Tony Stockwell

Tony Stockwell is a British psychic medium, author and television personality, one of the best-known touring mediums in the UK. He currently lives in Wickford, Essex.

Early life and career

Stockwell was born in Walthamstow, East London. His career as a medium began at age 16, after a friend invited him to a local Spiritualist church to watch another medium at work; the experience convinced him he wanted to become a medium himself. He practised mediumship early in his career at the Spiritualist Association of Great Britain, and later held a certificate from the Spiritualist National Union for Teaching, Demonstrating and Speaking. He teaches at the College of Psychic Studies in South Kensington, London.

Television career

Stockwell has fronted three of his own television series for Living TV: The Psychic Detective, Street Psychic and Psychic School, along with two one-off specials, Street Psychic San Francisco and The National ESP Challenge. He also appeared in a 1995 ITV series, Psychic Private Eyes, alongside fellow medium Colin Fry, and later guested on Fry's own show 6ixth Sense. Stockwell has separately appeared alongside Derek Acorah and Colin Fry as one of "The Three Mediums", and made a guest appearance on Most Haunted Live 4. In 2009 he toured the UK jointly with American medium James Van Praagh.

Books and other work

Stockwell has written several books about his experiences as a medium, including his autobiography Spirited, The Psychic Case Files and Walking with Angels, alongside a number of instructional audio programmes on mediumship development. He runs his own training courses for aspiring mediums, teaching regularly both in the UK and at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York.

Reception

Reviewing a live Stockwell demonstration in 2023, The Skeptic magazine noted the venue's disclaimer that the event was billed "for entertainment purposes" — a framing generally understood to reference the UK's Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951, which prohibited obtaining payment through claimed psychic ability except where clearly presented as entertainment. The reviewer described what they characterised as competent cold reading technique, combined with what they suggested might be some pre-established knowledge of attendees, and observed that audience members' apparent threshold for accepting a reading as genuine evidence of an afterlife often appeared to require little more than a correctly guessed gender followed by general, broadly-applicable statements.

VAULT PROFILE ASSESSMENT

CATEGORY

Psychic Medium / TV Personality

VAULT RELEVANCE

Moderate

CONNECTION

Televised and touring mediumship, and the wider British "celebrity medium" television genre of the 2000s

ASSESSMENT

Tony Stockwell represents a long-running, still-active strand of British televised mediumship distinct from the more overtly investigative framing of shows like Most Haunted — his work centres on direct audience readings rather than location-based paranormal investigation. Contemporary sceptical coverage of his live shows applies the same broad critique (cold reading, audience-narrowed statements) levelled at most touring mediums, though he has attracted comparatively less sustained controversy than contemporaries such as Derek Acorah.

See also

• Colin Fry
• Derek Acorah
• James Van Praagh
• Most Haunted
• Mediumship
• Cold reading
• Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951
• Spiritualist Association of Great Britain
• College of Psychic Studies

External links

• Wikipedia — Tony Stockwell
• The Skeptic — Tony Stockwell on tour
• Tony Stockwell — official site
• College of Psychic Studies — Tony Stockwell
• Tony Stockwell on IMDb