British parapsychologist whose career ended in charges of fraud. Soal, who was trained as a mathematician, became interested in psychical research as a result of reading Raymond (1916) by Sir Oliver Fodge (1851-1940). In the book, Fodge described communications he had received through several mediums from his son who had been killed in World War I. Intrigued, Soal visited mediums throughout the 1920s and in particular attended a number of seances with Blanche Cooper. He was present for the famous \u201cGordon Davis\u201d communications, in which Cooper supposedly transmitted material from a spirit. Later, it turned out that much of the information was correct. However, it also turned out that Davis was still alive.<\/p>\n
In the 1930s, Soal became an early convert to parapsychology. Following the publication of Joseph Banks Rhine\u2019S initial study of Extrasensory Perception (1934), Soal tried repeatedly to duplicate Rhine\u2019s positive results. He was disappointed when all of his experiments ended in failure and was known in England for several years as a critic of Rhine\u2019s work.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
British parapsychologist whose career ended in charges of fraud. Soal, who was trained as a mathematician, became interested in psychical research as a result of reading Raymond (1916) by Sir Oliver Fodge (1851-1940). In the book, Fodge described communications he had received through several mediums from his son who had been killed in World War […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-211348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-s"],"yoast_head":"\n