An in-depth history of psychical research and spiritualism, accompanied by period illustrations. Is spiritualism a religion or a racket? How does it differ from psychical research? What went on in the world of séances, mediums, and the scientists who investigated them in the early decades of the twentieth century? This fascinating account, first published in the 1930s, brings to life an era when spiritualists gripped the public imagination and researchers fought to determine what was and wasn’t real. Fifty Years of Psychical Research is part of The Paranormal, a series that resurrects rare titles, classic publications, and out-of-print texts, as well as publishes new supernatural and otherworldly ebooks for the digital age. The series includes a range of paranormal subjects from angels, fairies, and UFOs to near-death experiences, vampires, ghosts, and witchcraft.
Mainline science rejects the paranormal because it cannot be proven by the classical methods of controlled experiments. But sciences such as geology, astronomy, and anthropology also don’t rely on laboratory testing for repeatable results. Moreover, psi concerns consciousness, which is by definition nonquantitative. "Psi researchers must stop acting like science’s poor relations," says author Lawrence LaShan, "limiting themselves to controlled experiments such as analyzing statistics of people guessing cards being flipped in the next room" This provocative book outlines the principles of making a real study of the large, exciting events — clairvoyance and precognition; mediumship and spirit controls; psychic healing — that would bring mainline science into and revitalize the whole field. "And the issue is not just academic," says LeShan. "The old, materialistic worldview has not worked. Psychic research," he argues, "can transform our sense of reality itself to offer a new and more hopeful picture of ourselves and of the world."
Hamlin Garland’s Main-Travelled Roads is recognized as one of the early landmarks of American literary realism. But Garland’s shift in mid-career from the harsh verisimilitude of Prairie Folks and Prairie Songs to a romanticizing of the Far West, and from ardent espousal of the principles of “veritism” to violent denunciations of naturalism, is a paradox which has long puzzled literary historians. In tracing the evolution of Garland’s work, the various reactions of his stories under the influence of editorial comment and of contemporary critical reaction, Jean Holloway suggests that the Garland apostasy was an illusion produced by his very intellectual immobility amidst the swirling currents of American thought. His extensive correspondence with Gilder of the Century, Alden of Harper’s Monthly, McClure of McClure’s, and Bok of the Ladies’ Home Journal is adduced in support of the thesis that the writer’s choices of subject and of treatment were psychologically forced rather than conditioned primarily by literary theory. As a subject for biography, however, Garland has an appeal far beyond the scope of his literary influence. The friendships of this gregarious peripatetic with the famous began with Howells, Twain, Whitman, and Stephen Crane, stretched down the years to include such younger men as Bret Harte and Carl Van Doren, and crossed the seas to embrace such British literary lions as Barrie, Shaw, and Kipling. Garland’s fervent espousal of “causes”—the Single Tax Movement, psychic experimentation, Indian rights-brought him into close contact with other prominent men—Henry George, Theodore Roosevelt, and William Jennings Bryan. These public figures form the incidental characters in Garland’s spate of autobiographical works. Yet it is the central figure of his own story which has become permanently identified with the “Middle Border,” that region “between the land of the hunter and the harvester” which Augustus Thomas defined as “wherever Hamlin Garland is.” In A Son of the Middle Border Garland nostalgically recreated his boyhood on the frontier and, regardless of the detractions of literary critics, preserved for posterity an important segment of American social history.
"I do not conceal from myself the consequences of such sincerity. It requires a good deal of boldness to insist on affirming, in the name of positive science, the POSSIBILITY of these phenomena (wrongly styled supernatural), and to constitute one's self the champion of a cause apparently ridiculous, absurd, and dangerous, knowing, at the same time, that the avowed adherents of said cause have little standing in science, and that even its eminent partisans only venture to speak of their approval of it with bated breath. However, since the matter has just been treated momentarily in fugitive writings by a group of journalists whose exacting labors wholly forbid a study of the psychic and physical forces; and since, of all this multitude of writers, the greater part have only heaped error upon error, puerility upon extravagance; and since it appears from every page they have written (I hope they will pardon me) that not only are they ignorant of the very a, b, c of the subject they have so fantastically treated, but their opinions upon this class of facts rest upon no basis whatever,—therefore I have thought it would serve a purpose if I should leave, as a souvenir of the long wrangle, a piece of writing better based and buttressed than the lucubrations of the above-mentioned gentlemen. As a lover of truth, I am willing to face a thousand reproaches. Be it distinctly understood that I do not for a moment deem my judgment superior to that of my confrères, some of whom are in other respects highly gifted. The simple fact is that they are not familiar with this subject, but are straying in it at random, wandering through a strange region. They misunderstand the very terminology, and imagine that facts long ago well authenticated are impossible. By way of contrast, the writer of these lines will state that for several years he has been engaged in discussions and experiments upon the subject. (I am not speaking of historical studies.) "Moreover, although the old saw would have us believe that 'it is not always desirable to state the truth,' yet, to speak frankly, I am so indignant at the overweening presumption of certain polemical opponents, and at the gall they have injected into the debate, that I do not hesitate to rise and point out to the deceived public that, without a single exception, all the arguments brought up by these writers, and upon which they have boldly planted their banner of victory, prove absolutely nothing, NOTHING, against the possible truth of the things which they, in the fury of their denial, have so perverted. Such a snarl of opinions must be analyzed. In brief, the true must be disentangled from the false. Veritas, veritas!"
