Camille Flammarion 
Mysterious Psychic Forces 

Camille Flammarion (1842-1925) was a French astronomer and psychical researcher, notable for his writings on mediumship and psychic phenomena, including case collections. He also distinguished himself as a novelist and popular science writer.



Flammarion popularised psychical research, and psychic phenomena in general, in his overview book ‘Mysterious Psychic Forces’ (1907). Besides his own investigations he described those carried out by Agénor de Gasparin, Marc Thury, the Dialectical Society of London, and William Crookes, lamenting that psychic phenomena ‘have been almost as little studied as in the time of Ptolemy, and have not yet found their Kepler, and their Newton, yet fairly obtrude themselves upon our notice, and cry out to be examined’. He also addressed speculative theories and the topics of fraud and deception. He added that he believed in survival of bodily death, but did not think this was the explanation for all séance phenomena.