Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research

History

The Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research is the senior serial of the Society for Psychical Research, the London body founded in 1882 to study reported psychic and paranormal phenomena by scholarly methods. The Proceedings began with the Society in 1882 and carried its longer research papers and major reports, issued in substantial volumes at irregular intervals.

The Proceedings published the Society's substantial investigations, among them its studies of mediumship, of apparitions and of spontaneous cases, and the large survey work the Society undertook in its early decades. The papers were the formal scholarly output of the field. The archive records them as the Society's research record and treats the phenomena examined as the subject matter under study.

The Proceedings belongs to the documentary record as a foundation of psychical research, the discipline from which the modern study of anomalous experience and consciousness descends. Its early volumes are among the primary sources for the scientific examination of the unexplained in the decades before the saucer era. Cite the specific volume and year for any paper.