The SPR Psi Encyclopedia

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: psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/visua…

Video introduction to the SPR's Psi Encyclopedia, put together by @TucsonPara : youtube.com/watch?v=4hNno7…

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: psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/rene-…

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: psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/coin-…

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: facebook.com/people/The-Soc…

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: psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/rober…

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: psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/annek…

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): psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/ouija…

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. psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/susan…

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: psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/cyril…

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. psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/julia…

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: psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/minot…

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. psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/noahs…

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: psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/marti…

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: psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/ryzl-…

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. psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/cold-…

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: psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/diete…

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: psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/georg…

Edward ‘Serjeant’ Cox (1809–1879) was an English lawyer, publisher, writer and researcher of psychology and psychical phenomena: psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/edwar…