It's funny to me because I practice mediumship and believe it is a helpful practice (one of very few healing methodology that was used in most of human history and certainly long before that; people will probably still be using it in 40,000 years if people are still around.) I think many of the problems people have today that are intractable (climate change, pathological politics, the perception that "the economy sucks", maybe even the agony of a parent who has an autistic child) are intractable because they are spiritual problems that can't be addressed by material means.

It boggles my mind that there was a time that you could convince people you were talking to the dead (boy it is fun to lift a table though) but by the mid 20th century that was gone and it was all the White Brotherhood (not racist) and Edgar Cayce and Seth and such. For most of history though and in the backwaters of China, persecuted by both Republicans and Communists, people have manifested animal spirits.

On the other hand, I don't believe in telepathy, precognition and such (even though my slightly defective nervous system is inclined to have unusual experiences like that.) I'm not in competition with physics or western religion; if somebody gets something out of going to church I celebrate that, but I have a call to the ministry to reach people who the church can't reach.