Episode 159: Inside the Séance Room

On each episode, we'll discuss the reasons we now know that our loved ones have survived physical debt, and so will we. Welcome to Shades of the Afterlife. My dear mom has been bugging me to go to her hairdresser, Dorine. I didn't object to going to her, It's just I didn't need a haircut. Guess what. A few days ago I went to Doreen. She's about my age, and you know how we get into conversations, right, whether it's a bartender or a hairdresser, it all seems to come out.

So I ended up telling her about Shades of the Afterlife, my book We Don't Die. She says, oh, I can tell you about my second job. She is a hairdresser at a funeral home. It took me a second to get my head around that, she said. It was difficult in the beginning thinking about what she was doing, but then understanding, Yeah, everybody wants to look their best, and she wants to give families nice last memories of their life.

So then we get into a conversation about the funeral home she works at, family owned, loving how much grief support, and how they care about people. Although I'm well over one hundred and fifty episodes of Shades of the Afterlife now, I have never really truly embraced that someday I'm going to depart this earth. I do have a will, but I don't know particulars as to what happens when someone dies. I'm here with my mom. One of us is probably going to go first. What happens? Does one call nine

to one one? Do you call a funeral? Home. I just didn't know. So yesterday I was bold and I reached out and I talked to a nice funeral director named Brenna. She thought I wanted to pre plan my funeral. I'm not ready for that, Brenna, but I asked for those basic questions and she said yes. Indeed, if you find one or the other passed away, you call nine

to one one first. If your loved one dies in hospice or hospital, those organizations can proclaim the person dead and then you move on to making the arrangements with the funeral home. So Brenna is going to mail me a pre planning guide, actually one for me and one for Mom, so that we can put everything down that we want and answer whatever questions there are to make things smoother for our loved ones left behind. Of course, we'll be greeted by our loved ones who have already

passed on when that comes in. I'll let you know I think it's vitally important to not only embrace the reality of life after death, but I think we'd live a better life if we had all of those arrangements planned. So I'll keep you posted on that. The fall season is here in New England Christmas decorations are up far too early. I had this flashback of how much I used to hate Christmas and the holidays. You see, I

loved Christmas when I was a kid growing up. My parents divorced when I was about fourteen, and the magic was gone. I would get downright angry when i'd hear a Christmas carol. I think I was just grieving for many years. Well, fast forward to twenty seventeen. That's when I took my first trip to the UK to learn about physical mediumship. You've heard trance medium Scott Milligan a number of times on Shades of the Afterlife, but that's where I first met him, and I can tell you

the magic of Christmas came back. I attended what's called a physical medium seance with Scott. Picture this Scott is tied down to a chair to make sure he is not manipulating anything. There's a circle about twenty five people, twenty five chairs. Our butts are in the seats, the lights go out, everyone's holding hands. We sing our hearts

out and yes, we sang Christmas carols. And in the center of the room there was a fake Christmas tree with lots of wrapped presents beneath it, all toys and such. You've heard the voice of mister Eric before his voice said a few words, there's also a voice of Daniel that works with Scott. And then they said the children have arrived. It was like a dozen children filled the room.

All the Christmas presents got unwrapped at the very same time, so you could hear the wrapping paper just flying everywhere. And suddenly toy drums started being beaten, a toy piano was played, A glow in the dark car was flying across the room. There were hula hoops that had glow in the Dark tape on them. They seemed to be floating around, and so much more. That was my first introduction, and what followed were voices of loved ones which seemed to come right out of mid air, and I was hooked.

For the skeptical mind, it's so easy not to believe that this is possible. However I knew it was real. It was not expensive to attend. There was love in the air, and I got my love of Christmas back. Not only did I meet Scott, but I met his circle leader and partner Darren Wynn. Darren and I had a conversation about his getting involved in physical mediumship. It was rather a lengthy conversation, and he's got a very heavy British accent. So I transcribed, and I thought I

would read you some of Darren's words. This is coming from somebody who sits with a present day physical medium. They are few and far between. There are many people that say they are physical mediums, but they charge an awful lot of money and they do some very strange things. Let us remember that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote all the Sherlock Holmes books, gave up writing Sherlock Holmes when he found out about physical mediumship and gave his

life to teaching people the reality of the afterlife. Dan Aykroyd, who wrote the movie Ghostbusters, he was familiar with terms like seance and ectoplasm because his grandfather sat in these circles as well. So here are some words from Darren as read by me. Scott and I became good friends over the years. We both worked at the same merchandise department store. I was his manager, and every Wednesday he told me he needs to leave early because he's going

to his study group. Little did I know his study group was actually his home circle. As time went on, we became partners and I would pick him up outside of his study group when he finished about ten o'clock on a Wednesday night. A few times Scott had invited me in to meet everybody. This sounds awful, but it was a lot of old people. I think the youngest person there was about sixty, and Scott was only in his early twenties. I thought, why is Scott hanging around

with all these old people. These people were actually quite lovely, but I really didn't understand what they were doing and what they were studying. One day I got a call from Scott that someone in the group was sick and what I liked to come and join. I thought, yeah, okay, I wanted to see for myself what it was they were doing. So I went along and walked into the house of John Austen. He sat in his chair in the kitchen. His mobility wasn't great as he had had

a stroke several years before. He was a lovely guy. He treated me like he'd known me for years, as did the rest of the group. I was quite naive back then in terms of spiritualism. Bearing in mind, I knew nothing of it. I'd never been to a spiritualist church, never seen a medium demonstration, so going into John's lounge for the first time was actually quite strange how it was set up. There was a cabinet in the bay window.

It was like a box with black fabric around it, and there were several chairs dotted around in a circle with a red light in the middle. I thought this is a bit strange, and being polite, I said where would you like me to sit? They placed me in the back corner of the room between two lovely old ladies in the circle. I was trying to take in everything that was happening, but clear I wasn't understanding what was about to happen. The next minute they closed the

front room door. Everything was blacked out. Even the windows were taped up so it was completely black. All I thought of was, oh my god, this is some kind of cult and these people are going to kill themselves. It was the weirdest thing. I didn't have a clue what physical mediumship was. All I know is I'm sitting in this group of old people. They turn out the lights and they turn on a little red light, and you know what, I forgot to tell you. Scott was

tied down to a chair in this cabinet. They used cable ties to tie down his arms and his legs, and all I could think of was next they were going to slaughter him being tied to that chair. I know that sounds awful, but these kind of thoughts go through your head, not expecting to ever see something like this. I was just so naive and went along with it.

The lights were out, the red light was on, and at this point I am gripping the hands of the two older ladies on either side of me, but everyone else in the room was totally relaxed, like this was normal for them. Next, someone did an opening prayer. Then we all started singing. A little while after that, John told us to all be quiet, and a voice formed

in the cabinet. Unbeknownst to me back then, that voice is who I now know as Eric, and Eric formally came through to introduce himself to me, and he started speaking directly to me. I knew it wasn't Scott because the voice didn't sound like Scott, and I knew it wasn't anybody in the room. This, I found out was a separate, independent voice. I feel a little bad for Darren. Scott didn't tell him anything that he was walking into and now that I've known Scott about seven years, that's

just his personality. I flew across the world to attend one of these seances, and now I've been to several dozen of them, and thankfully, now that the world is cleaning up, there's more to come. If you go to the Scott Milligan page Atweedn'tdie dot com, you can see what's coming up. But we'll go to the break and then I'll come back with some more stories from Darren.

So much happened that he didn't even believe was possible, but that gave him his introduction to physical and trance mediumship, and now he's spent years by Scott side and working with the spirit world. So let's go to the break. You're listening to Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network. Welcome back

to Shades of the Afterlife. I'm Sandra Champlain, and last we heard, our friend Darren is sitting with a group of older people all holding hands in a small room. His partner, Scott is tied down to a chair in a cabinet, and the voice, which he now knows is Eric, was speaking to him, so let me continue reading his story. I communicated with Eric for just a little while. It was a brief conversation, and he welcomed me to the circle. I should also tell you that there was a small

wooden board in the middle of the room. It was about a meter three feet square, put on top of the carpet in this room. On the board there was a trumpet. There was a drum, a bell, and a couple other bits and pieces. After Eric was done talking to me, we continued to sing and the trumpet began to lift off the floor. It was luminescent due to glow in the dark tape. I could see the board was moving underneath it, and the trumpet came over to me. I thought, what on earth is going on? We just

kept singing. I held these ladies' hands tight, but oh my god, I was absolutely petrified. Eventually it all came to an end, and I thought, thank God, this is over. But then a part of me was intrigued at the same time. What was it that I had just witnessed? How could this trumpet float off the floor? My mind was questioning everything. I saw Scott and he kind of gave me that, look, what are you thinking. We all left the room, went into the kitchen, had a cup of tea and a bit of cake and a chat.

And that's when John Austin said to me, do you want to come back next week? And I said yes, definitely. But the following week came and I never went. Scott never mentioned it. Several weeks past and Scott said to me, oh, someone's called him sick again from home circle. Do you want to come back and help with the power again. Darren has spent years now by Scott's side at these home circles. He tells the story of when he first saw Scott, when Eric was talking through him and Scott

was not in the cabinet. He said, when Eric came through and spoke, I looked at Scott and almost fell off my chair. His face was completely different. All of his features had changed, and his demeanor had changed. He was stooped over, like he was taking on the personality of this person. I had never seen that before. That is what was called overshadowing. At this point, I ask Darren to back up a little bit and talk about

physical mediumship. Here's what he says. With physical mediumship, the reason it's done in the dark is that there is a substance known as ectoplasm that exudes from the medium. Now I'm not a scientific person, but I believe we all carry this ectoplasm. But with physical mediums they're able to produce far more in quantity than we can. Ectoplasm stems from the pancreas and it's a mixture of bodily fluids white blood cells, red blood cells, and other fluids

in the body. And the spirit world can extract this ectoplasm from the medium from any orifice. It can come from the the mouth, the ears, through the pores of the skin, the belly button, et cetera. But from what I've witnessed with Scott over the many years, it comes generally from his nose or mouth. It becomes a vapor form. In the minute it hits the atmosphere, it becomes solid. I know scientists who have managed to get a sample

of this ectoplasm and tested it. Most components belong to the human being, but there is one component that is not of this world. So with ectoplasm, it just comes out of the medium and it can come out in copious amounts. The best way I can describe it is it looks like a white cloth that is attached to the medium. It's part of the medium's life force. I've seen it in red light, and yes, it looks like white cloth, and in it the spirit world can form hands or step into it and become again. They can

also form rods in the ectoplasm. They can use these rods to lift objects like the trumpet. They're very intelligent. The trumpet can be lifted and moved around the room, done ever so gently or very fast, but if it comes near to people, it comes so gently and might just tap you on the shoulder. I've been in demonstrations where the spirit person can actually cloak themselves in the ectoplasm and become as solid as you or I am.

They can walk around the room, they can shake hands, and they can talk to you, and you can hear them. If the floor is wooden, you can hear the people walking across. For one demonstration, I sat helping a circle leader and sat on one side of the cabinet. One of Scott's main controls came out. I heard him walking around and he spoke to the lady next to me. It was the height of summer in the UK, and when it gets hot in the UK, it gets really hot.

We were all sitting in our swimming shorts and T shirts. I will never forget this because as the spirit person came over to talk to the lady, he was dressed quite differently. As he was talking to her, he leant against me. Because it was such a small room, I could feel his leather boots. Nobody in that room had leather boots on. I could feel his coat, and as he leaned against me, I could feel the sleeves of

the coat on my arms. I could feel he had a tweed material jacket on, and he was dressed as a proper gentleman. I know it sounds weird to say it, but just feeling a tweed jacket was the most bizarre thing. And feeling these tall leather boots and knowing that no one in the room was wearing that. Spirit people can walk around the room and be as solid as we are. They can also form a voice box with the ectoplasm

as well. The voice box is independent from the medium and the closest I can describe it, it's like a mouth. You can see a mouth forming in the ecdoplasm, and it's the closest a spirit person can get to the sound of how they actually sounded in life. It will sound like them, but not one hundred percent. It's hard to work for the spirit person, I'm convinced, because they cannot hear their own voice. They have to work from memory to try to recreate how their voice sounded when

they lived. In a seance, if you're lucky, you may just hear from your loved one. You may hear their voice through the voice box. They may touch you, or if you're lucky, they may fully or partially materialize. They may be able to hold your hand, or you can touch their face. I've witnessed all kinds of different scenarios. But why is it done in the dark. I think because ectoplasm comes from so deep inside the body. It's never been exposed to any degree of light. It is

said it is extremely light sensitive. I've been lucky enough to see the ectoplasm a number of times in red light controlled red light. But it's literally the spirit world that will say, Darren, listen to our instructions very carefully. When we say turn the red light on for ten seconds and turn it off. You will have to follow

the instructions very carefully. I know people sitting in the circle get annoyed because they've never sat in a physical medium demonstration, but we have to follow what the spirit world says. In public demonstrations, when someone from the spirit world materialize, I may ask the question, what part of you is materialized? That may sound awful, but sometimes if there's a little child materialized, it might just be one hand, one leg, or half of the face. To us, that's

fine because we can't see it. But imagine if the light was turned on and if you've lost a child and your child materialized in that way, it would be horrific to see. But to them, they are just using their etheric body to step into the ectoplasm. Another reason I believe the seances are done in the dark. It's like in the home circle. It's needed to give extra power. With a physical medium. You need people from this world to provide the power so that those in the spirit

world can do what they need to do. During the circles, we sing and we laugh. They draw from our power and sometimes they can take different members of the circle out. And when I say out, you may be sitting there and singing your heart out, and then you begin to feel drowsy or drift off, and you have no control over it, but you just go with it because that's what the spirit world is doing. They're taking an element of your power, your energy, to help with some kind

of development. Now this is Sandra speaking again. After I had been to many of Scott's seances, I offered to the spirit world use me in any way you need me. If you need me as a battery, I'm here for it. And what Darren says is true. It doesn't happen with the newcomers. Don't worry about that. But with me, I had the experience of being wide awake and singing and then yawning more than any human being has ever yawned

at one time. And the next thing you know, they may say, Sandra, turn on the light, and it's clear that I missed lot that was going on. But I don't mind, Darren continues. Singing is wonderful. We may not sound good, but we sing our hearts out. We have a good time while we're doing it, and we laugh and laugh is number one for providing power. But obviously it's hard to sit and laugh for two two and a half hours. So we continue to sing songs, songs

that everybody knows by heart, fast songs, holiday songs. You don't necessarily need to know all the words. You just need to try and have fun. Here's something interesting the spirit world did. It was a bigger room. The spirit world pulled Scott out of the cabinet, still in his chair. They asked me to come over to see what I could feel. What I felt was Scott's chair with him in it, being upside down and balancing on one corner. I could feel him. He was still completely tied to

the chair. And then in the room there was a big circular table. It probably could have seated twenty people, and it was pushed to a corner of the room. The table was touching two of the corner walls, so if you wanted to get into that corner of the room, the only way you could do it is by pulling that large table away from the wall. But when the light came on, Scott was now seated in the corner

behind the table. We'll be right back. You're listening to Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network. Welcome back to Shades of the Afterlife. I'm Sanders Champlain and I am reading from a conversation I had with Darren Wynn, who is the circle leader for Physical Medium Scott Milligan. If you've ever come to one of our free Sunday gatherings at two o'clock New York time, you may have met Darren. Darren is on most of them, other than the times he

has to work or he has to travel. So I'd like to continue with some of his stories from this seance room. As he just said how important laughter and singing is to build energy. He continues with As we progressed through the years, the phenomena came in very strong. We saw a lot of trumpet phenomena. We even saw different hands form on the glow in the dark plaque.

But ultimately the reason behind everything we do is to try to create the voice box, and the voice box takes a lot more power and practice than the phenomena does. Like I explained earlier, a loved one can speak through the ectoplasmic voice box and that is independent from the medium. You can hear it up in the air, you can hear it down on the floor or you could hear it either side of the room. From the spirit person's perspective, they are able to express themselves directly to the recipient

and speak in a perfect world. The communicators from the unseen world can form themselves and cloak themselves in the ectoplasm. They could walk around the room and speak directly to you, giving you communication. That has only happened on a few occasions that I have seen. I know the last time

we were in New Orleans, I was really surprised. In one of the seances one of our little friends from the spirit world, Norman, who used to suffer from down syndrome when he lived, He comes through every now and again, and he likes to win your hearts. And anyone who departs this earth, if they have any kind of infirmity, they lose it when they get to the other world. They don't carry those elements with them, but when they come close to the earth they can feel like that again.

But with Norman, bless him, he plays on it because he likes to be the center of attention. He wants everyone to fall in love with him. So he comes back with down syndrome, and in the seance in New Orleans, Norman actually materialized. He was walking around the room talking to people in the circle. He was placing his hands on people, and then he did something he's never done before. He started giving out communication. He said, I have a little girl here. I don't remember her name, but Norman

knew it. He gave so much information about this girl and I thought he's never done that before. And then he said, I'm going to do something. There was one woman in the room who understood all of the information, and it was her daughter. He stood right in front of her and he said, I'm going to do something for you now, and he materialized her daughter from him. So, if you can visualize, little Norman materialized from an ectoplasmic rod coming from Scott and now another materialized form comes

from Norman. So Norman walked over to the left side of the room and was talking to people, and this little girl went running over and stood right in front and talked to her mom. Everyone felt the love. I was gobsmacked. After all these years of sitting, I've never seen I've seen that one before. Two people materialized, but one of them solely for the mother and talking to her mother and touching her mother. It was such a

beautiful thing to take part of. A lot of people come to the seances and they say, I want to see this, I want to see that, I want to see the trumpet lift, I want to see lights. But a lot of people forget about the communication element of it. I've been in hundreds of seances. Now, when you hear a loved one communicating through the voice box, it is so special and so rare. I can't even begin to explain how that feels. I always say to people, go into the seance room with an open mind and an

open heart, and please be open to anything. Don't go in with preconceived ideas, or don't go in with wants and desires. Another time, we were scheduled to do a seance in wheelchair in the north part of the UK, but we forgot it was a bank holiday. We were driving up there and it should have taken four and a half hours, but it took ten and a half hours for us to get there. Normally, when we arrived for a seance, I spend time with the people doing a pre talk. At this time I couldn't. I made

it very short. Scott sat in the chair. We played three tracks of music, allowing Scott's mind to settle a little before we began singing. Within ten seconds of the music going on, the voice box had formed. There was a girl who was seated two seats from me, and I heard, as clear as I have ever heard it, a voice. It was her dad who came through and spoke to her. Of course, we didn't know who it was.

We had never been there before. We found out her father passed three days before and they hadn't even buried him. And he came and he spoke to her, gave her evidence, communicated it was beautiful. Another time, a guy was seated two seats away from the cabinet. If you looked at this guy, he was big and muscular and covered in tattoos. He's not the sort of person you would have thought would be spiritual in coming to a seance. I was

a bit concerned about him. I knew I shouldn't have a preconceived notion by his looks, but he looked rather rough and tough. But we are all human, And in this seance, this gentleman's wife came through and she was talking directly to him. This man started to cry. It wasn't til afterwards we realized his wife had only passed a few months before. I believe they had three children and one was a six month old baby. And to see how this reunion changed his life, that's why we

do this. I met Scott and Darren back in twenty and sixteen when I took that trip over to England, and of course I went back several times. It was in two thousand and eighteen I think that I invited Scott to come to America and he spoke at a conference about the afterlife. He also did some of the seances. In two thousand and nineteen, I held three We Don't

Die events, two in Orlando and one in Boston. We are very excited for these groups of people to experience these seances, as well as here from mister Eric and Daniel and morning Star who were through Scott's trance mediumship. And then we all know what happened. March twenty twenty came and the world sat still for many years. Although I don't have any big plans of traveling right now

and I spend my time here with Mom. I am happy to report that our tutor team, Carrie and Phil are teaching mediumship around the world and Scott and Darren have just begun to create retreats that you can sit with them, learn about this special kind of mediumship and others, and attend one of these seances. And of course, even if you cannot travel, you can always keep listening to shades of the afterlife, and I'll bring you as much comforting words about the afterlife and words of wisdom about

living a powerful life as I can. This form of mediumship physical mediumship is extremely rare. There may still be hundreds, if not thousands, of what's called home circles like Darren was talking about with John Austen, small groups of people coming together, singing, inviting a space for the spirit world to come forward. This form of mediumship was the form of mediumship back eighteen hundreds early nineteen hundreds when World War One hit, there was so much death and people

were desperate to know that their loved ones live on. Unfortunately, a whole bunch of con artists came out of the woodwork to con people out of their money and fictitiously create these seances saying that their loved ones had lived on.

tell you about your deceased loved one. Scott Milligan, Darren and I have been on a quest to teach people how to sit for yourself and invite in the love of your spirit team. How do you meet with other people to create the space for the spirit world to work through you. Are there still con artists in the world practicing physical mediumship? Yeah, unfortunately they are. I wish

I could give you some names to recommend. Right now, it's just Scott Milligan and his sittings are few and far between, but there are some coming up in twenty twenty four and more in the future. I'm sure. Beware of the people that produce gemstones, charge a lot of money and do things that insult your intelligence. They're out there. You want to hear stories from people of loved ones

coming through. They shouldn't cost you a lot of money, and you should always feel that presence of the Spirit world. If you go back on some of my earlier episodes, you'll hear the voice of Sir Arthur Conan, Doyle, dan Ackroyd, Scott Milligan telling his experience, Physicist Jan Vandersandy sharing how he got into mediumship and more So, it is time for our break, and when we come back, I'm going to play a little bit from inside the seance room

for you. You're listening to Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network. Welcome back to Shades of the Afterlife. I'm Sandra Champlain. What I'd like to do now is play for you a part of a seance with Darren, with myself with Scott Milligan. I'd like to dedicate this episode to Mary Beth Levecchio. Mary Beth was minister of a church in Phoenix, Arizona. It was her that organized the seances in her church.

Mary Beth has passed to the spirit world this year. She had come to our Live We Don't Die events. She volunteered. She gave herself freely to all of humanity and I know for sure she is still working from the other side of life. There were about forty people that attended this scance. We had a pre talk before people entered the room what to expect, what to do,

what not to do. Everyone took their shoes off, they took their jewelry off, and why we do that is sometimes there's an apport that shows up in the room from the other side, and it's to be sure that no one brought anything in with them. Scott is seated in a chair tied down. Everyone can search him make sure there's nothing on his person that he cannot manipulate anything and make these sounds himself, and he's strapped in tight.

Everyone in the circle is instructed to hold hands. If anyone breaks the circle, we have to notify the circle leader, which is Darren, so we all know that no one is getting up and creating this phenomena. In the center of this room, there were some hula hoops, musical instruments, and lots of toys. After the lights went out, three pieces of Scott's favorite music were played just to relax

his mind. You'll hear Darren's voice in the beginning. Then I edited out probably three songs, and then you'll hear Doe a Deer and you'll hear a spirit child playing the piano, toy piano, and then some drums come in and we'll see how much we have time for in this segment. This is edited from a two hour seance Enjoy.

the dark plaque. A little spirit girl was showing her hands to us. Keep in mind we all were holding hands the whole time. The spirit kids played for a while, we started singing again to build the energy. And next you're gonna hear the voice of Daniel, who speaks through Scott.

little bit more. Again. This is all edited from I think two and a half hours we were sitting there in the dark.

with your life is yours. But may you need this place for smiles and happiness, to know that the dead do not sleep. So do not stand at my grave. And because I'm not there, if you are in distress, look to the stars and see how they shine. You may not be able to touch the stars that the light can touch you. So miss us not for I've not gone. I live within your hearts. I will speak again in the opportunity to answer questions on another occasion. I thank you all on behalf of the Austin Wish

Circle who have sat to allow us to speak. So I thank you humbly and heartily, Potatoes and poodles.