Aloha,

Do any list members pay attention to or research some or
all of the various technological instruments in mediumism
or paranormal activity?

On last night's Coast To Coast AM radio program they were
discussing electronic voice phenomena (EVP). EVP involves
using various audio recording technologies to record and
then filter or enhance the recordings in order to highlight
meaningful communications from the spirits of the dead.
EVP apparently has an active fandom these days.

EVP technologies were contrasted with earlier and simpler
mediumistic technologies, notably Ouija boards--even though
not answers got laid out.

I mention this mostly because I usually do not turn to the
sort of machine and electronics shop occulture that this
techno-mediumism involves. Maybe thanks to TV and radio,
I tend to look at techno-mediumism as occultural entertainment
much more than investigating as I think of it for this list.

But that's just me.

What I also realized, in a more literary/cultural criticism way,
is that the process that pushes many works of "classic"
literature towards and into the class of "childrens' books"
seems to have applied to Ouija boards. (And probably to other
kinds of occulture. It wasn't all that long ago that various of
my co-practitioners and I were seriously talking about the
development and marketing of "teen wicca" as a popular
occultural category. "Wicca" as occulture had been until
the 1990s classified as "adult.")

Ouija boards became popular as a technology of adult mediumism,
moved through a period of adult party entertainment, and
ended up as a toy for kids, owned, manufactured, and marketed
as a toy. (I wonder if the character of the anti-occulture criticism
has also shifted to reflect this push of Ouija boards from tool to toy?)

Adult mediums, to a great extent, appear to have taken up other
mediumistic technologies that are far more complicated and
refined--audio and video recording, chemical and radiation
sensors, computer assisted filtering and enhancement,
satellite observation, and such like. (In the case of talking boards,
my brief scan of internet resources indicates that adult mediums
use a sophisticated board design dating from the 1960s or
1970s that uses whole words, not letters.)

Musing The Medium Is As Credible As Her Or His Tools! Rose,

Pitch