William Crookes’ first papers on spiritual phenomena

Abstract

Toward the end of the 19th century the British scientist William Crookes accomplished researches on some phenomena that were called “spiritual”. Crookes interpreted some of those phenomena as due to a new force he called “psychic force”. His ideas were not well received by the scientific community. The chief aim of this work is to provide translations of two William Crookes’ papers related to inquiries into spiritual phenomena. Along the translations we provide comments regarding analyses of issues involved in the investigations, for instance, the control of experimental circumstances.