A reliable source of information about psi research, the scientific investigation of psychical phenomena, created by the Society for Psychical Research @spr1882
We've moved! I'm handing over to a colleague who has started a new feed, and this one is now inactive. The Society for Psychical Research's Psi Encyclopedia can now be found at @PsiEncyclo so please head over there to find out about the latest additions to the website.
Andreas Sommer report - Visualising the Supernatural - The 2025–26 Kunstmuseum Basel exhibition 'Ghosts: Visualizing the Supernatural' traced 250 years of visual culture surrounding apparitions, mediumship and the occult: https://t.co/0U0UHd7zhL
Experiments with a small random-moving robot made René Peoc’h one of the most discussed figures in animal psychokinesis research. His studies with imprinted chicks and other subjects suggested intention might bias random systems: https://t.co/rm0kDG6t3v
Coin apports are a specialised form of ‘apport’ phenomena in which coins are said to appear without an obvious normal source or cause. This article centres on a recent Mexico City case: https://t.co/wFHLM2VLvU
Antony Flew was a philosopher known for his critiques of theism, postmortem survival and parapsychology. He remained sceptical of postmortem survival and precognition, whilst arguing that psychical research deserved rigorous philosophical scrutiny: https://t.co/Xxdd1LXJfs
Robert McLuhan, who has helped shape one of the field’s main public resources. Through blogging, publishing and editorial work, he became a prominent interpreter of parapsychology for general readers and the principal architect of the Psi Encyclopedia: https://t.co/nfq8ypdsX9
Annekatrin Puhle is a German philosopher whose works bring cultural history, dreams, apparitions, magic and anomalous light experiences into dialogue, combining archival investigation, case collection and personal-experience accounts: https://t.co/VBjERUZWfs
The Ouija board's history crosses Spiritualism, parlour gaming, psychical research, literature, and popular culture. It has generated evidence relevant to automatisms, mediumship, implicit cognition, and the study of anomalous information (revised): https://t.co/uus6AqckLI
Susan Gerbic became a visible example of activist scepticism through campaigns against alleged psychic fraud, the building of sceptical communities, and coordinated efforts to shape public information about what she regards as ‘pseudoscientific’ claims. https://t.co/5dOPJbGrkK
Cyril Burt, one of Britain’s most influential psychologists, took a serious interest in parapsychology, arguing that psychic phenomena merited scientific attention. His writings approached these phenomena with caution, curiosity and rational scrutiny: https://t.co/Wpe6kGfPn7
Julian Ochorowicz was a keen advocate of the medical benefits of hypnosis. He championed hypnosis as therapy, treated telepathic suggestion as a serious topic and investigated mediums, interpreting dramatic séance phenomena without resorting to spirits. https://t.co/bLMjulMHu9
Minot Judson Savage (1841–1918) argued that mediumistic communications and other psychic phenomena pointed not merely to telepathy but to the continued existence of the dead. His writings sought to reconcile scientific method with survivalist belief: https://t.co/gS9uk0LT3p
The Noah’s Ark Society for Physical Mediumship originated in 1990 in a home circle led by Robin Foy. The NAS helped preserve mediumistic traditions and indirectly fostered the later Scole Circle.
https://t.co/PrlCIGsZsV
Experimental parapsychologist Martin Johnson (1930–2011) linked academic psychology and experimental parapsychology. His work on the Defense Mechanism Test and publication standards left durable marks on parapsychology: https://t.co/8FLUf8uaOe
Czech parapsychologist Milan Ryzl helped bring Cold War-era ESP research to international attention through his investigations of hypnosis as a psi facilitator and his striking experiments with Pavel Stepanek. Latest in the SPR's Psi Encyclopedia: https://t.co/opB1w0vY5b
Sensations or measurements of cold recur in reports of apparitions, séances, hauntings, often treated as signs of the paranormal. Evidence remains sparse, ordinary environmental and physiological explanations may account for at least part of the effect. https://t.co/3iRRefb8wg
Dieter Vaitl helped bring altered states, meditation, and exceptional experiences into serious psychophysiological study. Bridging parapsychology, clinical psychology, and neuroscience, he shaped modern German research on consciousness: https://t.co/dOMmXoUvcf
George P Hansen is a parapsychologist, magician and critic of both believers and sceptics of psi phenomena. He is best known for developing Trickster Theory, an attempt to explain the instability and elusiveness of psi phenomena: https://t.co/K0r8cHno4C
Edward ‘Serjeant’ Cox (1809–1879) was an English lawyer, publisher, writer and researcher of psychology and psychical phenomena: https://t.co/wPIdAtkpg7