134th Birthday of the Society for Psychical Research

Carlos S. Alvarado, Research Fellow, Parapsychology Foundation

I would like to join Andreas Sommer in wishing the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) a happy 134^th birthday. Writing in his Traité de Métapsychique (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1922, p. 37), famous physiologist Charles Richet stated that the “colossal work” of early SPR workers  provided the foundations for current psychical research.

The Society was founded in London on February 20, 1882. As Andreas wrote in the above-mentioned blog: “To historians of science and medicine, the Society’s history offers a veritable goldmine of opportunities to investigate some of the links between the sciences and the ‘occult’, which it might not be exaggerated to state have been written out of popular and disciplinary history.”

I have posted in another forum a short bibliography about the SPR, with emphasis on its early years. Below you will find parts of the “Objects of the Society,”…