This is part two in a series of four accounts from Alistair A. McLauchlan who attended four mediumship events in Scotland in 2019. In the first of these articles we meet Karen Docherty and David Frances in Dundee.
Note: McLauchlan was discouraged from taking photos; what is included here was taken surreptitiously. I’ve altered the images to remove faces, yet still hold the mood of the event. At the conclusion of each of these accounts, I will add my closing thoughts. Enjoy!
Alistair McLauchlan
PERTH (FRIDAY 7th OF JUNE)
My next night of mediumship on Saturday night in Stirling had been canceled at short notice so I had to scramble for another within the next week. Luckily, there was small show at the Salutation Hotel in Perth, which is only half an hour down the road from my hometown. I called up the Hotel and found that you could pay at the door. So I drove down after work.
Tonight’s medium is called Andrew Lindsay. I recognize him from his website when I enter the small events room. He looks about aged 30–35 and is small, thin, and wiry with a curly mop of ginger hair. He’s wearing a smart suit and polished shoes and cheerily welcomes everybody into the room, calling the majority by their first name. There is another raffle tonight, but at a pound for five tickets, it’s not as shameless a ruse as Docherty’s draw in Dundee. The prizes: a bottle of pink gin, a bottle of wine, a bag of chocolates, and an envelope marked “from Andrew” are displayed on a table that doubles as a reception desk. I buy ten tickets, pay admittance, and take a seat in an empty row at the back of the room. There would be a better view of the medium and audience interaction at the front, but as I’m a 6’4’ lump, I’m always paranoid about obscuring people’s view.
The small events room is clean, tidy, and mundane with around thirty chairs lined in several rows. Again, the audience mostly consists of middle-aged housewives, some with their daughters. Everyone is relaxed and chatty with around half slurping long vodkas or gin and tonics. There’s a few splendid hairstyles on show, the best of which is a distinctive mullet style like an ‘80s Austrian footballer: curly on top but straight down the back and sides, a bit like Elvira’s but blonde. I also recognize a couple of other psychic/mediums as they walk into the room; they embrace and chat with each other before taking their seat. There seems to be a lot of cross pollination between different mediums and their audiences. I remove my jacket and settle into my chair, instantly feeling like an outsider in this small but dedicated gathering.
The woman who was selling raffle tickets doubles as compere and steps up to address the audience; there’s no need for a microphone in such a small space. She gives the normal warnings about mobile phones, asks permission to take some photos, then welcomes the medium to the front. Lindsay reintroduces himself then asks the audience if this is anybody’s first time at this type of event. A middle aged, bald man two rows directly in front of me tentatively raises his hand. Lindsay jokes at the newcomer’s expense then with the audience, easing them into his performance. He stresses the importance of the people responding with a clear and loud voice and not mumbling or simply nodding affirmation, then adds that he is conscious of his rapid talking style explaining that he has just returned from a tour of America and had to slow his speech down as a result.
Unlike Docherty or Francis, this medium first picks a member of the audience, then designates a waiting spirit to them. It’s a daring approach with a greater chance of failing; however, I soon get the impression that the first woman chosen is well known to Lindsay and his unusual method. She is middle-aged, overweight, and has long white hair and cheerily welcomes Lindsay’s invitation like a Granny cooperating with a child’s magic trick. He explains that he is in contact with a father figure then immediately changes this to a grandfather named John, to which the woman replies with a single yes. He then describes John as a private man who loved his large family and lived in a small tenement building, to which the woman also replies yes. Lindsay then jumps spirits to the woman’s sister who he feels is very concerned about her; he then claims to be seeing a birthday in November, to which the woman also replies yes. Lindsay informs the woman that both her sister and grandfather like to visit her house regularly, then says that her sister was alone when she died and that her family was not around at the point she crossed unto the spirit world. The woman recoils at this statement replying “not really” while shaking her head, clearly upset. I’m confused why he would risk offending an eager audience member with such a loaded comment, condemning his opening connection to a premature and awkward conclusion.
Lindsay then moves around the room, picking several more eager participants and questioning them in his strong Perthshire brogue. Each time he follows his method and uses the same awkward technique: assign a spirit to a person, bombard them with questions or general statements, demand immediate answers, then question again. There’s guesses of months, dates, and birthdays, some statements about photographs, ornaments on a mantlepiece, a motorbike accident, and a vision of a “medic or nurse.” Nearly all these speculations fail to hit a direct bullseye of recognition but are vague enough to have some resonance to the chosen person. Any complete misses are quickly ignored by the pace of interrogation, and whenever he appears to be faltering, Lindsay interjects a little joke or daft comment to recoup the rapport and trigger uproarious laughter from the audience. At times I feel like I’m lugging into private conversation between people waiting at a bus stop or to a blathering hairdresser entertaining a customer. There’s no substance in his statements, holding no more resonance than idle chit chat. He reminds me of a mean school friend you knew talked absolute nonsense, but you tolerated him because of his entertaining, storytelling style.
Then Lindsay suddenly points to a woman in the row in front of me and tells her “I know you are here to get in touch with your son who’s passed to the other side, but he is here beside me tonight.” The woman nods her head but doesn’t answer. She is part of a trio of women who have been giggling with each other laughing along with all tonight’s proceedings. Lindsay tells her that her son was with them during their journey to tonight’s event and had been listening to them “carrying on” in the car. He communicates that her son is “always watching over her and she should not stress and worry about things so much.” On the face, it’s an impressive hit, but her quiet response makes me feel that this isn’t the first time both have conversed on this subject, as if she has been preheated or prepared.
His method of interrogation starts to bother me, and I begin to feel uncomfortable, dreading the possibility that he may choose me next. There have been some wild opportunist casts of which the majority caught nothing. Each miss contributes to an awkward aura in the room, which is only punctured with a whimsical joke or remark. His devotees, however, are quick to pick up on these remarks and respond with roaring laughter and overenthusiastic applause like parents watching their kids in a school play. Inevitably, Lindsay gets around to the bald man in front of me who is attending his first event. The man answers quietly in an English accent and appears confused and uneasy at being put on the spot. He half acknowledges some of the guesses and accepts the diagnosis of a gum ailment but is generally maneuvered around the conversation by Lindsay. The medium ends the connection by assuring the man that he will be going on a journey “down south” very soon, which given the man’s obvious accent, it’s not as much of marvel of prognostication as others in the room believe. The intermission comes as a relief, and I’ve had enough. Tired and unimpressed, I decide to leave before I am picked out, interrogated, then manipulated into Lindsay’s act. On the way out, I give my raffle tickets to the trio of women who were sitting in front of me, then exit the hotel into a bright, summer evening.
Overall, I found Andrew Lindsay’s performance to be underwhelming and amateurish, closer in style to David Francis’s unrefined and scattergun approach. Both chuck out random but commonly shared information into the audience, receive an enthusiastic response then run with it until they hit a brick wall and destroy the connection. There’s been no convincing evidence of spirits and even less proof that the mediums can contact these spirits. I can remember being similarly disappointed when I first watched a full baseball match as a kid. Before live TV coverage, I’d only seen baseball during its greatest moments via highlights and the movies, and each time those clips made you feel that home runs were a regular occurrence. However, in general you’d be lucky to see one homerun per game as they are all short taps and runs between bases with a lot of swings and misses in between. Similarly, the two medium shows have been the same: a lot of swings and misses and precious few homeruns.
FOLKLORE
I work with my brother, which can range from hilarious to dreadful on any single day. On the Wednesday afternoon following the Perth event, as we drove to a customer’s garden, a black crow clipped the top of our work van. We stopped the van to see if the bird was okay, but there was no sign of it anywhere. It must have flown on, bruised no doubt, but uninjured. It was strange as neither of us had ever hit a crow before, them being smart and agile birds. Pheasants are usually hit as they seem to be heavier and unable to dodge in time. The next morning while in a different garden, a large black raven suddenly fell from the sky and crashed into a wall beside me. The poor beast seemed stunned and crawled under a parked car to recover. After finishing my job, I looked under the car then searched the garden, but the bird had disappeared. Again, hopefully it gathered its senses and flew away unharmed. When I told my younger brother about the second crow, he was shocked.
“What does it all mean?” he asked.
He then explained the importance of crows in Norse mythology and Celtic folklore. For him these events had to have some sort of mystical resonance, perhaps a forewarning or even a portent of doom. I put it down to coincidence. Some people who look for connections will eventually find them or invent something to that ends. The skeptics, however, look at the supernatural from a less imaginative an unromantic viewpoint, preferring to use cold logic, evidence, and facts to find an explanation. I’m not sure if I’m convinced by either side.
HOT READING
Hot reading is simply prior research by the psychic or medium, but it can take many forms and is evolving with new technology. Previously, hot reading could be attained by mediums scouring local newspapers in the library, by covertly listening into preshow conversations, or by the audience filling in pre-show Spirit cards that indicated who you were trying to connect with and why (what other information does a medium need?). In the most callous of example, several mediums were caught writing down local gravestone details—especially those of young children—in expectance of grieving mothers to be attending their events. Nowadays, the internet has rendered these archaic methods as pointless, superseded by tools such as google search and social media archaeology. The internet—especially Facebook—provides all the details needed to provide a convincing report of every aspect of an audience member’s life. Your past trauma and existing grief lie open for everyone to peruse. Everything is widely accessible and thus susceptible to opportunists, lying exposed like an open wound. A psychic or medium need only your name and address, both of which you usually provide when buying tickets over the internet. The creation of false social media accounts called “sock puppet accounts” by skeptics regularly entrap mediums as fictional information is repeated verbatim during their shows. Added to this, it would be fair to assume that many of the event audience also elect for private readings from mediums. Private readings are a “one on one” form of mediumship like a psychiatrist’s treatment of patient, with the same exposure of personal information. So when a medium faces his or her quarry, they will be loaded with a wealth of previous information on a healthy percentage of their audience.
Susan Gerbic: Notice that the medium Lindsay greets people as they arrive by their first names, always a red-flag that some hot-reading will be going on. Someone who has been previously read is considered a hot-read as they are pulling information from past readings as if Spirit is repeating themselves.
I’m also interested in these raffles. I’m not aware of them in the United States; the mediums will have a table where they sell their swag but not raffles. Possibly I haven’t been paying that close to attention? Seems a nice way to pull a bit of extra cash from attendees, especially if the medium doesn’t have a book to sell.
About the first reading, McLauchlan says he is confused why Lindsay would give the sitter negative information that would make her upset. I wonder if Lindsay just got confused; he clearly knows this sitter’s story, probably has read for her before. Maybe he is confusing her story with someone who had a sister that died alone?
Again, like the first event in Dundee I’m struck at how
McLauchlan describes the event as a performance and the
audience as willing participants, eager to help along the
medium. He makes it sound like these people are so used to
communication with the dead that it is an after-thought.
Next McLauchlan takes us to Edinburgh.