Sheargold, Richard K(empsell) (1911-1988)

British parapsychologist. He was born on December 20, 1911, at Caterham, Surrey, England. He was departmental manager at McMichael Radio, Slough, England. He joined the Society for Psychical Research and took a special interest in scientific experiments relating to the question of human survival. In 1963 he became the first chairman of the Survival Joint Research Committee Trust.

Under the sponsorship of the SPR, he completed a series of card-guessing tests with mediums as percipients, in order to investigate the possibility of a relationship between telepathic faculty and the ESP demonstrated by mental mediums. These experiments were reported in the Journal of the SPR (June 1961). From 1971 on, Sheargold experimented with the electronic voice phenomenon, also known as Raudive Voices, that had just been publicized in the West by Friedrick Jürgenson and Konstantin Raudive. In September 1973, he gave a talk on "Experiments on the Jürgenson Voice Phenomena" at a symposium organized by The Institute of Parascience. He died January 25, 1988.

Sources:

Berger, Arthur S., and Joyce Berger. The Encyclopedia of Parapsychology and Psychical Research. New York: Paragon House, 1991.

Ellis, David J. The Mediumship of the Tape Recorder. Pulborough: The Author, 1978.

Pleasants, Helene, ed. Biographical Dictionary of Parapsychology. New York: Helix Press, 1964.

Sheargold, Richard K. "The Ghost of Twenty-Nine Megacycles." Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 53 (1986).

——. Hints on Receiving the Voice Phenomenon. N.p., 1973.

——. "The Occultism of Occultism." Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 45 (1970).