Wikipedia

Doris Stokes

Doris May Fisher Stokes(6 January 1920 – 8 May 1987), bornDoris Sutton,was a Britishspiritualist,professionalmedium,and author. Her public performances, television appearances, and memoirs made her a household name in Britain.[1]While some believed her to possesspsychicabilities, investigations published after her death demonstrated that she used fraudulent techniques includingcold reading,hot reading,and planting accomplices in her audience.[2]

Doris Stokes
Born
Doris May Fisher Sutton

(1920-01-06)6 January 1920
Grantham,Lincolnshire,United Kingdom
Died8 May 1987(1987-05-08)(aged 67)
Lewisham,London, United Kingdom
NationalityBritish
Occupation(s)Spiritualist, self-proclaimed medium, author
Years active1949−1986
Known forTV appearance's, publications

Early life

edit

Stokes was born inGrantham,Lincolnshire,England in January 1920.[3]In her memoirs she claimed that she started seeing spirits and hearing disembodied voices in childhood, and that she developed these abilities further once she joined a local spiritualist church after her son died in infancy. She was recognized as a practisingclairaudientmedium by theSpiritualists' National Unionin 1949.[4]

During a crisis of confidence in 1962, she gave up her work as a medium and retrained as apsychiatric nurse,[5]but had to retire five years later following an attack by a patient. She returned to her psychic work, and in 1975 became the resident medium at theSpiritualist Association of Great Britain.[4]

Career

edit

Stokes first came to public attention in 1978 during a visit to Australia, when she appeared onThe Don Lane Show.In the wave of interest that followed her appearance, she played to three capacity audiences at theSydney Opera House.She was also the first medium to appear at theLondon Palladium;the tickets sold out in two hours.[6]She was especially believable because of her smiling, down-to-earth manner, which avoided the traditional trappings of the séance and gave her performances almost "the ordinariness of a transatlantic telephone call".[7]In 1980, her first autobiographical volume,Voices in My Ear: The Autobiography of a Mediumwas published, pulling her further into the public eye in the UK. More than two million copies of her books were sold.[4]Positive testimonials continued to come forward into the 2000s, from celebrities includingEamonn Holmes[8]andDale Winton.[9]

Stokes was condemned by theChurch of Englandand other Christian denominations, which objected to spirit communication as an offence to God. She countered that her work was done for God,[4]and in accordance with the Bible's injunction to "test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world" (1 John 4.:1).

Stokes's health was poor throughout her life. Her thirteen or so cancer operations included amastectomy,and the April 1987 removal of a brain tumour, after which she did not regain consciousness. She died inLewisham,London on 8 May 1987.[4]Described variously as "an individual of great personal warmth", "theGracie Fieldsof the psychic world "[10]and "a ruthless moneymaking confidence artist",[11]she continued to give free consultations or "sittings" until a month before her death, when she left only £15,291.[4]

Criticism, debunking and accusations of fraud

edit

"Whatever the truth, on the most charitable assessment, Doris Stokes was not all she seemed, and the most serious question marks hang over her."

---Ian Wilson,The After Death Experience,chapter 7

Stokes was accused of using various forms ofdeceptionto achieve the effect of communicating with the dead. These included cold reading,[12][13]eavesdropping,and planting accomplices in the audience.[14][15]

Evidence of audience plants

edit

Stokes's death coincided with the publication ofCatholicauthorIan Wilson's 1987 book,The After Death Experience,in which he presented a detailed exposé of her methods. He described her as providing "slick, sure-fire answers" to the questions of life after death.[16]

He attended one of Stokes'sPalladiumperformances in November 1986, when she claimed to contact the dead relatives of four consecutive audience members, with a sequence of convincing and poignant details. However, when the participants were questioned after the performance, it turned out that each of them had been invited by Stokes. The manager of the Palladium explained that Stokes routinely booked the front three rows of the theatre for her own use.

Those "contacted" included a young woman called Dawn. She was given a message supposedly from her husband, who had died less than a month earlier, telling her that he supported her decision to turn off hislife supportmachine. However, when hospital nurses had asked her whether she would like to speak to anybody about this decision, she had asked to speak to Doris Stokes. Stokes had spoken to Dawn by telephone, offering commiseration and asking to be updated with the results of the tests that would determine whether Dawn's husband lived or died.

In 1987, Dawn described a number of personal details which Stokes had given unprompted to her mother on the phone. While Dawn found these convincing, Wilson suggests that Stokes obtained them from Dawn's aunt, a prominent local spiritualist.

Another participant was Marilyn Stenning, whose daughter Kerry had recently died in a car accident. She received a personal phone call from Stokes, offering her front-row seats for the Palladium performance. Other participants included "camp followers", who regularly attended the shows and repeatedly received messages from the same people. During the second half of the performance, members of the audience were chosen apparently at random. Wilson described this post-interval performance as "much less convincing... [relying] on intelligent guesswork and 'fishing'".[2]

Disputed memoirs and testimony

edit

While Stokes published seven volumes of autobiography, some of the events she describes in them have been questioned.

In her book,Voices in my Ear,Stokes claimed that she had solved two murder cases in England. However,Detective Chief SuperintendentWilfrid Brooks of theLancashire Constabularystated that Stokes made no contribution whatsoever to the detection of either murderer.[17]

Whilst inBeverly Hills,Los Angeles, she also claimed that local murder victim Vic Weiss had contacted her with details of his murder. Former magician and high-profile sceptic,James Randi,contacted theLos Angeles Police Department,who informed him that all of the information supplied by Stokes had been available to the media at the time.[17]Stokes was unable to provide any new information to the police and the case remains unsolved.[18]

Bibliography

edit
  • Voices in My Ear,Doris Stokes with Linda Dearsley (1980)
  • More Voices in My Ear,Doris Stokes with Linda Dearsley (1981). Publisher: FUTURA PUBNS.
  • Innocent Voices in My Ear,Doris Stokes with Linda Dearsley (1983). Publisher: Sphere; New edition.
  • A Host of Voices,Doris Stokes with Pam and Mike Kiddey (1984)
  • Voices in My Ear: Autobiography of a Medium(1985). Publisher: TBS The Book Service Ltd; New edition.
  • Whispering Voices,Doris Stokes with Linda Dearsley (1985). Publisher: FUTURA PUBLICATIONS; 1st edition.
  • Voices in My Ear: Autobiography of a Medium(1980). Publisher: Little, Brown.
  • Voices of Love,Doris Stokes with Linda Dearsley (1986). Publisher: TBS The Book Service Ltd.
  • Joyful Voices,Doris Stokes with Linda Dearsley (1987)
  • A Tribute to Doris Stokes,Linda Dearsley (1988)

See also

edit

References

edit
  1. ^Wilson, Ian(1989).The After Death Experience(Paperback ed.).Corgi Books.p. 82.
  2. ^abWilson, Ian(1989).The After Death Experience(Paperback ed.).Corgi Books.pp. 83–93.
  3. ^Ludden, Ken (2012).Mystic Apprentice Master Volume with Dictionary.Lulu.ISBN978-1-105-57750-5.
  4. ^abcdef"Stokes, Doris May Fisher".Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.Oxford University Press.June 2004.
  5. ^Wilson, Ian(1989).The After Death Experience(Paperback ed.).Corgi Books.p. 84.
  6. ^ Young, Robin (23 September 2004). "Frauds who dealt in cheesecloth and charm".The Times.p. 3.
  7. ^Wilson, Ian(1989).The After Death Experience(Paperback ed.).Corgi Books.p. 83.
  8. ^"Be my guests: One week to go countdown to Christmas".Daily Mail.17 December 2005. p. 74.
  9. ^Winton, Dale (1 September 2002). "We broke down the door... my beautiful mother was lying dead on the bed".The Mail on Sunday.p. 49.
  10. ^ Calman, Stephanie (25 June 1984). "Doris calls heaven and makes them happy".The Times.p. 9.
  11. ^James, Keith (16 September 2003). "Letters: My message from Doris".Daily Mail.p. 57.
  12. ^"A nice little earner in the futures market".The Sunday Times.17 August 1997. p. 3.
  13. ^Bob Couttie. (1988).Forbidden Knowledge: The Paranormal Paradox.Lutterworth Press. p. 42ISBN978 0 71 882686 4
  14. ^Fanshawe, Simon (17 September 2005). "I know what you're thinking There is, says the US 'mind reader' Marc Salem, no such thing as reading minds. But being able to read people's signs and signals, he tells Simon Fanshawe, can be elevated to an art form where science meets our enduring need for mystery".Financial Times.p. 1.
  15. ^Lewis Smith, Victor (20 July 2001). "He's just Telly Pathetic".Evening Standard.p. 35.
  16. ^Wilson, Ian(1989).The After Death Experience(Paperback ed.).Corgi Books.ISBN978-0-06-227955-2.
  17. ^abPlummer, Mark (1981)."Doris Stokes Wrong – Police"(PDF).The Skeptic.1(1): 1. Archived fromthe original(PDF)on 19 August 2006.Retrieved3 January2007.
  18. ^Connelly, Michael (11 June 1989)."Who Shot Vic Weiss".Los Angeles Times.Archived fromthe originalon 11 December 2006.Retrieved3 January2007.Ten years later, Weiss' killing remains unsolved and one of the San Fernando Valley's most puzzling mysteries.
edit
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Doris_Stokes&oldid=1253114596"