page_title: Joseph Rinn
section_title: Metropolitan Psychical Society
hierarchical_section_title: Joseph Rinn / Metropolitan Psychical Society
caption_attribution_description: English: The magician Joseph Rinn.
context_page_description: Joseph Francis Rinn was an American magician and skeptic of paranormal phenomena.
context_section_description: Rinn became disillusioned with the American Society for Psychical Research as he believed they had failed to expose cases of psychic fraud so in 1905 he formed a skeptical group known as the Metropolitan Psychical Society. Notable skeptical members who were also magicians included Winfield S. Davis and James L. Kellogg.
  In January, 1910 a series of séance sittings were held in the physics laboratory at Columbia University with the medium Eusapia Palladino. Scientists such as Robert W. Wood and Edmund Beecher Wilson attended. Davis, Kellogg, Rinn and John W. Sargent, a past-president of the Society of American Magicians were present in the last séance sittings in April. They discovered that Palladino had freed her left foot to perform the phenomena. Rinn gave a full account of fraudulent behavior observed in a séance of Palladino.
caption: Joseph Rinn from his book Sixty Years of Psychical Research.
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