A Teacher
Eileen Garrett
The skeptical medium who funded its own testing
The transmission
Eileen Jeanette Garrett was born in County Meath, Ireland, around 1893 (some records give 14 March 1892; most published accounts cite 1893). She lived in England and France before emigrating to the United States in 1941, and became one of the twentieth century’s best-known trance mediums, working with “controls” such as “Uvani.” She came to public attention after the 1930 R101 airship disaster, when she held séances claiming contact with the dead crew — sittings later investigated and disputed.
What distinguished Garrett was her own skepticism: rather than insisting on a spirit explanation, she treated her abilities as a puzzle to be tested and submitted herself to researchers including J.
B. Rhine at Duke. In 1951, with the philanthropist Frances P. Bolton, she founded the Parapsychology Foundation in New York to fund and disseminate scientific research on psychic phenomena. The Foundation built one of the world’s largest parapsychology libraries and has supported hundreds of projects; it continues today. She died in Nice, France, on 15 September 1970.
A note on the evidence. Rhine reported positive results with Garrett, but later studies could not replicate them, and analyses found her test scores consistent with chance; her R101 claims were judged unevidential by critics. The Atlas presents her as a sincere, unusually self-critical experimenter whose lasting legacy is institutional rather than evidential.
What they gave
Founded the Parapsychology Foundation: Created a durable institution funding scientific study of psychic claims, a rare bridge between mediumship and academic research.
- The self-testing medium: Modeled an honest, skeptical stance toward her own gift, asking what it really was rather than asserting spirit agency (All Is One, Consciousness Is Fundamental).
- Subject and patron of research: Worked directly with experimenters such as J. B. Rhine, lending the field a famous and cooperative test subject.
- Carrier of the survival question into the lab: Helped move Spiritualist claims into the institutional, critical layer of parapsychology.
The line they stand in
Influenced by: the Spiritualist mediumship tradition; the experimental parapsychology of J. B. Rhine; the psychical-research culture of the SPR.
- Influenced: the Parapsychology Foundation and the institutional study of psi; academic parapsychology in the mid-twentieth century; later collaborations between mediums and laboratory researchers.
Revelations they taught
Essential Works
- My Life as a Search for the Meaning of Mediumship1939
- Adventures in the Supernormal1949