1.
Non-profit organisation
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A nonprofit organization is an organization whose purpose is something other than making a profit. A nonprofit organization is dedicated to furthering a particular social cause or advocating for a particular point of view. This is known as the non-distribution constraint, the decision to adopt a nonprofit legal structure is one that will often have taxation implications, particularly where the nonprofit seeks income tax exemption, charitable status and so on. The terms nonprofit and not-for-profit are not consistently differentiated across jurisdictions, in laymans terms they are usually equivalent in concept, although in various jurisdictions there are accounting and legal differences. The nonprofit landscape is varied, although many people have come to associate NPOs with charitable organizations. Although charities do make up an often high-profile or visible aspect of the sector, overall, they tend to be either member-serving or community-serving. e. It could be argued many nonprofits sit across both camps, at least in terms of the impact they make. For example, the support group that provides a lifeline to those with a particular condition or disease could be deemed to be serving its members. Many NPOs use the model of a bottom line in that furthering their cause is more important than making a profit. Although NPOs are permitted to generate revenues, they must be retained by the organization for its self-preservation, expansion. NPOs have controlling members or a board of directors, many have paid staff including management, whereas others employ unpaid volunteers and executives who work with or without compensation. In some countries, where there is a fee, in general. The extent to which an NPO can generate surplus revenues may be constrained or use of surplus revenues may be restricted. Some NPOs may also be a charity or service organization, they may be organized as a corporation or as a trust. Their goal is not to be successful in terms of wealth, NPOs have a wide diversity of structures and purposes. Some of the above must be expressed in the charter of establishment or constitution. Others may be provided by the authority at each particular jurisdiction. While affiliations will not affect a legal status, they may be taken into consideration by legal proceedings as an indication of purpose, most countries have laws that regulate the establishment and management of NPOs and that require compliance with corporate governance regimes
2.
Parapsychology
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It is identified as pseudoscience by the overwhelming majority of mainstream scientists. Parapsychology research is conducted by private institutions in several countries and funded through private donations. Most papers about parapsychology are published in a number of niche journals. Parapsychology has been criticised for continuing investigation despite being unable to provide convincing evidence for the existence of any psychic phenomena after more than a century of research and it has been noted that most academics do not take the claims of parapsychology seriously. Para is from Greek, and means beside, closely related to, the term parapsychology was coined in or around 1889 by philosopher Max Dessoir. Rhine in the 1930s as a replacement for the psychical research in order to indicate a significant shift toward experimental methodology. The term originates from the Greek, παρά para meaning alongside, in parapsychology, psi is the unknown factor in extrasensory perception and psychokinesis experiences that is not explained by known physical or biological mechanisms. The term is derived from the Greek ψ psi, 23rd letter of the Greek alphabet, the term was coined by biologist Berthold P. Wiesner, and first used by psychologist Robert Thouless in a 1942 article published in the British Journal of Psychology. The Parapsychological Association divides psi into two categories, psi-gamma for extrasensory perception and psi-kappa for psychokinesis. In popular culture, psi has become more and more synonymous with special psychic, mental, in 1853, the chemist Robert Hare conducted experiments with mediums and reported positive results. Other researchers such as Frank Podmore highlighted flaws in his experiments, agenor de Gasparin conducted early experiments into table-tipping. Over a period of five months in 1853 he declared the experiments a success being the result of an ectenic force, critics noted that the conditions were insufficient to prevent trickery. For example the knees of the sitters may have been employed to move the table and no experimenter was watching above, the German astrophysicist Johann Karl Friedrich Zöllner tested the medium Henry Slade in 1877. According to Zöllner some of the experiments were a success, however, flaws in the experiments were discovered and critics have suggested that Slade was a fraud who performed trickery in the experiments. The Society for Psychical Research was founded in London in 1882 and its formation was the first systematic effort to organize scientists and scholars to investigate paranormal phenomena. Early membership included philosophers, scholars, scientists, educators and politicians, such as Henry Sidgwick, Arthur Balfour, William Crookes, Rufus Osgood Mason and Nobel Laureate Charles Richet. Presidents of the Society included, in addition to Richet, Eleanor Sidgwick and William James, and subsequently Nobel Laureates Henri Bergson and Lord Rayleigh, and philosopher C. D. Broad. Areas of study included telepathy, hypnotism, Reichenbachs phenomena, apparitions, hauntings, in the 1880s the Society investigated apparitional experiences and hallucinations in the sane
3.
Psychic
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A psychic is a person who claims to use extrasensory perception to identify information hidden from the normal senses. The word psychic is used as an adjective to describe such abilities. Psychics may be theatrical performers, such as magicians, who use techniques such as prestidigitation, cold reading. Psychics appear regularly in fantasy fiction, such as in the novel The Dead Zone by Stephen King, a large industry and network exists whereby psychics provide advice and counsel to clients. Some famous psychics include Edgar Cayce, Ingo Swann, Peter Hurkos, Jose Ortiz El Samaritano, Miss Cleo, John Edward, psychic powers are asserted by psychic detectives and in practices such as psychic archaeology and even psychic surgery. Critics attribute psychic powers to intentional trickery or to self-delusion, a study attempted to repeat recently reported parapsychological experiments that appeared to support the existence of precognition. It is also used in science-fiction. The word psychic is derived from the Greek word psychikos, the Greek word also means soul. In Greek mythology, the maiden Psyche was the deification of the human soul, the word derivation of the Latin psȳchē is from the Greek psȳchḗ, literally breath, derivative of psȳ́chein, to breathe or to blow. French astronomer and spiritualist Camille Flammarion is credited as having first used the word psychic, elaborate systems of divination and fortune-telling date back to ancient times. Some fortune-tellers were said to be able to make predictions without the use of these elaborate systems and these people were known as seers or prophets, and in later times as clairvoyants and psychics. Seers formed a functionary role in civilization, often serving as advisors, priests. A number of examples are included in biblical accounts, the book of 1 Samuel illustrates one such functionary task when Samuel is asked to find the donkeys of the future king Saul. The role of prophet appeared perennially in ancient cultures, in Egypt, the priests of the sun deity Ra at Memphis acted as seers. In ancient Assyria seers were referred to as nabu, meaning to call or announce, the Delphic Oracle is one of the earliest stories in classical antiquity of prophetic abilities. The Pythia, the priestess presiding over the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi, was believed to be able to deliver prophecies inspired by Apollo during rituals beginning in the 8th century BC. Other scholars believe records from the time indicate that the Pythia spoke intelligibly, the Pythia was a position served by a succession of women probably selected from amongst a guild of priestesses of the temple. The last recorded response was given in 393 AD, when the emperor Theodosius I ordered pagan temples to cease operation, recent geological investigations raise the possibility that ethylene gas caused the Pythias state of inspiration
4.
Paranormal
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A paranormal phenomenon is different from hypothetical concepts such as dark matter and dark energy. Unlike paranormal phenomena, these concepts are based on empirical observations. The most notable paranormal beliefs include those that pertain to ghosts, extraterrestrial life, unidentified flying objects, psychic abilities or extrasensory perception, the term paranormal has existed in the English language since at least 1920. The word consists of two parts, para and normal, the definition implies that the scientific explanation of the world around us is normal and anything that is above, beyond, or contrary to that is para. On the classification of paranormal subjects, Terence Hines in his book Pseudoscience, what sets the paranormal apart from other pseudosciences is a reliance on explanations for alleged phenomena that are well outside the bounds of established science. Thus, paranormal phenomena include extrasensory perception, telekinesis, ghosts, poltergeists, life after death, reincarnation, faith healing, human auras, the explanations for these allied phenomena are phrased in vague terms of psychic forces, human energy fields, and so on. This is in contrast to many pseudoscientific explanations for other nonparanormal phenomena, in traditional belief and fiction, a ghost is a manifestation of the spirit or soul of a person. Alternative theories expand on that idea and include belief in the ghosts of deceased animals, sometimes the term ghost is used synonymously with any spirit or demon, however in popular usage the term typically refers to a deceased persons spirit. The belief in ghosts as souls of the departed is closely tied to the concept of animism, as the 19th-century anthropologist George Frazer explained in his classic work, The Golden Bough, souls were seen as the creature within that animated the body. Although the evidence for ghosts is largely anecdotal, the belief in ghosts throughout history has remained widespread, the possibility of extraterrestrial life is not, by itself, a paranormal subject. Many scientists are engaged in the search for unicellular life within the solar system, carrying out studies on the surface of Mars. Projects such as SETI are conducting a search for radio activity that would show evidence of intelligent life outside the solar system. Scientific theories of how life developed on Earth allow for the possibility that life developed on other planets as well, the paranormal aspect of extraterrestrial life centers largely around the belief in unidentified flying objects and the phenomena said to be associated with them. Early in the history of UFO culture, believers divided themselves into two camps, the first held a rather conservative view of the phenomena, interpreting them as unexplained occurrences that merited serious study. They began calling themselves ufologists in the 1950s and felt that logical analysis of sighting reports would validate the notion of extraterrestrial visitation, the second camp consisted of individuals who coupled ideas of extraterrestrial visitation with beliefs from existing quasi-religious movements. These individuals typically were enthusiasts of occultism and the paranormal, many had backgrounds as active Theosophists, Spiritualists, or were followers of other esoteric doctrines. In contemporary times, many of these beliefs have coalesced into New Age spiritual movements, both secular and spiritual believers describe UFOs as having abilities beyond what are considered possible according to known aerodynamic constraints and physical laws. The transitory events surrounding many UFO sightings also limits the opportunity for repeat testing required by the scientific method, acceptance of UFO theories by the larger scientific community is further hindered by the many possible hoaxes associated with UFO culture
5.
Henry Sidgwick
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Henry Sidgwick was an English utilitarian philosopher and economist. He was one of the founders and first president of the Society for Psychical Research and his work in economics has also had a lasting influence. He also founded Newnham College in 1875, a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. It was the second Cambridge college to admit women after Girton College, the co-founder of the college was Millicent Garrett Fawcett. He joined the Cambridge Apostles intellectual secret society in 1856 and he was born at Skipton in Yorkshire, where his father, the Reverend W. Sidgwick, was headmaster of the local grammar school, Ermysteds Grammar School. His mother was Mary Sidgwick, née Crofts, Henry himself was educated at Rugby, and at Trinity College, Cambridge. While at Trinity, Sidgwick became a member of the Cambridge Apostles, in 1859, he was senior classic, 33rd wrangler, chancellors medallist and Craven scholar. In the same year, he was elected to a fellowship at Trinity, and soon afterwards, he became a lecturer in classics there, the Sidgwick Site, home to several of the universitys arts and humanities faculties in the university, is named after him. In 1869, he exchanged his lectureship for one in moral philosophy, in the same year, deciding that he could no longer in good conscience declare himself a member of the Church of England, he resigned his fellowship. He retained his lectureship, and in 1881, he was elected an honorary fellow, in 1874 he published The Methods of Ethics, by common consent a major work, which made his reputation outside the university. John Rawls called it the first truly academic work in moral theory, in 1875, he was appointed praelector on moral and political philosophy at Trinity, and in 1883 he was elected Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy. In 1885, the religious test having been removed, his once more elected him to a fellowship on the foundation. Besides his lecturing and literary labours, Sidgwick took a part in the business of the university and in many forms of social. He married Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick, who was a member of the Ladies Dining Society in Cambridge, Bart Schultzs 2005 biography of Sidgwick sought to establish that Sidgwick was a lifelong homosexual, but it is unknown whether he ever consummated his inclinations. According to Schultz, Sidgwick struggled internally throughout his life with issues of hypocrisy and he is buried in Terling All Saints Churchyard, Terling, Essex, with his wife. In July 1895, the medium Eusapia Palladino was invited to England to Frederic William Henry Myerss house in Cambridge for a series of investigations into her mediumship. According to reports by the investigators, Myers and Oliver Lodge and her fraud was so clever, according to Myers, that it must have needed long practice to bring it to its present level of skill. In the Cambridge sittings, the results proved disastrous for her mediumship, during the séances, Palladino was caught cheating to free herself from the physical controls of the experiments
6.
William F. Barrett
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Sir William Fletcher Barrett was an English physicist and parapsychologist. There he lived with his mother, Martha Barrett, née Fletcher, and his sister, the family returned to their native England in Royston, Hertfordshire in 1848. In 1855 they moved to Manchester and Barrett was then educated at Old Trafford Grammar School and he then taught at the Royal School of Naval Architecture. In 1873 he became Professor of Experimental Physics at the Royal College of Science for Ireland, from the early 1880s he lived with his mother, sister, and two live-in servants in a residence at Kingstown. Barrett discovered Stalloy, an alloy used in electrical engineering and also did a lot of work on sensitive flames. During his studies of metals and their properties, Barrett worked with W. Brown and he also discovered the shortening of nickel through magnetisation in 1882. When Barrett developed cataracts in his years, he also began to study biology with a series of experiments designed to locate. The result of experiments was a machine called the entoptiscope. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in June 1899 and was also a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and he married Florence Willey in 1916. He died at home,31 Devonshire Place in London, Barrett became interested in the paranormal in the 1860s after having an experience with mesmerism. Barrett believed that he had been witness to thought transference and by the 1870s he was investigating poltergeists, the publication caused controversy and in the wake of this Barrett decided to found a society of like-minded individuals to help further his research. Barrett held conference between 5–6 January 1882 in London, in February the Society for Psychical Research was formed. Barrett was a Christian and spiritualist member of the SPR, although he had founded the society, Barrett was only truly active for a year, and in 1884 founded the American Society for Psychical Research before his paranormal research diminished significantly. However, he became president of the society in 1904 and continued to submit articles to their journal, Barrett and the other members of the SPR such as Edmund Gurney and Frederic W. H. Myers had been easily duped. Barrett had a special interest in divining rods and in 1897 and 1900 he published two articles on the subject in Proceedings of the SPR, as a believer in telepathy, Barrett denounced the muscle reading of Stuart Cumberland and other magicians as pseudo thought readers. Barrett helped to publish Frederick Bligh Bonds book Gate of Remembrance which was based on alleged psychical excavations at Glastonbury Abbey, Barrett endorsed the claims of the book and testified to Bonds sincerity. However, professional archaeologists and skeptics have found Bonds claims dubious, in 1919, Barrett wrote the introduction to medium Hester Dowdens book Voices from the Void. Barrett has drawn criticism from researchers and skeptics as being overly credulous for endorsing spiritualist mediums, for example, author Ronald Pearsall wrote that Barrett was duped into believing spiritualism by mediumship trickery
7.
Stainton Moses
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William Stainton Moses was an English cleric and spiritualist medium. Moses was born in Donington near Lincoln and he was educated at Bedford School, University College School, London and Exeter College, Oxford. He was ordained as a priest of the Church of England by Bishop Samuel Wilberforce in 1870, Moses attended his first séance with Lottie Fowler in 1872. Charles Williams and Daniel Dunglas Home were the mediums he visited. Five months after his introduction to spiritualism, he claimed to have experienced levitation, the automatic scripts of Moses began to appear in his books Spirit Teachings and Spirit Identity. The scripts date from 1872 to 1883 and fill 24 notebooks, all but one have been preserved by the London Spiritualist Alliance. A Treatise on One of the Objective Forms of Psychic or Spiritual Phenomena in 1878, in it, he coins the term psychography for the spiritualist concept of channeling messages from the dead via automatic writing. Moses was one of the first vice-presidents of the Society for Psychical Research, other early members included Frederic W. H. Myers, Henry Sidgwick and Edmund Gurney. In 1886 and 1887 in a series of publications the SPR exposed the tricks of the medium William Eglinton, because of this, some spiritualist members including Moses resigned from the SPR. Moses endorsed the spirit photography of Édouard Isidore Buguet, however, Moses had supported Buguet in an article for Human Nature in May 1875. After Burguet was exposed later in the year, Moses insisted that Buguet was still a genuine medium. The case has been cited by researchers as an example of spiritualists willing to believe, in 1884, Moses was a founding member, together with Rogers, of the London Spiritualist Alliance, afterwards the College of Psychic Studies. Moses died on 5 September 1892, Moses performed in dark conditions only with a small select circle of friends, he did not allow psychical researchers to attend his séances and refused to be tested. Nor would the feats described have required any special skill on the mediums part and it was suggested that Moses looked up obituaries, daily newspapers, biographies or The Annual Register to research the history of deceased people. Joseph McCabe described Moses as an impostor and wrote that his apports. Science historian Sherrie Lynne Lyons wrote that the glowing or light-emitting hands in séances could easily be explained by the rubbing of oil of phosphorus on the hands, Moses was caught twice with a bottle of phosphorus. To my mind, he was quite capable, many of Mosess statements about ancient history have proven to be false. Researcher Georgess McHargue has suggested that Moses mediumship was the result of self-suggestion, the first documented instance of cryptomnesia occurred in 1874 with Moses
8.
Frederic W. H. Myers
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Frederic William Henry Myers was a poet, classicist, philologist, and a founder of the Society for Psychical Research. Myers work on research and his ideas about a subliminal self were influential in his time. Myers was the son of Revd Frederic Myers and his second wife Susan Harriet Myers nee Marshall and he was a brother of poet Ernest Myers and of Dr. Arthur Thomas Myers. His maternal grandfather was the wealthy industrialist John Marshall and he was a Fellow of Trinity College from 1865 to 1874 and college lecturer in classics from 1865 to 1869. In 1872 be became an Inspector of schools, in 1867, Myers published a long poem, St Paul, which became popular. The poem included the words of the hymn Hark what a sound and this was followed in 1882 by The Renewal of Youth and Other Poems. He also wrote books of criticism, in particular Wordsworth and Essays, Classical and Modern. As a young man, Myers was involved in relationships with Arthur Sidgwick, the poet John Addington Symonds. He later fell in love with Annie Eliza, the wife of his cousin Walter James Marshall, Myers relationship with his cousins wife has been questioned by different researchers to be sexual or Platonic. Annie committed suicide in September 1876 by drowning, the British occult writer Richard Cavendish noted that According to his own statement, he had very strong sexual inclinations, which he indulged. These would seem to have been mainly homosexual in his youth, in 1880, Myers married Eveleen Tennant, daughter of Charles Tennant and Gertrude Tennant. They had two sons, the elder the novelist Leopold Hamilton Myers, and a daughter, the researcher Trevor H. Hall argued that Myers had an affair with the medium Ada Goodrich Freer. However, Trevor Hamilton dismissed this and suggested that Freer was simply using her acquaintance with Myers to gain status in the psychical research movement, John Grant has suggested that Myers was a womanizer who was easily duped and probably seduced by Freer. Biographer Bart Schultz has written that Myers was suspected of all manner of sexual quirks and he also noted the odd behaviour of Myers, such as insisting to be with Edmund Gurney with his bride on their Honeymoon even against strong protest from the bride. A relationship between eroticism and Myers interest in research was examined by Professor of Philosophy Jeffrey J. Kripal. Biographer Trevor Hamilton has defended Myers against the allegations of sexual misconduct, Myers was interested in psychical research and was one of the founding members of the Society for Psychical Research in 1883. He became the President in 1900, Myers psychical ideas and theory of a subliminal self did not impress contemporary psychologists. Psychologists who shared an interest in psychical research such as Théodore Flournoy, however, according to historian Janet Oppenheim not even all Myers colleagues at the SPR accepted his hypotheses
9.
William Crookes
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Sir William Crookes OM PRS was an English chemist and physicist who attended the Royal College of Chemistry in London, and worked on spectroscopy. He was a pioneer of vacuum tubes, inventing the Crookes tube which was made in 1875, Crookes was the inventor of the Crookes radiometer, which today is made and sold as a novelty item. Late in life, he interested in spiritualism, and became the president of the Society for Psychical Research. Crookes made a career of being a meteorologist and fierce lecture giver at multiple studies and courses, Crookes worked in chemistry and physics. His experiments were notable for the originality of their design and his interests, ranging over pure and applied science, economic and practical problems, and psychiatric research, made him a well-known personality. He received many public and academic honors, Crookess life was one of unbroken scientific activity. William Crookes was born in London, the eldest of 16 siblings and his father, Joseph Crookes, was a tailor of north-country origin, at that time living with his second wife, Mary Scott Lewis Rutherford Johnson. From 1850 to 1854 he filled the position of assistant in the college and it wasnt in organic chemistry which the focus of his teacher, August Wilhelm von Hofmann, might have been expected to lead him towards, but into new compounds of selenium. These were the subject of his first published papers,1851, in 1855 he was appointed lecturer in chemistry at the Chester Diocesan Training College. In 1856 he married Ellen, daughter of William Humphrey of Darlington and they had three sons and a daughter. Married and living in London, he was devoted mainly to independent work, in 1859, he founded the Chemical News, a science magazine which he edited for many years and conducted on much less formal lines than was usual for the journals of scientific societies. In 1861, Crookes discovered an unknown element with a bright green emission line in its spectrum and named the element thallium, from the Greek thallos. Crookes wrote a treatise on Select Methods in Chemical Analysis in 1871. The method of analysis, introduced by Bunsen and Kirchhoff, was received by Crookes with great enthusiasm. His first important discovery was that of the element thallium, announced in 1861, by this work his reputation became firmly established, and he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1863. He developed the Crookes tubes, investigating cathode rays and he published numerous papers on spectroscopy and conducted research on a variety of minor subjects. In his investigations of the conduction of electricity in low pressure gases, he discovered that as the pressure was lowered, as these examples indicate, he was a pioneer in the construction and use of vacuum tubes for the study of physical phenomena. He was, as a consequence, one of the first scientists to investigate what is now called a plasma and he also devised one of the first instruments for studying nuclear radioactivity, the spinthariscope
10.
Oliver Lodge
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For the British poet and author, see Oliver W. F. Lodge Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge, FRS was a British physicist and writer involved in the development of, and holder of key patents for, radio. He identified electromagnetic radiation independent of Hertz proof and at his 1894 Royal Institution lectures, in 1898 he was awarded the syntonic patent by the United States Patent Office. Lodge was Principal of the University of Birmingham from 1900 to 1920, Oliver Lodge was born in 1851 at The Views Penkhull in what is now Stoke-on-Trent, and educated at Adams Grammar School, Newport, Shropshire. He was the eldest of eight sons and a daughter of Oliver Lodge – later a ball clay merchant at Wolstanton, Staffordshire – and his wife, Grace, née Heath. Lodges siblings included Sir Richard Lodge, historian, Eleanor Constance Lodge, historian and principal of Westfield College, London, in 1865, Lodge, at the age of 14, entered his fathers business as an agent for B. Fayle & Co selling Purbeck blue clay to the potteries, travelling as far as Scotland and he continued to assist his father until he reached the age of 22. His fathers wealth obtained from selling Purbeck ball clay enabled Lodge to attend lectures in London. Lodge obtained a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of London in 1875 and he was appointed professor of physics and mathematics at University College, Liverpool in 1881. In 1900 Lodge moved from Liverpool back to the Midlands and became the first principal of the new Birmingham University and he oversaw the start of the move of the university from Edmund Street in the city centre to its present Edgbaston campus. Lodge was awarded the Rumford Medal of the Royal Society in 1898 and was knighted by King Edward VII in 1902, in 1928 he was made Freeman of his native city, Stoke-on-Trent. Lodge married Mary Fanny Alexander Marshall at St Georges Church, Newcastle-under-Lyme in 1877. They had twelve children, six boys and six girls, Oliver William Foster, Francis Brodie, Alec, Lionel, Noel, Violet, Raymond, Honor, Lorna, Norah, Barbara, four of his sons went into business using Lodges inventions. Brodie and Alec created the Lodge Plug Company, which manufactured sparking plugs for cars, Lionel and Noel founded a company that produced an electrostatic device for cleaning factory and smelter smoke in 1913, called the Lodge Fume Deposit Company Limited. Oliver, the eldest son, became a poet and author, after his retirement in 1920, Lodge and his wife settled in Normanton House, near Lake in Wiltshire, just a few miles from Stonehenge. Lodge and his wife are buried at the parish church, St. Michaels. Their eldest son Oliver and eldest daughter Violet are buried at the same church, in 1873 J. C. Maxwell published A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism and by 1876 Lodge was studying it intently. Indeed, Lodge is probably best known for his advocacy and elaboration of Maxwells aether theory – a later deprecated model postulating a wave-bearing medium filling all space. He explained his views on the aether in Modern Views of Electricity, as early as 1879 Lodge became interested in generating electromagnetic waves, something Maxwell had never considered
11.
Charles Richet
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Charles Robert Richet was a French physiologist at the Collège de France known for his pioneering work in immunology. In 1913, he won the Nobel Prize in recognition of his work on anaphylaxis, Richet devoted many years to the study of paranormal and spiritualist phenomena, coining the term ectoplasm. He also believed in the inferiority of blacks, was a proponent of eugenics, Richet spent a period of time as an intern at the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris, where he observed Jean-Martin Charcots work with then so called hysterical patients. In 1887, Richet became professor of physiology at the Collège de France investigating a variety of such as neurochemistry, digestion, thermoregulation in homeothermic animals. In 1898, he became a member of the Académie de Médecine, the research helped elucidate hay fever, asthma and other allergic reactions to foreign substances and explained some previously not understood cases of intoxication and sudden death. In 1914, he became a member of the Académie des Sciences, Richet discovered the analgesic drug chloralose with. Richet had many interests, and he wrote books about history, sociology, philosophy, psychology, as well as theatre plays and he was a pioneer in aviation. He was involved in the French pacifist movement, starting in 1902, pacifist societies began to meet at a National Peace Congress, often with several hundred attendees. Unable to unify the pacifist forces they set up a permanent delegation of French Pacifist Societies in 1902. Richet held a deep interest in perception and hypnosis. In 1884, Alexandr Aksakov interested him in the mediumof Eusapia Palladino, in 1891, Richet founded the Annales des sciences psychiques. He kept in touch with renowned occultists and spiritualists of his such as Albert von Schrenck-Notzing, Frederic William Henry Myers. In 1919, Richet became honorary chairman of the Institut Métapsychique International in Paris, as a scientist, Richet was positive about a physical explanation for paranormal phenomena. He wrote, It has been shown that as regards subjective metapsychics the simplest and most rational explanation is to suppose the existence of a faculty of supernormal cognition, setting in motion the human intelligence by certain vibrations that do not move the normal senses. In 1905, Richet was named president of the Society for Psychical Research in the United Kingdom, in 1894, Richet coined the term ectoplasm. He rejected the hypothesis of mediumship as unscientific, instead supporting the sixth sense hypothesis. According to Richet, It seems to me prudent not to give credence to the spiritistic hypothesis, consequently, although in certain rare cases spiritism supplies an apparently simpler explanation, I cannot bring myself to accept it. The history of the Hertzian waves shows us the ubiquity of these vibrations in the external world and he hypothesized a “sixth sense”, an ability to perceive hypothetical vibrations, which he discussed in his 1928 book Our Sixth Sense
12.
William James
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William James was an American philosopher and psychologist who was also trained as a physician. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked James as the 14th most cited psychologist of the 20th century and he also developed the philosophical perspective known as radical empiricism. James work has influenced intellectuals such as Émile Durkheim, W. E. B, du Bois, Edmund Husserl, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Rorty, and has even influenced Presidents, such as Jimmy Carter. Born into a family, James was the son of the Swedenborgian theologian Henry James Sr. James wrote widely on topics, including epistemology, education, metaphysics, psychology, religion. William James was born at the Astor House in New York City and he was the son of Henry James Sr. a noted and independently wealthy Swedenborgian theologian well acquainted with the literary and intellectual elites of his day. William James received an eclectic trans-Atlantic education, developing fluency in both German and French, education in the James household encouraged cosmopolitanism. The family made two trips to Europe while William James was still a child, setting a pattern that resulted in thirteen more European journeys during his life. In his early adulthood, James suffered from a variety of ailments, including those of the eyes, back, stomach. Two younger brothers, Garth Wilkinson and Robertson, fought in the Civil War, the other three siblings all suffered from periods of invalidism. He took up studies at Harvard Medical School in 1864. His studies were interrupted once again due to illness in April 1867 and he traveled to Germany in search of a cure and remained there until November 1868, at that time he was 26 years old. During this period, he began to publish, reviews of his works appeared in periodicals such as the North American Review. James finally earned his M. D. degree in June 1869, what he called his soul-sickness would only be resolved in 1872, after an extended period of philosophical searching. He married Alice Gibbens in 1878, in 1882 he joined the Theosophical Society. Jamess time in Germany proved intellectually fertile, helping him find that his interests lay not in medicine but in philosophy. Later, in 1902 he would write, I originally studied medicine in order to be a physiologist, I never had any philosophic instruction, the first lecture on psychology I ever heard being the first I ever gave. In 1875–1876, James, Henry Pickering Bowditch, Charles Pickering Putnam, G. Stanley Hall, Henri Bergson and Sigmund Freud
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Hypnotism
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Hypnosis is a state of human consciousness involving focused attention and reduced peripheral awareness and an enhanced capacity to respond to suggestion. The term may refer to an art, skill, or act of inducing hypnosis. Theories explaining what occurs during hypnosis fall into two groups, altered state theories see hypnosis as an altered state of mind or trance, marked by a level of awareness different from the ordinary conscious state. In contrast, nonstate theories see hypnosis as a form of imaginative role enactment, during hypnosis, a person is said to have heightened focus and concentration. The person can concentrate intensely on a thought or memory. Hypnotised subjects are said to show a response to suggestions. Hypnosis is usually induced by a known as a hypnotic induction involving a series of preliminary instructions. The use of hypnotism for therapeutic purposes is referred to as hypnotherapy, stage hypnosis is often performed by mentalists practicing the art form of mentalism. The term hypnosis comes from the ancient Greek word ὕπνος hypnos, sleep, and the suffix -ωσις -osis, or from ὑπνόω hypnoō, put to sleep and the suffix -is. The words hypnosis and hypnotism both derive from the term neuro-hypnotism, all of which were coined by Étienne Félix dHenin de Cuvillers in 1820 and these words were popularized in English by the Scottish surgeon James Braid around 1841. Braid based his practice on that developed by Franz Mesmer and his followers, a person in a state of hypnosis is relaxed, has focused attention, and has increased suggestibility. It could be said that suggestion is explicitly intended to make use of the placebo effect. For example, in 1994, Irving Kirsch characterised hypnosis as a placebo, i. e. a method that openly makes use of suggestion. Have defined hypnosis in terms of dissociation, Social psychologists Sarbin and Coe. have described hypnosis in terms of role theory. Hypnosis is a role that play, they act as if they were hypnotised. Defined hypnosis in terms of behavioural parameters, such as task motivation. Conceptualised hypnosis as a state of enhanced suggestibility and he has defined hypnotism as a form of influence by one person exerted on another through the medium or agency of suggestion. Described hypnosis by using the concept of regression in the service of the ego
14.
Telepathy
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Telepathy is the purported transmission of information from one person to another without using any of our known sensory channels or physical interaction. Telepathy experiments have historically been criticized for lack of proper controls, there is no convincing evidence that telepathy exists, and the topic is generally considered by the scientific community to be pseudoscience. Telepathy is a theme in modern fiction and science fiction, with many extraterrestrials, superheroes. As the physical sciences made significant advances, scientific concepts were applied to mental phenomena, the modern concept of telepathy emerged in this context. The skeptic Eric Dingwall criticized SPR founding members Frederic W. H. Myers, in the late 19th century the magician Washington Irving Bishop would perform thought reading demonstrations. Bishop claimed no supernatural powers and ascribed his powers to muscular sensitivity, Bishop was investigated by a group of scientists including the editor of the British Medical Journal and the psychologist Francis Galton. Bishop performed several feats such as correctly identifying a selected spot on a table. During the experiment Bishop required physical contact with a subject who knew the correct answer and he would hold the hand or wrist of the helper. The scientists concluded that Bishop was not a telepath but using a highly trained skill to detect ideomotor movements. Another famous thought reader was the magician Stuart Cumberland, Cumberland claimed to possess no genuine psychic ability and his thought reading performances could only be demonstrated by holding the hand of his subject to read their muscular movements. He came into dispute with psychical researchers associated with the Society for Psychical Research who were searching for genuine cases of telepathy. Cumberland argued that telepathy and communication with the dead were impossible and that the mind of man can not be read through telepathy. In the late 19th century the Creery Sisters were tested by the Society for Psychical Research, however, during a later experiment they were caught utilizing signal codes and they confessed to fraud. G. A. Smith and myself have been accepted and cited as the evidence of the truth of thought transference. The psychologist Leonard T. Troland had carried out experiments in telepathy at Harvard University which were reported in 1917, the subjects produced below chance expectations. Arthur Conan Doyle and W. T, Stead were duped into believing Julius and Agnes Zancig had genuine psychic powers. Both Doyle and Stead wrote the Zancigs performed telepathy, the results revealed no evidence for telepathy. She attempted to duplicate 290 pictures which were drawn by her husband, Sinclair claimed Mary successfully duplicated 65 of them, with 155 partial successes and 70 failures
15.
Mediumship
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Mediumship is the practice of certain people —known as mediums— to purportedly mediate communication between spirits of the dead and living human beings. There are different types of mediumship including spirit channeling, and ouija, humans have been fascinated with contacting the dead since the beginning of human existence. Cave paintings by indigenous Australians date back 28,000 years, some depicting skulls, bones, spirits, Other cave paintings in Indonesia date back a further 10,000 years. Mediumship gained popularity during the century, when ouija boards were used by the upper classes as a source of entertainment. Investigations during this period revealed widespread fraud—with some practitioners employing techniques used by stage magicians—and the practice began to lose credibility, fraud is still rife in the medium/psychic industry, with cases of deception and trickery being discovered to this day. Scientific researchers have attempted to ascertain the validity of claims of mediumship, an experiment undertaken by the British Psychological Society led to the conclusion that the test subjects demonstrated no mediumistic ability. Other forms involve materializations of the spirit or the presence of a voice, the practice is associated with several religious-belief systems such as Vodun, Spiritualism, Spiritism, Candomblé, Voodoo, Umbanda and some New Age groups. In Spiritism and Spiritualism the medium has the role of an intermediary between the world of the living and the world of spirit. Mediums claim that they can listen to and relay messages from spirits, or that they can allow a spirit to control their body and speak through it directly or by using automatic writing or drawing. Spiritualists classify types of mediumship into two categories, mental and physical, Mental mediums allegedly tune in to the spirit world by listening, sensing. During seances, mediums are said to go into trances, varying from light to deep, attempts to communicate with the dead and other living human beings, aka spirits, have been documented back to early human history. Mediumship became quite popular in the 19th-century United States and the United Kingdom after the rise of Spiritualism as a religious movement, Modern Spiritualism is said to date from practices and lectures of the Fox sisters in New York State in 1848. The trance mediums Paschal Beverly Randolph and Emma Hardinge Britten were among the most celebrated lecturers and authors on the subject in the mid-19th century, allan Kardec coined the term Spiritism around 1860. Kardec claimed that conversations with spirits by selected mediums were the basis of his The Spirits Book and later, his five-book collection, some scientists of the period who investigated spiritualism also became converts. They included chemist Robert Hare, physicist William Crookes and evolutionary biologist Alfred Russel Wallace, nobel laureate Pierre Curie took a very serious scientific interest in the work of medium Eusapia Palladino. Other prominent adherents included journalist and pacifist William T, Stead and physician and author Arthur Conan Doyle. After the exposure of the fraudulent use of magic tricks by physical mediums such as the Davenport Brothers. However, the religion and its beliefs continue in spite of this, with physical mediumship and seances falling out of practice, Spiritualism continues to be practiced, primarily through various denominational spiritualist churches in the United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom
16.
Apparitional experiences
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In parapsychology, an apparitional experience is an anomalous, quasi-perceptual experience. It is characterized by the apparent perception of either a living being or an object without there being any material stimulus for such a perception. The person experiencing the apparition is awake, excluding dream visions from consideration, there are other competing explanations of apparitional experiences. Firsthand accounts of apparitional experiences differ in many respects from their counterparts in literary or traditional ghost stories. The content of apparitional experiences includes living beings, both human and animal, and even inanimate objects and their motive, as with most of the early work of the Society, was to provide evidence for human survival after death. For this reason they had a particular interest in what are known as ‘crisis cases’ and these are cases in which a person has a quasi-perceptual experience of someone at a distance at the time of that person’s death or other crisis. A notable later discussion of apparitional experiences was that of G. N. M. Tyrrell, the study and discussion of apparitions developed in a different direction in the 1970s, with the work of Celia Green and Charles McCreery. One of the points that was highlighted by their work was point listed above, by contrast, subjects who visit reputedly haunted locations in hopes of ‘seeing a ghost’ are more often than not disappointed. It is unusual for a figure to engage in any verbal interaction with the percipient. Apparitional experiences have relevance to psychological theories of perception, and in particular to the distinction between top-down and bottom-up approaches, gibson, emphasises the role of the external sensory stimulus. The interest of apparitional experiences to psychology has acquired an added dimension in recent years with the development of the concept of schizotypy or psychosis-proneness. This is conceived of as a dimension of personality, continuously distributed throughout the normal population, apparitional experiences also have implications for the philosophy of perception. Gibson, referred to above, became an advocate of the theory of direct realism. Initial descriptions of vicious snakes might then be drawn and redescribed as wavy lines, two armies struggling over my soul arose from the subjective experience of seeing moving sets of dots. Spiders might be reduced, when the patient stated and drew what he actually saw, in drawings of their hallucinations patients could often distinguish between those forms which duplicated what they saw with their eyes from those forms which were what they made out of it. Such difficulties of interpretation are much less obvious in the case of written reports by ostensibly normal subjects, in good health and not medicated at the time of the experience. Similar close mimicking of normal perception is reported by some of the subjects of a dream and out-of-body experiences. Apparitional experiences appear prima facie more compatible with the theory of representationalism
17.
English language
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English /ˈɪŋɡlɪʃ/ is a West Germanic language that was first spoken in early medieval England and is now the global lingua franca. Named after the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes that migrated to England, English is either the official language or one of the official languages in almost 60 sovereign states. It is the third most common language in the world, after Mandarin. It is the most widely learned second language and a language of the United Nations, of the European Union. It is the most widely spoken Germanic language, accounting for at least 70% of speakers of this Indo-European branch, English has developed over the course of more than 1,400 years. The earliest forms of English, a set of Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the century, are called Old English. Middle English began in the late 11th century with the Norman conquest of England, Early Modern English began in the late 15th century with the introduction of the printing press to London and the King James Bible, and the start of the Great Vowel Shift. Through the worldwide influence of the British Empire, modern English spread around the world from the 17th to mid-20th centuries, English is an Indo-European language, and belongs to the West Germanic group of the Germanic languages. Most closely related to English are the Frisian languages, and English, Old Saxon and its descendent Low German languages are also closely related, and sometimes Low German, English, and Frisian are grouped together as the Ingvaeonic or North Sea Germanic languages. Modern English descends from Middle English, which in turn descends from Old English, particular dialects of Old and Middle English also developed into a number of other English languages, including Scots and the extinct Fingallian and Forth and Bargy dialects of Ireland. English is classified as a Germanic language because it shares new language features with other Germanic languages such as Dutch, German and these shared innovations show that the languages have descended from a single common ancestor, which linguists call Proto-Germanic. Through Grimms law, the word for foot begins with /f/ in Germanic languages, English is classified as an Anglo-Frisian language because Frisian and English share other features, such as the palatalisation of consonants that were velar consonants in Proto-Germanic. The earliest form of English is called Old English or Anglo-Saxon, in the fifth century, the Anglo-Saxons settled Britain and the Romans withdrew from Britain. England and English are named after the Angles, Old English was divided into four dialects, the Anglian dialects, Mercian and Northumbrian, and the Saxon dialects, Kentish and West Saxon. Through the educational reforms of King Alfred in the century and the influence of the kingdom of Wessex. The epic poem Beowulf is written in West Saxon, and the earliest English poem, Modern English developed mainly from Mercian, but the Scots language developed from Northumbrian. A few short inscriptions from the period of Old English were written using a runic script. By the sixth century, a Latin alphabet was adopted, written with half-uncial letterforms and it included the runic letters wynn ⟨ƿ⟩ and thorn ⟨þ⟩, and the modified Latin letters eth ⟨ð⟩, and ash ⟨æ⟩
18.
Cambridge University Library
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Cambridge University Library is the main research library of the University of Cambridge in England. It is also the biggest of 114 libraries within the University. The Library is a scholarly resource for both the members of the University of Cambridge and for external researchers. Cambridge University Library comprises the main University Library and its affiliated libraries, as at August 2015, twenty-one affiliated libraries were associated with the main University Library, which is often referred to within the University as the University Library or just the UL. Through legal deposit, purchase and donation it receives around 100,000 items every year, the main University Library holds approximately 8 million items. Its original location was the Universitys Old Schools near Senate House until it outgrew the space there, the current acting librarian is Professor Christopher Young. As early as the century, Cambridge University owned a collection of manuscripts. These would have kept in chests along with other valuables. A common library can be traced to the beginning of the 15th century, the earliest catalogue is dated ca. 1424, at which there were 122 volumes in the library. The second earliest surviving catalogue was drawn up in 1473, from the 16th century onwards it received generous donations or bequests of books and growth was considerably increased once the privilege of legal deposit had been granted. The current main University Library building was constructed between 1931 and 1934 under architect Giles Gilbert Scott, who designed the neighbouring Clare Memorial Court. The site had been used by the First Eastern General Hospital, built at the outbreak of the First World War on the 8 acres joint cricket field of Kings and Clare Colleges. The hospital had 1,700 beds at its height and treated some 70,000 casualties between 1914 and 1919, the library is a Grade II listed building. Inside are a number of 17th- and 18th century bookcases including the ones designed for the old University Library by James Essex in 1731-4, the building bears a marked resemblance to Scotts industrial architecture, including Bankside Power Station. The library tower stands 157 feet tall,6 feet shorter than the top of St Johns College Chapel and 10 feet taller than the peak of Kings College Chapel. Supposedly, in opening the building, Neville Chamberlain referred to it as this magnificent erection, contrary to popular belief, pornographic material is not stored in the tower. The library has been extended several times, the main building houses the Japanese and Chinese collections in the Aoi Pavilion, an extension donated by Tadao Aoi and opened in 1998. The library is building a new facility in Ely
19.
Cambridgeshire
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The city of Cambridge is the county town. It contains most of the known as Silicon Fen. Local government is divided between Cambridgeshire County Council and Peterborough City Council, which is a unitary authority. Cambridgeshire is noted as the site of Flag Fen in Fengate, one of the earliest-known Neolithic permanent settlements in the United Kingdom, compared in importance to Balbridie in Aberdeen, Scotland. A great quantity of archaeological finds from the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, most items were found in Isleham. Cambridgeshire was recorded in the Domesday Book as Grantbridgeshire, covering a large part of East Anglia, Cambridgeshire today is the result of several local government unifications. In 1965, these two counties were merged to form Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely. Under the Local Government Act 1972 this merged with the county to the west, Huntingdon, the resulting county was called simply Cambridgeshire. Since 1998, the City of Peterborough has been a separately administered area and it is associated with Cambridgeshire for ceremonial purposes such as Lieutenancy, and joint functions such as policing and the fire service. In 2002, the conservation charity Plantlife unofficially designated Cambridgeshires county flower as the Pasqueflower, the Cambridgeshire Regiment, the county-based army unit, fought in the Boer War of South Africa, the First World War and Second World War. Due to the flat terrain and proximity to the continent, during the Second World War the military built many airfields here for RAF Bomber Command, RAF Fighter Command. In recognition of this collaboration, the Cambridge American Cemetery and Memorial is located in Madingley and it is the only WWII burial ground in England for American servicemen who died during that event. Most English counties have nicknames for their people, such as a Tyke from Yorkshire, the traditional nicknames for people from Cambridgeshire are Cambridgeshire Camel or Cambridgeshire Crane, referring to the wildfowl that were once abundant in the fens. The term Fenners was often applied to those who come from the country to the north of Cambridge. Since the late 20th century, this term is considered to be derogatory and has been discouraged in use, original historical documents relating to Cambridgeshire are held by Cambridgeshire Archives and Local Studies. See also Geology of Cambridgeshire Large areas of the county are extremely low-lying, the highest point is in the village of Great Chishill at 146 m above sea level. Other prominent hills are Little Trees Hill and Wandlebury Hill in the Gog Magog Downs, Rivey Hill above Linton, Rowleys Hill, AWG plc is based in Huntingdon. The RAF has several stations in the Huntingdon and St Ives area, RAF Waterbeach,6 miles north of Cambridge, is a former RAF airfield, now used as an army barracks
20.
Phantasms of the Living
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Frederic William Henry Myers was a poet, classicist, philologist, and a founder of the Society for Psychical Research. Myers work on research and his ideas about a subliminal self were influential in his time. Myers was the son of Revd Frederic Myers and his second wife Susan Harriet Myers nee Marshall and he was a brother of poet Ernest Myers and of Dr. Arthur Thomas Myers. His maternal grandfather was the wealthy industrialist John Marshall and he was a Fellow of Trinity College from 1865 to 1874 and college lecturer in classics from 1865 to 1869. In 1872 be became an Inspector of schools, in 1867, Myers published a long poem, St Paul, which became popular. The poem included the words of the hymn Hark what a sound and this was followed in 1882 by The Renewal of Youth and Other Poems. He also wrote books of criticism, in particular Wordsworth and Essays, Classical and Modern. As a young man, Myers was involved in relationships with Arthur Sidgwick, the poet John Addington Symonds. He later fell in love with Annie Eliza, the wife of his cousin Walter James Marshall, Myers relationship with his cousins wife has been questioned by different researchers to be sexual or Platonic. Annie committed suicide in September 1876 by drowning, the British occult writer Richard Cavendish noted that According to his own statement, he had very strong sexual inclinations, which he indulged. These would seem to have been mainly homosexual in his youth, in 1880, Myers married Eveleen Tennant, daughter of Charles Tennant and Gertrude Tennant. They had two sons, the elder the novelist Leopold Hamilton Myers, and a daughter, the researcher Trevor H. Hall argued that Myers had an affair with the medium Ada Goodrich Freer. However, Trevor Hamilton dismissed this and suggested that Freer was simply using her acquaintance with Myers to gain status in the psychical research movement, John Grant has suggested that Myers was a womanizer who was easily duped and probably seduced by Freer. Biographer Bart Schultz has written that Myers was suspected of all manner of sexual quirks and he also noted the odd behaviour of Myers, such as insisting to be with Edmund Gurney with his bride on their Honeymoon even against strong protest from the bride. A relationship between eroticism and Myers interest in research was examined by Professor of Philosophy Jeffrey J. Kripal. Biographer Trevor Hamilton has defended Myers against the allegations of sexual misconduct, Myers was interested in psychical research and was one of the founding members of the Society for Psychical Research in 1883. He became the President in 1900, Myers psychical ideas and theory of a subliminal self did not impress contemporary psychologists. Psychologists who shared an interest in psychical research such as Théodore Flournoy, however, according to historian Janet Oppenheim not even all Myers colleagues at the SPR accepted his hypotheses
21.
Apparitional experience
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In parapsychology, an apparitional experience is an anomalous, quasi-perceptual experience. It is characterized by the apparent perception of either a living being or an object without there being any material stimulus for such a perception. The person experiencing the apparition is awake, excluding dream visions from consideration, there are other competing explanations of apparitional experiences. Firsthand accounts of apparitional experiences differ in many respects from their counterparts in literary or traditional ghost stories. The content of apparitional experiences includes living beings, both human and animal, and even inanimate objects and their motive, as with most of the early work of the Society, was to provide evidence for human survival after death. For this reason they had a particular interest in what are known as ‘crisis cases’ and these are cases in which a person has a quasi-perceptual experience of someone at a distance at the time of that person’s death or other crisis. A notable later discussion of apparitional experiences was that of G. N. M. Tyrrell, the study and discussion of apparitions developed in a different direction in the 1970s, with the work of Celia Green and Charles McCreery. One of the points that was highlighted by their work was point listed above, by contrast, subjects who visit reputedly haunted locations in hopes of ‘seeing a ghost’ are more often than not disappointed. It is unusual for a figure to engage in any verbal interaction with the percipient. Apparitional experiences have relevance to psychological theories of perception, and in particular to the distinction between top-down and bottom-up approaches, gibson, emphasises the role of the external sensory stimulus. The interest of apparitional experiences to psychology has acquired an added dimension in recent years with the development of the concept of schizotypy or psychosis-proneness. This is conceived of as a dimension of personality, continuously distributed throughout the normal population, apparitional experiences also have implications for the philosophy of perception. Gibson, referred to above, became an advocate of the theory of direct realism. Initial descriptions of vicious snakes might then be drawn and redescribed as wavy lines, two armies struggling over my soul arose from the subjective experience of seeing moving sets of dots. Spiders might be reduced, when the patient stated and drew what he actually saw, in drawings of their hallucinations patients could often distinguish between those forms which duplicated what they saw with their eyes from those forms which were what they made out of it. Such difficulties of interpretation are much less obvious in the case of written reports by ostensibly normal subjects, in good health and not medicated at the time of the experience. Similar close mimicking of normal perception is reported by some of the subjects of a dream and out-of-body experiences. Apparitional experiences appear prima facie more compatible with the theory of representationalism
22.
Frank Podmore
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Frank Podmore was an English author, and founding member of the Fabian Society. He is best known as a member of the Society for Psychical Research. Born at Elstree, Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, Podmore was the son of Thompson Podmore and he was educated at Haileybury and Pembroke College, Oxford. In October 1883 Podmore and Edward R. Pease joined a socialist debating group established by Edith Nesbit, in January 1884 the group became known as the Fabian Society, and Podmores home at 14 Deans Yard, Westminster, became the organisations first official headquarters. In 1886 Podmore and Sidney Webb conducted a study into unemployment, eventually published as a Fabian Society pamphlet, Podmore married Eleanore Bramwell in 1891, however, the marriage was a failure and they separated. His major work was a study of the life and ideas of Robert Owen. Podmore resigned from a senior post in the Post Office in 1907, Psychical researcher Alan Gauld wrote that In 1907 Podmore was compelled to resign without pension from the Post Office because of alleged homosexual involvements. He separated from his wife, and went to live with his brother Claude, rector of Broughton, Podmore died by drowning at Malvern, Worcestershire, in August 1910. Podmores books, giving non-paranormal explanations from much of the research that he studied, received positive reviews in science journals. Podmore who considered most mediums fraudulent, was open minded about the hypothesis for Leonora Pipers séances. A review of the work of Ivor Lloyd Tuckett, The Evidence For The Supernatural stated that he completely undermined this hypothesis for Mrs. Piper, Alan Gauld argued that Tuckett was able to come to his conclusions by selectively citing evidence. Podmore defended the validity of telepathy and ghosts, the latter of which he believed to be telepathic hallucinations, Podmores publications include, Phantasms of the Living. The Government Organisation of Unemployed Labour, reprinted as Mediums of the 19th Century. Telepathic Hallucinations, The New View of Ghosts, eusapia Palladino Edward R. Pease, The History of the Fabian Society. Andrew Lang, The Poltergeist and his explainers, The Making of Religion, London, Longmans, Green, modern Spiritualism, A History and a Criticism. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 17, 389-403
23.
Eusapia Palladino
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Eusapia Palladino was an Italian Spiritualist physical medium. She claimed to possess powers such as levitating tables and communicating with the dead through her spirit guide John King. She convinced many of her powers, but was caught in deceptive trickery throughout her career, magicians and skeptics who evaluated her claims concluded that none of her phenomena was genuine and she was a clever trickster. Her Warsaw séances at the turn of 1893–94 inspired several colorful scenes in the historical novel Pharaoh, Palladino was born into a peasant family in Minervino Murge, Bari Province, Italy. She received little, if any, formal education, orphaned as a child, she was taken in as a nursemaid by a family in Naples. In her early life, she was married to a travelling conjuror, Palladino later married a wine merchant, Francesco Niola. Palladino visited Warsaw, Poland, on two occasions and her first and longer visit was when she came at the importunities of the psychologist, Dr. Julian Ochorowicz, who hosted her from November 1893 to January 1894. On 1 January 1894 Palladino called on Prus at his apartment, as described by Ochorowicz, In the evening she visited Prus, whom she always adored. So she saw it as her obligation to pay him a New Years visit, Palladino subsequently visited Warsaw in the second half of May 1898, on her way from St. Petersburg to Vienna and Munich. At that time, Prus attended at least two of the three séances that she conducted, in July 1895, Palladino was invited to England to Frederic William Henry Myers house in Cambridge for a series of investigations into her mediumship. According to reports by the investigators Myers and Oliver Lodge, all the phenomena observed in the Cambridge sittings were the result of trickery and her fraud was so clever, according to Myers, that it must have needed long practice to bring it to its present level of skill. In the Cambridge sittings the results proved disastrous for her mediumship, during the séances Palladino was caught cheating in order to free herself from the physical controls of the experiments. Palladino was found liberating her hands by placing the hand of the controller on her left on top of the hand of the controller on her right. Instead of maintaining any contact with her, the observers on either side were found to be holding each others hands, Richard Hodgson had observed Palladino free a hand to move objects and use her feet to kick pieces of furniture in the room. The magician John Nevil Maskelyne who was involved in the investigation supported Hodgsons conclusion, however, despite the evidence of fraud, Oliver Lodge considered some of her phenomena genuine. In the Daily Chronicle on 29 October 1895, Maskelyne published a long exposure of Palladinos fraudulent methods, according to historian Ruth Brandon Maskelyne concluded that everything rested on the question whether Eusapia could get a hand or foot free occasionally. She wriggled so much that it was impossible to control her properly throughout, if she could get one hand, and sometimes a foot, free, everything could be explained. In the British Medical Journal on 9 November 1895 an article was published titled Exit Eusapia, the article questioned the scientific legitimacy of the SPR for investigating Palladino a medium who had a reputation of being a fraud and imposture
24.
Automatic writing
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Automatic writing or psychography is an alleged psychic ability allowing a person to produce written words without consciously writing. The words are claimed to arise from a subconscious, spiritual or supernatural source, Automatic writing as a spiritual practice was reported by Hyppolyte Taine in the preface to the third edition of his De lintelligence, published in 1878. Besides etherial visions or magnetic auras, Fernando Pessoa claimed to have experienced automatic writing and he said he felt owned by something else, sometimes feeling a sensation in the right arm that he claimed was lifted into the air without his will. George Hyde-Lees, the wife of William Butler Yeats, also claimed that she could write automatically. William Fletcher Barrett wrote, Automatic messages may take place either by the writer passively holding a pencil on a sheet of paper, or by the planchette, or by a ouija board. In spiritualism, spirits are claimed to control of the hand of a medium to write messages, letters. Automatic writing can happen in a trance or waking state, arthur Conan Doyle, in his book The New Revelation, wrote that automatic writing occurs either by the writers subconscious or by external spirits operating through the writer. The Surrealist poet Robert Desnos claimed he was among the most gifted in automatic writing, some psychical researchers such as Thomson Jay Hudson have claimed that no spirits are involved in automatic writing and that the subconscious mind is the explanation. Alleged cases of writing have included Jane Roberts, Helen Schucman. In 1975, Wendy Hart of Maidenhead claimed that she wrote automatically about Nicholas Moore, scientists and skeptics consider automatic writing to be the result of the ideomotor effect. According to skeptical investigator Joe Nickell, automatic writing is produced while one is in a dissociated state and it is a form of motor automatism, or unconscious muscular activity. Psychology professor Théodore Flournoy investigated the claim by 19th-century medium Hélène Smith that she did automatic writing to convey messages from Mars in Martian language and he invented the term cryptomnesia to describe this phenomenon. Automatic writing behavior was discovered in three patients with right hemispheric damage, on the influence of Suggestion in Modifying and directing Muscular Movement, independently of Volition. A Hypergraphic Syndrome of Automatic Writing, Affective Disorder, and Temporal Lobe Epilepsy in Two Patients, journal of Clinical Psychiatry 47, 255-257. Walsh, E. Mehta, M. A. Oakley, D. A. Guilmette, D. N. Gabay, A. Halligan, Peter and Deeley, using Suggestion to Model Different Types of Automatic Writing. Zusne, Leonard, Jones, Warren H. Anomalistic Psychology, an Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural. Houdinis Skeptical Advice, Just Because Somethings Unexplained Doesnt Mean Its Supernatural By Michael Shermer, February 4,2011
25.
Borley Rectory
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Borley Rectory was a Victorian house that gained fame as the most haunted house in England after being described as such by Harry Price. Built in 1862 to house the rector of the parish of Borley and his family, it was damaged by fire in 1939. The large Gothic-style rectory in the village of Borley had been alleged to be haunted ever since it was built. These reports multiplied suddenly in 1929, after the Daily Mirror published an account of a visit by paranormal researcher Harry Price and his claims are now generally discredited by ghost historians. Borley Rectory was constructed on Hall Road near Borley Church by the Reverend Henry Dawson Ellis Bull in 1862, the house replaced an earlier rectory on the site that had been destroyed by fire in 1841. It was eventually enlarged by the addition of a wing to house Bulls family of fourteen children, the nearby church, the nave of which may date from the 12th century, serves a scattered rural community of three hamlets that make up the parish. There are several substantial farmhouses and the remains of Borley Hall. After their affair was discovered, the monk was executed and the nun bricked up alive in the convent walls and it was confirmed in 1938 that this legend had no historical basis and seemed to have been fabricated by the rectors children to romanticise their Gothic-style red-brick rectory. The story of the walling-up of the nun may have come from Rider Haggards novel Montezumas Daughter or Walter Scotts epic poem Marmion, the first paranormal events reportedly occurred in about 1863, since a few locals later remembered having heard unexplained footsteps within the house at about that time. The local organist, Ernest Ambrose later said that the family at the rectory were very convinced that they had seen an apparition on several occasions. Various people claimed to have witnessed a variety of puzzling incidents, Bull died in 1892 and his son, the Reverend Henry Foyster Bull, took over the living. On 9 June 1928, Harry Bull died and the rectory again became vacant, in the following year, on 2 October, the Reverend Guy Eric Smith and his wife moved into the house. Soon after moving in, Smiths wife, while cleaning out a cupboard, shortly after, the family reported a variety of incidents including the sounds of servant bells ringing despite their being disconnected, lights appearing in windows and unexplained footsteps. In addition, Smiths wife believed she saw a horse-drawn carriage at night, the Smiths contacted the Daily Mirror asking to be put in touch with the Society for Psychical Research. On 10 June 1929 the newspaper sent a reporter, who wrote the first in a series of articles detailing the mysteries of Borley. The paper also arranged for Harry Price, a paranormal researcher and he arrived on 12 June and immediately phenomena of a new kind appeared, such as the throwing of stones, a vase and other objects. Spirit messages were tapped out from the frame of a mirror, as soon as Price left, these ceased. Smiths wife later maintained that she already suspected Price, an expert conjurer, the Smiths left Borley on 14 July 1929 and the parish had some difficulty in finding a replacement
26.
Richard Hodgson (parapsychologist)
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Richard Hodgson was an Australian-born psychical researcher. Hodgson was born in Melbourne, Australia on September 24,1855 and he received a doctor of law degree in 1878 from the University of Melbourne. In the 1880s he moved to England to study poetry at St Johns College, Cambridge, Hodgson met Henry Sidgwick his professor at Cambridge and became a member of the Society for Psychical Research in 1882. Hodgson joined the American Society for Psychical Research in 1887 to serve as its secretary, Hodgson was sent by the SPR in 1884 to India to investigate Helena Blavatsky and concluded that her claims of psychic power were fraudulent. Hodgson in his report wrote that the letters were frauds and had written by Blavatsky herself who had put them in the cabinet from an opening in her bedroom located behind the Shrine room. Although a believer in mental mediumship, Hodgson was a critic of physical mediumship which he claimed was fraudulent, some of the mediums that he exposed as frauds were William Eglinton, Eusapia Palladino, Henry Slade and Rosina Thompson. A. T. Baird author of the book Richard Hodgson published by Psychic Press Limited, Joseph McCabe praised the work of Hodgson in debunking fraudulent mediums but wrote he was credulous on his study of Leonora Piper. Richet claimed furniture moved during the séance and that some of the phenomena was the result of a supernatural agency, however, Hodgson claimed there was inadequate control during the séances and the precautions described did not rule out trickery. Hodgson wrote all the phenomena described could be account for on the assumption that Eusapia could get a hand or foot free. Lodge, Myers and Richet disagreed, but Hodgson was later proven correct in the Cambridge sittings as Palladino was observed to have used exactly the way he had described them. In July 1895, Hodgson was invited to England to Myers house in Cambridge for a series of investigations into the mediumship of Palladino, according to reports by Hodgson, Myers and Oliver Lodge, all the phenomena observed in the Cambridge sittings were the result of trickery. Her fraud was so clever, according to Myers, that it must have needed long practice to bring it to its present level of skill, in the Cambridge sittings the results proved disastrous for her mediumship. During the séances Palladino was caught cheating in order to free herself from the controls of the experiments. Palladino was found liberating her hands by placing the hand of the controller on her left on top of the hand of the controller on her right. Instead of maintaining any contact with her, the observers on either side were found to be holding each others hands, Hodgson had observed Palladino free a hand to move objects and use her feet to kick pieces of furniture in the room. In 1898, Myers was invited to a series of séances in Paris with Charles Richet, in contrast to the previous séances in which he had observed fraud he claimed to have observed convincing phenomena. Sidgwick reminded Myers of Palladinos trickery in the previous investigations as overwhelming and this enraged Hodgson, then editor of SPR publications to ban Myers from publishing anything on his recent sittings with Palladino in the SPR journal. Hodgson was convinced Palladino was a fraud and supported Sidgwick in the attempt to put that vulgar cheat Eusapia beyond the pale and it wasnt until the 1908 sittings in Naples that the SPR reopened the Palladino file
27.
India
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India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and it is bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast. It shares land borders with Pakistan to the west, China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the northeast, in the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Indias Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a border with Thailand. The Indian subcontinent was home to the urban Indus Valley Civilisation of the 3rd millennium BCE, in the following millennium, the oldest scriptures associated with Hinduism began to be composed. Social stratification, based on caste, emerged in the first millennium BCE, early political consolidations took place under the Maurya and Gupta empires, the later peninsular Middle Kingdoms influenced cultures as far as southeast Asia. In the medieval era, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam arrived, much of the north fell to the Delhi sultanate, the south was united under the Vijayanagara Empire. The economy expanded in the 17th century in the Mughal empire, in the mid-18th century, the subcontinent came under British East India Company rule, and in the mid-19th under British crown rule. A nationalist movement emerged in the late 19th century, which later, under Mahatma Gandhi, was noted for nonviolent resistance, in 2015, the Indian economy was the worlds seventh largest by nominal GDP and third largest by purchasing power parity. Following market-based economic reforms in 1991, India became one of the major economies and is considered a newly industrialised country. However, it continues to face the challenges of poverty, corruption, malnutrition, a nuclear weapons state and regional power, it has the third largest standing army in the world and ranks sixth in military expenditure among nations. India is a constitutional republic governed under a parliamentary system. It is a pluralistic, multilingual and multi-ethnic society and is home to a diversity of wildlife in a variety of protected habitats. The name India is derived from Indus, which originates from the Old Persian word Hindu, the latter term stems from the Sanskrit word Sindhu, which was the historical local appellation for the Indus River. The ancient Greeks referred to the Indians as Indoi, which translates as The people of the Indus, the geographical term Bharat, which is recognised by the Constitution of India as an official name for the country, is used by many Indian languages in its variations. Scholars believe it to be named after the Vedic tribe of Bharatas in the second millennium B. C. E and it is also traditionally associated with the rule of the legendary emperor Bharata. Gaṇarājya is the Sanskrit/Hindi term for republic dating back to the ancient times, hindustan is a Persian name for India dating back to the 3rd century B. C. E. It was introduced into India by the Mughals and widely used since then and its meaning varied, referring to a region that encompassed northern India and Pakistan or India in its entirety
28.
Helena Blavatsky
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Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was a Russian occultist, spirit medium, and author who co-founded the Theosophical Society in 1875. She gained a following as the leading theoretician of Theosophy. Born into an aristocratic Russian-German family in Yekaterinoslav, Ukraine, Blavatsky traveled widely around the Russian Empire as a child, largely self-educated, she developed an interest in Western esotericism during her teenage years. According to her claims, in 1849 she embarked on a series of world travels, visiting Europe, the Americas. Both contemporary critics and later biographers have argued that some or all of foreign visits were fictitious. Relocating to the United States in 1873, she befriended Henry Steel Olcott and rose to attention as a spirit medium. In New York City, Blavatsky co-founded the Theosophical Society with Olcott, in 1877 she published Isis Unveiled, a book outlining her Theosophical world-view. In 1880 she and Olcott moved to India, where the Society was allied to the Arya Samaj and that same year, while in Ceylon she and Olcott became the first Westerners to officially convert to Buddhism. Although opposed by the British administration, Theosophy spread rapidly in India, amid ailing health, in 1885 she returned to Europe, there establishing the Blavatsky Lodge in London. Here she published The Secret Doctrine, a commentary on what she claimed were ancient Tibetan manuscripts and she died of influenza in the home of her disciple and successor, Annie Besant. Blavatsky was a controversial figure during her lifetime, championed by supporters as a guru and derided as a fraudulent charlatan. Developing a reliable account of Blavatskys life has proved difficult for biographers because in life she deliberately provided contradictory accounts. Further, very few of her own writings authored prior to 1873 survive, the accounts of her early life provided by her family members have also been considered dubious by biographers. Blavatsky was born as Helena Petrovna von Hahn in the Ukrainian town of Yekaterinoslav and her birth date was 12 August 1831, although according to the Julian calendar used in 19th-century Russia it was 31 July. Immediately after her birth, she was baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church and her mother was Helena Andreyevna von Hahn, a self-educated 17-year-old who herself was the daughter of Princess Yelena Pavlovna Dolgorukova, a similarly self-educated aristocrat. Pyotr had not been present at his daughters birth, having been in Poland fighting to suppress the November Uprising against Russian rule, a year after Pyotrs arrival in Yekaterinoslav, the family relocated to the nearby army town of Romankovo. When Blavatsky was two old, her younger brother, Sasha, died in another army town when no medical help could be found. In 1835, mother and daughter moved to Odessa, where Blavatskys maternal grandfather Andrei Fadeyev and it was in this city that Blavatskys sister Vera Petrovna was born
29.
Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick
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Eleanor Mildred Balfour was born in East Lothian, daughter of James Maitland Balfour and Lady Blanche Harriet. She was born perhaps the most prominent political clan in 19th-century Britain. Another brother, Frank, a biologist, died young in a climbing accident, one of the first students at Newnham College in Cambridge, in 1876 she married the philosopher Henry Sidgwick. In 1880 she became Vice-Principal of Newnham under the founding Principal Anne Clough and she and her husband resided there until 1900, the year of Henry Sidgwicks death. In 1894 Sidgwick was one of the first three women to serve on a commission, the Bryce commission on Secondary Education. She was elected President of the Society for Psychical Research in 1908 and she was a member of the Ladies Dining Society in Cambridge, with 11 other members. In 1916 Sidgwick left Cambridge to live one of her brothers near Woking. She was awarded honorary degrees by the universities of Manchester, Edinburgh, St Andrews, most of her writings related to psychical research, and are contained in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. However, some related to matters, and a couple of essays dealt with the morality of international affairs. Sidgwick was highly critical of physical mediumship, Sidgwick regarded Eglinton to be nothing more than a clever conjurer. Due to the papers, Stainton Moses and other prominent spiritualist members resigned from the Society for Psychical Research. In 1891, Alfred Russel Wallace requested for the Society to properly investigate spirit photography, Wallace had endorsed various spirit photographs as genuine. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 2, 282-334, results of a Personal Investigation into the Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism. With Some Critical Remarks on the Evidence for the Genuineness of Such Phenomena, Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 4, 45-74. On Spirit Photographs, A Reply to Mr A. R, Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 7, 268-289. A Contribution to the Study of the Psychology of Mrs. Pipers Trance Phenomena, Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 28, 1-657. Review, The Reality of Psychic Phenomena by W. J. Crawford, journal of the Society for Psychical Research,18, 29-31. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 33, 23-429, N. Howard, Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick and the Rayleighs, Applied Optics 3, 1120- Fowler, Helen
30.
Slate (writing)
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A slate is a thin piece of hard flat material, such as the rock also called slate, that is used as a medium for writing. The rock is “a metamorphic rock created by the recrystallization of the minerals in shale from clay to parallel-aligned, flat, the writing slate consisted of a piece of slate, typically either 4x6 inches or 7x10 inches, encased in a wooden frame. A precise date range for writing slates of this type has not been established, usually, a piece of cloth or slate sponge was used to clean it and this was sometimes attached with a string to the bottom of the writing slate. The writing slate was used by children in America in one-room schoolhouses to practice writing and arithmetic during classes or at home, the writing slate was sometimes used by industry workers to track goods and by sailors to calculate their geographical location at sea. Sometimes multiple pieces of slate were bound together into a “book”, the exact origins of the writing slate remain unclear. References to its use can be found in the century and evidence suggests that it was used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. ”By the nineteenth century. At the dawn of the century, writing slates were the primary tool in the classroom for students. In the 1930s writing slates began to be replaced by modern methods. However, writing slates did not become obsolete and they are still made in the twenty-first century, though in small quantities. Slate itself had been in use as a material long before it was used for writing. The use of slate as a material can be traced back to at least the Roman era in Wales. The slate used in roofing had to be of high quality, as the material is prone to cracking. Slate used for writing slates also had to be of good quality because of the thinness required, mining slate of this quality is a straightforward process since slate splits into nearly perfectly flat surfaces. The difficult part of the process is sorting out the quality slate from slate with “cats” or flaws. Properly sorted slate can be made into any required size, roofing slate is still in use, primarily for the restoration of eighteenth and nineteenth century buildings, as it is fairly expensive. Chalkboard Slate #Electronic devices Davies, Peter, U. S Department of Commerce, National Bureau of Standards
31.
William Eglinton
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William Eglinton also known as William Eglington was a British spiritualist medium who was exposed as a fraud. Eglinton was born in Islington, London and he claimed to materialize spirits in his séances. It was discovered that the materializations were fakes, in 1876, Eglinton was exposed as a fraud when the psychical researcher Thomas Colley seized the spirit materialization known as Abdullah and cut off a portion of its cloak. It was discovered that the cut piece matched a cloth found in Eglintons suitcase, Colley also pulled the beard off the materialization and it was revealed to be a fake, the same as another one found in the suitcase of Eglinton. In 1886 the spiritualist John Stephen Farmer wrote a biography of Eglinton. Eglinton performed slate writing mediumship and his critics were the psychical researchers Eleanor Sidgwick. In 1886 and 1887 a series of publications by S. J. Davey, Hodgson, due to the critical papers, Stainton Moses and other prominent spiritualist members resigned from the SPR. Hereward Carrington has written that Eglinton was involved with Madame Blavatsky in producing fraudulent Mahatma letters, frank Podmore wrote that Eglinton had on at least two occasions been detected in fraudulently simulating occult phenomena. Moreover, several observers claimed to have seen Eglinton actually writing on the slates with his own hands, professor Carvill Lewis during a séance with Eglinton heard him write on the slates and observed writing movements. Lewis had also discovered that Eglinton had looked up answers to questions in a dictionary, in 1882, the American magician Harry Kellar was baffled by an alleged levitation of Eglinton. Massimo Polidoro has written that Kellar did not impose any form of control and couldnt see anything in the dark séance room, houdini wrote it was not strange that Kellar did not detect Eglintons method instantly nor is it strange that he acknowledged that he was baffled. Magic historian Barry Wiley wrote that Eglinton was exposed as a several years later. The Question, A Brief History and Examination of Modern Spiritualism, the Alleged Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism, An Account of Two Séances. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, the Follies and Frauds of Spiritualism. London, Watts & Co. pp. 66–69 Eleanor Sidgwick, Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 2, 282–334. Spiritualism and Theosophy by William Eglinton
32.
Alfred Russel Wallace
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Alfred Russel Wallace OM FRS was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, and biologist. He is best known for conceiving the theory of evolution through natural selection. This prompted Darwin to publish his own ideas in On the Origin of Species and he was considered the 19th centurys leading expert on the geographical distribution of animal species and is sometimes called the father of biogeography. Wallace was one of the leading thinkers of the 19th century. Wallace was strongly attracted to unconventional ideas and his advocacy of spiritualism and his belief in a non-material origin for the higher mental faculties of humans strained his relationship with some members of the scientific establishment. Aside from scientific work, he was a social activist who was critical of what he considered to be an unjust social and his interest in natural history resulted in his being one of the first prominent scientists to raise concerns over the environmental impact of human activity. Since its publication in 1869 it has never been out of print, Wallace had financial difficulties throughout much of his life. Alfred Wallace was born in the Welsh village of Llanbadoc, near Usk and he was the seventh of nine children of Thomas Vere Wallace and Mary Anne Greenell. Mary Anne was English, Thomas Wallace was probably of Scottish ancestry and his family, like many Wallaces, claimed a connection to William Wallace, a leader of Scottish forces during the Wars of Scottish Independence in the 13th century. Thomas Wallace graduated in law, but never practised law and he owned some income-generating property, but bad investments and failed business ventures resulted in a steady deterioration of the familys financial position. His mother was from a middle-class English family from Hertford, north of London, when Wallace was five years old, his family moved to Hertford. There he attended Hertford Grammar School until financial difficulties forced his family to him in 1836. Wallace then moved to London to board with his older brother John and this was a stopgap measure until William, his oldest brother, was ready to take him on as an apprentice surveyor. While in London, Alfred attended lectures and read books at the London Mechanics Institute, here he was exposed to the radical political ideas of the Welsh social reformer Robert Owen and of Thomas Paine. He left London in 1837 to live with William and work as his apprentice for six years, at the end of 1839, they moved to Kington, Hereford, near the Welsh border, before eventually settling at Neath in Glamorgan in Wales. Between 1840 and 1843, Wallace did land surveying work in the countryside of the west of England, by the end of 1843, Williams business had declined due to difficult economic conditions, and Wallace, at the age of 20, left in January. One result of Wallaces early travels is a controversy about his nationality. Since Wallace was born in Monmouthshire, some sources have considered him to be Welsh, one Wallace scholar has stated that the most reasonable interpretation is therefore that he was an Englishman born in Wales
33.
Spirit photography
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Spirit photography was first used by William H. Mumler in the 1860s. Mumler discovered the technique by accident, after he discovered a second person in a photograph he took of himself, seeing there was a market for it, Mumler started working as a medium, taking peoples pictures and doctoring the negatives to add lost loved ones into them. Mumlers fraud was discovered after he put identifiable living Boston residents in the photos as spirits, other spirit photographers also started to sell photographs. A later spirit photographer was Fred A. Hudson, who took many photographs for spiritualists in 1872. Through the 1880s into the early 20th century spirit photography remained popular, with proponents such as Arthur Conan Doyle. William Stainton Moses, another spiritualist, claimed that spirit photography operated by means of a substance called ectoplasm. Some spiritualists authored books supporting spirit photography, Georgiana Houghton wrote Chronicles of the Photographs of Spiritual Beings and Phenomena Invisible to the Material Eye and James Coates wrote Photographing the Invisible. One of the later spirit photographers was William Hope, the psychical researcher Harry Price revealed that the photographs of Hope were frauds. Unaware that Price had tampered with his supplies, Hope then attempted to produce a number of Spirit photographs, although Hope produced several images of spirits, none of his materials contained the Imperial Dry Plate Co. Ltd logo, or the marks that Price had put on Hopes original equipment, in his book Fifty Years of Psychical Research, Price listed many spirit photographers who had been exposed as frauds. Price who had spent most of his life studying psychical phenomena wrote that There is no evidence that a spirit photograph has ever been produced. Which is also the view of most psychical researchers, other spirit photographers exposed as frauds include David Duguid and Edward Wyllie. Ronald Pearsall exposed the tricks of spirit photography in his book The Table-Rappers, spiritualism Orb Spirit Photography of Georgiana Houghton
34.
William H. Mumler
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William H. Mumler was an American spirit photographer who worked in New York and Boston. His first spirit photograph was a self-portrait which developed to show his deceased cousin. Mumler then left his job as a jeweller, instead opting to work as a full-time photographer, taking advantage of the large number of people who had lost relatives in the American Civil War. Perhaps his two most famous works are the photograph of Mary Todd Lincoln with the ghost of her husband Abraham Lincoln, and his photo of Master Herrod, a medium, with three spirit guides. After being accused of various activities, he was taken to court for fraud, though found not guilty, his career was over, and he died in poverty. Today, Mumlers photos are known to be fakes, yet, they circulated widely in the following years and decades, and were marketed as objects of belief and visual curiosities both within and beyond the spiritualist movement. Before beginning his career as a photographer, Mumler worked as an jewellery engraver in Boston. In the early 1860s, he developed a self-portrait that appeared to feature the apparition of his cousin who had been dead for 12 years. This is widely credited as the first spirit photograph of a living subject featuring the likeness of a deceased person imprinted by the spirit of the deceased. Spirit photography is thought to have been a lucrative business thanks to the families of those killed during the American Civil War seeking reassurance that their relatives lived on and he was married to a famous healing medium, who conducted her own business beside her husbands. Critics of Mumlers work included P. T, according to Joe Nickell Mumler was exposed as a fraud when people recognized that some of the supposed spirits were still among the living. Mumler was brought to trial for fraud in April 1869 and those testifying in support of Mumler included Moses A. Dow, a journalist who Mumler had photographed. Though acquitted of fraud, Mumlers career was ruined, after the trial, he went on to be a photograph publisher, discovering a photo printing process from wood-cuts, known then as the Mumler process. Today, his photos are considered hoaxes, one of Mumlers most famous photographs apparently shows Mary Todd Lincoln with the ghost of her husband, Abraham Lincoln. Willin goes on to say that Mumler did not discover who she was until after the photo was developed, although the image has been dismissed as a fraudulent double exposure, it has been widely circulated. Master Herrod was a medium from Bridgewater, Massachusetts photographed by Mumler in about 1872. One photograph, once developed, apparently showed Herrod in a surrounded by the spirits of Europe. The photograph was advertised for sale in The Religio-Philosophical Journal on August 24,1872, other photographs by Mumler included pictures showing various spirits with living sitters
35.
William Hope (paranormal investigator)
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William Hope was a pioneer of so-called spirit photography. Based in Crewe, England, he was a member of the well known spiritualists group and he died in Salford hospital on 8 March 1933. As a young man Hope was employed as a carpenter, Hope produced his first spirit image in 1905. Soon afterwards he formed the Crewe Circle Spiritualist group, with himself as the leader, in 1906, Hope managed to dupe William Crookes with a fake spirit photograph of his wife. Oliver Lodge revealed there had been signs of double exposure – the picture of Lady Crookes had been copied from a wedding anniversary photograph. However, Crookes was a convinced spiritualist and claimed it was evidence for spirit photography. Doubts were also raised about his photography in 1908. Hope was first exposed in 1920 by Edward Bush who had caught Hope out by using a trap and he used the fake name Wood and sent a letter to Hope with a photograph of a living person which he pretended was his deceased son. He later attended a sitting with Hope, Hope produced a spirit extra which was exactly the same as the photograph he had sent Hope and on it were the words Dear friend Wood. The psychical researcher Whately Carington wrote regarding the exposure any reasonable person will say that Mr Bush had proved his case, in 1921, Mr DeVaga, a friend of the magician Harry Houdini, attended a sitting with Hope. DeVaga found the conditions in the room suspicious and suspected that Hope had switched a plate. Price wrote in his report William Hope has been guilty of deliberately substituting his own plates for those of a sitter. It implies that the medium brings to the sitting a duplicate slide, unaware that Price had tampered with his supplies, Hope then attempted to produce a number of spirit photographs. Although Hope produced several images of spirits, none of his materials contained the Imperial Dry Plate Co, ltd logo, or the marks that Price had put on Hopes original equipment, showing that he had exchanged prepared materials containing fake spirit images for the provided materials. Price later re-published the Societys experiment in a pamphlet of his own called Cold Light on Spiritualistic Phenomena - An Experiment with the Crewe Circle. Doyle threatened to have Price evicted from his laboratory and claimed if he persisted to write sewage about spiritualists, Doyle and other spiritualists attacked Price and tried for years to have Price take his pamphlet out of circulation. Price wrote Arthur Conan Doyle and his friends abused me for years for exposing Hope, despite Prices findings, Hope still retained a noted following amongst spiritualists. Doyle refused to accept any evidence that Hope was a fraud and even invoked a conspiracy that Price, Hopes exposures were discussed in detail by James Black in an article for the Scientific American in 1922
36.
Arthur Conan Doyle
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He is also known for writing the fictional adventures of Professor Challenger, a second character he invented, and for propagating the mystery of the Mary Celeste. He was a writer whose other works include fantasy and science fiction stories, plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction. Doyle is often referred to as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or simply Conan Doyle and his baptism entry in the register of St Marys Cathedral, Edinburgh, gives Arthur Ignatius Conan as his given names and Doyle as his surname. It also names Michael Conan as his godfather, the cataloguers of the British Library and the Library of Congress treat Doyle alone as his surname. Steven Doyle, editor of the Baker Street Journal, wrote, shortly after he graduated from high school he began using Conan as a sort of surname. But technically his last name is simply Doyle, when knighted, he was gazetted as Doyle, not under the compound Conan Doyle. Nevertheless, the use of a compound surname is demonstrated by the fact that Doyles second wife was known as Jean Conan Doyle rather than Jean Doyle. Doyle was born on 22 May 1859 at 11 Picardy Place, Edinburgh and his father, Charles Altamont Doyle, was English, of Irish Catholic descent, and his mother, Mary, was Irish Catholic. In 1864 the family dispersed because of Charless growing alcoholism, in 1867, the family came together again and lived in squalid tenement flats at 3 Sciennes Place. Doyles father died in 1893, in the Crichton Royal, Dumfries, supported by wealthy uncles, Doyle was sent to England, at the Jesuit preparatory school Hodder Place, Stonyhurst in Lancashire at the age of nine. He then went on to Stonyhurst College until 1875, from 1875 to 1876, he was educated at the Jesuit school Stella Matutina in Feldkirch, Austria. He later rejected the Catholic faith and became an agnostic and he also later became a spiritualist mystic. From 1876 to 1881, Doyle studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh Medical School, including working in Aston, Sheffield and Ruyton-XI-Towns. During that time, he studied botany at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh. While studying, Doyle began writing short stories and his earliest extant fiction, The Haunted Grange of Goresthorpe, was unsuccessfully submitted to Blackwoods Magazine. His first published piece, The Mystery of Sasassa Valley, a set in South Africa, was printed in Chamberss Edinburgh Journal on 6 September 1879. Doyle was employed as a doctor on the Greenland whaler Hope of Peterhead in 1880 and, C. M. as a ships surgeon on the SS Mayumba during a voyage to the West African coast. He completed his M. D. degree on the subject of tabes dorsalis in 1885, arriving in Portsmouth in June 1882 with less than £10 to his name, he set up a medical practice at 1 Bush Villas in Elm Grove, Southsea
37.
London Spiritualist Alliance
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The College of Psychic Studies is a non-profit organisation based in South Kensington, London. They are dedicated to the study of psychic and spiritualist phenomena, in August 1873, the British National Association of Spiritualists was formed by Thomas Everitt, Edmund Rogers and others at a meeting in Liverpool. Early members included well known such as Charles Maurice Davies, Charles Isham, William Stainton Moses, Stanhope Templeman Speer, Morell Theobald. The BNAS carried out experimental séances and investigations into mediumship and it held no dogmatic religious views but was known for sympathising with the religion of Jesus Christ. The first public meeting of the BNAS took place on April 16th,1874 under the chairmanship of Samuel Carter Hall, by 1875 the BNAS had over 400 members. Its headquarters moved to Great Russell Street, London, in 1879 the German astrophysicist Johann Karl Friedrich Zöllner became an honorary member. William Henry Harrison and his colleagues from the Scientific Research Committee of the BNAS were involved in experiments that weighed mediums during materialization séances, specially built self-recording instruments were used. This was considered controversial and not all members agreed in conducting such experiments, in 1872, Harrison also caused controversy in the spiritualist community by exposing the fraud of spirit photographer Frederick Hudson. In 1875, Harrison with C. F. Varley conducted an experiment in photographing the alleged Odic force of Carl Reichenbach. There was a dispute between Moses and Harrison over its leadership council. Harrison was expelled from the BNAS, in April 1879, Charles Massey a vice-president resigned, as did Moses on December 31,1880. In 1882, the BNAS changed name to the Central Association of Spiritualists, the remaining members such as vice-president Edmund Rogers, one of Mosess loyal supporters tried to reconstruct the society. However, internal conflict between members and financial problems caused the group to dissolve, in October,1883 a special conference was set up to discuss the ideas of Moses to form a new society. In March 1884, Moses and others formed the London Spiritualist Alliance, the first meeting was held on May 5 at the banqueting room in St Jamess Hall. Moses was president and members included John Stephen Farmer, Massey, Rogers, Stanhope Templeman Speer, Alaric Alfred Watts, after Moses died in 1892, Rogers became the president. The LSA obtained a wider membership under the leadership of Rogers including notable figures such as Alfred Russel Wallace, in 1886, Eleanor Sidgwick from the Society for Psychical Research claimed that the medium William Eglinton was fraudulent. Members from the LSA and articles in the journal Light supported Eglinton and accused Sidgwick of bias, some spiritualist members resigned from the SPR. In 1925, Arthur Conan Doyle became president and the LSA bought a new headquarters at Queensberry Place, between October,1930 and June 1931 the materialization medium Helen Duncan was investigated by the LSA
. PMID 23355763. doi:10.1177/0952695112439376.
