Witch Watch: Seances can be tricky

Redford Observer, August 14, 1975 (enlarge)

If anybody had frivolous notions about Gundella being just an entertainer or a paranormal charlatan that was easily debunked in her many columns railing against profiteers of the occult.

Here she talks about the trickiness of seances but not in the way that you might imagine. She has said before that seances are experiments and not rituals. Each person brings something different to the experience and the worst possible participant is somebody who purposefully plays a part or acts out to sway the outcome. In other words it is wise to have trust in the participants.

This column discusses the charlatans and the heavily-gifted and scary seers. One instance was of a widowed man who sought to speak with his recently-departed wife. The medium "contacted" her and the spirit told him to remarry...the medium. After doing so he was bilked of $6,000 in savings and the ghost whisperer disappeared faster than a shadow person.

Another medium once contacted Gundella and relayed a message that she had received from her deceased grandmother. She told Gundella of things that nobody else could have possibly known and was convinced of the woman's powers of perception. She just didn't believe that she had spoken to her grandmother because if her spirit had sorely needed to get in contact with Gundella she would have done so directly.