SOME THOUGHTS ON PHYSICAL MEDIUMSHIP

The Spiritualist movement was about trying to contact the dead yes.  Soon things like spirits supposedly tapping messages got boring and some mediums claimed to have the power to release ectoplasm from their bodies that a spirit could use to physically appear.

There are accounts from reliable people that something appeared in séances and no trickery was possible. This can be taken as evidence that Hume was right that testimony is not enough to validate a miracle. At best he told us you get agnosticism.  He argued not against miracles but against taking them as things that should be believed in.  Even if they should be believed in it does not follow that, "I live in the desert and have never seen ice and yet I believe" is on the same level as, "I have never seen Jesus but I believe he is alive and raised from the dead."  You know it's not on the same level for if you know of good witnesses who say, "We saw an angel who said Jesus did not rise", you will ignore them.

Back to the séances.  Photographs of the result have been taken. They show a spirit that supposedly used elements borrowed from the medium's body to materialise. Yet the spirit looks like an embarrassingly crude cut out. You can take the view that the picture proves fraud did in fact happen. Or you can say that the spirit itself used crude images. If spirits themselves fake the miracles and wonders that is a warning to avoid the paranormal and supernatural and not to look for miracles.