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Founded the first British laboratory for scientific study of psychical phenomena. |
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Founded the Parapsychology Lab at Duke University (1935); coined the term ''extrasensory perception" and established use of Zener cards. |
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Leading 20th-century American psychic; known for psychic healing. |
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Established acceptance of psychokinesis in the mid-20th-century. |
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Society's view of psychic phenomena has undergone tremendous changes in the short span of 100 years. For centuries, people "believed in" but feared every sort of mysterious power, but turned their back on these "superstitious fairy tales" when faced with the Technology Revolution. But as science began to reveal that everything is relative (and thereby possible but not definite or permanent), people once again turned to explore realms that transcend a merely physical plane. |
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When the Spirit Moves You |
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Just over 100 years ago, a new type of movement concerning the supernatural flourished. Called Spiritualism, it involved communication with spirits of the dead. The movement began in a small town near Rochester, New York, when a loud banging on the walls awakened a blacksmith and his two teenage daughters. As this disturbance continued over several weeks, neighbors were called in to witness the ruckus. |
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The Fox sisters, who had created elaborate methods to communicate with their spirit visitor, soon organized seances throughout the United States. These seances came complete with rapping sounds and levitating tablesthe preferred mode of spirit communication. Many people claimed that they felt the hands of the spirits upon them. Theories abounded about what caused this rapping, including fraud, but the fact remains that the Foxes were never caught in the act of producing the raps and thumps. |
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Over the next 20 years the Spiritualism movement had 11 million people30 percent of the American populationbelieving that life after death meant that the dead were able and willing to communicate with them. The movement became so rampant that 15 years after the first spirit visit to the Foxes, a bill was proposed in the U.S. Congress to organize a committee to investigate the Spiritualism phenomenon! |
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