A séance (pronounced: ) is, on its most basic level, an attempt to communicate with the dead. The séance, or sitting, is led by a person known as a medium who will usually go into a trance and allow the dead to communicate through him or her. More recently, this has been known as channeling.

Belief in the ability to communicate with the dead is part of a religious movement called Spiritualism, which flourished from the 1840s until the 1920s and still exists today. Skeptics consider séances to be scams. M. Lamar Keene once practiced scam séances, but revealed the fraud in his book, The Psychic Mafia (Randi 1995:135).

References

• M. Lamar Keene (as told to Allen Spraggett), The Psychic Mafia, Prometheus Books, 1997, ISBN 1573921610 (Originally published in 1976 by St. Martin's Press and published by Dell (publisher) in 1977.)

• James Randi (1995), An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural. St. Martin's Press ISBN 0312151195 ()

העלאה באוב 降神会