Surviving Death

Here are some good reasons to stay skeptical about such things. I don't know much about the film authors but I won't be surprised if there is some pseudoscientific or religious agenda.
 
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It's not "surviving" death, is it?

If you are dead, then you are dead. Why do folk have to describe "not quite dying" as death? All this "the doctors said I was dead for 10 minutes!" is just manure of the bovine. If you are still there to recount a story then you clearly are NOT sodding well dead.

As for NDE stuff...
 
The “N” word is always the one that gets me - “I died” -“Well then you didn’t have a near death experience did you?” :)
 
Carrot Flower King said:
It's not "surviving" death, is it?

If you are dead, then you are dead. Why do folk have to describe "not quite dying" as death? All this "the doctors said I was dead for 10 minutes!" is just manure of the bovine. If you are still there to recount a story then you clearly are NOT sodding well dead.

As for NDE stuff...
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Darat said:
The “N” word is always the one that gets me - “I died” -“Well then you didn’t have a near death experience did you?” :)
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Agree on "surviving death" but I think picking holes in the title is not the best response, since it's not enough to debunk the paranormal claims of the people who had NDE. For example many people claim that they saw everything in the operational room when their brain was flatlined and after "returning to this world" retold what they saw with striking accuracy. I guess this what OP is interested in. The film might contain such stories to intrigue people.
 
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The phenomena of the dissociative state under anesthesia is pretty well-known and there’s at least one project trying to understand why this occurs under some forms of anesthesia and not others..
There’s also research into what exactly causes anesthesia to work, as although the practice is quite standardized, the exact mechanism isn’t.
 
It's not picking holes, though, is it? It's clarifying what exactly we are talking about: saying "surviving death" is a surefire indication that someone does not know what they are talking about, (ETA) or has some class of an agenda in which "miracles" happen. Specifying NDE is better and clearer.
 
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After death experiences are what interest me; too bad we don't have any of those.
 
suren said:
Agree on "surviving death" but I think picking holes in the title is not the best response, since it's not enough to debunk the paranormal claims of the people who had NDE. For example many people claim that they saw everything in the operational room when their brain was flatlined and after "returning to this world" retold what they saw with striking accuracy. I guess this what OP is interested in. The film might contain such stories to intrigue people.
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Those stories are intriguing, of course. But what we come to understand when we take a more scientific approach is that the subjects' recollections of timelines and time correlations don't cohere to the actual events. That is, they recall "with startling accuracy" some sensory elements of their environment, but correlating that to the time when they were supposedly near death becomes very problematic. It is hypothesized then that the time-ordering and coincidence of events becomes "squashed" in the subject's memory.
 
JayUtah said:
Those stories are intriguing, of course. But what we come to understand when we take a more scientific approach is that the subjects' recollections of timelines and time correlations don't cohere to the actual events. That is, they recall "with startling accuracy" some sensory elements of their environment, but correlating that to the time when they were supposedly near death becomes very problematic. It is hypothesized then that the time-ordering and coincidence of events becomes "squashed" in the subject's memory.
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Yeah, and they're really striking. I remember a woman in YouTube comment section told quite long story of her NDE. In short, she was claiming that she was flying over the ambulance car while it was taking her body to hospital and she saw and remembered the ambulance car number. After regaining consciousness, she told that story and the car number to the doctors. According to her the doctors were dumbfounded after checking that car number since there was no blood flow in her brain and was completely unconscious.

I'm skeptical of course. She could theoretically lie, be mistaken, misremember, or maybe somehow saw the car before telling that story to doctors, but it's still a striking story.
 
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suren said:
Yeah, and they're really striking. I remember a woman in YouTube comment section told quite long story of her NDE. In short, she was claiming that she was flying over the ambulance car while it was taking her body to hospital and she saw and remembered the ambulance car number. After regaining consciousness, she told that story and the car number to the doctors. According to her the doctors were dumbfounded after checking that car number since there was no blood flow in her brain and was completely unconscious.
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I'm assuming there is no corroboration from the actual doctors?
 
RolandRat said:
I'm assuming there is no corroboration from the actual doctors?
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I don't know 100%.

Fortunately I found that comment:
I was dead for over 20 minutes. I have gone the opposite direction and don't tell much detail because it is something very personal and intimate to me. No monetary value in my opinion. That being said, it was an INCREDIBLE experience both times I was in cardiac arrest and I do not fear death at all! One thing I remember, is watching my husband break down, sobbing on the hood of the car while I was being resuscitated the 2nd time it happened. I watched EMS cut my clothes off, do CPR, start a line in the jugular vein, load me in the ambulance and absolutely fly down the street with me in it. I even saw the ambulance number and where they were taking me. Interestingly enough, my husband and I were on our way to a different hospital. When I awoke, they asked me if I I knew where I was. I told them exactly where I was, including the unit and room number. They were flabbergasted. A rush of hormones can't explain that when I watched it all happen outside of my own body like a spectator. I even verified the ambulance number and met the guys who saved my life. I already knew who they were. I don't think anyone will ever know the explanation to be honest, but I don't think we've ever come close to explaining it. I am not religious at all, but I am spiritual now, although atheist..... after both times it has happened. All that, coming from a Sr. Research Analyst in 5 divisions of medicine and epidemiology. I have a different insight as a researcher, but we haven't even come close to figuring it out. We must swallow our pride and realize that we do not know it all.
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This is the YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wECPvOfyx4
I'm not implying that she is correct, theoretically some people might troll.
 
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Lukas1986 said:
There is a new Netflix documentary called Surviving Death which looks on Near-Death Experiences and all the paranormal stuff:

https://www.netflix.com/sk/title/80998853?trkid=255824129&s=i

Here is the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq5V9SgO1_A
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How many times are folk going to roll this stuff out?

So many accounts given by those who claim experience of near death. They are always nice experiences, typically about a feeling of serenity, as they ascend towards a brightly lit welcoming destination, only to be dragged back to their ailing bodies before they get there. We don't hear of someone someone descending towards a less welcoming destination, from which heat is radiating, and the sound of wailing and gnashing of teeth heard.

To my intense annoyance, some of the authors who write about the first experience, imply that it is universal that those with near death episodes have these. This is clearly a lie. Not only have I have spoken to others that have had NDEs, and have not had these visions, but have been there myself, three times, and have not. I think this entitles me to claim some expertise on the subject.
 
It's pretty clear that there is a shared, culturally determined, visual "language" being used to describe these experiences, similar to how there is a common description of aliens from "abductees"/sleep paralysis sufferers which is of relatively recent origin and contrasts to the old "black hag" descriptions of the same phenomenon or Fuseli's pictures.

And in that instance you gave, Suren, that opening quote tells me what I need to know: a supposed researcher in medicine stating that they were "dead for over 20 minutes"... Agenda, agenda, agenda. If they don't know what death actually is then they should just shut the f up. You do not come back from death, by definition, unless you are going down some supernatural (i.e. pretty unreal and unevidenced) route.

If we are going to go on this class of anecdote, then monsters were rampaging around a certain ward at Sunderland Royal just before Christmas 1978 because I repeatedly SAW them and a piece of sand dune near Seascale was bleeding (absolutely dripping with blood!) in December 1982 because I SAW it! That I was in a a toxic confusional state during one and in the middle of several days worth of serious magic mushroom ingestion for the other is totally irrelevant, as I SAW what I SAW. So, it's true, it is!
 
Carrot Flower King said:
And in that instance you gave, Suren, that opening quote tells me what I need to know: a supposed researcher in medicine stating that they were "dead for over 20 minutes"... Agenda, agenda, agenda. If they don't know what death actually is then they should just shut the f up. You do not come back from death, by definition, unless you are going down some supernatural (i.e. pretty unreal and unevidenced) route.
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I didn't imply that we have to believe everything she said. The believers who were responding to skeptics' responses were often using emotional arguments sorta "skeptics will easily dismiss this rock solid testimony".

Yeah, something is fishy with this "dead for over 20 minutes". It's unlikely to survive such a prolonged brain anoxia without brain damage. Although in the response she claimed to have temperature 94 oF (~34.4 oC), I doubt that this would change anything significantly.
 
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suren said:
I was dead for over 20 minutes. I have gone the opposite direction and don't tell much detail because it is something very personal and intimate to me. No monetary value in my opinion. That being said, it was an INCREDIBLE experience both times I was in cardiac arrest and I do not fear death at all! One thing I remember, is watching my husband break down, sobbing on the hood of the car while I was being resuscitated the 2nd time it happened. I watched EMS cut my clothes off, do CPR, start a line in the jugular vein, load me in the ambulance and absolutely fly down the street with me in it. I even saw the ambulance number and where they were taking me. Interestingly enough, my husband and I were on our way to a different hospital. When I awoke, they asked me if I I knew where I was. I told them exactly where I was, including the unit and room number. They were flabbergasted. A rush of hormones can't explain that when I watched it all happen outside of my own body like a spectator. I even verified the ambulance number and met the guys who saved my life. I already knew who they were. I don't think anyone will ever know the explanation to be honest, but I don't think we've ever come close to explaining it. I am not religious at all, but I am spiritual now, although atheist..... after both times it has happened. All that, coming from a Sr. Research Analyst in 5 divisions of medicine and epidemiology. I have a different insight as a researcher, but we haven't even come close to figuring it out. We must swallow our pride and realize that we do not know it all.
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I would like to know when she first time told this story and how long it took her to recall this experience.

Most of these special stories like Pam Reynolds or a story like this is mostly remembered or collected years after it happened. For example Pam Reynolds case was collected 3 years after the whole operation has happened:

So not only must Pam Reynolds have known quite a lot about the operation prior to undergoing it, but there is another major problem confronting those claiming this is truly proof of the reality of a separable immaterial mind. This problem is the difference in time between undergoing the operation, and reporting it to Sabom.

Pam Reynolds underwent her operation during 1991.
Michael Sabom first read the details of her experience during 1994.
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Source: http://www.neardth.com/pam-reynolds-near-death-experience.php#three-years

If we had already these kind of evidence then the second AWARE study would not be in progress. Also all of these kind of studies that tried to prove that people can identify special signs all failed to this day, not only one person was able to see identification signs when they had a OBE. Most of these stories are just myths or collected years later when the person had other ways of knowing this.
 
Lukas1986 said:
I would like to know when she first time told this story and how long it took her to recall this experience.
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Honestly, I don't know, the comment itself was posted 2 years ago. We can ask her but her case probably is not a "well documented" case like Pam Reynolds' or other famous cases. So it will not be as trustable as other well documented reports.

This is her next long response, I don't know how much that tells:
Considering exactly how the brain works, and the lack of ATP to even create memories is a major problem with "piecing memories together." No circulation, no exchange of calcium, and no making of memories can occur. I don't remember anything prior to me actually leaving my body. My husband has told me the rest, but until I remember leaving my body, there is nothing. I don't remember my husband being stuck in traffic or him being on hold waiting for a dispatcher for 8 minutes. My memories of the event all started with visual cognition. You cannot piece together someone's face or an ambulance number when there is no brain activity to even see.

As far as lack of evidence for the scientific community, I 100% understand why. Just like with psych research, you can't just crack open the brain at any time and see what's going on without destroying what you're trying to understand. That's for starters. Another issue, is there is no true data with someone's experience. It is all subjective data when the meat and potatoes of modern science thrives on objective data. Sure, we can record what the body is doing but we have no way to measure said consciousness. I know I was in PEA arrest. Only 3% of people ever come back from that. Of those 3%, only 3% have decent brain function. They're those we call vegetables usually. I am very lucky to have survived it. It is when someone is in PEA arrest, that we typically just call it and pronounce the patient as deceased. With all that being said......I was DEAD. My temperature was 94 F. If I had enough brain function to piece together an event that my eyes could not even see, we better be rethinking what we call brain dead and we'd better be rethinking those patients kept on life support to be donors after being pronounced brain dead if anyone wants to say that my brain was piecing memories together. If you familiarize yourself with the physiology of the brain, and advanced pathophysiology, you realize just how much we truly don't understand and how this should not be possible for the brain to do.
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I personally think the claim "I was dead for over 20 minutes" is somewhat fishy. If that implies a total brain anoxia for over 20 minutes then she would very likely to have a brain damage, she claimed to have temperature around 34.4 C which is not very far from normal. My speculation is that the medics were helping her and there was a little blood flow into her brain.
 
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suren said:
Honestly, I don't know. We can ask her but her case probably is not a "well documented" case like Pam Reynolds' or other famous cases. So it will not be as trustable as as other well documented reports.

This is her next long response, I don't know how much that tells:


I personally think the claim "I was dead for over 20 minutes" is somewhat fishy. If that implies a total brain anoxia for over 20 minutes then she would very likely to have a brain damage, she claimed to have temperature around 34.4 C which is not very far from normal. My speculation is that the medics were helping her and there was a little blood flow into her brain.
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It also assumes that her “memory” of what happened had to be formed contemporaneously with the actual events.

Never mind about how her spirit is meant to “see” events and then insert memories into her brain once she is revived.
 
Even if I take it at face value what the woman is saying there are lines that are very fishy and make me pause and is quite strange:

I don't remember anything prior to me actually leaving my body.
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How is it possible she does not remember anything prior but remembers the rest?

This quote also from her shows that she had after the incident some background information from another source:

My husband has told me the rest, but until I remember leaving my body, there is nothing.
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I was DEAD.
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Nope she wasn't dead. If she was dead she would stay dead. We are not resurrecting people and people who believe this are wrong even Dr. Sam Parnia is wrong when he calls these experiences after death experiences. We do not know a lot about the process of dying but she was not dead. Also there was a study with dead pig brains and it showed this:

Yet recent advances in science reveal that it may take many hours for individual brain cells to die. In a 2019 Nature report, slaughtered pigs’ brains, given a substitute blood infusion 4 hours after death, had brain function gradually restored over a 6-10 hour period. For many years now, brain cells from human cadaver biopsies have been used to grow brain cells up to 20 hours after death, explained Parnia. His underappreciated conclusion: “Brain cells die very, very slowly,” especially for those whose brains have been chilled, either medically or by drowning in cold water.
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Source: https://community.macmillanlearning...d-the-conscious-experience-of-death/ba-p/6828
 
It is always interesting to read discussions such as this here on IS with the strong emphasis on the fact that people who report such stories are not dead, especially as so many participants elsewhere so firmly believe the stories! I always point out that the imagination is brilliant at telling stories and that, just because science cannot explain every dot and comma, the fact that the person did not actually die remains unchanged.
 
suren said:
I didn't imply that we have to believe everything she said. The believers who were responding to skeptics' responses were often using emotional arguments sorta "skeptics will easily dismiss this rock solid testimony".

Yeah, something is fishy with this "dead for over 20 minutes". It's unlikely to survive such a prolonged brain anoxia without brain damage. Although in the response she claimed to have temperature 94 oF (~34.4 oC), I doubt that this would change anything significantly.
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It isn't just "fishy": it is plain untrue, no matter her protestations. Dead is the end, if she survived, then it wasn't death, it was something possibly near death. It isn't "rock solid testimony", but an anecdote about someone's possible experience. My anecdotes about monsters and bleeding sand dunes are more credible, as I'm not claiming anything mysterious or miraculous, just describing hallucinations from a couple of the better known sources of hallucinations.

To repeat, use of language such as that is a good sign of ignorance or an agenda. As this person is supposed to be a medical researcher, I'll be kind and rule out the ignorance. So that leaves us with...
 
Quote: internet user:

I was dead for over 20 minutes. I have gone the opposite direction and don't tell much detail because it is something very personal and intimate to me. No monetary value in my opinion. That being said,(She will still tell you all about it) it was an INCREDIBLE experience both times I was in cardiac arrest and I do not fear death at all! One thing I remember, is watching my husband break down, sobbing on the hood of the car while I was being resuscitated the 2nd time it happened. I watched EMS cut my clothes off, do CPR, start a line in the jugular vein, load me in the ambulance and absolutely fly down the street with me in it. I even saw the ambulance number and where they were taking me. Interestingly enough, my husband and I were on our way to a different hospital. When I awoke, they asked me if I I knew where I was. I told them exactly where I was, including the unit and room number. They were flabbergasted. A rush of hormones can't explain that when I watched it all happen outside of my own body like a spectator. I even verified the ambulance number and met the guys who saved my life. I already knew who they were. I don't think anyone will ever know the explanation to be honest, but I don't think we've ever come close to explaining it. I am not religious at all, but I am spiritual now, although atheist..... after both times it has happened. All that, coming from a Sr. Research Analyst in 5 divisions of medicine and epidemiology. I have a different insight as a researcher, but we haven't even come close to figuring it out. We must swallow our pride and realize that we do not know it all.
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That is my red flag.
 
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I watched the first episode and one of the medium episodes and the final episode on reincarnation. The series needs a healthy dose of skepticism. I think others have addressed some of the issue with the NDE episode. I could only watch some of the medium episode. There was no one to challenge the medium's assertions and the a lot of the same old worn out pseudo science talk. I couldn't finish it. The reincarnation episode also did not approach anything very skeptically. There was some para psychologist interviewing kids. I couldn't help but think of Vinkman in Ghost Busters. In case, he would show a kid two pictures and ask the kid if he remembered one of the images form the past life. Sometimes it seemed the questions were a bit leading but in any case, the kid always had a 50/50 chance of being right. There was also no real examination of the parents to see how much a child might have been coached an fed information. My wife said these parents seemed more like carnies taking their kids to a freak show.
 
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seayakin said:
I watched the first episode and one of the medium episodes and the final episode on reincarnation. The series needs a healthy dose of skepticism. I think others have addressed some of the issue with the NDE episode. I could only watch some of the medium episode. There was no one to challenge the medium's assertions and the a lot of the same old worn out pseudo science talk. I couldn't finish it. The reincarnation episode also did not approach anything very skeptically. There was some para psychologist interviewing kids. I couldn't help but think of Vinkman in Ghost Busters. In case, he would show a kid two pictures and ask the kid if he remembered one of the images form the past life. Sometimes it seemed the questions were a bit leading but in any case, the kid always had a 50/50 chance of being right. There was also no real examination of the parents to see how much a child might have been coached an fed information. My wife said these parents seemed more like carnies taking their kids to a freak show.
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Of course the Dutch medium was one of three things:

  • self-deluded
  • a charlatan
  • mentally unbalanced

The voice of 'Tommy' was so obviously her. She went t great lengths to try t recreate the early spiritualists, Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophist. Then there were all the attempts to produce 'ether'. This has all proven to have been faked. The stuff about being locked in a dark room with the participants and her being chained to a chair...

The other spiritualist some guy with a clear English accent, and the woman with the long blonde hair (wig?|) didn't go beyond 'oh, I'm getting a Dave here. You sir you've lost a father? A grandfather then? Well whoever it is they send their love.'

And that just about sums it up. One guy was told the words of what was written on his family restaurants' menu and an ugly green car was mentioned. They were really impressed...but then realised all of this material was easily searchable on Google, no clairvoyancy needed.

The NDE's and signs from the dead were far more interesting to me, as was reincarnation, although I would describe that more as deja vu than 'knowledge of having lived before as someone else'. The mothers of these young kids convinced of deja vu misunderstood this IMV and coerced their little ones into giving explicit specific details. One little kid was convinced he had been murdered and wad able to come up with a name and his previous parents. Now he may well have experienced a deja vu but I think his parents changed it into 'reincarnation' which I doubt a three (?) year old can really have any concept of, let alone understanding that they are a unique individual. A sense of identity and self typically comes with teenage years.

One boy was 'convinced' his previous life was as a Hollywood actor, very rich with a big swimming pool, etc. Riiiight. His mother led him down a path of showing him photos and making pick the said 'film star' out. He picked a film extra, :D who was actually quite wealthy as a later film producer. Bunkum.

There is even spiritualism meets reincarnation. A hindi guy who lost his father was delighted to discover that the Dutch lady had a foreign gentleman who wanted to speak to him and she even had the Hindi for 'Son'. This was logical according to the Netflix producers because Hindis believe in reincarnation so what could be more natural than a Hindi man's departed dad coming through at a seance? And he had expressed scepticism before with another medium which shows how discerning he was. So this visitation must be more authentic than average. So there.


Signs from the newly departed, this seemed possible to me. Who can prove it one way or another? Or separate the fantastists from the authentic?

Then there was a lady who visited supposed haunted houses to tape voices from the other side against white noise. Then there was the chap who began getting 'ether' messages from his late father on polaroid camera film. Hmmmmm.

What to make off it. The subject matter was sympathetically and well-presented. However, the woman who claimed she had a premonition she would 'die' in childbirth with lots of blood, had been told she was in danger of placenta pravaeria which she then looked up on the internet and frightened herself half to death and keep seeing images of this happening. Well, it did happen but it hardly qualifies as a 'premonition' if the doctors told her of this condition early in her pregnancy.


Problem with this type of subject, people can simply dismiss it as, 'well, we weren't taught it at school and the scientists say it isn't possible. LALALALALALA' <fx fingers in ears> so we might be dismissing a real phenomena simply because there is no academic authority on it (apart from the designated woo brigade) or the establishment clergy haven't endorsed it. But just because the Man says it ain't so, does that make it not so?

That is my tuppence worth.
 
You can't survive death.

That's what death is.

Can we try to use the language we all agreed on.
 
What would be the proper term to apply to a situation in which someone's heart stopped, they lost consciousness and stopped breathing for roughly 5 minutes before being restarted/awakened?
 
ChrisBFRPKY said:
What would be the proper term to apply to a situation in which someone's heart stopped, they lost consciousness and stopped breathing for roughly 5 minutes before being restarted/awakened?
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Not dead yet.


Not Dead Yet -- Bad Examples.
 
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911 Dispatcher: "Hello this is 911 please state the nature of your emergency."

Caller: "My husband collapsed to the floor, he's not breathing and there's been no heartbeat for the last 5 minutes or so. I think he's dead!"

911 Dispatcher: "No mam, he's still alive but probably a bit poorly."

Caller: "Is there someone else there I can speak with?"
 
ChrisBFRPKY said:
What would be the proper term to apply to a situation in which someone's heart stopped, they lost consciousness and stopped breathing for roughly 5 minutes before being restarted/awakened?
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A near death experience ........ I've been there.

Well I don't know if my heart stopped but I lost consciousness and my breathing stopped because my lungs well full of water.
 
Thor 2 said:
A near death experience ........ I've been there.

Well I don't know if my heart stopped but I lost consciousness and my breathing stopped because my lungs well full of water.
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So have I. I got the whole tunnel, light, disembodiment deal.

Totally mundane, of course, but there is no chance the Tru-BelieversTM will ever accept those accounts.
 
I'm a retired hospital worker who carried a Code Blue pager for decades. I've seen many hundreds of people die, and then of course there were several who were revived by epi and defib and brute force methods. The people who crashed and lived were referred to as "codes" and the people who didn't survive were simply "dead". There's no middle ground, really. You are alive or you are dead. If you are really dead, then you're not going to talk about your experiences.
 
ChrisBFRPKY said:
911 Dispatcher: "Hello this is 911 please state the nature of your emergency."

Caller: "My husband collapsed to the floor, he's not breathing and there's been no heartbeat for the last 5 minutes or so. I think he's dead!"

911 Dispatcher: "No mam, he's still alive but probably a bit poorly."

Caller: "Is there someone else there I can speak with?"
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You did specify who'd been re-awakened/restarted, hence alive...

Not restarted would be dead, which is the terminal, final, not coming back from one.

If someone survives, then they didn't, by definition, die. Unless we are going to re-define the word "die", in which case this sort of discussion becomes even more pointless than it already is.
 
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Just to add my two cents to the discussion. This documentary was filmed according to Leslie Kean’s book “Surviving Death: A Journalist Investigates Evidence for an Afterlife”. In the book the author mentions a story about the Icelandic medium Indridi Indridason and his “channelling” of “Jensen” with veridical information that can’t be accounted by normal means. Some parapsychologist considers this to be the perfect case. This event happened in 1900’s when Iceland was part of Denmark.

I took this case a little bit deeper as Denmark has open archives containing newspapers from that time. Here is what I have found.

As many others medium performers of the time, Indridason was famous of moving things in dark while sitting in chair firmly tight and under the control of sceptical observants. Witnesses also report that he spoke in French and Danish, but it is not known to which extent. Like in many other cases of xenoglossia it was probably just couple of words. As tricks in the dark were exposed by many researchers, I wanted to put more emphasis on “Jensen”.

Indridason was famous for his channelling of a Copenhagen resident “Jensen” on the evening of November 24, 1905. At that session, as original researchers and the medium promotors claim, “Jensen” said that there was a building burning in Copenhagen in the same time as the session was happening. That information was confirmed later when newspapers form Denmark arrived. Also, ten days after that sitting “Jensen” provided some new details about his identity which was confirmed correct. Here are key points of the “Jensen” channelling:

1. The fire happened at the same time when the séance took place, on the night of 24.11.1905., as original sources from 1905. claim.

2. The telephone and telegraph had not been introduced to Iceland at the time of the Indridi case, as original sources claim. So, there was no way that someone could have received telegraph feed about the fire and give it to the medium.

3. There was actual Emil Jensen who lived in Copenhagen an died several years before the fire.

4. Information about the details of “Jensen’s” life was precise and medium couldn’t have read it in newspapers as Haraldsson couldn’t find his obituary in two leading newspapers of the day: “It (my Christian name) is Emil. My name: Emil Jensen, yes! I have no children. Yes, (I was a bachelor). No, (I was not so young when I died). I have siblings, but not here in heaven.”

However, all of key points are founded on shaky grounds:


1. The fire didn’t happen on the night of the séance, but most probably the night before

The Copenhagen fire happened earlier, a night before the séance took place. It probably started late in the night of Thursday, November 23, when the fireman got alarm. The fire was extinguished early in the morning of Friday, November 24, around 2 am. And fireman left the scene around 4 am just to come again because the fire started again. The Danish newspapers reported about the fire on November 25. That would be only possible if the fire happened on the night of 23/24.11.1905., one night before the séance took place, because of the newspaper printing deadlines. For example, on November 25 the Horsens Social Demokrat newspaper writes about the fire with all the important details in the telegram column dated on 24.11.1905. Horsens is 172 kilometres away from Copenhagen. So, if the fire happened the same night when the séance took place that means that the Horsens newspapers issue for November 25 should had been printed the same day, and only after the editor got telegram form Copenhagen – probably later in that day! And that is not possible because of the printing deadlines. As a former journalist I know that the printing deadline is around midnight. So, if you want to have your newspaper on the streets early in the morning you must close it by midnight. In the 19. century that deadline would have to be even earlier because all the letters had to be adjusted manually because of the printing technology. The same telegram feed about the fire was published in other newspapers published in cities of Aarhus and Fredericia, which are not close to Copenhagen.

2. The telegraph service was installed in Iceland before the séance took place and it was possible for medium’s associates to read telegraph feed about the fire and give it to him

Reports in the Iceland newspapers Isafold published on 1.7.1905. says that there was a Marconi station operating in Reykjavik as from summer 1905. Also, one of the medium associate/manager was a journalist and a newspapers owner who most probably could read reports from that station.

3., 4. There was actual Emil Jensen and there was his obituary published in the Danish newspapers Dannebrog on August 4, 1898 that contained precise information that was spoken by “Jensen”

Someone could have searched old newspapers between the first and second sitting (10 days difference) and give more info on “Jensen” that is a common Danish surname. Obituary contains all the needed info that medium “channelled”.

Original report can be found in “A Perfect Case? Emil Jensen in the mediumship of Indridi Indridason. The fire in Copenhagen on November 24th, 1905 and the discovery of Jensen´s identity. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 59 (223), 195-223.”

If this is a perfect case it has a lot of holes in it… I just wonder how many holes are there in other examples reported in the documentary.
 
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Shuca said:
Just to add my two cents to the discussion. This documentary was filmed according to Leslie Kean’s book “Surviving Death: A Journalist Investigates Evidence for an Afterlife”. In the book the author mentions a story about the Icelandic medium Indridi Indridason and his “channelling” of “Jensen” with veridical information that can’t be accounted by normal means. Some parapsychologist considers this to be the perfect case. This event happened in 1900’s when Iceland was part of Denmark.

I took this case a little bit deeper as Denmark has open archives containing newspapers from that time. Here is what I have found.

As many others medium performers of the time, Indridason was famous of moving things in dark while sitting in chair firmly tight and under the control of sceptical observants. Witnesses also report that he spoke in French and Danish, but it is not known to which extent. Like in many other cases of xenoglossia it was probably just couple of words. As tricks in the dark were exposed by many researchers, I wanted to put more emphasis on “Jensen”.

Indridason was famous for his channelling of a Copenhagen resident “Jensen” on the evening of November 24, 1905. At that session, as original researchers and the medium promotors claim, “Jensen” said that there was a building burning in Copenhagen in the same time as the session was happening. That information was confirmed later when newspapers form Denmark arrived. Also, ten days after that sitting “Jensen” provided some new details about his identity which was confirmed correct. Here are key points of the “Jensen” channelling:

1. The fire happened at the same time when the séance took place, on the night of 24.11.1905., as original sources from 1905. claim.

2. The telephone and telegraph had not been introduced to Iceland at the time of the Indridi case, as original sources claim. So, there was no way that someone could have received telegraph feed about the fire and give it to the medium.

3. There was actual Emil Jensen who lived in Copenhagen an died several years before the fire.

4. Information about the details of “Jensen’s” life was precise and medium couldn’t have read it in newspapers as Haraldsson couldn’t find his obituary in two leading newspapers of the day: “It (my Christian name) is Emil. My name: Emil Jensen, yes! I have no children. Yes, (I was a bachelor). No, (I was not so young when I died). I have siblings, but not here in heaven.”

However, all of key points are founded on shaky grounds:


1. The fire didn’t happen on the night of the séance, but most probably the night before

The Copenhagen fire happened earlier, a night before the séance took place. It probably started late in the night of Thursday, November 23, when the fireman got alarm. The fire was extinguished early in the morning of Friday, November 24, around 2 am. And fireman left the scene around 4 am just to come again because the fire started again. The Danish newspapers reported about the fire on November 25. That would be only possible if the fire happened on the night of 23/24.11.1905., one night before the séance took place, because of the newspaper printing deadlines. For example, on November 25 the Horsens Social Demokrat newspaper writes about the fire with all the important details in the telegram column dated on 24.11.1905. Horsens is 172 kilometres away from Copenhagen. So, if the fire happened the same night when the séance took place that means that the Horsens newspapers issue for November 25 should had been printed the same day, and only after the editor got telegram form Copenhagen – probably later in that day! And that is not possible because of the printing deadlines. As a former journalist I know that the printing deadline is around midnight. So, if you want to have your newspaper on the streets early in the morning you must close it by midnight. In the 19. century that deadline would have to be even earlier because all the letters had to be adjusted manually because of the printing technology. The same telegram feed about the fire was published in other newspapers published in cities of Aarhus and Fredericia, which are not close to Copenhagen.

2. The telegraph service was installed in Iceland before the séance took place and it was possible for medium’s associates to read telegraph feed about the fire and give it to him

Reports in the Iceland newspapers Isafold published on 1.7.1905. says that there was a Marconi station operating in Reykjavik as from summer 1905. Also, one of the medium associate/manager was a journalist and a newspapers owner who most probably could read reports from that station.

3., 4. There was actual Emil Jensen and there was his obituary published in the Danish newspapers Dannebrog on August 4, 1898 that contained precise information that was spoken by “Jensen”

Someone could have searched old newspapers between the first and second sitting (10 days difference) and give more info on “Jensen” that is a common Danish surname. Obituary contains all the needed info that medium “channelled”.

Original report can be found in “A Perfect Case? Emil Jensen in the mediumship of Indridi Indridason. The fire in Copenhagen on November 24th, 1905 and the discovery of Jensen´s identity. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 59 (223), 195-223.”

If this is a perfect case it has a lot of holes in it… I just wonder how many holes are there in other examples reported in the documentary.
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Nice analysis. :thumbsup:
 
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