In the English-speaking world there is a small handful of mediums whose accuracy gives even outspoken sceptics pause. Gordon Smith is one of them. The Scotsman from Glasgow, originally a barber by trade, has been repeatedly tested under controlled conditions by academic researchers for more than 25 years. His best-known scientific study was conducted by Prof. Archie Roy (astronomer at the University of Glasgow, †2012) and Tricia Robertson over several years and published in 2001 and 2004 in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. Since then Smith has been considered one of the methodologically most robust mediumistic phenomena of recent decades.
From barber to "Psychic Barber"
Gordon Smith was born in Glasgow in 1962 – the youngest of seven children in a working-class family in the Cessnock district. He trained as a barber and ran a small salon in the city for years. He had his first mediumistic experiences as a child, by his own account, but did not speak about them publicly for a long time. Only in the mid-1990s did he begin giving demonstrations in spiritualist churches and small circles. His reputation as an exceptionally precise medium spread quickly – along with the affectionate nickname "the Psychic Barber", by which he is still known today.
What set Smith apart in the spiritualist scene at the time was his unusual level of detail: he frequently gave first names and surnames, addresses, specific life circumstances, even nicknames – with sitters he had never met before. It was precisely this specificity that later made him interesting for scientific investigation.
Training and teaching at Arthur Findlay College
Like many British mediums, Smith went through formal training at the Arthur Findlay College at Stansted Hall (Essex) – the international training centre of the Spiritualists' National Union (SNU) and effectively the "university of mediumship" in the English-speaking world. The student later became the tutor: Smith taught demonstration mediumship and development to beginners and advanced students at Arthur Findlay College for many years and shaped a generation of younger mediums.
The Glasgow studies (Roy & Robertson, 1996–2004)
In the mid-1990s Archie Roy, an astrophysicist at the University of Glasgow, and his colleague Tricia Robertson sought a method for statistically testing mediumistic messages. They wanted to factor out the effect of "general" statements – statements that apply to many people and are therefore not evidential. Their method was simple and elegant:
- A medium gives a sitting for sitter A, in whose presence several uninvolved non-recipients also sit.
- All present – the recipient and the non-recipients – are subsequently given the list of statements and have to mark independently which statements apply to them personally.
- If the medium delivers only "generally" applicable sentences, recipient and non-recipients should mark a similar number of hits. If, however, the medium really is working for the intended recipient, the actual recipient should mark significantly more hits than the non-recipients.
This procedure allows hard statistical testing. Random effects and general statements are filtered out quantitatively. Smith was one of several mediums tested – but his results stood out. Roy and Robertson published two papers under the title "Some Anomalies of Information Ownership" in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research in 2001 and 2004.
The findings
Across the sittings examined, the intended recipient identified significantly more statements as applying to themselves than the control sitters did. In the recorded sittings the probability that the result arose by chance fell well below 1 in a million. In other words: the specificity of Smith's statements could not be explained statistically by generalities.
"We have tested very different mediums. With some there was no significant effect, with others there was, and Gordon Smith was particularly striking. The chance of a coincidental hit was, in his case, vanishingly small."
— Tricia Robertson (paraphrased, from later interviews)
Roy was a respected astrophysicist in his field – long-time president of the Royal Astronomical Society in Scotland, author of several standard texts on celestial mechanics. His scientific reputation gives the study additional weight; this was not someone with a "spiritual agenda" doing methodologically loose work.
Smith's method
Smith works mainly clairvoyantly and clairaudiently – he sees images, hears names, receives very concrete details. Unlike trance mediums (see trance medium blog), he remains fully conscious throughout the sitting. Characteristic of his style:
- Names, names, names. Smith is renowned for delivering several first names, surnames and even nicknames per sitting. In the English-speaking mediumship scene this is considered unusual because names are very easy to falsify.
- Addresses, street names, house numbers. In several documented sittings he gave addresses where deceased persons had lived – also when the sitter did not have the address in mind and had to verify it afterwards.
- Specific life circumstances. Professions, hobbies, family constellations, illness details – not the vague "your father loves you" but "your father, who worked at the Royal Mail and had right-lung surgery".
- Personality characterisations. He often describes the personality of the deceased so that the bereaved recognise them immediately – idiosyncratic turns of phrase, sense of humour, typical sayings.
Books and impact
Smith has set down his experiences in a series of well-selling books, now translated into many languages:
- Spirit Messenger (2003) – his first autobiography, the international breakthrough
- The Unbelievable Truth (2005) – answers to common sceptical objections
- Stories from the Other Side (2007) – a collection of documented sittings
- Through My Eyes (2014)
- The Mediums Mystery School (2018ff.) – teaching and training material
In the United Kingdom Smith has been a guest in BBC productions, ITV documentaries and discussion panels several times. His public reception has benefited greatly from his calm, almost sober demeanour: no theatrical effects, no New-Age rhetoric, but clear statements with a clear request for verification.
Why Smith matters for mediumship research
Three reasons make Smith a key example:
- Scientific accompaniment over more than a decade. Roy and Robertson tested him not in a single sitting but in series over years. The findings have been replicated and published in a peer-reviewed journal (Journal of the SPR).
- High level of specificity. Smith delivers exactly the kind of highly specific information that Lazar's EREAMS study defines as the gold standard: names, addresses, details that are neither researchable on the internet nor obtainable by observing the sitter.
- Connection to academic culture. Through Roy, Smith is embedded in the world of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR, founded 1882) – one of the oldest scientific bodies for the investigation of paranormal phenomena, with members like William James, Henri Bergson, Carl Gustav Jung and several Cambridge professors in its history.
Smith in comparison
In our overview of scientific mediumship studies, Smith stands alongside the other principal figures of the field:
- Lazar/EREAMS (Germany, 2021): 243 participants, broad reach, the specificity method instead of blinding – see EREAMS blog.
- Beischel/Windbridge (US, from 2007): small samples, but the strictest blinding (quintuple-blind).
- Schwartz/University of Arizona (US, from 2001): individual famous sitters, single-blind.
- Roy/Robertson/Smith (UK, 1996–2004): the most elegant methodological solution to the generality problem, published in one of the oldest specialist societies (SPR).
Smith's case thus fills an important gap: it is not "one study", but a single medium followed for years, whose accuracy was repeatedly demonstrated under controlled conditions.
Critical perspective
As with any mediumistic research, sceptical voices accompany Smith too. The most frequent arguments:
- "Cold reading at confirmation." The Roy/Robertson procedure rules this out: statements are written down before evaluation and judged independently by recipient and control sitter.
- "Statistical selection effects." Roy and Robertson document selection and sitting order transparently in their papers; the argument typically does not bear on their specific study.
- "Single-investigator bias." Roy & Robertson are a single researcher pair, not a larger research group. Replication by another team would be methodologically valuable – this has not yet happened in this form.
Smith himself repeatedly stresses in his books that he does not want to overdraw evidential claims: he is a mediumship student, practitioner and teacher – not a researcher. Readers should judge for themselves what the Glasgow studies prove.
Context
This article complements the Heaven Connect series on the scientific framing of mediumship research: Oliver Lazar's EREAMS study and the accompanying background blog, as well as the NDE blocks on van Lommel, Greyson, Pam Reynolds, Kuhn, van Laack and Brüntrup, the Bösch/Claes case in Baselland and the physics-philosophy article on matter and the Higgs field. Where Lazar provides the German-speaking study evidence and Beischel the strictest blinding, the Glasgow-Smith line delivers what carries the natural-scientist accent: statistical falsifiability of a single medium across years.
Sources:
• Archie E. Roy & Tricia J. Robertson, Some Anomalies of Information Ownership, Part 1: Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 65 (2001) 91–106; Part 2: JSPR 68 (2004) 18–34.
• Gordon Smith, Spirit Messenger, Hay House 2003.
• Gordon Smith, The Unbelievable Truth, Hay House 2005.
• Gordon Smith, Stories from the Other Side, Hay House 2007.
• Tricia Robertson, Things You Can Do When You're Dead, White Crow Books 2013 (an accessible, comprehensive treatment of the Glasgow research).
• Society for Psychical Research (SPR), London – spr.ac.uk.
• Arthur Findlay College, Stansted Hall – arthurfindlaycollege.org.
For more, see our curated knowledge collection. Gordon Smith's profile as a reputable medium is listed on Heaven Connect as a consultant page.