Eckhard Kruse's Pages
Physical Mediumship
Measurements in a séance with Mychael Shane
This page presents some results of the measurements done during a séance with Mychael Shane at Basel Psi Association in October 2016. The entire séance has been recorded with a thermal camera and four microphones as described for the sound source localization in Warren Caylor's séances.

Many thanks to Mychael for his openness to this research and for letting me have any freedom regarding the measurement set-up!

The picture gives an impression how Mychael is tied to his chair inside the cabinet. In addition his mouth was taped. Note, his forearms are fixed somewhat close to the elbow, because the arm-rest of the chair is quite short compared to Mychael's body size. Anyhow, the purpose of this page is not to try to convince skeptics by discussing each detail of the provisions against potential trickery, but to simply present the results of the measurements.

Also I want to add: Even though these phenomena and their challenge to the predominant world-view capture my scientific interest, probably much more important is that the 'contact with the spirit world', the messages and healings seem to provide very concrete beneficial impulses to many participants.

Thermal imaging
The entire séance has been recorded with a thermal camera, using a separate box for storing the data (for techies: I programmed a Raspberry Pi such that it stores the data and can be controlled in the darkness using some simple switches). The raw data of each image has a resolution of 160 x 120 pixels and represents infrared heat data with about 0.1 Centigrade relative precision. For better visualization, the temperature has been mapped to color gradients and the resolution has been upscaled using a Catmull-Rom spline interpolation. The following picture gives an example of the resulting images, including some comments.


The (manually added) outlines indicate the cabinet and Mychael's position inside as the curtain was closed. Because the curtain shields Mychael's heat, his exact position cannot be determined with the thermal data (at least with the current low-cost sensor). But, the faint silhouette always remained in place (other temperature-color mappings show this more clearly, see further below). When the curtain was opened at the end of the séance, Mychael's position was the same as at the beginning. In addition, during the séance the curtain sometimes revealed his left leg, which also always matches the indicated outline.
Some observations
The following video provides some observations and snippets of interesting phases during the séance. Some comments are directly placed in the video.


  • Changes of the overall color in the video are due to heating / recalibration of the thermal sensor. (Maybe I will implement some postprocessing filter.)
  • The heat silhouette of the medium does not seem to move throughout the séance. With a color profile such as below, this can be seen a bit more clearly, especially regarding the parts of the body that are close to the curtain.
  • Unfortunately, the perspective has been such that the position of Mychael's left hand and the center of the curtain, where some of the action takes place, are almost on the same line of sight, even though they had a distance of maybe half a meter, which is not Next time, I will choose a different position.
  • Obviously, this was just a first step for getting some insight into what's going on in the dark during the séance. I am confident that next time more interesting data will result.