Across Britain on any given weekday night, a psychic or medium is likely communicating with the dead in your local pub.
These “pub psychic nights” have become an increasingly visible feature of Britain’s spiritual landscape, but until now, they’ve remained largely under-researched and socially misunderstood. To some, they are easily dismissed, seen as exploitative or merely light entertainment. But for others, they offer exciting and meaningful opportunities to explore ideas they are open to believing in. Our project Weekday Worldviews: The Patrons, Promise and Payoff of Psychic Nights in England is the first sociological study of pub psychic audiences in Britain. Our findings reveal their significance as accessible, emotionally resonant, and spiritually meaningful events, particularly for working-class women navigating grief and uncertainty.
Our research involved surveys (N=74), 16 in-depth interviews, and participant observation at four psychic events across England. All took place in pubs or working men’s clubs, spaces with long histories as communal hubs, particularly in working-class areas. Most participants were not affiliated with institutional religion. In fact, many actively distanced themselves from organised religion altogether with 57% stating that religion was not so or not at all important in their lives. The most prominent religious categories participants associated themselves with were ‘no religion’ and ‘spiritual but not religious’. These findings support broader shifts in British religiosity. Census data (2021) shows record lows for institutional Christian affiliation with
England and Wales now minority Christian countries. Despite this, belief in the afterlife and the paranormal remain widespread and participant stories were rich with existential questioning, grief processing, and a search for meaning.
In this context, pub psychic nights represent what we term a low-barrier, grassroots form of spiritual exploration. They provide local, social, and emotionally charged responses to life’s big questions. In one of the two articles that are forthcoming about our work, we draw on Victor Turner’s concept of liminality, and frame pub psychic nights as existing as “betwixt and between” spaces. They are neither secular, nor are they sacred in the traditional sense, instead they oscillate between both. Our observations of psychic night events blended everyday pub culture, fruit machines, sometimes cheap and not-so-cheap lager, pool tables, dart boards, friends gathering after work (particularly if the space was only a cordoned off area), but with emotionally intense moments of spirit communication.
At one event, a teenage girl tearfully responded to a message she believed came from her miscarried child. In another, a participant was told by a psychic she was being followed by a sex demon. These moments were uncomfortable, sometimes ethically troubling, but they were also shared with strangers. which is somewhat unusual. Think about it, an outpouring of shared grief in a space usually reserved for watching football. There is a powerful mixture of laughter, tears, tissues, and supportive touches circulating freely. In this temporary community, the pub becomes a sanctuary of sorts.
The cultural, emotional, and spatial familiarity of pubs means there are no rituals to learn, no creeds to accept, no lifelong commitments to make. Instead, a small speech at the start introduces how the night will go to the uninitiated. And there is a possibility of comfort, guidance, and recognition. For those who attend, especially those managing grief or trauma, the psychic night offers a liminal experience that can be emotionally transformative, even if fleeting or for the most sceptical.
Psychic nights are embedded in gendered and classed dynamics. Importantly, they feel like places run by women, for women. Most attendees were women, often attending in intergenerational groups, with many having experienced personal loss. Men are often overlooked, with the readings being mostly directed towards the groups of women. The messages they received often validated their emotional labour and encouraged them to prioritise their own needs. This is consistent with the long-standing relationship between women and Spiritualism historically. From the Fox sisters in 1848 to women leading pub psychic nights today, the movement has often empowered those outside the traditional centres of religious and institutional authority. Yet, this empowerment is not without ambivalence. Messages from spirits often reflect normative gender roles (“you’re so caring, so strong”) and can individualise structural problems. Instead of critiquing the social pressures that overburden women, the guidance offered tends to focus on personal resilience and emotional adjustment. Similarly, while these nights often invert the historically male-dominated pub space, they can still feel exclusionary for some. One of our interviewees, a mixed-race woman, described the events as unfolding in “white working-class spaces” where she felt like an outsider.
Across our data, one theme emerged repeatedly: that pub psychic nights are helping people process grief outside of traditional religion and alongside (and sometimes instead of) grief therapies. More than half (55%) of survey respondents agreed that simply attending eased their feelings of grief. Yet, this positive effect sits uncomfortably alongside concerns about ethics, vulnerability, regulation, and care. These events operate largely outside institutional oversight. There are no standards of safeguarding and no mechanisms for aftercare. Some mediums offered future readings or advertised one-to-one services, but there was little support for those visibly distressed during public messages, other than from the audience or the medium. Several participants admitted that they turned to psychic nights in moments of crisis, as a way to avoid dealing with pain, or to outsource big decisions. One described attending after a breakup, hoping the psychic would tell her she’d meet “the man of her dreams.” Others noted they were “hooked,” not in the sense of addiction, but because they were still seeking answers they hadn’t received.
We find that pub psychic nights offer a window into how spirit communication, grief, and meaning-making are being renegotiated in 21st-century Britain, among mostly the nonreligious. They show that contemporary spirituality doesn’t need a pulpit or a pew. For many, these nights are neither wholly sacred nor wholly profane. They are liminal, unstable, disruptive, emotionally complex, and precisely because of that, they matter.
