The major sources of research directly supporting survival.

The modern interest in psychic phenomena, particularly those associated with survival and usually demonstrated by mediums in a trance state, began over 150 years ago. The Fox sisters in America are usually considered to have initiated this trend when, in 1848, they apparently contacted the spirit of a man who had lived in their house and had been murdered there. A wave of interest in such activity spread rapidly across the western world with genuine mediums producing apparently substantial psychic phenomena inextricably mixed with fraudulent mediums out to make money from the bereaved seeking contact with their dead relatives. An important spin-off from this activity was the development of research into psychic phenomena, usually undertaken by thoroughly sceptical scientists, and others, with the intention of showing that all mediums and their activities were fraudulent. Thus in 1882 the Society for Psychical Research was founded in Britain, shortly followed by the American Society for Psychical Research. As well as these organised research groups there were many individual researchers who often undertook lengthy investigations into individual mediums. Examples of such individuals are the well-known scientists Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge and Prof. Charles Richet. Although these researchers often remained sceptical about psychic phenomena - having found nothing which convinced them of the reality of survival - there were many, often very high-profile scientists, who became convinced by their results that mediums were able to manifest phenomena which were inexplicable in mainstream scientific terms; and some of them accepted that the only realistic explanation was that the human spirit survived death. Some of the more important books describing research of this sort are summarised below.