The Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF) conducted a scientific research in partnership with the University of São Paulo (USP) in 2011, where 99 information were analyzed in 13 messages psychographed by the medium Chico Xavier, attributed to Jair Presente, who drowned in 1974. The research, which concluded that the information contained in the messages was true, was published in the scientific journal "Explore".

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The research methodology included interviews with Jair's relatives and found that the letters contained dates, names of people and description of situations that were not known to the medium.

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According to the psychiatrist and researcher Alexander Moreira Almeida, the probability that Chico Xavier had access to much of this information by conventional means was extremely remote. Some of them were even unknown to the relatives who visited Chico Xavier at the time to obtain the psychographed letters.

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This research was the post-doctorate theme of the researchers Denise Paraná and Alexandre Caroli Rocha and, through the methodology used in this study, the letters psychographed by other mediums can be analyzed. Follow the reports of Dr. Alexander Moreira-Almeida and Dr. Elizabeth Schimitt Freire, who participated in the study.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. Alexander Moreira-Almeida (Prof. From psychiatry at the Medicine College, Director at Nucleus of Research in Spirituality and Health)

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"Mediumship is an experience in which the individual claims to be under the influence or under the control of a non-material entity, that is, a spiritual being. From the scientific point of view, one of the extremely interesting aspects are individuals who claim to be under the influence of deceased people. What we have sought to do is to investigate whether a medium is effectively able to obtain this kind of information that he would not have access by normal means.

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In order to verify the veracity of the information, and what kind of access Chico Xavier had to the information, we interviewed the relatives of the related person, we also sought to identify documents proving that information, birth records, death certificates, newspaper clippings. We have also researched in libraries in Uberaba city for example, to see if it was possible for Chico Xavier to have had access to this information in newspapers or periodicals of that time (we remember that there was no internet at that time).

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Throughout the letters, we have identified 99 specific information items such as relatives' names, places, circumstances of life, circumstances of death, etc. One fact that also draws much attention is the fact that there were some of the situations in which the information provided by Chico Xavier was unknown even to the relatives who came to him to obtain these letters. Only later did the relatives verify this information as correct.

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In summary, the main conclusion of our study was that Chico Xavier was able, in these investigated letters, to produce true information, accurate information, without us being able to identify habitual means by which he could have had access to this information, that is, it is very unlikely that there has been fraud, induction, suggestibility, or even the ability to imagine what the individual thinks or feels based on their bodily or emotional reactions.

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There remain a few other possibilities: That Chico would have had telepathic access to the minds of those individuals who were there but, on the other hand, it draws attention that some information not even the individuals who were there possessed. There is also another possibility that the consciousness of that individual, while not being effectively attached to the body of the deceased individual, could somehow be active and able to communicate through Chico Xavier, but this is an extremely controversial subject that needs to be further investigated. Our group has conducted further investigations, as well as other groups abroad. "

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Dr. Elizabeth Schmitt Freire (Researcher at UFJF)

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"Rigorous investigation of mediumship can contribute in a very significant way to understanding the nature of mind and the mind-brain relationship. One of the psychographic modalities of Chico Xavier was the so-called family letters, which were attributed to deceased people and addressed to their families in mourning.

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The purpose of our study was to investigate the accuracy of the information transmitted in Chico Xavier's family letters and to explore possible explanations for the medium's access to this information. For this study, we analyzed 13 letters, whose authorship was attributed to Jair Presente. These letters were psychographed by Chico Xavier during the years 1974 and 1979.

 

We analyze these items using two scales: The "concordance scale" evaluates the concordance of this information with the facts, and the "leak scale" evaluates the probability that this information has been transmitted to the medium by conventional means, for example through conversation with family, reading newspaper articles, etc. We identified that 97% of these items have a clear and precise match with the facts; There was no incorrect item and only two items had an inaccurate match.

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In addition, a lot of information was very specific such as names, surnames, dates, description of specific events and references to feelings and very intimate thoughts of Jair's family and friends. One of the most common explanations for the correctness of mediumistic communications is that the medium would make very general statements, very vague, that would be true for almost everyone or that would be interpreted in different ways. However, this was not what we found in Chico Xavier's letters, since most of the information was very specific.

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We also investigated the hypothesis that Chico Xavier had "planted" assistants with the families present at the session, to start a conversation with the purpose of obtaining information and next to pass it to the medium, but we consider this hypothesis very implausible, not only by the large number of people present at the sessions, but also because most of this information was very intimate, and some even unknown to family members, such as the information that an aunt of Jair's mother had already passed away.

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The results of this study emphasize the need to continue this line of inquiry by exploring unconventional hypotheses and non-materialistic perspectives on the nature of consciousness and the mind-brain relationship. One limitation of our study was the fact that we base our analysis mainly on the memories of relatives in relation to the events that occurred during the production of these psychographed letters. For this reason, we are now initiating a new study, where the medium's access to information will be strictly controlled by the researchers. "

 

Rocha AC, Paraná D, Freire ES, Lotufo Neto F, Moreira-Almeida A. Investigating the fit and accuracy of alleged mediumistic writing: a case study of Chico Xavier’s letters. Explore 10(5):300-8, 2014