Haunting experiences

Person A's mother died recently.  She was grieving the loss for a few weeks. She went to a medium who allegedly channelled a message to her from her deceased mother. "I'm getting a middle-aged woman who has got brown hair," the medium began.Person A's ears pricked up. Her mother had had brown hair and had been middle-aged. "She was fond of gardening and of her cat. Her name is Jennifer or Jessica..." the medium continued. My mum used to do gardening. Not for years. It had been a hobby of her's though. She had 2 cats, not one! Person A thought. But it seems to fit my mum alright. "She died quickly..." The medium looked keenly around, hoping for someone to identify the lady as being theirs. Person A "knew" that it was for her. She stuck her arm up. This gave Person A much comfort. "I can see her standing on your left. She's caressing your hair," the medium said to Person A. Person A waited for a message from her mum. "She's saying that she loves you and that you know when she's present - you get the sensation of goosebumps or hot spots when she is."
   Person A hadn't thought about that, actually. (She hadn't noticed goosebumps and hot spots when her mum was present. In fact, she hadn't experienced any sign that her mum was present.) Person A just nodded. She didn't say too much as it was during a mediumship demonstration, and the audience was massive. She is a Spiritualist, although this is her first taste of mediumship.
     On the way back home, Person A thought about the demonstration. She didn't doubt that her mother had come through. Had she experienced goosebumps or hot spots whilst her mum was present? She tried to think it over, keeping her eyes focused on the road in front as she drove. I must have felt her presence at some point, as the medium had said, She thought. She didn't doubt the correctness of what the medium had said. Consequently, she succumbed to informative social influence. She tried to think of some examples. Initially, she couldn't think of any.

Reconstructive memory - the bits it changed

     It was five weeks since she the demonstration. Since then, she had been positively recommending the medium's services to her friends, even though her mind had garbled the actual content of the message. Suddenly, there was more detail in her account. Her account was not accurate. She forgot some details and added others.
  She chatted away to her friend, Person B: "My mother came through at the mediumship circle I went to a few weeks ago," she told Person B. Person B's eyebrows went up in surprise. "Really? What did the medium say?"
  "She said that she was getting a lady with brown hair, and that she had been interested in gardening for a time. She also said that she'd had cats that she'd been very fond of." Person A told her. "That's incredible!" Person B exclaimed. "Lucky you!"
   Person A glowered. "Yes. She saw her standing on my left, behind me, caressing my hair. She knew it was for me!" Reconstructive memory not only distorted some details, but it also changed the order of events in her memory. "She said that she loves me and that I know when she is present because I get goosebumps and hot spots when she's around." Person A finished.
"Wow!" Person B said. "Have you felt goosebumps and hot spots when you've sensed she's around?" Person A thought for a moment. Then she thought she'd recalled a moment when she had. Or was her mind making it up, to avoid embarassment as a consequence of her friend's question? "Yes. There was one moment in which I'd been in the sitting room. I felt a surge of warmth enter my left arm, and when I looked to my left, I had an image of her in my mind - as if she was in the physical and not dead at all!" Person A told her.
    Person B was so impressed with this that she wanted to go and see this medium, too. Person A passed on her details. "I'd definitely go to her again!" Person A said.

Reconstruction

  "I'm getting a middle-aged woman who has got brown hair..."   vs. "She said that she was getting a lady with brown hair"  - Not reconstructed (though "middle-aged" was not recalled).

"She was fond of gardening and of her cat. Her name is Jennifer or Jessica..." vs. "...She had been interested in gardening for a time. She also said that she'd had cats that she'd been very fond of."

- Reconstructed. The medium had said that the lady had been "fond of gardening" but Person A remembered this as being "She had been interested in gardening for a time". Her mum had been into gardening for a time before her illness, though not to the extent of being something she was "fond of". The medium had not mentioned any specifics such as this, yet because it hadn't been quite right, Person A had misremembered the details so that they were more impressive than they actually were. 

Essentially, she was mixing some details about her mother with what she "remembered" from the reading. The names given were wrong, so they were forgotten. The medium had said that she had been fond of her cat; however, this was wrong as Person A's mother had had two cats that she'd been fond of. Hence, instead of recounting that the medium had said she'd had one cat that she'd been fond of, she recounted that the medium had said that "she'd had cats that she'd been very fond of."

  

 "I can see her standing on your left. She's caressing your hair... She's saying that she loves you and that you know when she's present - you get the sensation of goosebumps or hot spots when she is." vs. "She saw her standing on my left, behind me, caressing my hair. She knew it was for me! "She said that she loves me and that I know when she is present because I get goosebumps and hot spots when she's around." - reconstructed. The medium said that she could "see her standing" on Person A's left, and that the spirit was "caressing" Person A's hair. Yet due to reconstructive memory, she recalled that the medium had identified her as the spirit had been seen standing next to her. In actual fact, of course, she was only identified because she's stuck up her hand as she felt that the reading went for her. Selective memory caused her to forget this bit. This makes the reading more incredible than it actual was. This has resulted in an amazing story that is not actually completely correct which has caused Person B to go and see the medium, too. 

   

Is it possible that selective attention caused her to forget the bits that were wrong? Perhaps because they were wrong, she didn't pay those bits any attention and so they didn't enter the memory stores in the first place? If they did enter memory, they would soon be forgotten, due to selective memory. The reason why the bits that were profoundly wrong such as the medium saying the person was called "Jennifer or Jessica" were forgotten, and that bits that were seen to relate to Person A's mother were recalled if they were correct (selective memory), or altered in order to make sense if they weren't quite right (reconstructive memory) is due to cognitive dissonance. Person A originally wanted to believe that her mum had come through and afterwards she believed, so naturally bits that didn't quite fit this belief were changed (such as the medium saying that she'd had one cat she'd been keen on being changed in Person A's memory as the medium having said that she'd had two cats she'd been keen on) - due to reconstructive memory - as if they didn't quite make sense (facts being wrong) it meant these details, even though they had actually been said by the medium, were not in accord with Person A's belief.

  The details that were not correct at all - the names, for example - were ditched as they did nto serve as evidence for Person A's belief. Because they were wrong, they had to be got rid of. The details that were correct were selectively remembered as, finally, they did serve as evidence for the belief - they were in accord with the belief. This is cognitive dissonance - facts or details (from an experience) that are not in accord with a belief are forgotten and those that are in accord are remembered.

   Of course, the medium didn't say that the spirit she was picking up on WAS Person A's mother. She's said she was "...getting a middle-aged woman who has got brown hair..." which is irrelevant, of course, to anyone of the audience whose deceased friends or relatives was not middle-aged, or who was not female, or who did not have brown hair. So anyone whose deceased loved-ones had those attributes can be sure that the reading was not for them, but for someone else. Clearly, the reading is only relevant to people whose deceased loved ones were:

• middle-aged
• female
• had brown hair

The medium, interestingly, does not state whether the woman was a mother, or grandmother. Then she says, "She was fond of gardening and of her cat. Her name is Jennifer or Jessica...". This means that anyone whose deceased loved-one had:

• been middle-aged
• female
• had brown hair

But who:

• was not fond of/interested in gardening
• had or was fond of their cat (or cats!)
• was not called Jennifer or Jessica

Could generally tick themselves off the list of possible candidates whose loved-one the medium was communicating with. However, if enough details seemed to fit as the description of the person's deceased loved-one (think of Person A, of course), could bend the situation so that their deceased loved-one had been described, ignoring the areas that were a bit iffy. This was precisely what Person A did. 
  What we know about this spirit from the medium is that she:

• was middle-aged 
• was female
• had brown hair
• liked gardening
• had a cat of which she'd been fond
• was called either "Jennifer" or "Jessica"

We do not know:

• where she lived
• when she lived
• her specific age
• what sort of house she lived in
• how many children she had
• about her garden
• her particular hobbies
• anything about her personality.
• whether she was tall or short
• how long her hair was
• what sort of clothes or styles she liked
• what sort of music she liked
• whether she was a mother or grandmother
• what sort of career she'd had
• when she died (how old she was when she'd died)
• the details of what she'd died of
• if she had other pets, besides a cat
• anything about her family - her husband, children, etc.
• if she had been married

Most importantly:

• How do we know that she was even Person A's deceased mother?

• How do we know the medium was channelling an actual spirit?
• How do we know the medium was not a fraud (no matter how convincing he/she may have seemed)?

   The medium could have been "channelling" any deceased person who belonged to a member of the audience, provided that overall they fitted the medium's description of the spirit. Yet despite this, Person A was certain that the medium had been describing her mother: "...it seems to fit my mum alright." she'd thought. Despite the areas that were inconsistent, Person A "knew" that the reading was "for her". The medium hadn't once picked up on whether the woman had been Person A's mother, grandmother, friend or sister or aunt. The reading may have fitted Person F's deceased sister, but because of the Barnum Effect Person A thought that the description was uniquely attributable to her loved-one when it could also have fitted someone else's loved-one. (Now Person F is sure that the reading was not for him, but was actually for Person A. This is in spite of the fact he'd thought that the medium was picking up on his sister, in the same way, and for the same reason that Person A had believed that the medium was picking up on her deceased mother.) The description was vague, general and ambiguous - it did not state the names of the spirit's family members, or describe her personality specific to the person she was supposed to have been. It was cold reading because the description could have gone for any member of the population who had a deceased loved one who (and let's list them all again):

• was middle-aged
• was female
• had brown hair
• liked gardening
• had a cat of which she'd been fond
• was called either "Jennifer" or "Jessica"

 Provided that the deceased person fitted this criteria, anyone could have thought that the spirit was their loved-one, who had been channelled by the medium.
     Thanks to the medium, though, Person A will undoubtedly associate "hot spots" or "goosebumps" with the (imagined?) sense that her mother's spirit was present; an association she would not have made necessarily prior to the mediumship demonstration. Yet if these hot spots or goosebumps were believed to have been caused by or been a result of her deceased mother being present in Spirit, then the hot spots or goosebumps would be interpreted to have been caused by such. This is classical conditioning because they may not have actually been caused by the spiritual presence of Person A's deceased mother, but rather because of more mundane causes, such as her body's circulation.