that the caller could easily perceive as specific references. This latter technique relies on a phenomenon known as the Forer effect, whereby people tend to recognize certain statements as being about them, when in fact the statements could apply to anyone. Van Praagh’s supporters firmly deny that this is the case, saying that he often provides very specific information that could not have been discovered through even the most skillful questioning.
SEE ALSO:
- Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal;
- the Forer effect
SOURCE:
The Greenhaven Encyclopedia of Paranormal Phenomena – written by Patricia D. Netzley © 2006 Gale, a part of Cengage Learning