Gustave Geley 

1865-1924

          GRADUATE DOCTOR of the Faculty of Medicine of Lyon, distinguished psychical researcher and Director of the Institut Metapsychique International of 1919 to 1924. 

In his first book, l'Etre Subconscient, published in 1899 in Paris, he expounded a theory of dynamo-psychism, a sort of soul energy by which he sought to escape from the trammels of materialistic philosophy. In his second book, From the Unconscious to the Conscious, he developed this into a more comprehensive treatise and learned to admitting an external direction and intention in the phenomena of trance which cannot be referred to the medium or to the experimenters. Shortly before the publication of this work, which is considered by many as the most important contribution to psychical research since Prof. Frederic Myers' Human Personality, he abandoned his medical practice at Anney and accepted, from Jean Meyer, the post of the director of the Institut Metapsychique International founded by Mr. Meyer. 

Geley was a very keen and indefatigable investigator; when, under fraud-proof circumstances, supernormal results were produced in his laboratory he had to defend himself against the accusation of medical colleagues that he was an accomplice of mediums. He actually consented to have his premises examined for secret doors and to being chained up with other investigators. 

The most palpable evidence he produced for the reality of mediumstic phenomena were the Kluski plaster casts, which are still on view in the Institute. His last book, Clairvoyance and Materialisation, based chiefly on his experiences with Eva C., marks another milestone in psychical research. It was to have been followed by a second volume, The Genesis and Meaning of Metapsychic Phenomena, of which, however, the world was deprived by his sudden death in an aeroplane accident on July 15, 1924, a few days after a last experiment with Kluski in Warsaw. Essentially, Geley was a survivalist but he was careful not to declare himself on subjects which would have alienated scientific opinion.

Source (with minor modifications): An Encyclopaedia of Psychic Science by Nandor Fodor (1934).