Project Story

Are the strange psychic phenomena in these images evidence of life after death, of some little-understood human ability, or of both? Independent of possible post-mortem survival of consciousness, genuine psychic phenomena have been documented for millennia. Research to better understand such phenomena and the far reaches of the human psyche is poorly funded. Your donation of $18 or more to the T.G. Hamilton Family Memorial Research Fund will receive a charitable donation receipt eligible for a generous income tax credit.

Between 1918 and 1935, Winnipeg medical doctor T. Glen Hamilton (TGH) investigated inexplicable human abilities, often labelled “paranormal.” Without the encouragement and collaboration of his wife Lillian Hamilton, who had trained as a nurse, the couple’s psychical research experiments would not have achieved international recognition.

In the family’s Elmwood home (“Hamilton House”), in an unused bedroom dedicated as a laboratory for psychical research, Dr. Hamilton took more than 300 unique photographs of non-contact table levitations and ectoplasmic masses, with multiple cameras and from different angles. Housed at the University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections (UMASC), the photographic images in the Hamilton Family Fonds, together with notes of the séance proceedings, attendance registers, and other manuscript material, provide a resource unparalleled worldwide for the study of psychic phenomena.

In 1980, the Hamiltons’ daughter Margaret Hamilton Bach, thanks to a sizeable bequest from her friend Sylvia Barber, a Winnipeg hairdresser and psychic photographer, launched the T.G. Hamilton Family Memorial Research Fund and an annual grant application process to defray the expenses of scholars wishing to visit Winnipeg to consult the Hamiltons’ psychical research records.

“My extensive study of the Hamiltons’ psychical research experiments benefited greatly from Hamilton Family Memorial research grants during the 1990s. Check out this Shaw TV interview from 2012. Please join me in supporting this Crowdfunding campaign. Our goal is to increase the size of the available annual grant, by adding $10,000 to the endowment fund. Your generous support will allow scholars the opportunity to study the amazing psychic phenomena photographed by T.G. and Lillian Hamilton, so that future generations might better understand these mysteries of the human psyche.” Walter Meyer zu Erpen, BA, MAS (UBC).

T.G. Hamilton photos © University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections