Acorah on stage

WHY DEREK HAS PROBLEMS ON STAGE by Thomas Alder

This article was written for this site by a practising Spiritualist medium whose opinion is based on decades of experience.

March 2005

I have been associated with the stage presentation of spirit-mediums and public demonstrations of psychic powers for almost two decades. I can usually tell when the individual presenting the demonstration is genuinely receiving information and when they are faking it.

For example there was one particular stage psychic-medium that I saw many times at different venues and he would, when he lost contact with his guides, enter into a set routine, rather like a stand up comedian. His lines included practiced scenarios such as ‘I have a young man here that has passed to spirit …..I am being shown a motor vehicle….He says he didn’t want to go….Can anyone here relate to that?’ And in the audience there would usually be someone who knew of a young person who died in a traffic accident, or owned a car and used to clean it every Sunday morning, or some other make it fit tie in to weave a fabricated tale around.

Another trick this psychic used was the try-on ‘Is there a number three on your door? I can see the number three around you….you are one of three children….you have three cats etc. etc. All absolute nonsense but the audiences accepted it and the man was a seasoned performer who had learned his trade on the platform of virtually every Spiritualist church in the UK spending years doing so.

I have also seen a number of stage demonstrations given by the man who calls himself Derek Acorah and can state, from my many years of experience observing spirit-mediums and psychics, that I consider he is faking it, and faking it badly. So inept are his stage presentations that it is a wonder the audiences have not demanded their money back, or complained to the theatre management that he is a fraud, because what he presents as spirit-mediumship on stage is anything but, in my opinion.

Take for example the recent Scarborough performance in which he failed totally to make a single meaningful connection. He was seen to be constantly glancing at his wristwatch, a certain sign that panic is setting in, and he is looking for a quick exit. Then he made one so called message fit when it was clearly not for the person that claimed it. Coming to a lady in late middle age, he said that he had a child in spirit aged ten years or so. She declined to accept this and no-one else did so in the area around that lady. Then another lady some distance away shouted out that perhaps he meant a child called Steven who had passed aged 19 years. To the amazement of the audience Derek agreed that this was so and made a very poor attempt at fitting this so-called message to her. It was all just an obvious nonsense and an insult to the intelligence of all concerned.

There is a reason why Derek Acorah has such
difficulty during his stage performances.

He is, effectively, a complete novice who has not served his 'apprenticeship' on the stages of Spiritualist Churches up and down the land and has become little more than a product of the television programmes that have boosted his public image to the point that makes it possible for him to fill theatres with thousands of people. These people, each paying around £17.00 per head, are expecting Derek Acorah to communicate with the spirit world and bring them messages of love and hope from their dear, departed loved ones.

Now Derek cannot do this to order. He may say he can, he appears to do so on the Most Haunted programme that is the foundation of his ‘fame’ but in truth he simply cannot communicate with spirit entities in any effectual way. I know when a spirit-medium is communicating, and having observed Derek many times on stage I am absolutely convinced that under theatre conditions, before a large audience, he is faking it, and doing so in such an inept fashion that the audiences should feel insulted.

Another problem that Derek faces when expected to present spirit-mediumship to a paying audience is the fact that, despite what he may say, his gift as a spirit-medium is weak. This becomes really obvious when he gets nothing from his so-called spirit-guide ‘Sam’ and he attempts to use his psychic powers to tune in.

You see. there is a massive difference between
psychic information and spirit-communication
given through mediumship.

The psychic can read information that is in the aura of a subject, as with psychometry, this information exists as a kind of memory locked into the vibrations that surround and exist within and around every single thing, both living and inanimate. Images come into the mind of the psychic and information becomes known to them. For example the psychic goes close to an individual who has been clinically depressed and immediately feels sad and gloomy, effectively assimilating the depression of the subject. That is a psychic response, no words need to be spoken the psychic just knows and speaks this knowledge aloud. It is true, 100% correct but it is not a communication from the spirit world.

The aura of a human being extends into infinity but it is extremely diluted beyond say fifteen feet or so.

On the stage of a big theatre Derek stands perhaps twenty feet or more from the first row of the front stalls and is therefore almost out of range using his psychic forces. So he comes off the stage and moves around the audience hoping for a psychic hit. He may get this by speaking to members of the audience and picking up information with his psychic powers using their voice vibration. This is not spirit-mediumship. This is not what the audiences have paid this man many thousands of pounds to witness.

A truly professional stage psychic-medium knows that they cannot hope to communicate with a vast audience using just psychic connections, and would not attempt to do so. What can be done is for the real spirit-medium to use their gift correctly, and ‘hear’ as a clairaudient the voice of their guide, or of another discarnate spirit that contacts them. They may also ‘see’ using the gift of clairvoyance, and pass that which they are shown to the recipient within the audience.

Spirit-mediumship does not rely on distance, so the message passed could be to anyone, seated anywhere in an auditorium. I have even witnessed powerful and correct messages passed to the partners or family of discarnate entities who were represented in an audience by close kin or even a neighbour. When a true spirit-medium communicates, the information is coming from a discarnate entity in the world beyond and not from the aura or voice vibration of the individual receiving the message.

Derek’s performances on stage are,
despite all the razzzle-dazzle,
totally and utterly hopeless in my opinion.

I believe he really should stop touring the theatre circuit, as he is damaging the reputation of all Spiritualists by claiming, quite falsely, to be a practising Spiritualist. He has, to the best of my knowledge, never been a member of The Spiritualist National Union nor has he undertaken platform mediumship throughout the UK Spiritualist Churches, where valuable experience is gained. In my opinion, his ludicrous spirit-communications are laughably bad and really nothing more than a mixture of try-ons whisked into a meaningless psychic melange that makes a mockery of mediumship. I believe he is out of his depth and play-acting at being a professional spirit-medium.

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