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Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, but to weigh and consider. Sir Francis Bacon

W. W. Baggally

Telepathy: Genuine and Fraudulent

Baggally was something of an amateur conjurer and made a point of trying to expose trickery. This book gives both cases in which fraud was discovered and successful cases in which no deceit could be found. Sir Oliver Lodge said of this book, "I heartily commend [this] book to the public as the record of a careful, conscientious, and exceptionally skilled and critical investigator. It would be difficult to find anyone more competent by training and capacity to examine into the genuineness of these subtle and elusive phenomena."

William Barrett

Death-Bed Visions - The Psychical Experiences of the Dying

Unfortunately, Barrett died whilst complying this volume, which, consequently, had to be published in an unfinished state one year after his death in 1926.

Nevertheless, it contains many fascinating cases of death-bed visions and their bearing on the question of survival. A small but classic work on the psychical experiences of the dying.

Stanley de Brath

Psychical Research, Science and Religion

"This book is a synthesis of facts severally established by men of high standing in science, and an inference from that synthesis... "

"There is now a wide-spread demand to know what the facts are; and being familiar with these matters since 1889, having the privilege of friendship with most of the distinguished men from whose works I have quoted, and having seen nearly all the phenomena myself under strict conditions, I may be able to give a summary to serve as an introduction to more extended reading on facts which have a close bearing on personal life and conduct for every man and woman, and are pregnant with great changes in scientific and religious ideas," writes Stanley De Brath in the Preface.

William Crookes

Researches into the Phenomena of Modern Spiritualism

This small volume is a milestone in the history of psychical research and rightly earns its title as a masterpiece.

Included are Crookes' famous accounts of D. D. Home's and Florence Cook's extraordinary array of psychic phenomena. 

Arthur Conan Doyle

The Vital Message

In "The New Revelation" the first dawn of the coming change has been described. In "The Vital Message" the sun has risen higher, and one sees more clearly and broadly what our new relations with the Unseen may be.

This, one of Doyle's most read volumes, contains a wealth of information relating to survival research, its prominent figures and how this exciting and ground-breaking research affects religion.

C. J. Ducasse

A Critical Examination of the Belief in Life After Death

This book "attempts to set forth, as adequately as possible, the various questions which, on reflection, arise on the subject; to purge them both of ambiguity and of vagueness; to point out what connection the subject does, and does not, have with religion; to examine without prejudice the merits of the considerations - theological or scientific, empirical or theoretical - which have been alleged variously to make certain, or probable, or possible, or impossible, that the human personality survives bodily death; to state what kind of evidence would, if we should have it, conclusively prove that a human personality, or some specified component of it, has survived after death; and to consider the variety of forms which a life after death, if any, could with any plausibility be conceived to take."

Nandor Fodor

These Mysterious People

The twenty-five articles published in this book were originally written for Northcliffe Newpapers, Ltd. They first appeared in the Bristol Evening World in April and May, 1934.

"I wish to stress that these narratives were written for the general public. It was my purpose to show that there are true stories which vie in fascination with the most popular thrillers. Also that it is time enough to know of the existence of such mysteries and the attempts at their unveiling by men of science", states Dr. Fodor.

Glen Hamilton

Intention and Survival

This book is a report of the highlights of nearly fourteen years of intensive research and study of various kinds of psychic phenomena - telekinesis, deep-trance, automatic writings, and materialized forms. This research was conducted by the late Dr. T. Glen Hamilton of Winnipeg, Canada, aided by a devoted group of friends. He was contemplating a book which was to have been based on his original notes and papers, and was to have included many of the photographs, when he died suddenly at age 61, in 1935. His widow, Lillian, and his younger son, James Drummond Hamilton completed the manuscript.

James Hyslop

Psychical Research and Survival

"There has been a great deal of a priori criticism of the work," writes Hyslop in the Preface, "which has been as bad as much of the credulity or hasty speculation on the other side, and this summary endeavours to fix the bars for scepticism quite as definitely as for belief. The destructive critic has had his own way for a long while, and it is now time to do some constructive work. This small volume tries only to point out the direction in which this can be done."

The Borderland of Psychical Research

"The present volume", said Hyslop "is not intended for the scientific student of psychology, but for the layman who wishes to understand the difficulties that attend the conversion of the more educated world to the more recondite problems of psychical research. I have here written on the more conservative side of the general question, and so have taken pains to show why it is necessary to be cautious about admitting supernormal phenomena. The book is devoted mainly to normal and abnormal psychology, with philosophic reflections bearing upon the problems of both."

Oliver Lodge

Survival of Man

The author's conviction of man's survival of bodily death - a conviction based on a large range of natural facts - was well known.

This volume includes Lodge's investigation into telepathy, clairvoyance, automatic writing, trance speech, cross-correspondence and his sittings with the famous American medium Leonora Piper.

Raymond or Life and Death

This book, written 7 years after "Survival of Man", details the author's search for evidence of his son's existence after his death in World War I.

Part 1 covers Raymond's short life, Part 2 deals with the evidence of Raymond's continued existence through numerous automatic-writings and trance mediums and then in Part 3 Lodge discusses various topics such as death and decay, the interaction of mind and matter, life and consciousness and much more.

Why I Believe in Personal Immortality

"My whole contention", writes Lodge in the foreword, "rests on a basis of experience, and on acceptance of a class of facts which can be verified at first hand by others if they take the trouble. I know how weighty the word "fact" is in science, and I say without hesitation that individual personal continuance is to me a demonstrated fact."

"This conviction has been reached through a study of obscure human faculty not yet recognized by orthodox science, and apparently not approved as a rule by Theologians."

W. H. Salter

Zoar, or; The Evidence of Psychical Research Concerning Survival

After a chapter defining the nature of psychical research, its scope and methods, there follows chapters concerned with the evidence "sometimes claimed to support the opinion that after the death of the body of flesh and blood men and women live on in a body having some, but not all, of the properties we associate with ordinary matter." In these chapters apparitions, poltergeists, and the so-called "physical phenomena" of the séance-room are discussed. The succeeding chapters deal with evidence, derived from trance-mediumship and automatic writing, that does not raise the question of survival in a quasi-material form. This section opens with a discussion of various psychological states, such as Ecstasy, Inspiration and Dissociation, which, though not in themselves mediumistic, throw light on mediumistic trance and the Controls that emerge in it, and will proceed to consider how far communications purporting to come from the spirits of the dead can be attributed to the faculties, normal or paranormal, of the living. Chapter 13 and Chapter 14 are devoted to the famous cross-correspondences. Salter then attempts to construct a theory that covers all the evidence set out in the previous chapters.

Charles Drayton Thomas

An Amazing Experiment

This book relates a remarkable incident in psychical research, showing how a number of convincing messages from their deceased child were transmitted to distant strangers. The account was first published in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, and was subject to the keen examination of critics. "The whole case forms a strikingly forceful argument for the reality of communication from the Beyond", said Charles Drayton Thomas.

Precognition and Human Survival

From the inside cover: "Here is an entirely fresh approach to the supreme question, 'If a man die shall he live again?' It is the outcome of thirty years intensive study of trance mediumship with the gifted sensitive Mrs. Osborne Leonard and the co-operation of the author's father who spared no effort to provide satisfactory evidence of many kinds.

 

The International Survivalist Society 2014