1948


24
YEARS

SPR

Following admission to the Ghost Club, Underwood is also invited to join the Society for Psychical Research.

“There was the flamboyant little Cyril E. M. Joad, who insisted that he had been hit by a piece of soap thrown by a poltergeist”

Harry Price (left) and Cyril E. M. Joad (right) at a Ghost Club dinner at the Savoy Hotel in London.

Cyril E. M. Joad

 “Professor F. J. M. Stratton told me all about the haunted house that he had been investigating for something like forty years…”

Professor F. J. M. Stratton

“Professor G. N. M. Tyrrell told me that he had full and complete records of at least sixteen people who were known to have projected their apparitions by sheer will-power…”

Professor G. N. M. Tyrrell

“During the many hours that I talked with William Salter, he imparted something of the honesty and impartiality that is the hallmark of the sincere psychical researcher”

William Henry Salter
President of the SPR for two years & Honorary Secretary for more than forty years 
©Mary Evans Picture Library/SPR

Another example of the “fascinating people I met through my SPR membership included Eileen Garrett, perhaps one of the most convincing mediums* of all time…”

*Mediumship is the practise of purportedly mediating communication between spirits of the dead and living human beings.

“She foretold the R101 airship disaster…”

“Yet she was the first to admit that her seances were often disappointing…”

 “…and I admit to being very surprised when she said...

‘In all my years’ professional mediumship I have had no “sign”, “test” or slightest evidence to make me believe I have contacted another world…’

“She always said that her ‘controllers’, whom she respected but could not explain, insisted that they were ‘spiritual dwellers on the threshold’,

but she always wondered whether they were in fact secondary personalities drawn from her subconscious.”