Trance mediumship is a method used to allow a spirit to interconnect directly through a person’s physical body. The medium needs intense focus to induce the trance state. It is important to put the ego aside for the communication to be delivered because the medium may influence the message with his or her own bias. The spirit or spirits using the medium’s mind must be free to influence the thoughts being conveyed. Because the medium may not recall all of the messages given while in the deep trance state, an assistant is usually employed to record the session.

In the 1860s and 1870s, trance mediums were common in the Spiritualist community. Since it was a time of changing social standards, mediums delivered passionate speeches on women’s suffrage, temperance and abolitionism.

Leonora Simonds Piper, born in Nashua, New Hampshire in 1859, was a popular trance medium. Her first psychic experience occurred when she was eight-years-old while playing in the garden. She felt a sharp pain in her right ear and a voice whispered, “Aunt Sara, not dead, but with you still.” She ran into the house and told her mother. Later, they discovered Aunt Sara had died the same day.

Piper’s mediumship began in 1884 after her father-in-law took her for a medical consultation with J.R. Cook, a blind clairvoyant known for his psychic cures. Piper lost consciousness at Cook’s touch and entered a trance of her own. From that time on, she dedicated her life in the service of Spiritualism, doing trance reading in both the United States and England.

Piper’s talent was so notable that she traveled to England to be tested by the premiere psychical researchers of the day. Piper did extremely well and was accepted as genuine. Despite that, claims of fraud followed her when she arrived back in the United States. She traveled to England again in 1906 and took part in the complex network of medium communications known as cross correspondences which were successful. That did not stop the accusations of fraud. When she died, her abilities were still doubted by many.

Today, scientific testing is being more controlled and measured. In 2012, preliminary research by Julio Peres and his research team was conducted on trance mediums to examine changes in brain function with emission computed tomography. Their study investigated psychography, where a spirit writes through the medium’s hand. They tested ten subjects, five less expert mediums and five with substantial experience, in both dissociative trance and non-trance states. They found lower activity in several areas of the brain in experienced mediums while in trance.

“This first-ever neuroscientific evaluation of mediumistic trance states reveals some exciting data to improve our understanding of the mind and its relationship with the brain,” Andrew Newberg said. “These findings deserve further investigation.”

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0049360