James H. Hyslop

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James Hervey Hyslop (18 August 1854 – 17 June 1920) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and psychical researcher, best known for reviving and leading the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) during the final fifteen years of his life.

Early academic career

Hyslop earned a B.A. from Wooster College, Ohio, in 1877, studied at the University of Leipzig from 1882 to 1884, and completed a Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University. He held teaching positions at Lake Forest University, Smith College, and Bucknell University during the 1880s before joining Columbia University in 1891, where he taught ethics and logic until 1902. His interest in psychical research drew open hostility from some Columbia colleagues — notably psychologist James McKeen Cattell, who formally protested Hyslop's involvement to the university's president — to which Hyslop reportedly responded by questioning why searching for humanity's origins was considered noble, while asking where humanity was headed was treated as disreputable.

Turn to psychical research

Hyslop became an active member of both the London-based Society for Psychical Research, serving as an SPR vice-president from 1899, and its American branch, working closely with the ASPR's research officer, Richard Hodgson, and with philosopher William James. In 1901, Hyslop published an extensive account of his sittings with the medium Leonora Piper, through whom he believed he had received communications from his late father, wife, and other deceased relatives — an experience he described as decisive in convincing him of the reality of survival after death, over and above ordinary telepathy between the living.

Weakened by tuberculosis, Hyslop resigned his Columbia post in 1902 and briefly joined a Vermont gold-mining venture, hoping the outdoor work and reduced stress would improve his health.

Founding the American Institute for Scientific Research

In 1904, Hyslop founded the American Institute for Scientific Research, intending one section to cover abnormal psychology and another dedicated specifically to psychical research. Following Richard Hodgson's death in 1905, the ASPR itself was dissolved the following year; Hyslop revived it as a section of his new Institute, which the ASPR soon absorbed entirely, effectively replacing it. He became the ASPR's chief investigator, taking over Hodgson's earlier work studying Leonora Piper's mediumship, and recruited researchers including Hereward Carrington and Walter Franklin Prince to assist. He launched the ASPR's first Journal in January 1907 and served as the Society's secretary-treasurer and director until his death in 1920.

Views and writings

Hyslop argued that seemingly trivial, hard-to-verify details relayed during mediumistic communications were often the strongest evidence for survival, precisely because they lay beyond what a medium could plausibly have discovered by ordinary means, and considered simple telepathy between the living an insufficient explanation for the phenomena he studied. He published widely on the subject, including Science and a Future Life (1905), Enigmas of Psychical Research (1906), Borderland of Psychical Research (1906), Psychical Research and Survival (1913), Life After Death (1918), and Contact with the Other World (1919), alongside a notable 1907 paper on deathbed visions.

Death and legacy

Hyslop died on 17 June 1920 in Upper Montclair, New Jersey. Following his death, the ASPR — the organisation he had rebuilt from near-dissolution and led for over a decade — continued on, eventually becoming embroiled in the "Margery" mediumship controversy of the mid-1920s that led Walter Franklin Prince and others to break away and found the rival Boston Society for Psychic Research.

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