My apologies for missing these messages over the last few days. After my initial post it seemed that nothing came back so I thought that the list was dead (pardon the pun). But you obviously are all still here. So thank you for the many responses I'll answer them all here rather than individually. 

The psychomanteum I created was/is rather elaborate in keeping with my artistic background and with the fact that I built it to take it to a certain festival in the desert.  What I built was a yurt 16ft in diameter and 8 ft tall in the center. Within the yurt I placed a number of artifacts and drawings to give the space some feeling of metaphysical activity and I had a variety of reflecting surfaces so that the user could choose which they wanted to use. These were a large iron cauldron with water in it and one or two mirrors. 

The first time I took it to the festival in 2007 I had a basic set up, the space was fairly bare and I paid little attention to the sound level, the light or the orientation of the space. I permitted friends of friends to use it all of whom were dealing with grief in some way. I thought that I had had a good deal of sucess when one person out of the 12 or so who tried had an experience some days after attempting it in the space. In Dr. Moody's book he does say that the experience can come come up to a week or so after, usually late at night and this was exactly what happened to this individual when the friend they'd tried to see in the psychomanteum  came to them in the night.

In 2008 I tried again at the same festival. This time I made the space much more elaborate, lining it with dark nylon silk to create a real gloom and I had a cover for the skylight so I could control the light fully. The only illumination in there was the flame of a turkish oil lamp. I had many more artifacts including a black painted wardrobe that housed the main mirror, one of 2 (2' x 3'and 4' x 5') both of which had large black frames, the cauldron again and an elaborate compass like diagram on the floor. I took care to orient the structure to the compass and to magnetic north having the door at the south and on the advice of some new age spiritual types with whom I was working at the time I did extensive rituals to banish the wrong kinds of spirits and summon the right ones. I took great care to sage people before hand and cleanse the space after each usage and I myself took part in a ritual to hold the space while people were present and using it. 

This time almost everyone who passed through the space said that they had a significant experience feeling the presence of or communicating with spirits. Three of them seeing the person they wished to visit with in the mirror as a full apparition. One person a reiki healer of some considerable psychic ability had an exceptional experience where he saw a multitude of spirits--though none of them associated with himself.  Many of the people that went though the space this year were friends but a percentage were complete strangers, a minority were dealing with grief. 

Personally I attempted to use the space both years and got nothing either time. The structure is too large to erect in New York though I am presently looking for a suitable space to use it here.

I cant help feeing that the ritual aspects of what I did greatly enhanced the success of the psychomanteum this year. Dr. Moody completely ignores any mention of ritual and seems to have carried on his work in a ritualistically sterile, almost scientific manner. The only advice he offered me in a brief exchange of emails last year was to make sure it was dark and quiet. I was dark certainly this year but I had no control of sound due to the festival outside and the thinness of the walls and if anything this year was noisier than last. 

Thanks for the link to manteum.com--I hadn't seen that site before and lots of useful info. 

Philip