Talk to younger British mediums today and, sooner or later, one name comes up: Mavis Pittilla. She was no TV personality, wrote no bestsellers, filled no halls with showy demonstrations. And yet she shaped the English mediumistic tradition of the last 30 years more strongly than perhaps any other single individual – as a teacher, a mentor and a benchmark for ethical practice. Her death in October 2023 left a gap in the English-speaking mediumistic scene that is still unfilled.
Who was Mavis Pittilla?
Mavis Pittilla was born in 1933 in the English Midlands. Like many mediums of her generation she experienced mediumistic perception early in life – but did not speak about it publicly for a long time. Only in mid-life, in the environment of the spiritualist church, did she develop systematically as a medium. What set her apart was not the glamour of demonstration – but an unusual clarity of statements combined with an almost old-fashioned modesty in presence.
For more than six decades she practised as a medium. She gave countless private sittings, worked in spiritualist churches, and developed in parallel a second career – as a teacher. It is this second career that defines her lasting impact.
The teacher at Arthur Findlay College
For decades Pittilla taught at Arthur Findlay College in Stansted Hall (Essex) – the international training centre of the Spiritualists' National Union (SNU) and effectively the "academy of English-speaking mediumship". Alongside this she worked extensively in the United States, where she was a sought-after guest tutor among American teachers like Janet Nohavec, Lauren Robertson, Suzanne Giesemann and Willa White.
Anyone who in the past 25 years took an advanced mediumship course at Arthur Findlay College very probably had Pittilla – or one of her students – at the front of the room. Among her best-known direct students:
- Gordon Smith (Scotland) – the "Psychic Barber" with the documented Glasgow studies
- Tony Stockwell – British medium and now himself a tutor at AFC
- Janet Nohavec – American medium, Reverend, an influential teacher in the US
- Lauren Robertson, Eamonn Downey, Susan Tara, and many more
Pittilla's teaching philosophy
What set Pittilla apart from the "TV-mediumship wave" of the 1990s and 2000s (Doris Stokes, Derek Acorah, Sally Morgan) was her almost ascetic seriousness about the task. Three points come up again and again in interviews and workshops:
1. Mediumship is a vocation, not a stage
Pittilla insisted that mediumistic work serves the bereaved – not the performance. She had a pronounced scepticism toward demonstrations aimed at effect rather than at healing. "Show mediumship" was, for her, a contradiction in terms.
"If you know something, say it. And if you don't know something, be silent. Both are equally important – and the second is the harder."
— Mavis Pittilla (paraphrased, from workshop recordings)
2. Connection with the spirit world is a relationship
Pittilla's central teaching concept was the relationship between medium and spirit guide. She emphasised that mediumistic accuracy does not come from technique but from a long, consciously cultivated inner communication with the spirit world. Without honouring this relationship, on her account, a medium can only stay on the surface.
3. Responsibility toward the bereaved
Pittilla explicitly demanded ethical maturity from her students: the bereaved are at their most vulnerable. A medium who places vanity above truthfulness can do great harm. She was one of the first teachers to systematically build this topic into her curricula.
The voice in the background
Pittilla deliberately avoided attention. She had no TV deal, no international publisher, no PR agency. There is only one autobiographical book: "More Than This: An Inspirational Memoir of a Modern Day Medium" (2018, with Jean Else). Only a handful of recordings exist on YouTube – including the early documentary "The Happy Medium" (2009) and several workshop recordings from the 2010s with American medium and teacher Willa White.
This restraint was strategic: Pittilla did not want to be misunderstood as a "TV medium". She saw herself as a craftswoman and a teacher – not a brand.
Pittilla and scientific mediumship research
Unlike Gordon Smith, Pittilla was never systematically tested by scientists – she probably never sought it. In her lectures she repeatedly said that mediumistic work belongs not in the laboratory but in the real context of grief and healing.
Her significance for the research landscape is nevertheless mediated: many of the mediums who appear today in studies (for example Lazar's EREAMS research or in Beischel/Schwartz) are methodologically and ethically shaped by Pittilla – directly or through her students. Her influence thus runs through two generations of practising mediums into the scientific record.
Death in 2023
Mavis Pittilla died on 9 October 2023 at the age of 90. The international spiritualist scene responded with a wave of memories, workshop recollections, tribute videos. Tony Stockwell, Janet Nohavec, Willa White, Lauren Robertson and many others published personal tributes – all with the same theme: she was the teacher who shaped us all.
Her legacy is not a book or a TV show. Her legacy is the two generations of practising mediums who today work with her ethical standards. Anyone who, like Heaven Connect, cares about reputable mediumship cannot bypass her influence.
Context
This article complements the Heaven Connect series on mediumship research and practice: the Gordon Smith blog (with the Glasgow studies), the EREAMS study results by Oliver Lazar, the accompanying Lazar background blog and the NDE research blocks on van Lommel, Greyson, Pam Reynolds, Brüntrup, Kuhn, van Laack and Kübler-Ross. Practical topics such as how to recognise a reputable medium or learning clairvoyance have, via the Pittilla tradition, received their standards.
Sources:
• Mavis Pittilla & Jean Else, More Than This: An Inspirational Memoir of a Modern Day Medium, self-published 2018.
• PSVC2 (YouTube), documentary "Mavis Pittilla – The Happy Medium", 2009.
• Willa White (YouTube), interview "Mediumship: A Pearl of Great Price", December 2020.
• Multiple tribute publications by her students after her death in October 2023 (Tony Stockwell, Janet Nohavec, Lauren Robertson).
• Arthur Findlay College, Stansted Hall – arthurfindlaycollege.org.
For more, see our curated knowledge collection – the Pittilla documentary, her Spiritualist-Church readings and the Willa White interview are linked there.