The founding of the Society for Psychical Research

Record summary

Founded in 1882 by scholars and investigators including Henry Sidgwick, Frederic W. H. Myers, Edmund Gurney, and others, the Society for Psychical Research examined apparitions, telepathy, mediumship, and related claims. Its creation is a major nineteenth-century episode in the attempted transition of occult and prophetic reports into systematic inquiry. The Society generated questionnaires, case collections, experiments, and critical debates, making it unusually useful for source comparison. Its members disagreed substantially, and later assessments question both evidential standards and the reliability of testimony gathered through retrospective surveys.