Everyone kept it polite in the “Skeptics vs. Mediums: Can We All Get Along?” panel held in the Courtland Grand Athens on Thursday evening at 8:30PM where a skeptic, a medium, and a medium-adjacent tackled softball questions, like “what happens when we die?”

Jon Michael, a former paranormal investigator and resident skeptic, shared true mutual admiration for his colleagues, Jamie Wagner, a practicing witch, and Alex Mastuo, a paranormal researcher and author, even as party lines were clearly drawn. Michael insisted the paranormal community had something the skeptics could also find useful – empathy. He reminded the audience more than once that “you have value. You deserve to ask the questions [that matter to you].”

Wagner debunked a common misconception about people who engage in what she described as intuitive work. “We don’t believe everything,” she said but insisted that practitioners grow their discernment over time through experience. Like Michael, she welcomed an empiricism that could measure what she felt in her lived experience as both a practicing medium and a Death Doula. While Mastuo has friends in both camps, she talked of the loneliness of riding the fence, as anyone who sees both sides of an argument can probably attest.

A theme that occurred over and over was one of the lived experiences. The difference seemed to be in defining that experience. Wagner spoke of what was real in more philosophical terms. “The question isn’t ‘is it real.’ The question is, ‘is it helpful.’” That notion got nods from all three panelists, proving that on this panel there was more that united than divided. Mastuo dropped another wisdom bomb when she talked about letting go of the need to prove whether something is real or not. “It becomes less a need to prove a thing is real, than to understand what the thing means to the people or community who believes.”

Belief and identity were predominant themes. Michael insisted that skepticism engenders a sense of autonomy in himself. He gets to be in control. He gets to choose, referring to himself as a “skeptical I-don’t-knower.”

Wagner spoke of the importance of the lived experience and how any explanation pales in comparison to the lived experience, and Mastuo encouraged the audience to be wary of those who spoke in absolutes and claimed to have all the answers.

As with any good panel, things were winding down when someone threw out a banger of a question: how do you know if you’re dealing with a ghost or demon? The answers were as interesting as the question. Mastuo asked how to define a ghost. Wagner suggested we interact with any non-corporeal element with the same manners and intuition we would with physical people. And Michael ended where we began, by suggesting he’d be curious why they are only two options.

“Consider alternatives,” he said. “Don’t settle. You’re more valuable than that.”