The lawyer and journalist Henry Steel Olcott (1832-1907) published People from the Other World in 1875. Part 1 of the work is a careful account of Olcott's 1874 investigations into the famous Eddy brothers of Chittenden, Vermont, and their claimed psychic powers. Part 2 is a report into two Philadelphia mediums who claimed to be able to call up two spirits called John and Katie King. The account includes descriptions of seances, healings, levitation, teleportation and the famous Compton transfiguration. Olcott, a founding member of the Theosophical Society and its first president, was a pioneer of psychical research. This work, deeply influenced by Helena Blavatsky (1831-1891), who he met at Chittenden, is one of his most popular. It offers an important insight into the nineteenth-century fascination with the occult and is a classic example of a Victorian attempt to approach the supernatural with the rigours of scientific investigation.
- ISBN10 0344593886
- ISBN13 9780344593888
- Publish Date 31 October 2018 (first published 1 October 1987)
- Publish Status Unknown
- Imprint Franklin Classics Trade Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 510
- Language English