Category: A

Supposedly a Tibetan lama (priest), Rampa claimed to have been born in 1911 in Lhasa and to have spent many years, from the age of seven, in esoteric training for the priesthood, specializing in Buddhist medicine, and then to have written an autobiography, The Third Eye, which was first published in 1956. The book covers…

A qualified medical doctor who began to explore parapsychology in the early 1950s, investigating a range of phenomena and publishing Beyond Telepathy (1962) and The Sacred Mushroom (n.d.). In 1971 Puharich met Uri Geller, an Israeli stage magician, and was convinced of his extrasensory powers. In 1974 Puharich published Uri: A Journal of the Mystery…

Prominent Dutch zoologist and pioneer cryptozoologist best remembered for his study of sea serpents. Oude-mans was born into a family known for its scientific and intellectual accomplishments. He developed an early interest in the study of animals. He completed his doctorate in zoology in 1885 and shortly thereafter became the director of the Royal Zoological…

A woman who claimed the ability to live without eating. According to Moore’s own account, in 1807 she decided that she could not stand to eat any more. Moore became the subject of some curiosity. Pamphlets written about her speculated that she had learned to live off air. A few suggested that she was eating…

Developer and promoter of the science of Lawsonomy. Born in London, he grew up in Detroit, and worked at various menial tasks, until he ran away from home in his teens, riding freight cars for several years. Between 1888 and 1907, Lawson became first a professional baseball player with a number of teams, later a…

Journalist and author one of whose claims to fame occurred in 1985 when the Koestler Chair of Parapsychology was established in the Department of Psychology at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. He and his wife Cynthia left a bequest in their wills to make this possible. On Koestler’s death from leukemia and Parkinson’s disease, his…

Founder of the Institute for Sex Research, Indiana University, in 1942, where he and his colleagues published two important reports: Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953). They revealed wide variations in sexual behavior and created something of a furor at the time. They were criticized for…

A prominent U.S. educational psychologist who has made important contributions to the study of intelligence from his graduate student days to the present. He maintained in an article published in the Harvard Educational Review in 1969 that there is an hereditary difference in the average Intelligence Quotient (IQ) of U.S. whites and blacks that blacks…

German doctor of naturopathy who developed the Mucusless Diet Healing System, still popularly advocated in health-food circles. Ehret was born in Freiburg, Baden, Germany. Shortly after graduating from the University of Freiburg, he was drafted into the army but was soon released because of his heart condition. As his health continued to degenerate, he turned…

Spiritualist, born in Blooming Grove, New York. Poor and uneducated, Davis was apprenticed to a shoemaker in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., at the age of 15. Under the tutorship of a Mr. Livingston in that town, Davis developed supposed clairvoyant powers and, in March, 1844, claimed under prolonged trance to have conversed with spiritual beings and mentors.…