Weird Tales/Volume 2/Issue 4/$600,000 for Study of Spiritualism

$600,000 FOR STUDY OF SPIRITUALISM

A BEQUEST of $400,000 has been made to Stanford university, San Francisco, for the study of spiritualism, according to a recent announcement. This gives the spiritualism and psychology departments a fund of more than $600,000, all derived from the estate of the late Thomas Welton Stanford of Melbourne, Australia, a brother of Senator Leland Stanford. The chair was originally founded by Thomas Welton, for many years a leading spiritualist. Trustees of the university accepted his first donation of $50,000 only on the understanding that investigations along "spirit" lines would be untrammeled, regardless of whether the case for or against spiritualism was shown to be true.

To date, Prof. John Edgar Coover, fellow in psychic phenomena, has been unable to find any scientific truth in the contentions of such eminent spiritualists as Sir Oliver Lodge and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, that communication with the dead is possible.