Harry Price

Harry Price ( born January 17, 1881 in London, † March 29, 1948 ) was a British parapsychologist and author.

Childhood

Harry Price was born on Red Lion Square. His father was Edward Ditcher Price, a traveling salesman and grocers. His mother's name was Emma Randall Price. He also had a sister. He went to London in three different schools, the Waller Road School, the Haberdashers ' Aske 's Hatcham College and Haberdashers the ' Aske 's Hatcham Boys School. At 15, he founded the Carlton Dramatic Society, for which he wrote smaller pieces. A drama was about a poltergeist, who he would have had experiences early on.

Parapsychological research

Like Houdini Harry Price had a tense relationship to magic. On the one hand he was set based on the own knowledge of stage magic and sleight of hand the whole very critical of the other, he had to be the urgent need to witness truly sensory events. Harry Price had his first successes in the area of ​​parapsychological research in 1922 when he led the "ghost photographer " William Hope of fraud. In the same year he traveled together with Eric Dingwall to Germany to investigate the case of the medium Willi Schneider in Munich.

In 1923 he turned to the University of London with a request to establish an institute for the study of parapsychological phenomena and equip them with the necessary financial resources and to allow the use of laboratories and library. The University of London, Department of Psychology, took his concerns to positive, and in 1924 the University of London Council for Psychical Investigation was founded. Price was honorary secretary and editor. 1926 Price traveled again to the continent, this time to investigate Eleonora Zugun who believed to be possessed by a devil. He invited her and her patroness, Countess Zoë Wassilko of Serecki, to London, where he studied Eleonora Zugun between 30 September and 24 October 1926.

1929 and 1930 examined Price Rudi Schneider, Willi Schneider's brother.

In Goethe 1932, on the occasion of its 100th anniversary Price traveled to the Harz Brocken to guide the witches experiment, a black magic ritual, in the course of which a goat should turn into a young man. 1934 began the National Laboratory of Psychical Research, with its most famous case study: It has paid the medium Helen Duncan with 50 pounds, so that their work could be examined under scientific control conditions. A sample of Helen Duncan's ectoplasm had been tested in advance in the laboratory, with the result that the alleged ectoplasm consisted mainly of protein. Price found that Duncan's spirit manifestations consisted of cotton gauze which she had swallowed before the meetings and regurgitated back at the appropriate moment. Price described this case later in the chapter The cheese -cloth Worshipper of his book Leaves from a Psychist 's Casebook. During the much acclaimed in the UK trial of Duncan 1944 Price surrendered his research results as evidence for the prosecution to the court.

Price continued his research. He examined the Indian rope trick as Kuda Bux ' firewalking demonstrations. At the same time he was involved in the founding of the National Film Institute ( British Film Institute ) and became its first chairman ( until 1941 ). And he was a co-founder of the Shakespeare Film Society. In 1936, he was doing a story for the BBC over a supposedly cursed Country Estate in Meopham, Kent, who 's Gap has been shown to cash under the titles The Confession of a Ghost Hunter and The Haunting of. In the same year he handed over his extensive library on permanent loan to the University of London, shortly thereafter cede also its laboratory and research equipment to the university.

In 1937, he headed further broadcasts of the BBC, during which Ahmed Hussain ran over fire. In the same year he succeeded for a year to rent the Borley Parish ( Borley Rectory - ) in order to investigate further there can. Together with 40 other ghost hunters, he moved into the parish to go to the nightmare on the ground. 1938 was revived on the initiative of the Ghost Club Prices, Price became chairman of this club. He undertook experiments with Rahman Bey, who in Carshalton " buried alive " could be, and created guidelines for the implementation of parapsychological experiments. In 1939, he initiated a national telepathic test in the weekly magazine John O'London Weekly. In the forties he concentrated on writing down his research results and published The Most Haunted House in England, Poltergeist Over England and The End of Borley Rectory.

1943 Price visited the ruins of the 1939 burned Borley Parish and met with excavations under the ruins of a woman skeleton.

Prices archives were handed over by his widow, the University of London 1976-1978. This includes extensive correspondence, drafts of his publications, newspaper reports in defamation cases, reports on his research, press clippings and photographs.

Works

• Revelations of a Spirit Medium, with Eric J. Dingwall, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd., London, Hardcover, 1922
• Cold Light on Spiritualistic " Phenomena" - An Experiment with the Crewe Circle, by Harry Price, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd., 1922
• Stella C. An Account of Some Original Experiments in Psychical Research, Hurst & Blackett Ltd.. , Hardcover, 1925
• Rudi Schneider: A Scientific Examination of his Mediumship, Methuen & Co. Ltd, Hardcover, 1930..
• Leaves from a Psychist 's Casebook, by Harry Price, Victor Gollancz Ltd.. , Hardcover, 1933.
• Confessions of a Ghost -Hunter, Putnam & Co. Ltd.. , London, Hardcover, 1936.
• The Haunting of Cashen 's Gap: A Modern "Miracle" Investigated - With RS Lambert, Methuen & Co. Ltd.. , Hardcover, 1936.
• Fifty Years of Psychical Research: A Critical Survey Longmans, Green & Co. Ltd, Hardcover, 1939..
• The Most Haunted House in England: Ten Years ' Investigation of Borley Rectory, Longmans, Green & Co. Ltd, Hardcover, 1940..
• Search for Truth: My Life for Psychical Research, Collins, London, Hardcover, 1942.
• Poltergeist Over England: Three Centuries of Mischievous Ghosts, Country Life Ltd, Hardcover, 1945..
• The End of Borley Rectory, Harrap & Co. Ltd.. , Hardcover, 1946.