DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research" by Michael Sage. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.
After being diagnosed with a life-threatening tumor at the age of 22 Leonora Piper sought out the services of a known healer and medium that was reputed to be able to instill psychic abilities in his patrons. During her first session with this medium she went into a trance and thus began a long and interesting career in the psychic arts. Though she claimed psychic experiences were common to her, even in childhood, her session with the medium resulted in her ability to channel such diverse entities as a French doctor, Abraham Lincoln, a young Italian maid, and Johann Sebastian Bach, Mrs. Piper and the Society for Psychical Research is the story of this corseted maven and the Society for Psychical Research’s exhaustive fifteen year investigation into her supernatural powers.
The more than 50 articles, essays, and reviews collected here for the first time were published by James over a span of some 25 years. The record of a sustained interest in phenomena of a highly controversial nature, they make it amply clear that James's work in psychical research was not an eccentric hobby but a serious and sympathetic concern.
Well before Darwinism, as it came to be called, impacted the educated world during the last four decades of the 19th Century, mainstream religion was in decline, as science and its concomitant, rationalism, took hold. Thomas Paine's book, The Age of Reason, published in three parts (1794, 1795, and 1807) influenced many educated people to repudiate their religious beliefs, including both God and the idea of an afterlife. For those who sat on the fence, unsure as to what to believe, Darwinism was the knock-out blow, since it was perceived as totally refuting the biblical account of creation as set forth in the Book of Genesis, which said that God created the world in seven days. Falsus in uno, falso in omnibus - false in one, then false in all - seems to have been the logical conclusion. After all, if the Bible had been inspired by God, as religious leaders proclaimed, how could an all-knowing God be so wrong? Therefore, god must not exist, and if there is no god, then there must not be an afterlife, either. If the spirits who communicated in the years immediately following the advent of Spiritualism in Hydesville, New York during 1848, are to be believed, there was a plan behind it all - a plan that resulted from a growing loss of faith and spiritual values in an increasingly materialistic world. "It is to draw mankind together in harmony, and to convince skeptics of the immortality of the soul," was the reply given to Territory of Wisconsin Governor Nathaniel P. Tallmadge when he asked a communicating spirit claiming to be John C. Calhoun, former vice-president of the United States, about the purpose of the strange phenomena. Some three years after the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) was founded in London in 1882, Leonora Piper, a young Boston, Massachusetts housewife, was "discovered" by William James, a pioneering psychologist, of Harvard University. Messages were delivered through Mrs. Piper that seemed to be coming from spirits of the dead. Soon after the discovery of Mrs. Piper, the American branch of the SPR (ASPR) was formed under the guidance of Professor James, and its primary task became the study of her mediumship, although it undertook the investigation of other mediums and paranormal phenomena, as well. A number of other reputable scientists and scholars studied Mrs. Piper for a quarter of a century. Unfortunately, because of the resistance of mainstream science on one end and orthodox religion on the other, the latter seeing communication with spirits as demonic, the research has been, for the most part, filed away in dust-covered cabinets and written off by many as outdated. Skeptics deride it as the product of hallucination and delusion and conclude that Mrs. Piper was just another charlatan, one clever enough to dupe many intelligent men and women in hundreds of observations over some 25 years. As the researchers came to understand, spirits face many obstacles in communicating with the earth realm and thus their messages are often fragmentary, confusing, distorted, meaningless, and wrong. Professor James called it the "bosh" material, seeing it as one major reason why Mrs. Piper's mediumship was not more widely accepted. In this book, author Michael Tymn filters out much of the bosh, permitting the reader to better appreciate the genuine communication. He explores the various interpretations, other than fraud, considered by the researchers. He approaches the subject as a lawyer arguing for the reality of spirit communication. He believes that those who carefully study the research and take the time to understand it will likely see Leonora Piper as the "white crow" that William James proclaimed her to be - the one who proved that all crows are not black, the one who gave science some very intriguing evidence that, under certain conditions, the "dead" can communicate with us.
THE INSPIRATION FOR THE NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIES • An impeccably researched, page-turning investigation, revealing stunning and wide-ranging evidence suggesting that consciousness survives death, from New York Times bestselling author Leslie Kean “An engaging, personal, and transformative journey that challenges the skeptic and informs us all.”—Harold E. Puthoff, Ph.D., director of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin In this groundbreaking book, award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author Leslie Kean investigates the unexplained continuity of the human psyche after death. Here, Kean explores the most compelling case studies of young children reporting verifiable details from past lives, contemporary mediums who seem to defy the boundaries of the brain and of the physical world, apparitions providing information about their lives on earth, and people who die and then come back to report journeys into another dimension. Based on facts and scientific studies, Surviving Death includes fascinating chapters by medical doctors, psychiatrists, and PhDs from four countries. As a seasoned reporter whose work transcends belief systems and ideology, Kean enriches the narrative by including her own unexpected, confounding experiences encountered while she probed the question concerning all of us: Do we survive death?
“Superbly organized and researched, this book by Block provides a comprehensive presentation about parapsychology." -Library Journal, Starred Review The Encyclopedia of Parapsychology covers the history of parapsychology, key international figures, and a decade-by-decade annotated bibliography of research. It includes find information on early psychical researchers from around the globe and how the work of those psychical researchers inspired the creation of the modern field of parapsychology. Alongside biographical entries about key figures are sketches of those at the center of psychical inquiry, like mediums and others who seemingly have the ability to manifest strange phenomena. The Encyclopedia covers the Spiritualism era which influenced early psychical inquiry and how it influenced psychical thought around the globe. More contemporary coverage includes biographical entries for current international researchers who continue to investigate the depths of psi phenomena. In order to provide comprehensive coverage of historical and modern research into psi phenomena, the Encyclopedia features a decade-by-decade bibliography of resources that highlight the shifting theories and experiments of the field, starting from the 1870s and going through the 2020s. This section includes a wide variety of research into topics such as psychokinesis, hauntings, poltergeists (also known as recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis), near-death experiences, extrasensory perception, remote viewing, and much more. Appendices provide information on international parapsychological research organizations and a quick start research guide. With information on key figures and research on an international scale, The Encyclopedia of Parapsychology provides an approachable yet comprehensive compendium of information.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Poision Squad and The Poisoner's Handbook tells the amazing story of William James's quest for empirical evidence of the spirit world What if a world-renowned philosopher and professor of psychiatry at Harvard suddenly announced he believed in ghosts? At the close of the nineteenth century, the illustrious William James led a determined scientific investigation into "unexplainable" incidences of clairvoyance and ghostly visitations. James and a small group of eminent scientists staked their reputations, their careers, even their sanity on one of the most extraordinary quests ever undertaken: to empirically prove the existence of ghosts, spirits, and psychic phenomena. What they pursued—and what they found—raises questions as fascinating today as they were then.
