If you want to push the case for mediumistic accuracy to its methodological limit, you have to rule out as many channels as possible through which information could leak from the recipient to the medium – from eye contact to vocal nuance to unconscious cues from the experimenter. This is exactly where the research of Dr. Julie Beischel and the Windbridge Institute in Tucson, Arizona has been operating since 2007. Her studies use the highest level of blinding seen in experimental mediumship research to date: a quintuple-blind protocol conducted entirely by phone. The samples are smaller than those of Roy & Robertson in Glasgow or Long in Kentucky – but the methodological rigour is uncompromising.
Who Is Julie Beischel?
Julie Beischel earned her PhD in 2003 in pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Arizona – squarely within the pharmaceutical and natural-science mainstream. A personal loss after her doctorate led her to the question of whether consciousness can survive death. She moved on as a William James Post-Doctoral Fellow into the VERITAS Research Program of consciousness researcher Gary Schwartz (also at the University of Arizona) and specialised in the experimental investigation of mediums.
In 2008 she founded the Windbridge Institute together with her husband Mark Boccuzzi, supported among other sources by a grant from the Portuguese Bial Foundation. In 2017 the Windbridge Research Center was established as a non-profit research entity that bundles mediumship research and its applied uses, especially for grief support.
Instead of "Afterlife": Anomalous Information Reception
Beischel deliberately uses a neutral term: Anomalous Information Reception (AIR). This sidesteps the metaphysical question of where the information comes from (from the deceased? telepathically from the living? from a non-local field of information?) and focuses on what can be tested:
Does a medium provide specific and accurate information about a deceased person without having had access to that information through normal sensory channels?
This reduction is not just academic elegance – it makes the research compatible with disciplines that would otherwise have no use for the term "spirit world". What remains is a clearly formulated, empirically testable question.
The Quintuple-Blind Protocol: Five Layers of Blinding
The procedure is conducted exclusively by phone – which removes all visual cues (facial expression, gesture, clothing, age, demeanour). Within the protocol there are five mutually independent layers of blinding:
- The medium knows only the first name of the deceased person before, during and after the reading – nothing else. It knows nothing about the living sitter for whom the reading is intended.
- The sitter (the living recipient) is given two reading transcripts after the session – their own and a decoy reading meant for someone else – and rates both. They do not know which one was meant for them.
- Experimenter 1 does not know which medium read for which sitter or which transcript belongs to whom.
- Experimenter 2 coordinates the calls but knows nothing about the deceased except their first names.
- Experimenter 3 evaluates the ratings and is blind to every link between medium, sitter and reading.
With this design, the classical skeptic explanations – cold reading, experimenter effect, rater bias, and deliberate fraud – are ruled out simultaneously. No previous experimental design in mediumship research has gone further.
Windbridge Certified Research Mediums (WCRM)
Beischel does not work with mediums who simply consider themselves mediums. Anyone admitted to the research goes through an eight-step certification procedure involving screening, psychometric testing and training. There are roughly 20 certified research mediums worldwide who voluntarily contribute several hours per month to studies. This strict pre-selection is exclusive – but it is also the reason why the samples are smaller than in the Glasgow or NDERF studies.
The Results
In the second major study (published in 2015 in the peer-reviewed journal EXPLORE), 20 WCRMs conducted a total of 86 readings. Across all evaluation dimensions, the statistical analyses produced significant effects with p-values between 0.05 and 0.0001 – that is, down to a chance probability of roughly one in ten thousand. With this, Beischel and her team replicated and extended the original triple-blind findings published in 2007.
Selected Publications
- 2007: Anomalous Information Reception by Research Mediums Demonstrated Using a Novel Triple-Blind Protocol. Explore 3/1.
- 2007: Contemporary methods used in laboratory-based mediumship research. Journal of Parapsychology 71, pp. 37–68.
- 2015: Anomalous Information Reception by Research Mediums Under Blinded Conditions II: Replication and Extension. EXPLORE 11/2 (Beischel, Boccuzzi, Biuso & Rock).
- 2017: Quantitative & Qualitative Mediumistic Analysis. Threshold 1/2.
- 2019: After-Death Communication Impact on Grief. Threshold 3/1.
Putting It in Context: Complement to Roy/Robertson and Long
The Beischel studies complement existing mediumship research in a useful way. Where the Glasgow Study of Roy & Robertson worked with larger samples and a moderate level of blinding, and Jeffrey Long's NDERF database opts for maximum sample size, Windbridge turns the dial radically the other way: fewer participants, but uncompromising methodological rigour.
Together, these strands paint a consistent picture: when the standard skeptic explanations (Forer effect, cold reading, experimenter bias, fraud) are systematically excluded all at once, a statistical signal remains that does not go away.
Beischel herself is deliberately cautious in her wording: she speaks of "anomalous information reception" – not of proof of an afterlife. This reserve is precisely her scientific strength. What the data compellingly show is that something is happening that requires explanation. How that something is interpreted remains open – and in science, that is not less, but the most honest possible result.
Sources:
• J. Beischel, Anomalous Information Reception by Research Mediums Demonstrated Using a Novel Triple-Blind Protocol, Explore 3/1 (2007).
• J. Beischel, Contemporary methods used in laboratory-based mediumship research, Journal of Parapsychology 71 (2007), pp. 37–68.
• J. Beischel, M. Boccuzzi, M. Biuso & A. J. Rock, Anomalous Information Reception by Research Mediums Under Blinded Conditions II: Replication and Extension, EXPLORE 11/2 (2015).
• Psi Encyclopedia (SPR): Julie Beischel.
• Windbridge Research Center.
For more on scientific mediumship research, see our articles on Gary Schwartz and the VERITAS program in Arizona, the Glasgow Study of Roy & Robertson, Oliver Lazar's EREAMS study, Jeffrey Long's NDERF research, and Patrizio Tressoldi's meta-analysis aggregating the field statistically.