Our Society

Thirty years ago Glasgow University Department of Adult and Continuing Education invited Professor Archie Roy to give courses of lectures in psychical research to extra-mural students. He accepted and has given the course "An Introduction to Psychical Research" more than sixty times in the West of Scotland, often giving three courses in a year. These courses engendered an intellectual interest in the subject in the majority of those who attended and a frequent question being asked by students at the end of the courses being, "How can we continue to study the subject?" More or less as a result of this and with the help of many who had asked that question, he founded the Scottish Society for Psychical Research in 1987 in order that people would be able to meet and study these matters further. With Archie as founding president the society has flourished. It attracts many knowledgeable speakers, many from abroad, to its programme of lectures and enjoys a lively audience of 80 or more at every monthly lecture in Glasgow University.

Archie was president of the London based SPR from 1993 to 1995 and has been a Vice-President ever since. He remains of course Founding President of the SSPR.

Some years ago Archie also helped to found PRISM (Psychical Research Involving Selected Mediums) which encourages, guides and funds research work with mediums. He himself has worked with Trish Robertson, the SSPR President, on such research work and they have had assistance and encouragement the SSPR members as participants in some of the experimentation. The resultant work has produced three papers already published by the SPR and a fourth under preparation. In addition to such planned research, Archie over the past thirty years has investigated innumerable spontaneous cases of allegedly haunted places and haunted people.

Apart from his scientific papers in the subject he has published two well-received books on the paranormal, A Sense of Something Strange and The Archives of the Mind. He has also just finished a first draft of his third, entitled The Eager Dead.

Archie is Professor Emeritus of Astronomy at Glasgow University and is still producing text-books on this subject and continuing his research in celestial mechanics with Dr Bonnie Steves at Glasgow Caledonian University, where he is a Visiting Professor. As he sometimes remarks, Emeritus means: he's retired but he wont go away. He still takes a very keen interest in the Scottish Society for Psychical Research and remains convinced that psychical researchers in their interest in the paranormal are conducting supremely important investigations that hopefully will shed light on the nature of human personality and its possible survival in some form after death.

Our Meetings

There are monthly lectures in Glasgow, (Sept. to April) which usually take place in the Boyd Orr Building of the University of Glasgow. For other informal meetings, the topics and venue are advertised in the PSI Report magazine.

Anyone who has experience of such things as haunted houses, poltergeist activity and any phenomena that seems to be paranormal, may contact our Secretary (details in Contact Us), for a free and confidential investigation.

The SSPR has a library with books and pre-recorded tapes of past lectures from many eminent researchers, including:

• Dr. Peter Fenwick, Neuropsychiatrist and a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, in 2004
• Prof. Robert Morris, Chair of the Koestler Parapychology Unit at the University of Edinburgh , in 2003
• Dr Rupert Sheldrake, Biologist, author and Fellow of the Institute of Noetic Sciences , San Francisco, in 2002
• Dr.Adrian Parker, Associate Professor in Psychology, University of Gothenburg , Sweden , in 2001
• Prof.Braude, Chairman of the Philosophy Department, University of Maryland , in 2000
• Prof.Hoyt Edge, University of Florida , in 1999
• Dr. Deborah Delanoy, Koestler Chair of Parapsychology, University of Edinburgh , in 1998
• Rev. Angus Haddow in 1997
• Colin Wilson, author, in 1996
• Dr John Beloff  - Eminent parapsychologist, University of Edinburgh - 1992
• Professor Erlendur Haraldsson -  published works include the topics of Apparitions and Ostensible Reincarnation - 2005
• Maurice Grosse  - A chief investigator in the case of the Enfield Poltergeist- 1992 and 2005

See our recently Past Lectures......

16 Years of The Psi Report

The Psi Report began as a single sheet Newsletter in December 1987 and continued as A4 pages for sixteen issues. Issue 17 of September 1989 adopted the present form as an A5 booklet, introducing a yellow cover and map of Scotland along with the "Psi" logo.
The Greek letter psi was proposed by the British psychologist, R.H.Thouless in 1942 as a useful abbreviation, covering ESP and PK. Our logo (above left) merges the Greek letter psi with the Scottish thistle, connecting psychical research and Scotland.

The Newsletter was called The Psi Report for the first time in issue 42 of February 1992.

Our Office Bearers

President - Nick Kyle
Vice President - Archibald Lawrie
Secretary - Tricia Robertson
Treasurer - Sarah Kyle	No Image Available

 

Other members of our team