Summer School Course in ‘Spooks’
Loyola University has offered summer courses in some fashion almost since its inception in 1912. One of these courses, offered in the summer of 1925, was taught by the Jesuit Priest Father Carlos M. de Heredia. He was a visiting priest who had devoted himself to the study of psychic phenomena and debunking the ‘spiritualists’ so popular at that time. In his course titled ‘Cryptopsychis,’ Father de Heredia demonstrated just how these spiritualists were able to pull off the mysterious knocking, table lifting, and other acts of charlatans used to dupe their victims. He even famously followed Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s spiritualism tour of the United States, demonstrating how Doyle’s evidence which provided ‘proof’ of an afterlife, could all be faked. To read more about this tenacious man and his quest to reveal the fallacy of spiritualism, check out this article from The Maroon on May 25, 1925.
Found in the Archives is a recurring series of crazy cool stuff found in the Monroe Library’s Special Collections & Archives.