Archivist and historian Walter Meyer zu Erpen is the Parapsychology Foundation’s International Affiliate representing Canada, an esteemed colleague and dear friend. I have invited Walter to share with you this month his survey about evidence of life after death received through Spiritualist mediumship. I personally completed the survey questions two weeks ago; most of the questions are easy to answer. As of today, Walter reports that over 240 individuals have responded. With your help, let’s push the total survey response to more than 500, to achieve a good representative opinion of what members of the parapsychology and Spiritualist communities believe about the question of life after death and the possibility of spirit communication. Let me now turn you over to Walter in his own words:
Is Survival a Fact? Evidence of Life after Death through Spiritualist Mediumship
At some point, most human beings ponder at least briefly the question of life after death. Typically, those drawn to investigation of the paranormal and its scientific study have an interest in the topic. In fact, many have spent decades studying the evidence of survival that has been received through Spiritualist mediumship. Academic and scientific study of the possibility of an afterlife and communication with surviving spirits has often been conducted within the fields of psychical research, parapsychology, and more recently survival research.
Have you formed an opinion as to whether some part of your personality, consciousness, or memories will survive the death of your physical body? Even if you have not yet arrived at a definitive conclusion, please consider participating in this survey about evidence of life after death received through Spiritualist mediumship. Answer as many questions as you like: by clicking here.
The modern Spiritualist movement dates from 1848 in Hydesville, New York, when the Fox family first experienced rapping sounds in the walls of their cottage that were interpreted as spirit communication from a deceased peddler identified as Charles Rosna. The story of the Fox sisters (Leah, Margaret and Catherine) is complicated by an admission of fraud in the late 1880s that was then retracted. Whatever the truth of the sisters’ story, the Fox family home was the focus of paranormal events, with the youngest sisters Maggie and Kate as the probable agents for what might today be called a poltergeist outbreak.
Though human attempts to communicate with deceased spirits date back millennia, the Spiritualist “religious” movement and in fact the fields of psychical research and parapsychology date from those spirit rappings in the Fox family home. Within years, small groups were meeting in private homes across the United States and Canada. This new wave of spirit communication quickly spread to the United Kingdom and continental Europe. In France, Allan Kardec’s study of the spiritualistic manifestations resulted in articulation of his philosophy of Spiritism that developed a significant following in some countries in Europe and South America.
The Irish-born Eileen Garrett, a co-founder of the Parapsychology Foundation, first developed her mediumship during the 1920s under the mentorship of the British Spiritualist Hewat McKenzie in London, England. With his wife Barbara, McKenzie had founded the British College of Psychic Science. Garrett became known worldwide because of the evidential message she conveyed from deceased Flight Lieutenant Herbert Carmichael Irwin two days following the crash of the R101 dirigible near Beauvais, France, in October 1930. Irwin’s communications related to technical details about the cause of the crash.
From the 1930s, Garrett travelled frequently to the United States where in 1951 the Parapsychology Foundation was established with funding provided by United States Congresswoman Frances Bolton. Throughout her life, Eileen Garrett kept an open mind about the spirit communicators and her spirit guides Uvani and Abdul Latif. She was never fully convinced whether the guides were independent entities as they claimed or some secondary aspect of her own personality. What she did come to accept was that without the assistance of the guides, she could not demonstrate some of the psychic abilities for which she had become famous.
With heightened anxiety around death and dying due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the London-based Society for Psychical Research has launched a new book project “Is There Life after Death? Arguments, Theories, Evidence.” The call for chapters issued by editors Leo Ruickbie and Robert McLuhan was widely circulated and received over 90 proposals in less than two months, with 26 accepted. The book is intended to provide an accessible and multi-disciplinary discussion of the issues relevant to the question of life after death. My contribution will focus on the evidence for survival provided through Spiritualist mediumship and whether that constitutes proof of life after death.
Other authors, including philosophers, physicists, psychologists, sociologists, and religious studies scholars, will focus on the approaches that the fields of psychical research, parapsychology and survival research have brought to bear on the question. The phenomena of after-death communications, deathbed visions, near-death experiences, hauntings and poltergeists, electronic voice phenomena and reincarnation will be explored, as well as a broader discussion of mental mediumship. The issues of suicide, the possible nature of the afterlife and what it is that might survive death will be examined.
In order to obtain a broad range of opinion on whether survival evidence through Spiritualist mediumship has proven life after death, I am conducting this survey that seeks both answers that can be quantified and others that provide names and examples to guide my selection of cases of evidential mediumship.
Whether or not you consider yourself a Spiritualist, I invite you to complete as much of the survey as you wish. Also, please feel free to share this request with friends, family and colleagues who have considered and formed an opinion about the evidence of survival received through Spiritualist mediumship. The survey results will be aggregated and anonymized. Here is the survey link: https://survivalresearch.ca/spiritualism-survey/
Spiritualists are loosely united around belief in life after death, the ability of mediums to provide evidence of spirit communication through mediumship, and a list of principles that vary from organization to organization. Other beliefs central to Spiritualism include a benevolent creative force, the ministry of angels, personal responsibility for how one lives one’s life, and eternal progress here and hereafter open to all human beings.
Among the many online resources available, information about the Spiritualist religious movement can be found through the websites of the National Spiritualist Association of Churches in the United States, the Spiritualist Church of Canada, and the Spiritualists’ National Union in the United Kingdom.
To complete the questionnaire before the 30 September deadline, please visit https://survivalresearch.ca/spiritualism-survey/ Thank you for considering this request and hopefully completing my survey and sharing it with others!
And a big thank you to PF President Lisette Coly for allowing me this forum to discuss my survey and to Anastasia Damalas for technical and editorial support.
Walter Meyer zu Erpen, BA, MAS
Victoria, BC, Canada
Parapsychology Foundation Canadian Representative
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So guys (Lisette again), please fill out the survey and tik tok…consider helping out before September 30. As they say on tv “the more you know”!
Until next month stay safe in the world gone mad!
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WALTER MEYER ZU ERPEN, MAS – BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Walter Meyer zu Erpen works as a self-employed archives consultant in Victoria, Canada, following a 20-year career with the BC Archives. He graduated from the University of British Columbia with an arts degree in history, then with a Master of Archival Studies (1985).
Meyer zu Erpen began his inquiry into the possibility of survival, mediumship and spirit communication in the 1970s through a Spiritualist church in his hometown. From the 1980s, as opportunity permitted, he visited and communicated with Spiritualist churches across Canada. Those contacts culminated in the Directory of Spiritualist Organizations in Canada, which saw six print editions (1991 to 2006, now continued online).
Meyer zu Erpen’s detailed historical study of the Thomas Glendenning Hamilton psychical research experiments in Winnipeg, Manitoba, began in 1991. His experiential research in the field includes a decade of observation of psychokinetic table movements in a Spiritualist home circle. He has lectured and written extensively about the Hamilton research and other significant Canadian cases and is the Parapsychology Foundation’s Canadian representative.
In 1991, inspired by the Survival Research Foundation, Meyer zu Erpen and a group of colleagues founded the Survival Research Institute of Canada that was incorporated as a federal charitable organization in 2000. For 30 years, Meyer zu Erpen has worked to preserve the records of Spiritualism and psychical research. He has been actively involved in the Preserving the Historical Collections of Parapsychology (PHCP) discussions, including co-facilitation of the Utrecht (2014) and Winnipeg (2018) meetings. With Shelley Sweeney, he co-curated the “Investigation of the Human Psyche” exhibit based upon the Spiritualism and psychical research collections in the University of Manitoba Archives (2018).
Relevant publications:
- With Joy Lowe, “The Canadian Spiritualist Movement and Sources for its Study,” Archivaria 30 (1990): 71-84.
- “Canadian psychical research experiments with table tilting and ectoplasm phenomena in the séance room,” in Christopher M. Moreman, ed., The Spiritualist movement: speaking with dead in America and around the world (ABC-CLIO, 2013), vol. 2, 205-228.
- “Afterlife beliefs in the Spiritualist movement,” The Routledge Companion to Death and Dying, edited by C.M. Moreman (Routledge / Taylor & Francis Group, 2018), 218-229.
- Meyer zu Erpen has assisted Leo Ruickbie, magazine editor for the Society for Psychical Research, to identify content for four issues of Paranormal Review: PHCP | 2014 (issue 72); T. Glen Hamilton (77); PHCP | 2018 (89); and spirit guide Walter Stuart Stinson (forthcoming).