Journal of the Society for Psychical Research

History

The Journal of the Society for Psychical Research is the regular journal of the Society for Psychical Research, the London body founded in 1882 to examine reported psychic and paranormal phenomena by the methods of scholarship. The Journal began in 1884 and has continued since. It was established for the shorter material of the Society's work, that is case notes, correspondence, book reviews and the record of meetings, and it appeared more frequently than the longer Proceedings.

The Journal records the working life of the Society: reports of sittings and investigations, exchanges between members, notices of lectures, reviews and obituaries. Across its long run it has documented the Society's examination of mediumship, apparitions, telepathy and related claims. The archive records the contents as the Society's own scholarly record and treats the claims investigated as the subject matter under study.

The Journal belongs to the documentary record as part of the foundational literature of psychical research, the field from which the later study of anomalous experience and consciousness descends. For an archive concerned with the long history of contact with the unexplained, the Society's serials are among the primary sources for the period before the saucer era. Cite the specific volume, number and year for any item.