I have been asked many times why so much of what I write about -
life after death, psychical research, and related paranormal
subjects is taken from research done a hundred or more years ago,
and why I don't write more about modern mediums and researchers.
Part of the reason is that there has been relatively very little
research looking at evidence of survival after death since 1930.
But that is a secondary reason. The primary reason is that I am
convinced that the phenomena observed by the pioneers of psychical
research, especially in the area of mediumship and, concomitantly,
in the area of spirit communication, were much more dynamic and
evidential than those of today. Sometime around 1920, when
Professor James Hyslop, one of the key pioneers, died, the research
reached a point of diminishing returns. The scientists and scholars
engaged in the research began to realize that they were continually
reinventing the wheel and would never succeed in producing evidence
to satisfy either the scientific fundamentalists or the religious
fundamentalists. As strong as the evidence was, it did not offer
the absolute proof the skeptics demanded. The pioneers were
followed by researchers, who, having witnessed the derision heaped
on their predesessors by materialistic "know-nothings," were
concerned with their reputations in academic circles. Since
consciousness survival had come to be a taboo subject in academia,
the new breed of researcher focused on ESP - often going out of
their way to avoid the survival of consciousness issue. In fact, a
fair percentage of parapsychologists, while accepting the reality
of ESP, rejected the spirit or survival hypothesis, concluding that
all such phenomena were somehow produced by the subconscious of the
individuals involved in their experiments. Such a conclusion was
much more academically and scientifically acceptable and made sure
funds for further research were available. To even hint at the
spirit hypothesis was to invite disdain. While a few later
researchers delved into the area of past-life studies, their work
received little attention from mainstream science and was ignored
or resisted by orthodox religions. When, during the 1970s, research
began in the field of near-death experiences, the researchers,
wanting to be scientifically proper, focused more on the positive
effects of the NDE than on the survival implications. It was not
until late in the 1990s, when Dr. Gary Schwartz of the University
of Arizona, began investigating the clairvoyant type of mediumship
that survival research again resurfaced. But Schwartz came under
attack by many scientific fundamentalists and research in this area
was further discouraged. This volume, intended as the first of four
volumes, covers the period before 1882, the year the Society for
Psychical Research (SPR) was organized and more formal scientific
methods were employed. The pre-1882 researchers were by no means
ignorant of the scientific methods necessary to validate mediums,
and it becomes clear to the discerning reader that these pioneers
were very much on guard against deception and mindful of other
explanations, including the subconscious theories. It also becomes
apparent to the serious student of this subject that the earliest
researchers went beyond the evidential aspects of mediumship and
recorded many messages concerning the afterlife environment and the
meaning of this life. They served as the foundation for a whole new
philosophy, one that made some sense of the afterlife and gave
meaning to this life.
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