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Thomas Brothers (mediums)
Tom and Will Thomas (born c. 1881) most well known as the Thomas brothers were two early twentieth century spiritualist mediums from Penylan, a village in the south of Wales. The brothers claimed to communicate with a spirit guide called "White Eagle". They were tied up in their séances and when the lights were turned off, objects would move around the room. Polidoro, Massimo. (2001). ''Final Séance: The Strange Friendship Between Houdini and Conan Doyle''. Prometheus Books. p. 123. Arthur Conan Doyle had attended a séance with the brothers in 1919, and declared the phenomena to be genuine. This was disputed by the magician Harry Houdini who found their mediumship act suspicious, noting there were methods of how they could have freed themselves from control. Houdini, Harry. (1924). ''A Magician Among the Spirits''. Harper & Brothers. pp. 147-148 The mentalist Stuart Cumberland Stuart Cumberland (1857–1922) was an English mentalist known for his demonstrations of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Brothers
Thomas D. Brothers is an American musicologist, and professor at Duke University. He graduated from University of Pennsylvania, magna cum laude with B.A. in music, in 1979, from University of California, Berkeley with an M.A. in music, in 1982, and with a Ph.D. in music, in 1991. Awards * Finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography (''Louis Armstrong: Master of Modernism'') * 2014 Irving Lowens Book Award from the Society for American Music for best book on American music (''Louis Armstrong: Master of Modernism'') * 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship * 2003–2004 National Humanities Center Fellow * 2001–2002 John Hope Franklin Institute Fellow, Duke University * 1999–2000 Harvard Fellow at Villa I Tatti, Research Center for Renaissance Studies in Florence Italy Works ''Chromatic Beauty in the Late Medieval Chanson: An Interpretation of Manuscript Accidentals''Cambridge University Press, 1997, ''Louis Armstrong In His Own Words'' Oxford University Press, 2001, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mediumship
Mediumship is the practice of purportedly mediating communication between familiar spirits or ghost, spirits of the dead and living human beings. Practitioners are known as "mediums" or "spirit mediums". There are different types of mediumship or spirit conduit (channeling), channelling, including table-turning, séance tables, trance, and ouija. Belief in psychic ability is widespread despite the absence of objective evidence for its existence. Scientific researchers have attempted to ascertain the validity of claims of mediumship. An experiment undertaken by the British Psychological Society led to the conclusion that the test subjects demonstrated no mediumistic ability. Mediumship gained popularity during the nineteenth century, when ouija boards were used as a source of entertainment. Investigations during this period revealed widespread fraud—with some practitioners employing techniques used by Magic (illusion), stage magicians—and the practice began to lose credibilit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Penylan
Penylan is a district and Community (Wales), community in the east of Cardiff, the capital city of Wales, known for its Edwardian era period houses and spacious tree lined roads and avenue (landscape), avenues. Situated to both the north and south of the A48 road, A48 dual carriageway, it is one of the most affluent districts of Cardiff, although subdivision of the large Victorian period properties is starting to occur in the areas at the south end of the ward, mimicking the trend in neighbouring Plasnewydd. Penylan has a number of large parks, including the southern part of Roath Park, and is one of the greenest areas in Cardiff. It is served by Penylan Library. Penylan Synagogue was opened in 1955, and closed in 2003 when a new synagogue had been built in nearby Cyncoed Gardens. Governance Penylan is both an ward (politics), electoral ward, and a community (Wales), community of the City of Cardiff Council, City of Cardiff. There is no community council for the area. The wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South Wales
South Wales ( cy, De Cymru) is a loosely defined region of Wales bordered by England to the east and mid Wales to the north. Generally considered to include the historic counties of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire, south Wales extends westwards to include Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire. In the western extent, from Swansea westwards, local people would probably recognise that they lived in both south Wales and west Wales. The Brecon Beacons National Park covers about a third of south Wales, containing Pen y Fan, the highest British mountain south of Cadair Idris in Snowdonia. A point of some discussion is whether the first element of the name should be capitalised: 'south Wales' or 'South Wales'. As the name is a geographical expression rather than a specific area with well-defined borders, style guides such as those of the BBC and ''The Guardian'' use the form 'south Wales'. In a more authoritative style guide, the Welsh Government, in their international gateway website, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andrew Lycett
Andrew Michael Duncan Lycett (born 1948) FRSL is an English biographer and journalist. Early life Born at Stamford, Lincolnshire to Peter Norman Lycett Lycett and Joan Mary Duncan (née Day), Lycett spent some of his childhood in Tanganyika, where his father established a preparatory school, The Southern Highlands School. Peter Lycett's mother was of the Burns-Lindow family of Ingwell anEhen Hall Cumbria. Lycett was educated at Charterhouse School and studied history at Christ Church, Oxford. Career Lycett worked for a while for ''The Times'' as a correspondent in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. He has written several well-received biographies and he is best known for his biography of Ian Fleming, ''Ian Fleming: The Man Behind James Bond''. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2009 and he is a Fellow in 2014. He lives and writes in London. Bibliography Books * * * ''Ian Fleming'' (W&N, 1995); US title, ''Ian Fleming: The man behind James Bond'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spirit Guide
A spirit guide, in Western spiritualism, is an entity that remains as a discarnate spirit to act as a guide or protector to a living incarnation, incarnated human being. Description In traditional African belief systems, well before the spread of Christianity and Islam, Africans believed and continue to believe in the eternal and ubiquitous spirit of the ancestors and the Almighty God. The ancestors are thought of as the ‘living-dead’, who continue to show a compassionate interest in the daily lives of their living descendants. Ancestor spirit guides are superior to the living and may include deceased parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, uncles or aunts. It is believed that because they have crossed over to the other side of life, the spirit guides act as mediators between the living and the Almighty God. This way of life is regarded as ancestor reverence, communication or remembering, and not as ancestor worship per se. According to Western Theosophy (Blavatskian), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Séance
A séance or seance (; ) is an attempt to communicate with spirits. The word ''séance'' comes from the French word for "session", from the Old French ''seoir'', "to sit". In French, the word's meaning is quite general: one may, for example, speak of "''une séance de cinéma''" ("a movie session"). In English, however, the word came to be used specifically for a meeting of people who are gathered to receive messages from ghosts or to listen to a spirit medium discourse with or relay messages from spirits. In modern English usage, participants need not be seated while engaged in a séance. Fictionalised conversations between the deceased appeared in ''Dialogues of the Dead'' by George, First Baron Lyttelton, published in England in 1760. Among the notable spirits quoted in this volume are Peter the Great, Pericles, a "North-American Savage", William Penn, and Christina, Queen of Sweden. The popularity of séances grew dramatically with the founding of the religion of Spiritualis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Massimo Polidoro
Massimo Polidoro (born 10 March 1969) is an Italian psychologist, writer, journalist, television personality, and co-founder and executive director of the Italian Committee for the Investigation of Claims of the Pseudosciences (CICAP). Early life As a child in the 1970s, Polidoro was fascinated by magic and the claims surrounding psychic phenomena. He read many books on these arguments that left him with numerous unanswered questions until he came upon ''Viaggio nel mondo del paranormale (Journey into the world of the paranormal)'' by Piero Angela. In the book, Angela treated these topics from a scientific angle instead of assuming they were true phenomena. He learned in his teens about the work of James Randi, and CSICOP investigating parapsychology from a critical, skeptical point of view. Polidoro studied Randi and his publications. Randi, like Houdini, was a magician and investigator of mysteries who employed a scientific approach to his investigations. Polidoro corresponded ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a British writer and physician. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for ''A Study in Scarlet'', the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Holmes and Dr. Watson. The Sherlock Holmes stories are milestones in the field of crime fiction. Doyle was a prolific writer; other than Holmes stories, his works include fantasy and science fiction stories about Professor Challenger and humorous stories about the Napoleonic soldier Brigadier Gerard, as well as plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction, and historical novels. One of Doyle's early short stories, " J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" (1884), helped to popularise the mystery of the ''Mary Celeste''. Name Doyle is often referred to as "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle" or "Conan Doyle", implying that "Conan" is part of a compound surname rather than a middle name. His baptism entry in the register of St Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh, gives "Arth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harry Houdini
Harry Houdini (, born Erik Weisz; March 24, 1874 – October 31, 1926) was a Hungarian-American escape artist, magic man, and stunt performer, noted for his escape acts. His pseudonym is a reference to his spiritual master, French magician Robert-Houdin (1805–1871). He first attracted notice in vaudeville in the United States and then as "Harry 'Handcuff' Houdini" on a tour of Europe, where he challenged police forces to keep him locked up. Soon he extended his repertoire to include chains, ropes slung from skyscrapers, straitjackets under water, and having to escape from and hold his breath inside a sealed milk can with water in it. In 1904, thousands watched as he tried to escape from special handcuffs commissioned by London's ''Daily Mirror'', keeping them in suspense for an hour. Another stunt saw him buried alive and only just able to claw himself to the surface, emerging in a state of near-breakdown. While many suspected that these escapes were faked, Houdini prese ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stuart Cumberland
Stuart Cumberland (1857–1922) was an English mentalist known for his demonstrations of "thought reading". Cumberland was famous for performing blindfolded feats such as identifying a hidden object in a room that a person had picked out or asking someone to imagine a murder scene and then attempt to read the subject's thoughts and identify the victim and re-enact the crime. Cumberland claimed to possess no genuine psychic ability and his thought reading performances could only be demonstrated by holding the hand of his subject to read their muscular movements. He came into dispute with psychical researchers associated with the Society for Psychical Research who were searching for genuine cases of telepathy. Cumberland argued that both telepathy and communication with the dead were impossible and that the mind of man can not be read through telepathy, only by muscle reading. An opponent of spiritualism Spiritualism is the metaphysical school of thought opposing physica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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