Garrett, Eileen J(eanette Vancho Lyttle)
(18921970)
Psychic medium, foundation executive, writer, editor, publisher,
and one of the most important figures of the early
parapsychological scene. She is believed to have been born
March 14, 1892, in Meath, Ireland, and given the name Emily
Jane Savage. In later years, Emily became known variously as
Jane Savage or Jean Lyttle (or Little). The latter name
was the pseudonym for her four published novels.
Garrett was a natural sensitive from an early age. Her psychic
ability was further developed by Spiritualist James Hewat
McKenzie at the British College of Psychic Science, London,
between 1924 and 1928. Garrett, however, was unique among
mediums in developing an objective approach to her own phenomena.
She also enlisted the assistance of qualified researchers
and scientists in investigating paranormal phenomena. She
was invited to the United States by the American Society for
Psychical Research in 1931, and from time to time visited
Duke University, working under the guidance of William McDougall
and J. B. Rhine. She worked with many famous investigators
of the paranormal, including Alexis Carrel, Nandor
Fodor, and Hereward Carrington. She experimented with telepathy,
trance, psychic controls, poltergeist, ESP, and many
other phenomena.
Her own powers of telepathy and clairvoyance were remarkable.
As a medium she attracted world interest when she
received a communication apparently from the dead captain of
the airship R101 after the airship had crashed but before the
news was reported.
In 1941 Garrett started the publishing house Creative Age
Press in New York with her own book Telepathy, written in five
weeks. She also launched Tomorrow magazine, one of the most
intelligent journals on paranormal topics of the time, and established
Helix Press, another publishing house.
In 1951 she set up the Parapsychology Foundation in New
York to encourage organized scientific research through grants
and international conferences. The foundation published the
International Journal of Parapsychology, the first issue of which appeared
in the summer of 1959. The foundation organized its
first international conference on parapsychology at the University
of Utrecht, Holland, on July 29, 1953, under the chairmanship
of Gardner Murphy.
Garrett had been married twice before her marriage to J. W.
Garrett in 1918. During her lifetime she encountered many famous
literary figures and worked with the greatest parapsychologists
of her time. She died September 15, 1970, and was
buried at Marseilles, France.
Sources
Angoff, Allen. Eileen Garrett and the World Beyond the Senses.
New York William Morrow, 1974.
Garrett, Eileen J. Adventures in the Supernormal. New York
Garrett Publications, 1949.
. Awareness. New York Creative Age Press, 1941.
. Life is the Healer. Philadelphia Dorrance, 1957.
. Many Voices The Autobiography of a Medium. 1968.
Reprint, New York Dell, 1969.
. My Life as a Search for the Meaning of Mediumship.
London Rider, 1939.
. The Sense and Nonsense of Prophecy. New York Farrar,
Straus & Giroux, 1950. Reprint, New York Berkley, 1968.
. Telepathy In Search of a Lost Faculty. New York Creative
Age Press, 1945.
, ed. Beyond the Five Senses. Philadelphia J. B. Lippincott,
1957.
. Does Man Survive Death New York Helix Press,
1957.
Progoff, Ira. The Image of an Oracle A Report on Research into
the Mediumship of Eileen Garrett. New York Helix Press, 1964.
