Erlendur Haraldsson, ‘Nineteenth Century Spiritualism: the Case of Indridi Indridason’

Indridi Indridason (1883-1912) became a medium in 1904 when he accidentally joined the first sitter group in the country. Immediately the table started moving violently; he became afraid and wanted to run away. The Experimental Society was founded by academics to investigate the phenomena around him; a detailed record was kept of the séances and the various phenomena such as levitations of the medium and objects and their movements in mid air, some of them being musical instruments that were played upon at the same time by invisible forces. Direct voices of communicators were heard in 77% of the recorded sittings in different locations of the séance room and away from the medium, singing was heard, sometimes of two trained singers at the same time, a soprano voice and a male bass voice. Sometimes the medium was forcefully levitated and two men were needed to hold him on the ground. Light phenomena of various forms and colours were seen and sometimes a human figure was seen in a ‘pillar’ of nebulous light, near as well away from the medium. He died at the young age of 28 and in the five years of his mediumship he produced under stringent conditions almost of all the phenomena that have been observed in physical mediumship.
Erlendur Haraldsson is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Iceland in Reykjavik. He studied at the Universities of Edinburgh, Freiburg and Munich in Germany and at the University of Virginia in the USA. He received his PhD from the University of Freiburg, and has been visiting professor in the United States and in Germany. Erlendur is an active researcher and has written seven books which have appeared in many translations and editions. Among them are Indridi Indridason, the Icelandic Physical Medium (with L. R. Gissurarson), The Departed among the Living, At the Hour of Death (with Karlis Osis), and Modern Miracles, Sathya Sai Baba, A Modern Day Prophet. He has lectured widely on both sides of the Atlantic and in the United Kingdom and published some one hundred papers in scientific journals. Four documentaries have been made of Haraldsson´s studies of children who remember past lives, such as by the BBC. For more information and extensive bibliography, see his homepage: www.hi.is~erlendur