The 1923 Shanghai Society for Psychical Research

Record summary

Shanghai’s Republican-era intellectual culture included organized interest in psychical research, spiritualism, telepathy, and related questions about mediumship. Accounts of such organizations and salons can provide a bridge between Chinese spirit-writing traditions, imported European psychical vocabulary, and modern scientific skepticism. The lead is useful for tracking how religious or mediumistic reports were reframed as experiments, evidence, or fraud investigations. The existence and exact title of a specific Shanghai society should be checked carefully in Chinese newspapers and periodicals, because English-language summaries sometimes conflate several short-lived groups and informal circles.