As if the Net weren't crowded enough already, people now are inviting spirits to log on. During the past year we've noticed more and more references to "cyberseances": attempts to communicate with the dead via e-mail, chat rooms, and audio/video connections.
Other spirit seekers on the Internet are willing to settle for any old departed soul with the wherewithal and an Internet connection. But a decidedly "living" problem has kept them from making a contact. "Unfortunately," says Felinda Bullock, one of the organizers of this informal Net seance, "we were unable to hold any seances because of the time zone differences from the members. Some of us were on both coasts of the United States, Australia, United Kingdom, and New Zealand.The most we were ever able to bring together was three, and we felt it was not an adequate number to hold the seance. Perhaps if we had a larger number of volunteers, we might have been able to pull it off."
While Bullock and company were serious in their attempt at spirit communications, they at least had a sense of humor about it. And they were aware of the possibilities of hoaxing. One posting by a member of the group noted: "We shall not commit suicide if the summoned entity starts using smileys and acronyms.
But no one truly expects the Internet to be a verifiable source of spirit communications. Even true believers in such things are skeptical when it comes to using the Internet to contact the dead. "A cyberseance is not a good idea," notes Mark Macy, an electronic spirit communication researcher and regional coordinator of the International Network for Instrumental Communication in Boulder, Colorado. "[It's] too easily faked."
In light of such doubts, even Bullock has decided focus energy elsewhere. "Quite a lot of time has passed since our first attempt to coordinate an Internet seance," she says, "and I have more or less moved on to other things."
-- Patrick Huyghe
There have been at least two attempts to make cybercontanct with the late Harry Houdini. The master magician and critic of spiritualism, who died on Halloween in 1926, had promised his wife that he would try to transmit from the "other side," if it was possible. And ever since then seances have been held in an attempt to contact him -- only now they also take place on the Web. The Houdini Museum, for instance, tried it over Halloween and so did the World Cafe in Santa Monica, Calif., but the results from these attempts are conspicuous by their absence.
Online seances are even easier to fake than live ones.