Roy Stemman reports: UNITED KINGDOM. James Byrne is not a happy medium. He claims the story that was posted on this website (16 October) – see Top medium quits saying, ‘I was deluded’ – was totally wrong. Yet it has taken him nearly a month to say so. He claims his local newspaper, the Chorley Citizen, whose interview with Byrne provided part of our story, had misunderstood what he said about setting up a Christian healing church. “They think that because you are a Christian you can’t be a Spiritualist,” he explained. “I never said I had ditched Spiritualism and stopped being a medium, just that I had taken a break because the voice that was recorded on a tape had disturbed me.” And, he adds, www.ParanormalReview.com should not have run its story repeating that claim without including comments from him. FACT: as reported in our original account, I spoke with him on the day after the newspaper account was published, and he promised to call me back later. He never did. I tried several more times and also sent him an e-mail but got no response. Why didn’t he return my call? He offered no explanation. And if the newspaper had misquoted him, why has he waited nearly a month to “correct” the error? And, more to the point, why has he not complained to the newspaper concerned? Gordon McCully was very surprised to hear of Byrne’s claim, when I phoned him (on 9 November), the day after I received a call from Byrne. “He hasn’t told me that,” said McCully, “and I’ve spoken to him since that story appeared. We sent him a copy of the Chorley Citizen and he’s not got back to me to say he’s either happy or unhappy about it. Basically, I did an interview with him and made notes to the effect that went into the article. I’ve just reported what he told me.” I said that Byrne was suggesting that McCully had thought he could not be both a Christian and a Spiritualist and had made the assumptions that appeared in his story. “Well, I’ll stand by my journalistic skills and my notebook,” Gordon McCully insisted, adding: “James knew where to find me if he wanted to discuss the contents but he’s not done so.” Should we believe Byrne or McCully? I’m backing the local newspaper journalist 100 per cent for one very good reason. Byrne is forgetting that he implicitly confirmed the newspaper’s story when he spoke to me briefly, the day after it was published. Here is a transcript taken from that conversation with him: Roy Stemman: The reason I’m calling you, James, is because I’ve picked up on the fact that you’ve given up Spiritualism. James Byrne: I have, yeah. Roy Stemman: I've just launched a website on the paranormal and I want to do a piece on that fact. Do you have a moment to talk me through your decision? James Byrne: The thing is, I will talk to you, of course I will, but I’ve got someone here at the moment. Could I possibly ring you back about 2pm? He never did... at least, not until 8 November. So, despite his claim to have been misreported by a local journalist, I had heard from his own lips the confirmation that he had turned his back on Spiritualism. It was an explicit acceptance of the fact: no misunderstanding and no misquotation. If his local newspaper had published an inaccurate story the day before, his response should have been, “No, they’ve got it all wrong. Let me explain.” Yet that wasn’t his reaction. Besides, does it make sense that someone whose mediumship could fill large public halls would allow such a damaging story to go unchallenged for more than three weeks ... unless it were true? But there was more to our story than that. Even before his local newspaper published its interview with him, I had discovered that he had been billed to speak to the Sceptics in the Pub group, which meets in London, on “Why I’m so against psychics”.  It sounded like an interesting event, particularly as Byrne promised: “My talk is based on the fact that so many charlatans exist and the psychic industry has become a multi-million pound industry and it is based on a complete sham which is not regulated. I will explain how I, having worked as a psychic for 30 years at the highest level, now believe it is not only morally wrong, but what psychics do you can train anyone to do in a matter of days and earn at least £400 per week with ease. “I will explain the tricks that most psychics successfully use. I will go into TV studios and speak against the subject in the future. I will also speak about what happened to make me realise I was deluding myself.” I couldn’t wait – but I never got to hear his talk because he cancelled the engagement. So, I asked him, if he is now claiming not to have turned his back on Spiritualism and is planning to go on tour, why did he make those statements? I didn’t get a straight answer. Instead, Byrne attempted to dismiss them as yet another misunderstanding, though he admitted he had been prepared to speak about some mediums who he did not accept as genuine. The words used to promote the talk were based on his answers to questions, Byrne added, but that really didn’t explain anything apart from implying they weren’t his own words. FACT: Wanting to hear both sides, I contacted Nick Pullar, who organises events for Sceptics in the Pub, and he confirmed that he had the complete exchange of e-mails relating to Byrne’s agreement to speak to them, the subject of that talk and his subsequent cancellation. Nick Pullar, rightly, says it would be unethical to divulge the contents of those e-mails, without James Byrne’s permission. But he has agreed that, in any dispute, he will be happy to present the e-mails to any competent tribunal or independent arbitrator to substantiate our claims. So, this is our position, which James Byrne – who claims also to be a journalist – is welcome to challenge if he can furnish evidence to support his claim:   He told local journalist Gordon McCully that he was giving up Spiritualism and mediumship. He also confirmed to me that he had given up Spiritualism. He told the organiser of the Sceptics in the Pub talks that he would explain why he now believes being a psychic is morally wrong and what happened to make him realise he was deluding himself. I decided to look again at his website (www.ministryofhealing.co.uk) in an attempt to understand why he has so completely changed his outlook on mediumship. When I first visited it, in early October, the website (above) made no mention of the fact that James Byrne was a psychic and a medium. Instead, it was devoted to Kings Christian Healing Church which – as the Chorley Citizen announced – he was setting up in Wheelton Village Hall, Lancashire. It advertised prayer request phone lines and two e-mail addresses (neither of which are now active, incidentally). Fortunately, I archived all of its pages on my computer, otherwise I might have doubted what I had previously seen. Because now, when you click on that same website address, it has been completely transformed (below). There’s no mention of Kings Christian Healing Church, and that’s probably because he only held two services there. Instead, the website sings his praises as a medium, promotes his book and talks about his successful tours. Could it be that his plans to reject Spiritualism and become a Christian healer failed to attract as many sick people as he had expected, so he has rapidly back-tracked, closing the church and wiping off the evidence of his Christian Healing ambitions, deciding instead to embrace Spiritualism and mediumship once again, and take his show on the road? It’s only a theory, but I suspect it’s as close to the truth as we’ll get. And if so, James Byrne seems not to care about the damage he has done to Spiritualism and the effect his earlier rejection of mediumship has had on recipients of his spirit messages. If James Byrne has realised his decision to give up mediumship was a mistake, or he has had a change of heart about his commitment to Spiritualism, why doesn’t he just say so, instead of claiming that professional journalists are misquoting and misunderstanding him?  And if he can’t prove our statements are wrong, I suggest he abandons his proposed tour until he is a lot less confused about what he really thinks about Spiritualism and mediumship, and what they mean to him.

Posted on Wednesday, November 08, 2006 Category: Mediumship

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