author
University of Pennsylvania. Seybert Commission for Investigating Modern Spiritualism
Formed at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1880s, this faculty commission set out to test the claims of modern spiritualism with unusual seriousness. Its published report became a notable skeptical document, recording investigations of mediums and finding fraud or strong grounds for suspicion in every case it examined.
1 Audiobook
Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University of Pennsylvania to Investigate Modern Spiritualism In Accordance with the Request of the Late Henry Seybert
by University of Pennsylvania. Seybert Commission for Investigating Modern Spiritualism
About the author
The University of Pennsylvania. Seybert Commission for Investigating Modern Spiritualism was not a single writer but a faculty commission created after Henry Seybert left the university a bequest requiring an inquiry into spiritualism and related belief systems. The commission was formed in the mid-1880s and brought together prominent Penn scholars and officials for a formal investigation.
Its best-known work is the 1887 Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University of Pennsylvania to Investigate Modern Spiritualism. In that report, the commission described visits, tests, and observations involving well-known mediums, and it concluded that the phenomena it examined were explained by deception, trickery, or circumstances that did not justify belief in supernatural causes.
Today, the commission is remembered less as an "author" in the usual sense than as an unusual academic body whose report captures a moment when a major university tried to study spiritualist claims in a methodical way. Penn Libraries still preserves records connected to the commission and to the broader Seybert collections on modern spiritualism.