The Rhine Research Center is an American non-profit organisation devoted to parapsychological research and public education, and the direct institutional successor to J. B. Rhine's original Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University.
Founding
When Rhine reached Duke's mandatory retirement age in 1965, he left the university and, with support from benefactors including Xerox founder Chester Carlson, established an independent non-profit organisation, the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man (FRNM), based in buildings on Buchanan Avenue directly across from Duke's East Campus. For the next three decades, FRNM served as parent body to the Institute for Parapsychology, its research arm, and Parapsychology Press, its publishing arm — continuing to issue the Journal of Parapsychology, founded by Rhine in 1937.
Rhine resigned as director in 1973; neither his resignation nor his death in 1980 affected the ongoing work of the institute he had built. In 1995, on the centenary of Rhine's birth, FRNM was renamed the Rhine Research Center in honour of Rhine and his wife, Louisa E. Rhine, whose own research had focused on collecting spontaneous, real-world psychic case reports rather than laboratory testing.
The Levy affair
In 1974, Walter J. Levy — a medical graduate who had risen quickly to become director of the Institute for Parapsychology and Rhine's expected successor — was found to have manipulated equipment during animal psychokinesis experiments, after colleagues grew suspicious of how consistently strong his results were and secretly wired his apparatus to detect tampering. The case remains one of the most significant confirmed instances of fraud in the organisation's history.
Later leadership and mission
Rhine's eldest daughter, Sally Rhine Feather, went on to direct the centre, continuing her parents' work. Under its modern mission statement, the Rhine Research Center describes its purpose as advancing the science of parapsychology, providing public education and resources, and fostering a community for those with a personal or professional interest in psi, alongside its original research work into ESP and psychokinesis. The centre also maintains the Alex Tanous Research Library, supported by a gift from the Alex Tanous Foundation of Portland, Maine.
Recent history
The centre operated from premises on Campus Walk Avenue near Duke University for nearly 25 years before closing in 2025; as of the most recent available information, it has not yet secured a new physical location.