James H. Hyslop: Difference between revisions - Wikipedia

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In 1916, Hyslop wrote the whole case for [[Patience Worth|Pearl Curran]]'s mediumship was based on fraud. Hyslop in the Journal for the American Society for Psychical Research claimed Curran had known people from the [[Ozarks]] who spoke a dialect reminiscent of Patience Worth and Curran's husband had studied [[Geoffrey Chaucer|Chaucer]] and educated her on the subject.<ref name="Douglas">Alfred Douglas. (1982). ''Extra-Sensory Powers: A Century of Psychical Research''. Overlook Press. pp. 170-171. ISBN 0-87951-064-1.</ref> According to Hyslop the case of Patience Worth was "a fraud and delusion for any person who wishes to treat it seriously." Hyslop also accused [[Casper Yost]] and the publisher of his book [[Henry Holt (publisher)|Henry Holt]] of knowing about the fraud but covering it up to increase sale's of the book. In the ''Mirror'' articles appeared by Emily Hutchings and Yost defending Curran against allegations of fraud. In response, Hyslop wrote a letter to the ''Mirror'' which claimed he had been told of Curran's knowledge of Chaucer by a "scientific man" who had heard it from Mr Curran himself.<ref name="Douglas"/> In 1938 the ASPR journal published an anonymous article which refuted all of Hyslop's accusations. According to the article the Ozark dialect did not resemble the language of Patience Worth and knowledge of Chaucer would not have given Curran the vocabulary to compose the Patience Worth literature.<ref name="Douglas"/>

Although a believer in mental mediumship, Hyslop is said to have found the physical phenomena of spiritualism "repulsive".<ref>Jenny Hazelgrove. (2000). ''Spiritualism and British Society Between the Wars''. Manchester University Press. p. 163. ISBN 0-7190-5559-8.</ref> In a review for the ''[[American Society for Psychical Research|Journal of American Society for Psychical Research]]'' in 1917, Hyslop wrote that various occurrences of [[Levitation (paranormal)|levitation]] could have been faked by trickery. HyslopHe also reviewed the psychical researcher W.William J.Jackson Crawford's experiments with the medium [[Kathleen Goligher]] and came to the conclusionsuggested that fraud was likely to explain thereported physical phenomena in the séance room could be unreliable.<ref>Peter Aykroyd. (2009). ''A History of Ghosts: The True Story of Séances, Mediums, Ghosts, and Ghostbusters''. Rodale. p. 124. ISBN 1-60529-875-1. "A review written by James H. Hyslop and published in a 1917 issue of the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research suggests that several occurrences of levitation at séances could, in fact, have been staged. In his review of W. J. Crawford's three titles covering his experiments with the Goligher cicle... Hyslop suggests that tampering and embellishment are all too possible in a séance situation, particularly where physical phenomena are involved."</ref>

==Personal life and family==