Gustav Geley (13 April 1868 – 15 July 1924) was a French

physician A physician, medical practitioner (British English), medical doctor, or simply doctor is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through the Medical education, study, Med ...

, psychical researcher and director of the Institute Metapsychique International from 1919 to 1924."Gustav Geley"
Biographical Dictionary of Parapsychology.

Career

Geley was born in 1868 at Montceau-les-Mines,

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

. He studied medicine in

Annecy Annecy ( , ; , also ) is the Prefectures in France, prefecture and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of the Haute-Savoie Departments of France, department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Regions of France, regi ...

. In 1919, he gave up his practice as a physician and become the director of the Institut Mètapsychique International. He was a spiritist and a believer in

reincarnation Reincarnation, also known as rebirth or transmigration, is the Philosophy, philosophical or Religion, religious concept that the non-physical essence of a living being begins a new lifespan (disambiguation), lifespan in a different physical ...

."Gustav Geley (1868-1924)"
Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology. 2001. Encyclopedia.com. 30 November 2014. In the early 20th century Joaquin María Argamasilla known as the "Spaniard with X-ray Eyes" claimed to be able to read handwriting or numbers on

dice A die (: dice, sometimes also used as ) is a small, throwable object with marked sides that can rest in multiple positions. Dice are used for generating random values, commonly as part of tabletop games, including dice games, board games, ro ...

through closed metal boxes. Argamasilla managed to fool Geley and Charles Richet into believing he had genuine

psychic A psychic is a person who claims to use powers rooted in parapsychology, such as extrasensory perception (ESP), to identify information hidden from the normal senses, particularly involving telepathy or clairvoyance; or who performs acts that a ...

powers. In 1924 he was exposed by Harry Houdini as a fraud. Argamasilla peeked through his simple blindfold and lifted up the edge of the box so he could look inside it without others noticing. Geley investigated the physical mediumship of

Eva Carrière Eva Carrière (born Marthe Béraud 1886 in France, died 1943),

and Franek Kluski, and endorsed the abilities of Carrière. It was reported in the ''Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology'' that Geley's "belief system seems to have made him a target for tricks by the mediums he studied and, in the end, capable of suppressing negative evidence." In 1954, the SPR member Rudolf Lambert published a report revealing details about a case of fraud that was covered up by many early members of the Institute Metapsychique International (IMI).Sofie Lachapelle. (2011). ''Investigating the Supernatural: From Spiritism and Occultism to Psychical Research and Metapsychics in France, 1853-1931''. Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 144–145. Lambert who had studied Geley's files on Eva Carrière discovered photographs depicting fraudulent ectoplasm taken by her companion Juliette Bisson. Various "materializations" were artificially attached to Eva's hair by wires. The discovery was never published by Geley. Eugene Osty (the director of the institute) and members Jean Meyer, Albert von Schrenck-Notzing and Charles Richet all knew about the fraudulent photographs but were firm believers in mediumship phenomena so demanded the scandal be kept secret. According to James Randi, Geley had a "very strong need for belief in the hereafter", as evidenced by Geley's statement, "Robbed of its illusions, individual existence seems a real misfortune if it endures only from birth to death. Geley's book ''Unconscious to the Conscious'' has been described as "almost a bible of reincarnationism." J. Gordon Melton, Jerome Clark, Aidan A. Kelly. (1991). ''New Age Almanac''. Visible Ink. Geley died in an airplane accident on 15 July 1924. He was 56.

Publications

''From the Unconscious to the Conscious''
(1921)

Career

Publications

References

Further reading