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Split Thread Scorpion's Spiritualism

JayUtah said:
You've been a member since 2013 and you tell us this story happened when you were a youngster in the 1970s. It's not the most recent six years we're wondering about, but the decades prior.
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I remember what happened clearly because the medium asked me to ask my mother about the message, because I had said no to everything the medium said. So I went home and asked my mother who was at the kitchen sink (where mothers usually are). I said to her, "Mother did you have a baby named Lawrence who died in the war" She looked up and said "yes" so I said " well I just had a message from him and he said he died because there was no equipment in the hospital because of the war" . She said " There were no oxygen tents" So I said well he wanted me to tell you he wanted to be remembered to you " My mother said " Oh " and shrugged her shoulders, and went back to doing the washing up. We did not discuss it again for years.
I remember all this because I was surprised that it was true and it made an impression on me.
 
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Scorpion said:
I remember what happened clearly because the medium asked me to ask my mother about the message...
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You do realize that the medium told you nothing she couldn't have discovered from third parties? It's not as if the long-lost brother had been raised in another country or given up at birth. He literally died in a public hospital -- albeit before your time -- attended by doctors, nurses, and -- sadly, ultimately -- undertakers. That you didn't know anything about him has bugger all to do with whether other people did, and that's how the medium works.

If someone had told me when I was a youngster that I had a great uncle Wendell, I would have denied it. I knew all my grandparents' siblings, because we had frequent reunions at the homestead. We were a close-knit family. Yes, everyone in the little town knew Wendell and the tragic story of their being unable to get him over a snowy mountain pass to a hospital when his appendix burst. Much like wartime shortages of lifesaving medicines and equipment, life on the frontier was harsh and sometimes cruel. It's easier to confide those things to strangers than to dredge them up among those who suffered through them.
 
Scorpion said:
I remember what happened clearly because the medium asked me to ask my mother about the message, because I had said no to everything the medium said. So I went home and asked my mother who was at the kitchen sink (where mothers usually are). I said to her, "Mother did you have a baby named Lawrence who died in the war" She looked up and said "yes" so I said " well I just had a message from him and he said he died because there was no equipment in the hospital because of the war" . She said " There were no oxygen tents" So I said well he wanted me to tell you he wanted to be remembered to you " My mother said " Oh " and shrugged her shoulders, and went back to doing the washing up. We did not discuss it again for years.

I remember all this because I was surprised that it was true and it made an impression on me.
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Shall I remind you of one of your previous recounting of this tale?



.... So I went home and my mother was doing the washing up. I said to her, "mother did you have a baby named*Lawrence*that died as a baby in the war" and she looked up and said "Yes" so I said "well I just had a message from him and he wanted to be remembered to you." She shrugged her shoulders and went back to the washing up. She was not a spiritualist and did not believe in it, and she had never been to the church, and I had never seen the lady medium before that night​

ETA

I think this may have been your first recounting here

. So I went home and my mother was at the kitchen sink, like all good mothers, I asked her if she had a baby that died in the war, and she looked up with a shocked look on her face and said "Yes". So I told her I had just had a message from him and he had grown up in the spirit world, and he wanted to be remembered to her.
My mother shrugged her shoulders and went back to the*washing*up. We did not speak about it again for years.
 
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Darat said:
Shall I remind you of one of your previous recounting of this tale?



.... So I went home and my mother was doing the washing up. I said to her, "mother did you have a baby named*Lawrence*that died as a baby in the war" and she looked up and said "Yes" so I said "well I just had a message from him and he wanted to be remembered to you." She shrugged her shoulders and went back to the washing up. She was not a spiritualist and did not believe in it, and she had never been to the church, and I had never seen the lady medium before that night​

ETA

I think this may have been your first recounting here

. So I went home and my mother was at the kitchen sink, like all good mothers, I asked her if she had a baby that died in the war, and she looked up with a shocked look on her face and said "Yes". So I told her I had just had a message from him and he had grown up in the spirit world, and he wanted to be remembered to her.
My mother shrugged her shoulders and went back to the*washing*up. We did not speak about it again for years.
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The devil, as they say, is in the detail.

But look at the consistent parts. Mysogyny is one of them. "Mother" always appears, in this instance, to be a mere kitchen appendage, existing merely to attend to Scorpions whims, incapable of any thought or feeling. A mere automaton.

And to reinforce Jay's earlier point, I was a third child. twelve years elapsed before the birth of my youngest sibling. What I was unaware of was the fact that in that twelve years there were four serious late term miscarriages/stillbirths. I only found that out after I reached adulthood when it turned out that everyone knew but never discussed it, ever. Same happened with my great uncle Everard. He had several spouses and children and simply vanished on a weird world walkabout for no apparent reason. He was not talked about either. But everyone else knew about him. The only reason I found out about him was that he showed up at the door one christmas. Was brought in had cake and tea made some idle chat and left. I had to ask "Who the **** was that?".

The point is that familial secrets are very common. Yet also common knowledge among family members. It is always the "secret shame" or "that thing too painful to mention" or any number of reasons such things get suppressed.

I had a go at the wandering "everard". Turns out he had a wife and child in south africa that he abandoned as well.
It was easy to find that. And that is what these so-called mediums do. They find the information that one is personally too lazy to find yourself even though one could. They exploit the ignorance of the audience because they know in advance that THEY have done the fact checking and the intended mark has not.
 
Scorpion always makes a big thing of how he'd never seen that particular medium before but he'd obviously been going to that church for some time and must have talked to at least a few fellow churchgoers. It only needs one to know (or know someone who knows) his family to have obtained that snippet of information and given it to the visiting medium. Probably thought they were helping him by encouraging faith, or something.
 
Pixel42 said:
Scorpion always makes a big thing of how he'd never seen that particular medium before but he'd obviously been going to that church for some time and must have talked to at least a few fellow churchgoers. It only needs one to know (or know someone who knows) his family to have obtained that snippet of information and given it to the visiting medium. Probably thought they were helping him by encouraging faith, or something.
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My family never went near the spiritualist church, and they tried to persuade me not to go either.
 
JayUtah said:
You keep falling into the trap of believing that only your family could have known about the brother.
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Around twenty years after I got the message the subject came up at a family gathering, and my uncle,(my mothers brother) said to my mother " You had a baby that died in the war, I didn't know that" My mother said " I didn't go around telling everyone"
My mother had not even told her brother, let alone some random strangers.
 
JayUtah said:
Please congratulate your mother on the stealth pregnancy. She was apparently very successful at concealing it from her siblings.
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It was during the war, my mother was in away in the air force ground staff, and my uncle was overseas in the army.
 
Scorpion said:
My family never went near the spiritualist church, and they tried to persuade me not to go either.
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So? Any one of your fellow churchgoers could have been, or known, someone who was aware of your mother's loss. A nurse, a registrar, a funeral director, the list is endless. People talk to each other. That's all it takes.
 
Scorpion said:
I have no idea, I presume she took leave to have the baby.
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Then who nursed it afterward. while she worked?

Its too late to ask her now, she died years ago.
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So if you don't know all the details of how she had the baby and who nursed it, how can you be so sure there was no way for your "true medium" to have found out about it?
 
JayUtah said:
Then who nursed it afterward. while she worked?



So if you don't know all the details of how she had the baby and who nursed it, how can you be so sure there was no way for your "true medium" to have found out about it?
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When you read the account Scorpion gives to me it sounds much more like when a woman had an affair, went away to have the child and didn't bring the child back and no one ever spoke of it again. Given we know Scorpion is an unreliable narrator, one who misunderstands everyday conversations and comments I think it is much more likely that his mother had a kid and gave it away. The "death" was a convenient story.
 
Darat said:
When you read the account Scorpion gives to me it sounds much more like when a woman had an affair, went away to have the child and didn't bring the child back and no one ever spoke of it again.
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That fits the part of the story where it was kept secret, even from family members who may have been away for extended periods. It doesn't fit as easily the part of the story where the medium knows about it. It doesn't preclude it, since others in the town would have worked out the reason for a nine-month absence.

Given we know Scorpion is an unreliable narrator, one who misunderstands everyday conversations and comments...
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All of which could be considered symptoms of untreated schizophrenia. The conversations I've had with schizophrenics invariably arrive at claims of details that just don't add up. Serving in the armed forces -- even in a support role -- while pregnant, and later while having responsibility for a newborn, are details that don't add up. We have to figure out which parts of the story (if any) actually happened, and which ones Scorpion is making up in order to present a scenario that has enough appropriate detail to preclude a medium finding out something by ordinary means.

We see this sort of embellishment for all kinds of fringe claims that require precluding mundane explanations -- ghosts, UFOs, religious experiences. As soon as skeptics start homing in on prosaic alternatives. the claimant suddenly comes up with more details to preclude those explanations. Then it's just a matter of testing those new details to see that the claimant doesn't really want to entertain mundane alternatives.

I think it is much more likely that his mother had a kid and gave it away. The "death" was a convenient story.
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That would be a familiar tale. What also would be a familiar tale is an impressionable (and possibly schizophrenic) youngster wanting very badly to believe in a spiritualist church he attends against the wishes of his family, and having a medium "tell" him something that he very much wanted to be true. He comes home and asks his mother -- she's doing laundry or being otherwise "dutifully" kitchen-bound, however works best for the story -- whether he had a brother who died in infancy. Whatever the mother's reaction, it becomes the seed for a story that gets embellished over the years to validate his budding spiritualist beliefs and the validity of its hired mediums. I can very easily envision the mother saying, "What on Earth are you talking about?" and this natural indignation being translated in the youngster's mind as confirmation. Then the details arise as necessary.
 
Scorpion said:
Around twenty years after I got the message the subject came up at a family gathering, and my uncle,(my mothers brother) said to my mother " You had a baby that died in the war, I didn't know that" My mother said " I didn't go around telling everyone"
My mother had not even told her brother, let alone some random strangers.
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Not telling everyone does not preclude telling someone.
 
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