page_title: William F. Barrett
section_title: Psychical research
hierarchical_section_title: William F. Barrett / Psychical research
caption_attribution_description: English: The Spiritualist William Fletcher Barrett
context_page_description: Sir William Fletcher Barrett was an English physicist and parapsychologist.
context_section_description: Barrett became interested in the paranormal in the 1860s after having an experience with mesmerism. Barrett believed that he had been witness to thought transference and by the 1870s he was investigating poltergeists. In September 1876 Barrett published a paper outlining the result of these investigations and by 1881 he had published preliminary accounts of his additional experiments with thought transference in the journal Nature. The publication caused controversy and in the wake of this Barrett decided to found a society of like-minded individuals to help further his research. Barrett held conference between 5–6 January 1882 in London. In February the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) was formed.
  Barrett was a Christian and spiritualist member of the SPR. Although he had founded the society, Barrett was only truly active for a year, and in 1884 founded the American Society for Psychical Research. He became president of the society in 1904 and continued to submit articles to their journal. From 1908–14 Barrett was active in the Dublin Section of the Society for Psychical Research, a group which attracted many important members including Sir John Pentland Mahaffy, T.W. Rolleston, Sir Archibald Geikie, and Lady Augusta Gregory.
  In the late 19th century the Creery Sisters (Mary, Alice, Maud, Kathleen, and Emily) were tested by Barrett and other members of the SPR who believed them to have genuine psychic ability, however, the sisters later confessed to fraud by describing their method of signal codes that they had utilized. Barrett and the other members of the SPR such as Edmund Gurney and Frederic W. H. Myers had been easily duped.
  As a believer in telepathy, Barrett denounced the muscle reading of Stuart Cumberland and other magicians as "pseudo" thought readers.
  Barrett helped to publish Frederick Bligh Bond's book Gate of Remembrance (1918) which was based on alleged psychical excavations at Glastonbury Abbey. Barrett endorsed the claims of the book and testified to Bond's sincerity. However, professional archaeologists and skeptics have found Bond's claims dubious.
  In 1919, Barrett wrote the introduction to medium Hester Dowden's book Voices from the Void.
caption: Barrett
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