87.7% right. Science still hasn't managed to explain it.

A 54-minute recording. A session from 1955. And a result that science is still trying to explain.

In 2026, researchers from the Spirituality and Health Research Center at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF), in partnership with scientists from Portugal, published a study on a historic recording of Chico Xavier in the international scientific journal Explore.

The material analyzed? A mediumistic session held in Pedro Leopoldo (MG) in 1955, when Chico Xavier received the Portuguese spiritist leader Isidoro Duarte Santos.

Over the course of the session, the medium described approximately 18 individuals, with physical and behavioral details and events from their lives. Sixty-five verifiable elements were identified - and the hit rate was around 87.7%.

But what makes this study different from the usual sensationalism?

Methodology. The researchers transcribed the material and cross-referenced each statement with documentary sources - public archives, biographies, newspapers of the time and historical records - in an attempt to eliminate interpretive bias. They also investigated publications from the time to check whether the medium would have been able to access the information by conventional means.

The level of detail exceeded expectations for any form of cold reading or prior research available in the 50s. The precision in describing intimate events and public figures in Portugal - at a time of limited communications - led scientists to classify the phenomenon as anomalous reception of information.

The study is also honest in its limits: there are cases in which the accuracy of mediums is no more than chance - which indicates that consistent phenomena can be rare. Errors have been pointed out - discrepancies in family names and places of birth, as well as inaccuracies in physical descriptions. Serious science does not affirm what it cannot prove. But it also doesn't rule out what it can't explain.

It is precisely on this frontier that Marlene Nobre's book The Gift of Mediumship places itself. Not as a definitive answer - but as a map for those who want to understand this phenomenon with depth, responsibility and rigor.

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