George Nugent Merle Tyrrell | |
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Occupation | Parapsychologist |
George Nugent Merle Tyrrell (1879-1952) most well known as G. N. M. Tyrrell was a British mathematician, physicist, radio engineer and parapsychologist.
Tyrell was a student of Guglielmo Marconi and a pioneer in the development of radio. In 1908 he joined the Society for Psychical Research. He conducted numerous experiments in telepathy and was interested in apparitional experiences. He attempted to explain ghosts by a psychological theory.
Tyrrell proposed that ghosts are a hallucination of the subconscious mind of a person, to explain collective hallucinations for more than one person, he proposed it as a telepathic mechanism. Tyrell was the president of the Society for Psychical Research 1945-1946.
Although a believer in telepathy, Tyrell was a critic of physical mediumship. He stated that it has been the "happy hunting ground of tricksters and charlatans."
Tyrrell created the term out-of-body experience in his book Apparitions.
A review in Nature for Science and Psychical Phenomena praised Tyrell for his "obvious sincerity" but suggested the book was "full of flaws" which aroused suspicion of Tyrell's critical faculties.