Book Review| November 01 2022 Review: Common Phantoms: An American History of Psychic Science, by Alicia Puglionesi Common Phantoms: An American History of Psychic Science. By Alicia Puglionesi. Stanford University Press, 2020. 336 pages. $90.00 hardcover; $28.00 softcover; ebook available. Ethan Doyle White Ethan Doyle White Independent Scholar Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Nova Religio (2022) 26 (2): 125–126. https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2022.26.2.125 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Ethan Doyle White; Review: Common Phantoms: An American History of Psychic Science, by Alicia Puglionesi. Nova Religio 1 November 2022; 26 (2): 125–126. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2022.26.2.125 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentNova Religio Search Before there was parapsychology, there was psychical research. Emerging and spreading across Western countries during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, psychical researchers sought to explore unusual mental phenomena such as telepathy and clairvoyance but without necessary recourse to the explanations offered by Spiritualism. In the United States, the subject was largely formalized through the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR), founded in 1885 as an offshoot of its British counterpart. Under the guidance of the prominent psychologist and philosopher of religion William James—a figure who looms large in this study—the ASPR gathered vast amounts of material from correspondents throughout the United States, much of which the society was unsure what to do with. It is into the ASPR’s rich and complicated archive that the novelist, poet, and historian Alicia Puglionesi has delved to produce Common Phantoms. Possessing a doctorate in the history of science from Johns Hopkins... You do not currently have access to this content.